In August of 2011 there was an article by the Washington Post entitled, “Scores show students aren’t ready for college: 75% may need remedial classes” which made me pause and reconsider an aspect of my dissertation. The author stated that having taken the ACTs (a standardized test that assesses a high school student’s proficiency in English, math, writing, and science, similar to the SATs), 75% of students had not passed the ACT’s college preparedness benchmarks. The article went on to quote Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who stated, “These ACT results are another sign that states need to raise their academic standards and commit to education reforms that accelerate student achievement.” Former West Virginia governor and President of the Alliance for Excellent Education also chipped in, displeased by the lack of coordination between K-12 and higher education and outraged at the burden on taxpayers for essentially having to pay twice for students learning the same content. The article ended by recognizing the critics who discredit the emphasis in K-12 on standardized testing and providing statistics on racial discrepancies in different states.

This article annoyed me a bit. I am very suspicious of mindless standardized testing in K-12 education, but it wasn’t the debate about standardized tests that bothered me. I wasn’t especially perturbed by the 75% figure either. It was something else. To better describe the cause of my irritation, allow me to deviate a bit from this article and share two stories which are, as always, anecdotal in nature.

The first story happened in Ms. Cynthia Hunafa’s fifth grade homeroom class. I sat relatively close to a boy named Matt who loved to read novels. If I remember correctly, Matt was rather short and had red hair. I would like to remember him wearing round Harry Potter-like glasses, but I am not certain about this. He might also have had freckles. He sat approximately two seats to the right of Sam Solomon, a tall blonde “new” student who sat facing me. I remember Sam was tall and thin and had a recycled paper notebook (a novelty at the time when the book, “50 Simple Things Kids Can Do To Save the Earth,” was widely popular). I associate Sam with the color purple. He might have been in the Purple Spelling Group. I do not remember. I just know he sat on the same side as Matt, and they both sat facing my direction. I do not recall Matt socializing with any of the other kids. He was quiet and shy, but I am most certain that he was constantly engrossed in his books.

One day, I saw Matt reading a massive book. I walked over to his desk and asked him what he was reading. Without looking up, he answered, “It,” as he did a little shake of his tome. “What?” “Stephen King.” He went back to reading.

If I had known Stephen King had actually written a book called “It,” perhaps, I would not have felt so humiliated. I probably would not have found any issue with continuing to read popular books for our age group, such as The Baby-sitters Club or the many adventures of Ramona and her sister. And, I would have never learned to enjoy looking closely into the meanings of words in stories and in texts as I do now. Of course these observations are all in hindsight. However, at the time, I interpreted Matt’s remark as one of smug indifference.

How dare he not look me in the eye and tell me what he is reading? Does he think he is better than me? Does he not know I am in the Gold Spelling Group? 

Needless to say, I was furious and determined to be able to read thick novels by Stephen King, just like Matt. I would prove to him that I could finish big books too, from cover to cover, so that the white vertical lines on the spine of the paperbacks would become relics depicting the pauses I took in conquering the novel in its entirety. Once he saw those lines, Matt would have to tell me what book he was reading at the time.

My mother, who knew nothing about King’s novels, was very pleased to hear about my interest in reading more difficult books. She suggested I look around our little library in our solarium to see if I couldn’t find something there. How about Stephen Hawking’s, A Brief History of Time, which I purchased years ago but never read? No, mother, I insisted. I only want Stephen King. That’s what Matt reads.

When I went to the bookstore at Merle Hay Mall with my mother, I asked the bookstore lady for Stephen King. Horrified, the lady behind the counter looked at me once, then looked at my immigrant mother (who was smiling proudly), and silently led me to the Horror section. “You will find his books here,” she pointed. She wouldn’t even go into the aisle to show me exactly where to look, and instead, quickly returned to her cash register bunker and watched carefully as the future female Jeffrey Dahmer carefully scanned book jackets for inspiration.

All I was interested in was finding a book with a funny-looking clown on the cover. Now, I am certain there were other novels (including “It”) at this particular bookstore, but being in the “20th percentile or less” height range within my age group, there was only one Stephen King book (in alphabetical order) that was within my eye level. I pulled it out of the shelf and was saddened to be greeted not by a clown, but instead, a cloud of green vapor floating behind a black foreground. Close enough, I thought. (Neon green was quite popular at the time.)

When I brought The Tommyknockers to the counter, the lady scornfully looked at my mother one last time as if she were the devil, herself, for allowing a young girl to read such inappropriate literature. Of course, neither my mother nor I had any clue, and we quickly paid and got into the car. Barely being able to contain my excitement on the ride home, as soon as we reached the house, I flung the door open, raced to my room, and quickly creased open the book to the first page.

And this is where this anecdote becomes relevant. When I began reading the very first sentence of Chapter 1, I came across a word that I could not understand. I vividly remember agonizing over my ignorance. Being an elite member of the special Gold Spelling Group, I did not want to admit that the book was too difficult for me, much less surrender to it after only attempting to read the first sentence. For days, I tried to understand what the word meant, and every night, I would try to pronounce the word aloud in hopes that the meaning would magically appear in my mind if I repeated it enough. When this plan did not seem to work, I went downstairs toward the solarium where my mother was hard at work at her loud electric typewriter, creating instruction for her next Japanese language class at Drake University. I plopped onto the orange couch next to her desk and pulled out my Kid’s Dictionary from our small library. My mother must have noticed the frustration in my eyes as I closed the dictionary in defeat. “What are you looking for?” the loud banging on the keys had stopped.

“Kah-teh-chee-zu-mu ga nai!”
The word, catechism, was not in my dictionary.

My mother came over and glanced at the first line of the book. “Kah-teh-chee-zu-mu,” my mother sounded out the word, just as I had done, in a Japanese accent. It was obvious that she had no idea either. However, being the educator that she was, my mother reached up to grab her English-Japanese dictionary and thumbed through the C tab. “Oh, it is pronounced kah teh kee zu mu,” she pointed at the phonological symbols next to the word. She mumbled the translation and nodded.

For the next thirty minutes or so, my mother explained to me about the history of  Western religions, in particular, Catholicism, and the importance of learning. I think my non-Christian mother tried her best to help her non-Christian daughter understand a very Christian word that neither one of us had ever encountered in our lives. The only association I had with Christianity was from the number of times our family was invited to our friend’s Baptist church where the congregation would raise their hands and sing songs about someone named Jesus. All this was so abstract to me that I still could not concretely lodge the word catechism in a safe place in my mind. My mother suggested I skip over the word and read further. “Maybe the story will explain it better.”

As it turns out, the story did not explain it any better. The Tommyknockers was a science fiction story about a writer who stumbles upon an alien spacecraft. Looking back, the book was too difficult for me to comprehend at my reading level. But, I had refused to give up, and I was eventually able to read every word in the book. (I must put the word “read” in italics because I probably only sounded out the words.) As I neared the end of the book, I was so determined to read from cover to cover that I had failed to study for a spelling test, and much to the chagrin of my mother, I was demoted from the elite Gold Spelling Group. Nonetheless, when I finished reading the last page of the novel, I took my paperback with the many vertical white lines on the spine and victoriously showed it to Matt as I boasted about how great the book was.

“Cool,” he said as he went back to his book.

It may seem a bit silly, but this small gesture by Matt was enough positive feedback to make me extremely proud of my accomplishment.

Though I never had another encounter with a word which had such a lasting impression on me as did the word catechism, I have come to learn that it is okay for me to sometimes skip over big words as long as I can enjoy the overall story. After the Tommyknockers incident, I began challenging myself with many other books that were difficult. I cannot say that I understood them all; however, I did become more and more comfortable finding parts of stories and transferring them into images in my mind.

 

Fast-forward twenty years for my second story. I was working remotely for a community college located in Texas as an instructional designer. One of the courses I helped design was an American Literature (I) class (which I will admit for the record that I did not get to finish designing). Having never taken American Literature in my life, I scoured the internet for syllabi, reading lists, presentations, podcasts, and videos of similar courses at other higher ed institutions. I identified the most common readings and familiarized myself with the purpose and meaning of the text. I should note that the class at this particular school in Texas was an accelerated four-week online course, so the most difficult part was deciding what text to cut out from my initial list and how to deliver it in a self-paced learning environment. For example, do I cut out the passages from The New England Primer (even though many schools had used snippets of it)? Or do I leave it in, since they were short readings?

Since I had never read The New England Primer, I decided to (like any other rational educator who deviates from popular teaching) look it up in Wikipedia and came across this sentence: “The 90-page work contained religious maxims, woodcuts, alphabetical assistants, acronyms, catechisms, and moral lessons.”

Catechisms.

Shit, it’s that Tommyknockers word again.

By this time, I was a doctorate student, and I must admit, I still had no idea what the word meant. For two decades the word had been resting patiently in my long-term memory for a chance to revive itself, and the glorious opportunity had finally arrived.

(I will not bore you with the process by which I finally understood the word catechism, but if anyone is interested, you can find concrete examples of catechisms from the New England Primer here.)

The importance of this story is extracting what I gained from the reading and designing process. When I began developing this course, I put on my instructional designer’s hat, pulled out my old textbooks, and was confident that I could begin with the assessment used by previous instructors and work my way back to the learning content. I looked over at syllabi from previous semesters at the college and found that evaluation in each of the sections were a series of test-bank questions assessing the student’s ability to recognize and recall fragmented bits of lower-level content in each of the readings. Here are two examples. (I have highlighted the correct answers in bold.)

 

1. [William] Bradford was elected ___ times as governor, which indicates he was a good leader.

• 5
• 10
• 25
• 30

 

2. In “Of Plymouth Plantation” on land, the healthy settlers treated the sick ones by

• avoiding them
• making fun of them
• taking care of them
• helping them when they could

 

Although I initially thought that all I needed to do was to cut out extraneous texts from a list, after reading more and more about (catechisms and) colonial Puritan literature, I began to understand that the American Literature (I) course was not just about reading literature by famous authors and answering rote questions. The texts were, in fact, historical primary and secondary records that provided a window into the politics, society, and culture of the American past. It wasn’t just historical. I realized that the discourse from the oral and written traditions had culminated into what we are today as a society. This was an amazing discovery for me, and I decided to rewrite the objectives, the assessment, as well as the learning content in a way that was reflective of this theme.

In hindsight, two decades is a long time to learn a single word, but for me, it took this long to finally be able to provide a context for housing catechism in my brain, thus creating meaning that made sense. It may be my own interpretation and very different from the authentic motivations of the Catholics or the Colonial Puritans. However, if it weren’t for the much detested Wikipedia, I may never have come to experience this.

To conclude the rather long anecdote, here is one way to understand the situation.

If it weren’t for Matt, I would have never opened up the Tommyknockers. If I had never opened up the Tommyknockers, I would have never agonized over a word so much that it would leave an impression in my memory. If I didn’t have such an impression in my memory, I would have spent the time studying for my spelling test. If I had spent the time studying for my spelling test, I would have not been ousted from the elite Gold Spelling Group.

Here is another perspective:

If it weren’t for Matt, I would have never opened up The Tommyknockers. If I had never opened up the Tommyknockers, I would have never agonized over a word so much that it would leave an impression in my memory. If I didn’t have such an impression in my memory, I would have never taken the time to understand the word catechism. If I had never taken the time to understand the word catechism, I would not have made a discovery that altered my understanding of American Literature and instructional design.

Either way, I am forever indebted to Matt and his initial remark, which stimulated my interest and helped shape the ideas and beliefs I currently hold.

Now, in returning to the original Washington Post article, if I had to use a similar technique to interpret the causal relationship implied in the text it would go something like this:

• Because there was no coordination between K-12 and Higher Ed, the instructors could not effectively teach the students to the test.
• Because instructors could not effectively teach the students to the test, students could not pass the ACT’s college preparedness benchmarks
• Because the students could not pass the benchmarks, taxpayers now have to pay for repeated courses.

It seems to me that we spend too much time looking at our past to pinpoint the exact date and time we made an error. (Examples: When we began to realize George W. Bush’s NCLB was failing or when Barack Obama’s Race to the Top became another NCLB in disguise.) We have become so embittered by the mistakes we have made in the past that we lose sight of the fact that such a revelation should not be a time where we place blame, but rather, a monumental opportunity where, if embraced, signifies a new starting point for better understanding how we can make positive solutions in the future. Mistakes or errors, in my opinion, may mark the end of a bad policy, but it is critical to recognize that it is also the beginning of a new quest to make things better.

If three in four students need remedial classes, those courses should no longer be labeled “remedial.” Instead, they should become regular pre-requisite classes for other courses. Although I am not contesting the argument that certain elements within our educational system may need reevaluation, we should never blame or punish our students for not knowing learning material the first time they are assessed or not being able to remember during a high-anxiety provoking test environment. Just as it took me decades to fully understand and make meaning of one abstract concept, it may take more time for some students to reach that A-ha! moment. Each student comes from different backgrounds and experiences, and so it is not surprising that they do not grasp the same knowledge at the same rate or in the same manner as their peers. They should be encouraged to allow confusion and frustration to be positive catalysts for the ever-evolving maturation of their minds. By the same token, this is true for educators. When we realize that a learning environment did not work as effectively as planned, we should pride ourselves for taking the time to better understand where our students are in their current level of development so that we can prepare them with skills that they will need in their subsequent courses. The end of twelfth grade does not mean that the high school mind shuts down and a new college mind begins. It is a continuous process that is lifelong and organic.

In instructional design (ID), we often talk about a needs assessment. A needs assessment is an analysis that a) identifies a gap between current outcomes and desired outcomes, b) prioritizes them, and c) solves them. When we talk about a needs assessment at the classroom level, part of this analysis requires us to 1) assess the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of students when they arrive to class on the first day, 2) set forth objectives that will help them achieve certain goals, and 3) find the best possible way to get them there. Unfortunately, step number 1 is a vague area. Classroom teachers typically do not get to personally know the students until many weeks into the semester, and lesson planning begins well before the students step foot for the first time in the classroom. At the state level, policy is based on retroactive evaluation of students who, most often, are not given a second chance to re-demonstrate mastery even if they could (unless they are classified as a failing student, in which case they must repeat the entire grade level).

For my dissertation, I have always been interested in the topic of setting good objectives: What is the desired state? Where do we want our students to go? By identifying clearly measurable objectives, all relevant parties (stakeholders, administrators, parents, teachers, and students) would understand the expectations and guidelines that would be indicative of achievement. This interest has not changed. However, with much reflection, I realize that the quality of writing objectives is largely contingent on our ability to clearly define a starting point. Perhaps, I thought after reading the Washington Post article, we are too busy blaming and creating toxic environments that we are not given the chance to loop back through the ID process to make sense of new beginnings (resulting from summative evaluation).

When I reflect on my learning as a 10 year old student and as an instructional designer, I can see an aspect of the ID process that requires further investigation. There are many researchers who have looked at what we want our students to be able to do or what types of skills we want them to achieve when they finish a semester of class or four years of college. Early this year, I remember President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Address, where he stated, “Now you need to give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers -– places that teach people skills that businesses are looking for right now, from data management to high-tech manufacturing.”

These goals are wonderful, particularly because the literature on education firmly states that students are ill prepared for the types of jobs that would help cultivate a highly skilled workforce in the future (when many of the current jobs will be replaced by technology). However, the process of designing instruction and learning environments is not just about setting goals or finding the most effective and efficient medium for achieving them. It is also about learning where we are now and evaluating whether or not the students can reach those goals. Stepping back and reassessing the past does not mean that we are regressing. Instead, I believe it means that we are creating a stronger foundation, just as I was able to make meaning of the word catechism and just as American Literature has reinvented itself by seeking guidance from the past.

 

The first sentence of Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers which had puzzled me over the years began: “For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost – that’s how the catechism goes when you boil it down.” The intended purpose of this proverbial rhyme was to suggest that small actions could lead to larger unexpected consequences. Based on the entry in Wikipedia, this was certainly the case for the protagonist in The Tommyknockers. However, I’d like to think that change can be mindful, and consequences do not have to be negative. If catechisms are used to help students learn doctrines or ideas, then perhaps, “for want of a nail,” we can carefully learn from difficulties of the past so that we don’t lose kingdoms, but we can collectively make the existing ones better. That’s how my catechism goes when you boil it down.