How School Works: Raise Your Hands When You Want to Learn

Ask any child you know how students are supposed to act in school and they will tell you: Remember to raise your hand. Be good. Do not speak unless you are asked a question.

Elementary schools today require children to work quietly in the classroom, walk quietly in the hallway, and eat lunch without talking, and all of this is under the guise of being considerate to others around you. The student script requires students' ways of being in school to be too similar to the ways students acted 50 years ago when I was in school and even 75 years ago when my parents were in school. Typically in today's schools, children who can be “seen and not heard” are still better off than the noisy ones who cannot be quiet. Schools continue to be places where children are too often encouraged to be quiet and docile. The troubling thing to me is the question of what happens to literacy if we teach children social constructs like this. If students learn to be quiet and wait for teachers to make the major decisions about learning, can they become independent problem-solvers for the twenty-first century? This chapter will address the ways the student script constrains literacy and suggests ways to move toward more student-centered learning.