+OK 10692 octets Received: from smtp08.nwnexus.com (smtp08.nwnexus.com [206.63.63.42]) by mail3.halcyon.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA04438 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:37:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from minglewood.dundee.net (minglewood.dundee.net [206.249.104.16]) by smtp08.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA13231 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:32:30 -0700 From: rdyarrow@elnet.com Message-Id: Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:29:09 -0500 To: "ClearingHouse" Subject: [education-consumers] Postermania Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Reply-To: rdyarrow@elnet.com Precedence: bulk Status: ===================================================================== Mary's note: I posted my own response to Roberta's question. Please share yours if you have another explanation. When my daughter had one of these assignments last year, I found her cutting up the dictionary in her desperate quest to find the specified words. Mary 1. From: "Roberta A. Arquilla" To: Subject: Postermania? Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 15:47:06 -0500 I am a board of ed member in Oak Brook, and am wondering where the current craze for having students spend an inordinate amount of their time making posters came from. I appreciate the fact that some small percentage of them will become graphic artists, but I question the value for just about everyone else. I recall last year an 8th grade poster my son had to do for a book he'd read. The requirement was to think of 8 different phrases that would describe one of the main characters in the book, and then find those words in magazines (of course, newspapers were not allowed because the print isn't "shiny"), and place them on the poster. The rubric was that the letters had to be of a certain size, so that people in the back could still read them. They had to be of complimentary colors, to produce an overall esthetic effect. They had to be of different styles, so one wouldn't become bored seeing the poster. I could go on and on..... I had no problem with reading a book, obviously. I had no problem with finding key words or phrases to describe one of the characters. I did have a problem with sitting on Mother's Day all day on the floor helping my son find these particular words in magazines. The net effect, other than a very sore back and a short temper, was that the posters ended up looking like ransom letters. I should have complained on the fact that that may promote violence amongst the student population. I find that each class, be it Language Arts, Social Studies or Spanish, promote posters as a major component of the grade. Perhaps this is why I elected to send my son to boarding school for high school. If no parents are there to purchase the poster board, etc., they can't assign them. Even more appalling was a friend of mine's 9th grade child, who was assigned the task of renting a period costume for Social Studies (an Elizabethan dress and hat). I called my friend one morning, well after the first period had begun, but she couldn't talk as she was dressing her daughter. I responded by saying school started over an hour ago. Yes, that was true, but she had to get her in the costume, and do her hair to fit in with the hat, and she couldn't go to her first two periods dressed that way, so she was going in late. Of course, the period after she missed as well to "undress". The lesson learned here? That mommy can drop $80 and untold hours going into the city to rent the costume, and that the student can miss three other classes for the 10 minute demonstration of an Elizabethan costume. Forgive me, but other than that, I fail to see what was learned that a photo couldn't have accomplished in less time and with less money. These nutty ideas that teachers get while missing school to attend the so-called "seminars" continue to irritate me. Do they use any common sense at all? If some self-acclaimed "expert" tells them that posters are a good idea, how do they become the main component of the class grade overnight? Or am I the crazy one? Thanks for your continued contributions to the ECC. Roberta Arquilla 2. My response: Roberta, I would have to add "Power Point-a-mania" to the list. This phenomenon you are describing has exploded in districts everywhere I go. I find myself shaking my head at the reverential attitude of school officials when proudly showing off the posters and Power Point presentations of their students. In St. Charles, we've had portions of board meetings spent "oohing" and "aahing" over history projects presented on tri-fold poster boards or flashed on overhead computer screens (Power Point computer graphic presentations which are nothing more than glamorized poster presentations....and even easier to put together with available clip art). I always want to raise my hand and say, "But where is the accompanying paper that the student has written? Can the student write a coherent 2 or 3 page paper on this topic? As far as I can see, Postermania originates from three directions: A. The hottest fad around these days has to be Gardiners' Multiple Intelligences, even though the theory has no research support. Everyone wants to teach to students' different intelligences and so instead of a written book report, the teacher will give the student the opportunity to either "act out" the book report or "draw" something related to the book. Unfortunately, since writing is always the most difficult option, few students will select that one when given the choice. Posters and Power Point presentations enable the teacher to feel as if he or she has adapted the assignment to meet the needs of students who are "kinesthetic learners" or "visual learners." As can be readily seen, a steady diet of these options ensures that a student will not develop those concurrent writing skills. If you visit the ISBE performance assessment site that I wrote about last week, you'll see that making posters and similar projects was encouraged for these types of assessments to enhance sensitivity to individual multiple intelligences . 2. Another reason for the poster mania comes from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), many who believe that visual literacy is as valid as written literacy. This powerful organization (a heavy proponent of Whole Language) is based out of Champaign at the U of I and as an undergraduate in 1970, I experienced this thrust from its inception. My freshman honor's rhetoric class met under the trees on the quad every day without rain. Under the trees we learned about Marshall McLuhan and how the technology of television was reawakening our tribal consciousness, finally counteracting our rigid left brained orientation distorted by learning how to read and write in a linear left-to-write regimen. In sync with this philosophy of how the Guttenburg Printing Press had destroyed our potential, we made poster after poster of concepts covered in the course. (also a home movie). Desiring an easy A on my transcript, I quickly discovered that if I bought the largest size of posterboard and the glossiest magazines available I was guaranteed the highest grade. The sheer size of the posterboard (impossible to bring to class and still steer my bicycle) along with brightly colored photographs rubber-cemented on it was my key. Collages were easy to make about how at the end of the 1960's an awakening tribal consciousness was arising, supposedly enhanced by television's impact on our neurology. The few times we had to write in that class, I discovered that abandoning capital letters as being too authoritarian warmed my TA's heart and also led to an automatic "A." Naturally, we also journaled, although I don't believed he ever read them. What seemed so innovative them, has now become commonplace. 3. The third influence on postermania seems to arise from educator's naive attempts to prepare students for the business world. Many educators whose entire careers (indeed their lives) have been spent within the confines of school buildings, have a caricaturized imagine of the business world as consisting of sales reps in front of poster boards or Power Point graphic computer presentations (also in front of chart paper taped to the walls). Often their image of this business world embraces teams of five or six individuals presenting the final project. The imagery reminds me how simplistically writers are characterized in the movies. Whenever a movie character is going to write a book, you see the character sitting on the hill at his or her typewriter or laptop perched to start the book. The reality of typing two sentences only to retype them twenty more times, of desperately thumbing through a thesaurus trying to find the right word, of tediously scanning twenty books trying to find the quote that would fit into the text just perfectly, of reordering a clause over and over until the meaning is clear is always omitted as the cumulous clouds slowly move over the neophyte writer in the movies. When educators feel as if they are meeting the needs of the business world as they see their students poised in front of the graphic art (and making a great looking poster or Power Point presentation is a no-brainer), they look past the importance of the accurate writing, of the importance of a rigorous knowledge base, of homework time spent learning something of more significance than cutting and pasting in front of a television set. ===================================================================== EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE networking and information for parents and taxpayers on the internet Website & Archives: http://education-consumers.com You are currently subscribed to education-consumers as: arthurhu@halcyon.com TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send a blank email to leave-education-consumers-989462S@lists.dundee.net ===================================================================== For less mail, use the following link and choose 1) a daily digest, 2) a daily list of subjects, or 3) no mail (read postings on Web) http://lists.dundee.net/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=education-consumers For more help & info: http://www.lyris.com/help or .