The ability to read and write proficiently has been one of the twin measures of an educated person for centuries. Facility in mathematics is the twin measure. Contemporary K-12 education is geared by a child’s facility with reading and writing. More than grade level promotion, gpa and access to advanced curricula, the ability to read and write shapes a child’s self-esteem and social-emotional well-being. What happens, then, when reading and writing no longer are the gold standard of education? How does the industry of education adjust to a new standard – perhaps, speaking and listening? If the trend of evolving generations holds, oral communication skills are more important than written communication skills. Boomers read and write. Millennials and Gen Z listen, see and speak. Seismic? Yes!
Take Away
My grandchildren do not read literature or biographies or informational texts as we did in earlier generations. They do not read newspapers or news journals. They do not write and share letter writing with relatives and friends. They do not worry out a grammatically correct sentence. Say, what? To learn something new, they do not refer to texts or tomes. They would rather not attend class to learn if there is an option. When I illustrate a daily comment with Shakespeare or Twain or even Stephen King, they do not show any recognition. I cannot even comment, “It is Greek to them” and believe that they know what I mean. They and their generation are oral, aural and visual. They communicate with sound and the texted sound bite and visual imaging. And, my grandchildren are just representative of their generation. I confirmed this generalization in conversations with local middle school children and their teachers. Today’s children prefer listening and talking to reading and writing.
For the proverbial English major, listening to daily conversation has become an aural anguish. So many of the conventions drummed into the Boomer generation have been abandoned by Millennials and Gen Z. Subject and predicate agreement no longer matters. Beginning an oral statement with “So, …” and liberally splashing “… you know…” and “…like…” and “…I mean…” throughout lengthy run-on sentence-statements is now common conversation. They do not know the difference between “he and I” and “him and me” and do not care. Across the conversational English of their generation, this unconventional usage is becoming standardized. If this is the future, what are educators called to do?
If the learning and working language preferences and practices of Gen Z, now becoming our most populated generation, are indicative of the learning preferences and language practices of the generations to come, how should public education respond in terms of teaching and learning?
What do we know?
Historically, school has been the source of reading, writing and arithmetic. Taken at a larger measure, schools were built to teach children to read and write. Books and other printed material were housed in classrooms and libraries. Paper and pencil and pen, long the given medium, gave way to computers and printers, but the functions remained the same. The educational goal was to read fluently and with comprehension and to write succinctly in well-crafted paragraphs. Reading and writing as tools for learning opened all the other subjects of school – the social studies and sciences, art and music, technical arts and technology, even drivers education – to children and their future lives.
Also, historically, education has slowly evolved to meet new realities. Public education is not on the cutting edge of change. In fact, public education often is justifiably criticized for being too slow to change and is an impediment to many needed changes in our world. Will this be true of our recognition of changing generational learning and language preferences and practices?
Why Is this Thus?
Education is designed by the adults in the room not the children. Picture Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers educators and politicians when you look at most school buildings, school curricula, and school organization. Think about the needs of late 20th century business and economy when you consider the educational outcomes of a high school education. Education supplied traditional business models requiring men and women who could fulfill roles in accounting and business, sales and marketing, engineering of all types, law, and medicine. Reading and writing were essential skills for success up to and into the 21st century. Reading and writing proficiency and fluency were symbols of success for those generations.
Millennials and Gen Z are different breeds of cats compared to the Greatest and the Boomers. They are mentally, socially and culturally wired differently. Add to their being different this reality – The American Dream shifted. For all prior generations, young adults believed that their standard of living would exceed that of their parents. Steady advances in personal income would continue for them as it had in the past. Horatio Alger stories of bootstrapping oneself to economic and social prosperity were rewritten. Millennials sweat paying off student debt and out-of-reach home mortgages and Gen Z eschew four-year degrees and are more cautious about long-term commitments. Young adults dream differently than the Greatest and the Boomers and engage in life differently, as well. Their learning preferences and language usages are just tokens of these differences. I engage in some stereotyping of Millennials and Gen Z, but in contrast to the Greatest and Boomers, not much.
To Do
The science of teaching provides us with our clues for tuning education to the preferences of our Gen Z children and beyond. The best practices of good teaching need to be everyday practices for children who are oral, aural and visual learners.
• Say it then write it. Madeline Hunter taught us that children hear faster than they can read. Saying it first allows a child time to hear and begin processing what you want them to learn. Saying it and pronouncing it allays guess work if the child must read an unknown word before hearing it. All of this is left-brain processing work. Then write it. The pause between saying and writing or displaying the word allows short term memory to begin working.
• Keep it simple. Use Hunter’s concepts of critical attributes to identify the important vocabulary, key words, and essential facts. Once these are presented and affirmed in short-term memory, they can be elaborated. And, do not crowd in more and more information. Erase words or take away digital displays when new words and concepts are “said and written”. Overcrowding causes confusion.
• Use visuals and models. It is all about multi-sensory learning. Saying it is aural. Writing it is verbal. Seeing it is visual. Envisioning it in a model provides a definition or model. Gen Z children are more 3D and a physical modeling helps them to mentally play with the information.
The next points are huge.
• Explain it, discuss it, question it. Children who prefer oral and aural learning experiences need to talk about their learning. They need to “think aloud” and hear other’s thinking. Discussion is their form of reinforcement. It provides clarification and repetition. Questions demand that they put it into their own words. Asking questions or being asked questions within their discussion is their way of “proving it”.
• Get all children involved in the discussion. Like all children in prior generations, Gen Z kids can be shy. But, given their proclivity for oral discussion over writing out their thinking, they will talk. Ask children “What do you think?” and then ask other children to agree, disagree or expand and add to what has been said. Oral discussion should become larger in time and scope and importance in instructional design.
• Elaborate and extend it with reading. Once a new idea or concept or model is introduced, oral/aural learners are ready to read about it. Reading makes sense to them when it meaningfully builds upon what they are learning. They would say that the oral/aural gives them a meaningful structure to which they can attach their subsequent reading.
Madeline Hunter, Mastery Learning, Corwin Press, 1982.
The big Duh
Best practices are required for teaching to consistently cause learning. The schools created by and for the Greatest Generation, Boomers, and perhaps Gen X emphasized educational outcomes through reading and writing. Millennials and Gen Z children show preferences for oral and aural learning experiences to achieve the needed educational outcomes for their future world. This fairly seismic shift does not mean that reading and writing are out and listening and speaking are in. Best practices in teaching remain the keys to generational success. Educator’s are constantly called to clinically adapt and use best practices geared to each generation and their learning needs.