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"Seat time." The radical reformers of education utter the phrase with contempt. To the progressives, as they like to anoint themselves, "seat time" sums up every dull and gloomy classroom experience. The mental image is of once-bright, once-eager youngsters beaten down by boredom. There they sit, little prisoners chained to their little desks, longing for the bell that signals a weekend furlough. Adults connect with that image. Rare a loop, at least in my generation, is the person who hasn't put in hard seat time. A lot of adults don't know that the generation now in school faces a lot less seat time than we did. (The adults who ridicule seat time know, but they're not letting on.) Elementary and secondary classrooms, especially, are louder and elementary students are less sedentary than they used to be. So those who express dismay over seat time do so for reasons other than concern about wear and tear on little deskbound behinds. No, the progressives' concern about seat time is academic in nature -- for at least as academic as the progressives can get without feeling queasy. What I can't figure out is why teachers don't seem to find that concern personally insulting. The implication, after all, is that time spent in their classes is a poor measure of academic growth. What has changed since seat time was considered a reasonable indicator that knowledge was passing from one generation to the next? Well, grades have become inflated, schools have been pushed to solve societal ills, unthinking parents and well-meaning psychiatrists have eroded discipline and socialization largely has replaced instruction as the primary purpose of schools. The ill-conceived effort to shift Ohio's educational system toward as-yet-unconceived student "competencies" is in many ways an admission that many kids know far too little when they graduate from high school. Agreed. But by shifting to a model in which students, not paid staff members, must demonstrate their competency, the state's educational establishment is also saying that it has given up on teachers. That establishment is saying that teachers no longer be trusted to make students' seat time worthwhile, or to give grades that accurately reflect what a student has learned. It is saying that teachers have failed, and we must demolish our educational structure accordingly and try something new. The truth, however, is that our educational structure is an empty shell, gutted long ago by those who view academic, content-based instruction as boring and teacher-led education as hostile to students' creativity. The truth is that teachers and students have been failed by a 70- year drive for classrooms moved that are child-centered rather than knowledge-centered. The popular mantra that a teacher shouldn't be "the sage on the stage, but rather the guide on the side" so that children can "construct their own knowledge" may take the pressure off of teachers, but it also should anger the best of them. The progressives argue that simply spending four years seat time in a high school English class will not necessarily result in English proficiency. As a top finisher on the ninth-grade proficiency test would say, "Well, duh." A student's success depends on the student, obviously, and to a great extent on the proficiency of the teacher. Does the teacher know the material? Can the teacher inspire interest in the subject? Is the teacher willing to be fair and demanding in prodding and assessing students? Does the teacher have the common sense to close the classroom door and do the right thing instead of the trendy one? Teachers like that do exist, and students know who they are. My son Danny, who just finished the eighth grade, knows a thing or two about seat time. He knew he wanted to spend as much of it as he could in Mr. Patten's social studies class before moving on to high school Danny was willing to do with his schedule whatever was necessary to get that seat, because he treasured the time he spent in it. For the last two years, that seat was the center of Danny's educational universe. Mr. Patton, you see, knows things - lots of things. And every year, he teaches a phenomenal amount of them to students who never realize until they sit in his class that they are interested in the things he teaches. Almost every school day for the last two years, a Mr. Patten story has come home. The stories, and the enthusiasm with which they were recounted, told me that even after many years of teaching, Mr. Patten likes his students and loves his subject. He makes his students' seat time worthwhile because he understands how precious it is. That's a simple truth cherished by the best teachers, and long-forgotten by the reformers.
__ O'Brien is deputy director of the Plain Dealer's editorial pages.
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