Physical Fitness Supports Academic Achievement

Japanese schools have received a lot of disparagement, and from many different perspectives. They are often accused of stifling creativity and over-emphasizing rote learning.

Whether or not these criticisms are merited, others may decide.

Praiseworthy, however, is a practice maintained in at least some Japanese schools: daily physical exercise, usually at the beginning of the school day.

While many American high schools have extensive sports programs, they differ from physical fitness programs in at least two ways.

First, high school athletics do not involve all students. Percentages vary, but at many North American high schools, roughly half of the student body may participate in a school team. Because the sports are seasonal, at any one point during the school year, a smaller segment of the students is engaged in athletic activity.

Second, time spent at sports practice does not always equal time spent in physical exercise. There are long speeches from coaches about strategy and morale, and there is time spent waiting in line to do a certain drill or get to a certain exercise machine.

By contrast, a school-wide exercise program might involve twenty or thirty minutes of calisthenics before the first class of the day - pushups, sit-ups, running, pull-ups, chin-ups, etc.

Administrators can consult athletic trainers, physical therapists, kinesiologists and exercise physiologists to design such a program, and individual students with medical conditions may need alternative programs.

Such programs will be more balanced, in some cases, than team practices for specific sports: addressing more and varied muscle groups, alternating between sudden exertion and endurance, balancing concentric with eccentric and isometric muscle contractions, balancing muscle strengthening with cardiovascular concerns.

The benefits to students are many - increased circulation, steadier metabolism, more alertness early in the morning, less drowsiness later in the day, longer ability for sustained mental focus, etc., all of which lead to better academics.

The Inefficiency of Stopping and Starting

The tradition of a long summer vacation is deeply rooted in American culture. Discussions about year-long schooling have been circulating for decades, but to little effect.

Whether or not one embraces year-round schooling, the fact that schools come to a complete stop in May or June and are resuscitated in August or September leads undeniably to serious inefficiencies. Visiting a typical public school in the middle of July is like touring the set of a "zombie apocalypse" movie being filmed in Hollywood.

Short of year-long schooling, schools could be kept running during the summer months to maintain some sense of institutional momentum. Teachers could use that time to prepare for the coming academic year, update records, and engage in 'professional development' and in-service continuing education.

Currently, the last one or two weeks of the school year are ineffective as a great deal of effort goes into ending the year; the first one or two weeks are ineffective as time and energy are spent jumpstarting the school year. From a perspective of industrial efficiency, shutting the institution down so thoroughly makes little sense.

In any case, however, elementary and secondary pupils in the United States do not need more total minutes or hours of time in school. The optimal configuration would be to shorten the school day and lengthen the school year.

A survey of the global trends shows that from the huge amount of school time (long days and long academic years) in some east Asian countries, to the relatively short school days in some central European countries, there is no direct correlation between amount of time spent in school and academic achievement.

There is, however, an negative impact on the individual student which increases with the amount of time spent in an institutional setting. To foster the twin necessary preconditions for civilization, the recognition of the individual and the value of liberty, school age children should spend time outside of institutions.

To foster the humanistic behaviors which we would like to see in society - altruism, honesty, justice, etc. - a child likewise is best directed to home and family, which are the source of such values. Is it any wonder that the problem of 'bullying' has become a popular topic of discussion, after our society has consigned children to ever longer hours of being warehoused in some institution?

To be sure, family environments are not perfect, and some can be dysfunctional and even dangerous. But they do have at least the possibility of providing a positive environment for children. By contrast, many public schools are configured in way which, while providing tolerable to good to even excellent academic education, cannot offer character formation which includes the humanistic virtues which we might like to see.

Indeed, despite their best efforts, they cannot offer them; even more, because of their best efforts, they cannot offer them. Because they are government institutions, they are a priori destined to fail.

As seeming counter-evidence, we see teachers who are truly beneficial to their students, and students who truly acquire these very virtues and character traits. How then, in the face of such counter-evidence, do we know that the schools are incapable of bestowing desirable socialization to students? Because these counter-examples are brought about, not because of the schools, but rather despite the schools, by teachers who exemplify the literal meaning of the word 'subversive.'

A teacher who manages to impart some such salutary experience to students is doing so in an effort to undermine the system.

The chimera of a school-imparted socialization arises from the notion that methodologies and the scribblings of educational 'experts' are of value. Universities across the land have schools of education, in which writings and lectures are produced, giving the impression that education is a science and that these experts can calmly direct the professional activities of teachers. As Mortimer Smith writes:

Can our own age be said to exhibit distinctive points of view, habits of thought, or philosophical attitudes to a degree great enough to constitute a "spirit of the times"? I am not prepared to make any sweeping generalizations about the matter, but it does seem to me that there are two rather obvious tendencies present in our contemporary world which make our own times somewhat unique. We live in a period when the concept of the importance of the individual has been largely replaced by the concept of the social, and when it is widely believed that all personal and social problems can be resolved by use of the scientific method. These two tendencies are in evidence in much current thinking and especially in our thinking about educational matters.

Because the social sciences are largely not sciences, and because the 'spirit of the times' allows institutional whims to overrule personal sovereignty, the educational system is ripe for hijacking.

The system is regularly hijacked by those with political and social agendas, by those who allege that they're acting the in best interests of students, yet who have no concern for student achievement. The system is hijacked by those who proclaim that they'll socialize students, and thereby claim the right to formulate 'affective goals', which is to say that the institution can and should shape what and how the students think and believe.

In a society founded on freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, and the right 'peaceably to assemble' in free association, the notion that the school should shape the non-academic aspects of children's lives is perplexing.

The notion of 'socialization' in school is a challenge to a free society.

For this reason, while it is good to extend the operational calendar of the schools by maintaining more staff in the summer - in practical terms, teachers working in their offices and classrooms during the summer - there is no need to increase the total number of hours and minutes children spend in school. Indeed, children might be best served by reducing that time.

The Competing Purposes of Education

The question is rarely asked, and even less often answered, why do we send our children to school?

As we know, other aspects of education are endlessly analyzed and debated. But what is the purpose of education?

Of course, there are many answers being given. They are, however, usually implied rather than explicitly stated: perhaps people give these answers without even realizing that they are giving them.

Clearly stated, or more often merely implicit, these goals are offered: education should make students effective and able participants in a democratic system; education should be job training; secondary education should be focused on preparing students for college or university; education should develop ethical or moral thinking; education should teach life skills like nutrition and hygiene; etc. The list is diverse and endless.

With such a large and divergent set of potential goals, the construction of a coherent educational system is unlikely.

This is entailed by the nature of public education. Private education has the luxury of clearly articulating some goals, which by implication excludes other goals.

Bernard Iddings Bell, discussing a monograph about education by Mortimer Smith, writes:

Mr. Smith ends this admirable essay with a question. "We have been going on," he says, "for some time on the theory that education consists simply of experience and change and 'growth’ … Perhaps we need to set up some ends for education; perhaps we need to ask "growth for what?" He knows, of course, that there is no "perhaps" about it. Our professors of education, our administrators, our school boards, teachers whom they train and employ, avoid inquiry about purpose as they would avoid the plague - purpose in life, in labor, in thought, in love, in citizenship, in anything, even in education itself. Why? Because to ask about the “why” of things is both personally disturbing and disruptive of whatever static social patterns happen to be. To ask “why” might result in teachers remaining human beings and children becoming human beings, both given to making embarrassing inquiries instead of being content to be placid tools for production and consumption of goods, complacent believers in whatever those who happen to wield social control tell them is the truth. Men who ask “why” are necessary, to be sure, for the survival of freedom and democracy. But who nowadays wishes a free state at the price of possible discomfort? Who for democracy is willing to run the risk of questioning closely those flattering demagogues who pleasingly blarney the electorate and who give much in bread and circuses? Certainly not the rank and file of hard-headed Americans.

The desire for moral and ethical thought as a goal in the educational system has repeatedly found new homes, moving back and forth between the Left and the Right, between the social liberals and the social conservatives.

Each has items which it wants declared ‘good’ or ‘evil’ - whether it’s tobacco or condoms, whether it’s tolerance of specific sexual practices or tolerance of free market enterprise, whether it’s the inclusion or exclusion of spiritual thought in public discourse, etc.

While they view each other as opposites, they have this in common: at some level, their goals for education obtain a moral hue.

Mortimer Smith indicates those both sides find themselves perpetually disappointed:

Under the guidance of “the scientific spirit” modern education cannot but fail to give young people a knowledge of good and evil, for to the social scientist these are relative terms. The student is taught to believe that goodness is what “works out” something that brings “beneficent fruits in social and personal life,” without defining any standard of beneficence; “standards” and “values” are to the modern educator prescientific, theological terms. It is precisely this attitude that produces in the student that sinister lack of individual moral freedom which Lafcadio Hearn declared was the result of Japanese education, which, as he pointed out, has always been an education based on social cohesion. By fostering this attitude in the student he will never know whether we're right and Hitler wrong; he will never develop any value-system by which to judge the intrinsic worth of anything. At best this kind of education will produce only clever, wary animals who have learned how to keep out of trouble.

Smith’s discovery is that, while the charge of ‘relativism’ is often perceived to be a charge leveled by the Right against the Left, it is in fact an accusation which the Left, in its own way, also makes against the Right.

As long as the electorate has significant influence on educational policy - as long as those who oversee education, whether they be local school boards or state legislatures - are directly elected, the question of the goals and objectives of public education will remain an unsettled one.

[Andrew Smith is a German teacher at Huron High School and at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. These writings constitute a mere exercise and are not to be taken as a definitive statement of his views.]

The School's Role as One of Many Formative Institutions in Society

While attending to the challenges of secondary education, readers often routinely consider students, teachers, parents, administrators both at building and regional levels, unions, elected school boards, and federal bureaucrats.

One often overlooked party is the faculty of the colleges and universities who prepare teachers: those whose task it is to teach the teachers to teach.

About this “pedagogical elite” or “academic hierarchy”, Bernard Iddings Bell writes:

They are too absorbed in teaching the teachers how to deal not with human beings but with creatures such as by nature ought not to exist, never could exist were it not for black magic; devoted to a more than dubious educational philosophy; pleased as Punch with themselves and unable to see how anyone in his right mind can jest at what they say.

Writing about an author who might venture to point out that some faculty, tasked with teacher preparation, are at best irrelevant and a waste of resources, and at worst actively diminish secondary education, Bell argues that such an author’s

thoughtful complaints will be welcomed by many who are intelligent laymen in respect to “education,” people like himself; by many percipient parents aghast at what the schools have done or are doing to their boys and girls; by many who, intent on promoting sound government and decent craftsmanship of thought and action, must take the products of our schools and colleges and try to make something of them and by them in terms of adultness.

One such author, evaluating teacher preparation programs, notes that one gap in the thinking of such syllabi is the failure to recognize that the broader definition of ‘education,’ in the sense of ‘formation,’ is wider than mere schooling. Mortimer Smith writes:

We are all apt to make the mistake of thinking of education only in its formalized aspect. If you were playing one of those parlor games that educators call “objective tests” and were given the word education and asked to write opposite it the first associated thing that came into your mind, wouldn’t you be apt to write school? We instinctively think of education as something we get from organized courses in a formal institution. Because of a persistent confusion in modern educational theory it is imperative that we emphasize the obvious truth that as education is the whole process of adapting the individual to the environment, the school can only be one factor in that process, not necessarily even the most important one.

Certainly, school is often the primary provider of “education” in the narrow sense: Where does one learn the quadratic formula? Where does one learn to conjugate a German verb? Where does one learn about the political intrigues surrounding the family of Henry II? Where does one encounter Shakespeare’s Tempest?

But school is only one provider among many of “education” in the broad sense: of “formation.” Usually, families are the primary locus of formation. In addition, there are clubs, neighborhoods, friends, religious institutions, the media, and many other social encounters which are apart from schooling.

It is folly, therefore, for schools to ignore, or deemphasize, their primary task of delivering education in the narrow sense. It is further folly if they assume that they are the primary or exclusive deliverers of education in the broader sense of formation.

[Andrew Smith is a German teacher at Huron High School and at Pioneer High School.]

Interior Architecture in Schools

There are two common arrangements for the interior space of a school; both lead to success.

In the first model, each teacher has a classroom. The teacher gives instruction exclusively in that room, and no other teacher uses that room. In this model, the room can be a rich environment, tailored precisely to the curriculum: posters, bulletin boards, bookshelves, and filing cabinets support learning.

In the second model, teachers change rooms several times a day. The rooms are minimalistic, with few pictures on the wall, and little or no storage in the room. The learning space is generic.

While these two different models lead to achievement, there is a third model which leads to disaster: the attempt to blend these two models meets with failure. Either all the teachers have their rooms, and the rooms belong to the teachers, or none of the teachers have their own rooms, and no room belongs to a teacher.

This third model fails because it sends a mixed message to the student. Consistency among the school's teachers on this point is crucial, even if they diverge on other matters.

To schedule a building, then, administrators should bear in mind that if some of the teachers are scheduled such that they have their own rooms, then all the teachers should be scheduled that way. Conversely, it is also good practice to schedule the building such that none of the teachers have their own rooms.

[Andrew Smith is a German Teacher at Pioneer High School]

An Exercise in Jargon

Take one key concept, two related concepts, and a global context. Together, these form a statement of inquiry.

Questions can be factual, conceptual, or debatable.

[Ann Arbor Pioneer High School teacher Andrew Smith placed on assignment at WISD]

IB Examinations

Students at an International Baccalaureate school are expected to interact with a text in a language (e.g., German, Latin, etc.) other than the school's (or the student's) native language. This will be part of the standardized assessments which are administered by the local school but sent to IB for evaluation.

For example, students must pass a 90-minute test in which they are given four short texts in the target language. Students then write, analyzing those texts in the target language.

[Andrew Smith teaches at both Pioneer High School and Huron High School. Although based primarily out of Huron High School, during the 2014/2015 academic year, and possibly into the future, Andrew Smith is an Ann Arbor Pioneer High School teacher placed on assignment at Pioneer for two hours daily, and a Ann Arbor Huron High School teacher placed on assignment there for three hours daily.]

Getting Real - Ann Arbor Pioneer High School Teacher Reflects on Change over the Decades

In the 1970s, high school was not as serious as it is now.

Homework loads are greater, standardized testing has multiplied, competition between students is more intense, and the stakes are higher.

Our challenge, however, is this: a segment of our student body has not become more serious, despite the fact that high school in general has.

In the 1970s, the consequences for not doing homework or not studying were not as impactful as they are now.

Good study skills and good work habits are essential to get good tests scores and get admitted into a competitive college or university.

In the late 1970s, students who were average or a little above average routinely gained admission to Big Ten universities. Now, to get into U of M, a student must be significantly above average.

The University of Michigan, along with MSU and Wayne State University, has become quite selective. But a significant percentage of high school students haven't adjusted to this reality.

The situation is, naturally, multi-factorial, and there is no simple answer. But one essential part of the solution is parental involvement and encouragement. Without that, a student's chances of excelling dwindle.

[Ann Arbor Pioneer High School Teacher Andrew Smith teaches History and German in the Ann Arbor Public Schools.]

School Census - Interesting Demographics

A statistical overview of Huron High School's student body as of November 10, 2014, reveals some interesting ratios. Total enrollment for these purposes was listed at 1501, although in reality it is probably somewhat higher.

Of 387 ninth graders, 221 were boys and 166 were girls. This lopsided breakdown held for every ethnic or racial demographic group except Asians. Among those labeled as 'white' or 'Caucasian' there were 103 boys and 56 girls.

By contrast, of 344 tenth graders, the gender ratio skewed in the opposite direction: there were 155 boys and 189 girls. There were more girls than boys in the following categories: Caucasian, African-American, Asian, and Multi-Ethnic. Among tenth graders, there were slightly more boys than girls among the 'American Indian or Alaskan' and the Latino/Hispanic, Arab-American, and 'other' categories. There were no data points among sophomores in the 'Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander' and 'unclassified' categories.

Among eleventh and twelfth graders, there were no significant asymmetries in the numbers. The total student count included 745 males and 756 females.

The statistical quirkiness seems to be found primarily among the freshmen.

A Sports Metaphor for Assessment

When it comes to testing, the unique and paradoxical role of the teacher may perhaps best be captured in a sports metaphor. Imagine a game in which one person is simultaneously a coach and an official.

Picture a coach, who’s worked with his team all week to help them prepare to struggle for a victory: picture this same individual being asked to make a “neutral” call, perhaps while watching the slow motion video replay several times.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen in organized athletics, and for good reason: the assignment of the tasks of coaching and refereeing involve a conflict of interests.

The classroom teacher, however, is placed into exactly this paradoxical role. The teacher works all week to ensure that the students are engaged in meaningful academic experiences. Yet the same teacher is then called upon to judge the students.

This creates a counterproductive psychological relation between the students and the teachers. If the students see the teacher as a coach, who’s helping the students to gain academic skills, then the students feel betrayal when the teacher suddenly assumes the role of the umpire and calls the students “out.”

Conversely, if the students see the teacher as a judge who will make the objective calls on the assessment, then the students are less inclined to engage when the teacher coaches them toward achievement.

The solution to this conflict of interest? Regular assessments - the ordinary tests given in a class, not the high stakes college admissions tests - should be designed, administered and graded by someone other than the classroom teacher.

If twice, or four times, or six times, per semester, the students were put through an examination regime by someone who’s not their regular classroom teacher, then the students would see more clearly that the teacher is their coach - the teacher is “on their side” and helping to prepare them to “clear the hurdle” of an upcoming examination.

Otherwise, as is commonly done now, the classroom teacher seems to be the one erecting the barriers for the students to jump: the teacher is seen by the students to be the problem, because the teacher creates, administers, and grades the tests.

In those rare occasions when a teacher is not the author of the assessment - in classes which prepare for AP tests, or for ACT or SAT tests - there is quickly a different relation between student and teacher. It is clear to the students that the teacher is there only to help them, and not to create obstacles.

To ensure meaningful results, the classroom teacher should not see the examination prior to the students taking it, although the classroom teacher should receive a clear description of the test, so as to prepare the students for it.

Such a method for classroom, in-course, assessments would lead to a better relationship between the students and the teacher, a more clear sense in the minds of the students that they are there to prepare for the test, and subsequently to better test results reflecting better academic achievement.

As a side benefit, the test results would be more meaningful: a more accurate and neutral measure of student progress.

[Andrew Smith is a German teacher at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.]

The Ongoing Marshmallow Test

A series of psychological studies, conducted by Walter Mischel and Ebbe B. Ebbesen at Stanford University, has become a well-known touchstone for both developmental psychologists and behavioral researchers. The major publication, in 1972, centered around the ability of young children to exercise self-restraint: if they could refrain from eating a marshmallow placed in front of them for a certain number of minutes, then they would receive a second marshmallow.

Those who ate the marshmallow before the designated time would not receive a second one.

The most significant aspect of the research was the correlation between being able to wait long enough to earn the second marshmallow and a large variety of indicators for success in academic, personal, and business life.

A variety of followup studies have expanded the range of correlations event further. Tanya Schlam at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health showed a correlation between body weight and success in the marshmallow test. That study was described, in non-scientific terms for the popular audience, in the online magazine Slate in August 2012.

Recent versions of the study involves multitasking and the ability to maintain focus. These have been conducted variously by Larry Rosen at California State University, James Kraushaar and David Novak at the University of Vermont, David Meyer at the University of Michigan, Russell Poldrack at the University of Texas, and Reynol Junco at Harvard.

These versions examine whether students could refrain from checking their smartphones, tablets, or laptops while studying. An informal summary appeared in Slate in May 2013.

Another variation studied environmental variations, particularly whether children had experienced reliable or unreliable promises from authorities. For the purposes of the study, this translated to whether the children believed that they would received the advertised reward. Summarized in Slate in October 2012, the researchers who created this version of the study concluded that unstable home factors would impede academic achievement.

New variants of the marshmallow experiment continue to appear, both in the serious literature, and in popular summaries. In all of them, continued correlations hold to SAT and ACT scores, grade point averages, graduation rates from both high school and college, as well as non-academic metrics like income or divorce rate.

[Andrew Smith is a German teacher at Pioneer High School.]

Georg Trakl

Over the years, poems by Georg Trakl have appeared in the German classes taught by Andrew Smith at both Pioneer High School and Huron High School. Why would a German teacher choose these particular works for students to study?

Trakl was a genius who played a major role in the Expressionist movement during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The Encyclopedia Britannica offers this:

The patronage of a periodical publisher and of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who secretly gave him part of a patrimony, enabled Trakl to devote himself to poetry; he brought out his first volume, Gedichte (“Poems”), in 1913. The following year he became a lieutenant in the army medical corps and, in Galicia, was placed in charge of 90 serious casualties whose agonies he, as a mere dispensing chemist, could hardly relieve. One patient killed himself while Trakl watched helplessly; he also saw deserters being hanged. He either attempted or threatened to shoot himself in the aftermath of these horrors and was sent to a military hospital at Cracow for observation. There he died of an overdose of cocaine, perhaps taken inadvertently.

Trakl's meter, rhyme, vocabulary, and lyric imagery make him a valuable influence in any German class.

Andrew Smith - Pioneer High School - Snow Days!

During the 2014 / 2015 academic year, Pioneer High School has had four snow days already. This may be a cause for concern, because after missing a certain number of snow days, the State of Michigan’s Department of Education will require local districts, like the Ann Arbor Public Schools, to add makeup days to their calendars.

This might mean either shortening some scheduled vacations, or adding days to the end of the school year. Either option would bring a flurry of protests. Many families will consider it inappropriate to impinge on their already-scheduled trips.

Should the extra days be necessary, the Department of Education will notify local districts around the state. Districts who fail to comply risk receiving a letter of reprimand or other disciplinary action. The worst consequence would be a reduction to the funding which the district receives from the state. This type of discipline is often threatened but rarely enacted, and to date, no district has been so disciplined because of snow days.

In any case, students in Pioneer High School are not eager to surrender vacation days, and also not eager to see school go further into the summer. As much as students enjoy ‘snow days,’ they’d rather not have any more of them if it means compromising the vacation schedule for the rest of the school year.

The teachers who teach German at Pioneer - Robert Lederer, Andrew Smith, and Astrid Tackett - are especially concerned because they have scheduled a trip. Pioneer High School students have been invited to Ann Arbor’s sister city in Germany. This trip, in June and July 2015, marks the 50th anniversary of this sister city partnership.

Although there have been many trips from Pioneer High School, Huron High School, and Skyline High School, this trip is of special importance because of the 50th anniversary. German teacher Robert Lederer is scheduled to lead this trip.

If the school year should be extended further into June because of snow days, or because of any other reason, this would complicate the already-intricate travel arrangements being made for the Pioneer High School group.

German teacher Andrew Smith, who has led or co-led such exchange trips since 1983, and German teacher Astrid Tackett, who has organized student travel and exchange programs in the district, teach a combined three hours of German per day during the current academic year at Pioneer.

Andrew Smith teaches other classes at Huron High School, and Astrid Tackett teaches other classes at Tappan Middle School.

German teacher Robert Lederer teaches five hours of German daily at Pioneer High School and does not teach at other schools.

Comments and remarks from students who’ve participated in these trips and exchange programs have been consistently positive. It seems that almost every year, a student makes the comment that she or he will celebrate her or his birthday in Europe because of the Pioneer High School German program!

The official name for the exchange programs of the AAPS high schools is ‘The German-American Partnership Program.’ More than one university administrator has made the remark that participation in programs like Pioneer’s GAPP is an important factor in the college admission process.

It would be a shame for this valuable GAPP program to be compromised because of snow days.