ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Curtis Kelly

Chuck Sandy

Panelists: Peter | Marc | Curtis | Chuck
Date: February 2005

Topic: "What ELT books influenced you most as a teacher?"

A Handful of Books

Chuck Sandy

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Anyone who knows me knows I am a reader. Ever since I was a child, I have always been the one with too many books in his bag. Whenever I go out of the house, even on a short outing, I have to make sure I have at least a few things to read. One book is never enough. Many of these books I'll read and discard. Others go back on my shelves just in case I'll want to look through them again or remember what I was thinking about or going through when I read them. Looking over my bookshelves is almost like looking at a map of my inner life.

“Looking over my bookshelves is almost like looking at a map of my inner life.”

Among these book there are a few I'll turn to again and again. The five books I've chosen to write about here fall into that category. My own copies of these titles are dog-eared and yellowed. They have bits of paper, old letters, and various notes stuck between the pages. At least one of them is falling apart from having spent too much time in my bag. They are like old friends, and I'd like to share them with you. They are all about education in one way or another. Sometimes it's not immediately apparent why this is so, but I promise you they are.

The hardest thing about this assignment was to limit my choices. Curtis Kelly helped me do this by writing about one of my recent favorites, Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach: Exploring The Inner Landscape of A Teacher's Life. I cannot say enough about this book, but since Curtis has already mentioned it, I'll simply endorse that choice again now, and in my own way, offer you these:

'Teaching As A Subversive Activity'
- Postman & Weingartner (available from Amazon)
When Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner wrote Teaching As A Subversive Activity in 1969, it was news. It still is. This book is as valid an attack on lock-step teaching and unimaginative schooling now as it was when they first declared that, "There are trivial ways of studying language which have no connection with life, and these we need to clear out of our schools." One of the reasons this book has been reprinted as many times as it has over the years is that we haven't quite managed to do this --yet. Perhaps not enough people have read it. If you are going to read one book about education, this is the one I'd recommend. It will change the way you think not only about the way you teach, but also about the ways your students learn and the schools they learn in. What was subversive about this book in 1969 is that it was the first to state that the purpose of education is to learn how to learn. Later, others would write about student autonomy, but it is still a subversive idea in many circles. I've read this book at least five times, and hanging by the door in my office is a card on which I've written these questions from the chapter entitled, "So what are you going to do now?"

What am I going to have my students do today?
What is it good for?
How do I know?

Teaching As A Subversive Activity is not only an attack, but also a book offering alternatives and suggestions. Even if you don't read the book, start asking yourself those three questions before you walk into class. Give it some thought. Then, begin to change.

'On Becoming A Person'
- Carl Rogers (available from Amazon)
The older I get, the more I realize that being a teacher is a matter of becoming that self which one truly is. As it is a process of becoming, one never gets quite there, but when actively engaged in this process, a teacher is somehow able to encourage others along in the same way. Carl Roger's On Becoming A Person opens with a very simple yet deeply profound statement:

"I speak as a person, from a context of personal experience and personal learnings."

You might ask what that statement has to do with teaching, and I'll tell you: everything. I've said it elsewhere, but it's worth repeating. To offer yourself, as you are, to a group of learners is the greatest gift you can offer them. If you're interested in discovering one of the places from which I've arrived at this conclusion, Rogers' On Becoming A Person is a very good place to start.

It is not easy reading. It is very challenging, for it asks such fundamental questions as: "What is the meaning of personal growth? Under what conditions is growth possible? How can one person help another? What is creativity and how can it be fostered?" Rogers speaks from a lifetime of experience as a psychologist, teacher, and person to provide the answers he's arrived at. In the process of reading you'll likely discover some of your own.

Recently, a good friend of mine suggested that many of the best teachers end up working their way right out of teaching. Rogers provides a good example of how this process works when he writes:

1. "My experience has been that I cannot teach another person how to teach."
2. "It seems to me that anything which can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential, and has little or no significant influence on behavior."
3. "I realize increasingly that I am only interested in learnings which significantly influence behavior."
4. "I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning."
5. "Such self-discovered learning cannot be directly communicated to another."
6. "As a consequence of the above, I have lost interest in being a teacher."

Fortunately, Rogers never lost interest in becoming or in being a learner. His beautiful book, written with honesty, "as a person" in his true voice, is what he offers us.

'A Place To Stand: Essays for Educators in Troubled Times'
- Mark Clarke (Available here)
This wonderful collection of essays by Mark Clarke reminds teachers that they are change agents and agitators: people whose very job is to gently shake up systems and agitate for change. In one of the essays entitled "A Systems Perspective on Changing, Teaching and Learning," Clarke suggests that "To change society, you have to change institutions" and that "To change institutions, individuals have to change." Yet, he says, "I am the individual who has to change" and "I cannot change myself without affecting others, and because I cannot change others unilaterally, I will need to engage them in some principled interactions…" You get the idea. This book is full of them. I highly recommend it as sound advice and good talk from one of the strongest and most authentic voices in education.

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Panelists: Peter | Marc | Curtis | Chuck

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