Everyone Learns That in 3rd Grade, Right?

By Sarah Cole | November 20, 2013

The following account is based on a true story. Names have been changed in order to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

David is a black boy from a working-class family. The public schools he attended for elementary school and middle school served majority-minority and low-income student bodies. The English teachers at his middle school had embraced the progressive “process learning” technique, in which students are expected to understand and develop their English skills through the process of writing. By the time he graduated from his middle school, David had written several short stories and essays, but was unable to identify a prepositional phrase in a sentence.

David begins ninth grade at a rigorous private high school with a predominately white and middle- to upper-class student body. His family knows that he could have a slightly bumpy transition to this new school. But David is a smart kid, and they never doubt his ability to successfully adjust. He starts the year feeling excited and ready to begin his high school career. However, a couple months into the school year David has a D in English. His English teacher Mr. Lewis mocks him in class for never having been taught certain grammar concepts at his previous schools. “Everyone learned about nouns and verbs in third grade, right?” the teacher sarcastically asks David in front of his classmates.

David’s parents are concerned and meet with Mr. Lewis to see how they can help their son improve in his class, but the teacher seems unwilling to help and only makes more snarky comments regarding David’s inadequate education in public schools. Eventually, with some coercion from the school’s administration, Mr. Lewis agrees to meet with David before school in order to teach him the grammar skills other freshmen at the school have already been taught. David’s grade in English begins to improve.

Although the initial behavior of Mr. Lewis was disgraceful and unprofessional, he has a point: David’s education has failed to teach him grammatical skills, and as a result the quality of his writing has suffered. Students of color throughout the nation are failing to learn these skills because their schools, like David’s middle school, rely on the process learning approach. In her groundbreaking 1988 article “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children,” leading education reformer Dr. Lisa Delpit suggests that this technique can only benefit students who already have a strong understanding of the skills that the subject requires. Students with this understanding have a solid foundation upon which they can build, but other students don’t have the prior knowledge necessary to grasp concepts indirectly covered through process learning methods.

The specificity of the beneficiaries of process learning strategies lends the approach to racial and socio-economic bias. For example, studies show that reading to children before they enter kindergarten can help develop their literacy skills before they even begin to read. However, the most recentHousehold Education Survey in 2007 revealed that while 67.4 percent of white children aged three to five have parents that read to them everyday, only 34.6 percent of black three to five-year olds can say the same thing. (Similarly, only 39.7 percent of three to five-year olds living below the poverty line have parents reading to them daily, compared to 63.9 percent of children living at 200 percent the poverty line.) In other words, almost twice as many white students as black students are beginning their first days of elementary school with literacy skills already developed.

This disparity would not be a problem if schools worked to catch up lagging students by teaching lessons on foundational skills. Unfortunately with the progressive education movement currently sweeping the nation, such is not the case at many schools. Time after time this pattern of reinforcing disparities repeats itself at these schools. Teachers in various subjects are opting for “higher level” learning without ever introducing students to the basic concepts of their course materials. In doing so, these teachers are automatically excluding from any meaningful learning many of their low income students or students of color, who most need those introductory lessons.

David’s new school recognized and corrected the shortcomings of his primary education, but far too many American students are not as lucky as him. They stumble through their K-12 education, never quite reaching a full understanding of material because they do not have the necessary gateway skills. Then, their schools bid them farewell and good luck as they enter the work force or go to college still lacking these critical skills and suffering tremendously as a result.

Any teaching method that disproportionately benefits those coming from backgrounds of privilege, such as being white and/or middle to upper class, is an impediment to achieving equality in the United States of America. We must ensure the provision of a foundation of basic skills on which our students can stand, so they will all be able to reach the higher level thinking which is the aim of process learning. Because, in the words of Mr. Lewis, everyone should be learning nouns and verbs in third grade, right?