Mind the Gap: Session 2

    1.  “The new reforms had everything to do with structural changes and accountability, and nothing at all to do with the substance of learning. Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education” (16).

In this statement, Ravitch claims that the reforms taking place under No Child Left Behind were not, in fact, at all about improving students’ education and furthering their learning. Instead, the reform was about measurement and accountability. Accountability, as Ravitch expresses, means nothing when what teachers are being held accountable for is not related to the ultimate goal of education. Teachers are being held accountable for things that simply are not central to learning and education—raising test scores. Raising scores has become the end goal, and this goal completely overlooks the purpose of education. Accountability, then, is not a valuable measurement of neither teachers’ performance nor student progress.

“These recommendations were sound in 1983. They are sound today” (30).

In this quote, Ravitch is referring to the recommendations made by A Nation at Risk—that we needed to reform and strengthen our curriculum, produce higher-quality textbooks, implement voluntary national standards, create clear high school graduation requirements that would prepare students for post-high school education, raise student expectations, require more of new teaching recruits, and raise teacher salaries.

I find Ravitch’s above statement completely maddening, and yet also motivating. How is it that in reading A Nation at Risk—a report written almost thirty years ago—we are still struggling with the same issues in the education system? Even more frustrating, why do we continue to implement strategies and bills like No Child Left Behind that we know are ineffective? Ravitch’s statement brings to light the difficult truth that everyone in the education world should address: we have not yet solved the problem, and in fact, we seem to have been unwilling to attend to the true nature of the problem for 29 years now.

2.   I believe that a well-educated person not only has a solid foundation of core subjects learned in school (English, writing, reading, math, science, and history), but, more importantly, can transform this knowledge and apply it to their everyday lives. A well-educated person should be able to think critically and creatively, problem-solve, and use their knowledge to achieve a set goal to better themselves and society. A person who is well-educated is able to take what he or she has learned and use it in a productive, meaningful way that contributes to others.

In my opinion, a well-educated person is also culturally knowledgeable and respectful of all religions, races, genders, ethnicities, and cultural traditions, regardless of his or her own beliefs and understanding.

 3. In our class discussion of the first two chapters of Ravitch’s book, what stood out to me the most was our debate on teacher evaluation. What is the best way to evaluate teachers other than examining test scores, and how might we establish a new evaluation system in our schools today? These are difficult questions to answer. One student in class mentioned a system developed at his school for evaluating teachers than involved observations, teacher-created and presented portfolios, and a sort of “academic review” of each teacher by a board of 5 different administrators and other teachers.

As much as an evaluation system like this seems considerably superior to that of using standardized test scores, at the same time it is not practical for all schools. Larger public schools and low-income schools would likely have a hard time establishing such an extensive and in-depth evaluation process. As we discussed in class, too, many teachers would probably object to such a thorough evaluation. These are the teachers who almost certainly need to refine their teaching practice, though, because if they are concerned about observations or presenting colleagues with a portfolio representative of what has been happening in their classroom, then they are doing something wrong.  The conclusion we came to as a class seemed to be that although we agree that test scores are not effective in evaluating teacher performance, we do not know how a different and better process could practically and realistically be put in place nation-wide, or even state-wide.

What I didn’t get a chance to say during this discussion was that I believe at least of portion of teacher evaluation needs to be observation (by both administrators and peers in the same and different content areas), and observations done over a significant period of time. I know this is not practical and would be extremely difficult to implement, but I feel that a teacher cannot be judged as “good” or “bad” based on how his or her students score on tests—tests that don’t even follow the curriculum the teacher is teaching. We spend 10 months every year with our students, carefully observing their behavior, taking note of their efforts and improvements on tests, homework, in-class work, group work, and outside the classroom in order to accurately evaluate their progress. So why, then, are teachers evaluated solely on a few numbers on a piece of paper?

    4. One of the main gaps in my subject area is my knowledge of both Spanish and Latin American literature. Although I took both upper-division Spanish courses in college while studying in Spain, my Spanish at the time was not good enough to truly grasp the historical and cultural contexts of the novels I read. I do not have a deep knowledge of either topic, and have found a few resources to be helpful in filling this gap.

The website I found most helpful in researching this gap is donquijote.org. This is a website offering general resources for both learners and teachers of Spanish alike, and the company offers Spanish courses abroad with accommodation in Spain and in Latin America. There are a wide variety of topics outlined, including Spanish and Latin American literature. The literature page (www.donquijote.org/spanishlanguage/literature/) has an extensive overview of the major periods and movements of both Spanish and Latin American literature ranging from the first texts written in Spanish to present-day literature. The links to each literature period/movement include historical context, cultural relevance, and the major author’s representative of that time period, as well as their most notable works. This website was extremely helpful for me in “brushing up” on my knowledge of the literature in both Spain and Latin America, and could easily be used as a student resource also.

The book I found that would help fill my gap in knowledge of Hispanic literature is entitled Aproximaciones al Estudio de la Literatura Hispánica. It is a textbook from one of my Spanish literature classes in college that features excerpts by various Hispanic authors from several Spanish-speaking countries. The books is organized by genre of literature, and analyzes la narrative (narrative), la poesía (poetry), lectura (reading selections), el drama (drama/theater), and el ensayo (essays).

  

    5.   After beginning my research on the relationship between music and second language acquisition, I decided to shift my focus to linguistics and phonetics of the Spanish language in Spain. I will now be researching the phonological and sociolinguistic variation of the regional dialects and minority languages in Spain. Although research has been difficult to find thus far (a problem I hope will resolve itself when my topic is more refined), I found two articles that are particularly useful to my research topic.

The first article, “Present Day Seseo and Ceceo in Southern Spain” by John B. Dalbor, offers a detailed description of the seseo/ceceo presence in “modern day” Spain. He defines seseo and ceceo and contrasts each term with what is typical in traditional Castellano (Castilian) speakers. He goes into more detail about other characteristics that distinguish Castellano from the Spanish in other Spanish-speaking countries. He then explains how the seseo/ceceo is recognized, and gives a phonological explanation of the different allophones (different speech sounds representing the same phoneme) that represent the phoneme /s/ heard in Spain. After conducting a one-week study of the seseo/ceceo in Sevilla and Granada (Southern Spain), he presents the results which analyze where seseo/ceceo is most common, among which social class, and how it presents differently in Sevilla and Granada.

Although this article was written in 1980, the Andaluz dialect of Spanish has not changed significantly over the past few decades, and Dalbor’s article is extremely valuable in the research of regional phonological variation in Spain today. One thing the article explained that I did not previously know is how seemingly random and varied ceceo and seseo speakers are in Andalucía. Previously, it had been my experience (as the stereotype claims) that most ceceo-speakers were uneducated peasants or famers. However, from Dalbor’s study, there is strong evidence against this view—that many highly educated Sevillanos and Granadinos, in fact, are ceceo-speakers or have frequent “slips” where distinction is not made. Even more contrary to the stereotype is that Dalbor interviewed several lower-class Andaluzes who were seseo-speakers (as opposed to ceceo). I also become more knowledgeable on the differences in how recognizable the ceceo/seseo distinction is between Sevilla and Granada. In Granada, it is significantly more difficult to identify someone as a definitive ceceo-speaker because two of the allophones sound very similar (both sounding like ceceo).

After reading this article, I have more questions about the seseo/ceceo variations found in Andalucía. I would like to research more about how this phonological variation contributes to the sociolinguistic identity of the Andaluz region. This writer was very convincing and I plan to look for other articles written by him.

The second article I found useful in looking for research on my topic is entitled “Spain’s linguistic Normalization Laws: The Catalan Controversy” by Earl L. Rees. Like the article mentioned above, this article was published in the journal Hispania and was published in 1996.  The article first explains the roots of Catalan—that it is a full romance language. Rees explains that the controversy began after Spain’s unification in 1469 when Ferdinand and Isabel made Castilian the official language for all administrative and ecclesiastical matters. Thus, two languages (Castilian and Catalan) needed to exist together. When King Philip V came into power in 1700, he wanted to modernize Spain and imposed strict laws that restricted the regional independence that Cataluña wanted. Castilian was used in all official matters, but Catalan remained the everyday language of the locals.

During Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975), he reinstated Castilian as the only official language of Spain in hopes of creating a definitive national identity. However, after his death in 75’, King Juan Carlos withdrew the one-language policy and in 1983, Spain’s 17 autonomous regions were created. Each region had its own parliament and administration. The Barcelona government enacted the Linguistic Normalization Law that same year, the goal of which was to reestablish and widen the presence of Catalan in public administration, education, and the media. Catalan is spoken by 8 million people in the Cataluña region, bordering areas, and in Valencia.

In 1994, the Supreme Court acknowledged Catalan as an official language in Cataluña in addition to Castilian. Catalan became the primary language of instruction in schools and administration. A conflict arose with Spanish-speaking immigrants in Cataluña, since most could not communicate in Catalan. Mono-lingual Spanish-speakers were looked down upon in the Catalan community. Making Catalan an official language—and defining what that means and will mean in the future—also created a long-lasting political conflict between the Catalan Socialist Party and the Popular Party.

Rees also asserts the importance of Catalan and identity among the people of Cataluña. The majority of Catalans do not consider themselves “Spanish.” People from Barcelona identify themselves as Catalan instead.

Finally, the article compares Catalan to the other two minority languages in Spain: Gallego (Galician) and Euskera (Basque). Rees describes the two languages and the role they play in their respective communities. Gallego, he explains, is a Romance language like Catalan. Basque, however, has unknown roots and is completely different than any other language in Spain. The major difference between Catalan and the other minority languages in Spain, Rees stresses, is that Catalan is a recognized, conscious part of the culture and identity of Cataluña. Basque is not emphasized or promoted in the same way in the Basque community, and Gallego is also limited in the Galician community.

Near the end of the article, Rees poses a question that I am now also curious about --is Catalan isolating Barcelona culturally from the rest of Spain? After reading this article, I also want to know more about the structure of the Catalan language, as well as its roots.

Before reading the article, I did not know much about minority language in Spain other than Catalan, and I find it interesting to be able to compare all three languages. It only shows how deeply rooted Catalan is in Barcelona’s culture and identity.

*See my responses to colleagues:

Yadira Zapata

Alana Scott