Our curriculum readings this week have focused on innovation versus doing what's always been done, and in this mindset, I came across an article this week that pins it down to a point - a very small point - indeed, a period.
A colleague of mine came into my room the other day with an article she had read that she found interesting. It is called "Space Invaders" and was posted on Slate.com. In this article, the author wrote about writing conventions - is it correct to use a single space after a period or two? Historically, due to typesetting irregularities, two spaces was the convention as it indicated more fully the change in sentence. However, now that typesetting is much more regulated, and the majority of fonts (excluding courier) have accounted for the irregularities of some narrow letters like "l" and "i", the double space, the author argues, is no longer needed.
While this is a very small point, his article goes on to note that in asking people why they continue to double-space after a period, despite the change in writing conventions on a professional level (MLA and other writing guides were cited as now supporting a single-space) many people responded that it was what THEY had been taught, so it was what they continue to do. The one teacher interviewed confessed to knowing that the new convention was a single-space, but continuing to teach students to double-space because it was what she had been taught in school.
This shocked me. I was taught there were five kingdoms in Biology when I was in high school, but we now know there are not. I don't teach 5 kingdoms because that's what I was taught - I teach 3 domains and at LEAST 6 kingdoms, while also presenting students with the idea that by the time they graduate, pursue post-secondary studies, etc., there may be many more. One kingdom alone has been proposed to include over 30 discrete groups that should be separately categorized! I would be doing my students a disservice to teach only 5 kingdoms. Is the double-spacing teacher doing her students s disservice as well? Or, is there a difference between skills and conventions versus factual information?
So many of us entered teaching and drew immediately on what we had been taught in high school. To get away from that means that we need to continue to learn - we must truly be "life-long" learners in order to teach well. This means embedding today's technology in a realistic way, not simply as an additive piece, and also presenting current facts, skills, and conventions while instructing students that they too must continue to learn into their future - we live in a fast-changing world, and this necessitates life-long learning.
To conclude, I would like to point out that despite my argument, I double-spaced after each period in this article. Old habits die hard?
Very interesting, J. In several weeks, we will look at the content that we all deal with. This reminds us how pervasive tradition is...and the way we have always done things. I bet we could make a sizable list of things that are no longer true, but we do anyway (just like the two examples you gave).
ReplyDeleteHow often do we look at the nature of the content we teach to see what she be updated? You have hit one of the critical elements of curriculum development—knowledge of the subject matter.