The object lesson

When CUC finally cut off the electric power to PSS’ central offices and schools, the howl most heard around the island was the blame game, which is a locomotive that verbally and circularly goes around driven mostly by the well-off and the personally unaffected who remain protected in the comfort of their homes, some minions even equipped with back-up generators to tide over the occasional brown out. 

I recall the time students failed to report to SVES class because their parents were convinced that the DPRK was lodging a deadly missile into the U.S. military facilities that day! Sixth grade Social Studies focuses on ancient civilization but the textbook ends with the Cold War, including the Korean conflict.  

It was an opportune chance to connect the historical dots of the peninsula from the ancient Goguryeo empire in Dong Bei to Nippon in Manchukuo (Manchuria), the Korean civil war, dugout Doug’s post-WWII surprise quagmire, the unexpected but understandable  Zhongguo Yalu crossing by the youthful Red Army, on to Panmunjom armistice, and contemporaneously, to the ill-fated collaboration of Korean manufacturing, Chinese labor, American marketing and Japanese finance in the much-lamented CNMI garment industry. 

News accounts regarding the PSS power shutout only carried the now foul smelling scent of the blame game, but I know of colleagues at PSS who would not have been remiss in their pedagogical duties in picking up the “reality” factor and made an object lesson out of it.  

Many saw the handwriting on the wall regarding the imposition of the assessment based NCLB accountability solely on standardized test on students and teachers as the death knell of meaningful and interactive education.  We are now hearing horror stories out of public schools trying to comply with requirements for funding, and merely training their clientele to pass tests. 

A school nurse colleague in Texas wrote recently of incidences of teachers and students “throwing up” on test days and laments that though counselors concede that only 60 percent of the students are comfortable in navigating through written tests as a means of assessment, 40 percent remain on the outside experiencing all kinds of psychosomatic disorders, consigned to the terrain of being certifiably “unqualified non-passers”! 

I am reminded when I shared with fellow teachers seeking PRAXIS assistance on how attitude in the test room determines much of the result, more than memorized answers of pat questions.  Anxiety prone on my first try, scrambling to review without success what patently was a lifetime of learning, I passed the requirement on a score clearly nothing to write home about.  I tried second-guessing “right” answers rather than use my common sense. 

After an extended bout of cervical spondylosis where I left my teaching post to seek alternative medical attention other than the recommended surgical scalpel, I returned medically cleared and tried returning to the classroom.  I decided to take the Social Studies PRAXIS for the High and Middle Schools, relying solely on anxiety-less chutzpah.  

My method was simple.  Without lifting a page out of the review books, I went into NMC’s test room deciding that I already knew 50 percent of the stuff (otherwise I had no business teaching the subject).  That left the issue of the remaining half. 

 A good standardized test of multiple choices usually set two answers out of four to be recognizably incorrect.  That leaves two answers to choose from, and discarding the incorrect choices, statistical probability expects one to get half of the remaining questions answered correctly.  Sum, 50 from confidence and 25 from guessing = a decent 75, way beyond the passing grade!

 Needless to say, my above 95-percentile rating did not get me hired back to PSS but that’s another story already told many times.  Besides, the “reality” led to options, and we are now merrily doing pedagogy in China.

 The object lesson in any learning is the grounding and matter-of-fact acceptance of the “reality” factor, such as the irrational fear of Uncle Sam’s grunts on Kim Jung Il.  Similarly, an electrical power-less PSS is an occasion to look at Saipan’s whole social process grounded on “the way life is,” its economic foundations, political dynamics, and cultural accretions. 

Were I in Jacqui Q’s shoes (if she is still the C-girl), I would encourage teachers to facilitate a description of daily CNMI experiences (see, hear, smell, taste, touch), get literal expressions of resulting feelings (joy and anger, pleasure and pain), catalyze an exchange of cognitive perspectives within an iterative framework, and facilitate clear images of what can be done in response, personally.  No moralism here, just the facts, Jack! 

Ruth Tighe, the on-island venerable librarian and maven of cogent thoughts and clear writing, was gracious enough to point out in her blog that CUC’s survival precedes any other priority given their function, adding that health and retirement might trump claims from free and appropriate education. 

For pedagogues, object lessons are best learned when grounded in reality; then deciding the necessary deed.  Leave the blame game to politicians; their casino delusion will be here a while! 

PSS’ Student First is clear enough; grounded in reality is the pedagogical order of the day!