Verbal Thinking: How Can I Tell You?

( This is the conclusion of the feature which began in yesterday's CRIMSON.)

MOFFETT'S alternative curriculum is based on the belief that a child can learn most and best when he is allowed to follow his own needs. He should do what he wants, not what he has to do. Moffett believes verbalthinking and self-expression are natural desires which a student will satisfy if he is given the opportunity to do so. They should be encouraged, not stifled by demands to classify and repeat what other people say, in the first four grades of school. Even if a child can successfully complete the assigned language exercises, his language ability is not enhanced nearly as much as it could be in making up a play or story.

The student's first language activity in Moffett's curriculum is non-verbal dramatic action. The child "limbers" his body and expresses free associations of feelings and impulses in solitary play with toys and in movement to music. Pantomime, substituting the stimulation of an idea for music or a toy, is the first mode in which a student attempts to converse with another. After choral pantomime Moffett proposes organizing students in small groups, six or less in each, to enact short scenes from stories for their own group and eventually for the whole class. Verbal dramatic activity naturally evolves as students add words to their pantomime. Finally students improvise stories rather than enact those they already know.

A second grade class at the Loker School which uses "How Can I Tell You" improvised around the theme of finding a treasure. One little girl shouted she had discovered a treasure buried in the ground. Other members of her group ran to her; one boy answered, "I picked it up." The other members of the group insisted it would be best to split it up among everyone. The girl agreed, but still added, "I get the most." Moffett advocates the formation of small groups of students like this to read, discuss and improvise among themselves. The desire to interact with peers provides the motivation to increased verbal ability and solve language problems. It also continually tests the effectiveness of a student's expression; if he is successful his peers will understand him.

As dramatic activities are further elaborated, reading and writing are introduced into the curriculum. Moffett chooses the "decoding" over the "meaning" approach for initial reading instruction. The latter method introduces words as incarnations of specific meanings to be memorized. Moffett thinks this approach confuses decoding and transcription with the much more complex skills of comprehension and composition. He advocates the use of the "decoding" method, which is based on the teaching of correspondences between spoken sounds and letters. Reading becomes just a translation between an articulated and written symbol system. Spelling is taught as different arrangement of phonetic elements, and punctuation is shown to be a written reflection of voice modulation.

The initial steps toward literacy in this curriculum are distinctive because children use their understanding of sound-letter correspondences, however limited, as soon as they are taught them. The knowledge is treated as a functional necessity in peer group interaction. Earlier dramatic experience leads to story reading by one student to a group. The reader gets a sense of the importance of conveying a meaning because other students do not have an identical text. The first attempts at composition are the recording of sensory stimuli and dictation of stories by young to older children. These are followed by written observations in an assigned project, like watching an animal eat or a plant grow. Finally the student writes out stories and plays to be read and enacted.

THE novelty of a student-centered language arts curriculum imposes difficulties which "How Can I Tell You" has helped to overcome. Anne McNamara is in charge of the language curriculum at the Loker School, which has followed Moffett's teaching proposals for two years. "It would have been great if there were a show last year," she said. "We would have known what we were supporting. Kids follow the program and it loosened up teachers. Last year we had to write out pantomimes and plays."

The production of "How Can I Tell You" necessitates two kinds of expertise not often found together. WGBH, Boston's educational television station, produces the program, and the 21-inch Classroom, a bureau of the Massachusetts Board of Education composed primarily of professional educators, plans and writes it. "Some people know about kids, and some people know about television, but very few know about both," said Peter Greenspan, a field representative for the 21-inch Classroom. No audience survey for "How Can I Tell You" has been taken yet, but currently 180 school systems comprising 700,000 pupils subscribe to the 21-inch Classroom for rights to their programs. A bill now in the State House of Representatives which would provide for reimbursement of half of the school system's subscription fee and a proposed WGBH cable to Mount Tom for broadcast to Massachusetts west of Worcester may expand the 21-inch Classroom audience.

The final programs presented by the Proposition are the best in the whole series. They all begin as a member of the company walks to the front of the stage and addresses the audience: "Hi, I'm an actress .... We've never done this before and we need your help." In the fourth Proposition program she continues, "I want you to tell me something you don't like to do." The audience shouts "work" and the Proposition improvises skits about a bum who never works, the aching back of a Russian who shovels snow all day, and finally they celebrate the liberation from all work with an Irish jig. Food suggestions provoke songs about spaghetti, "just pouring out" and steaks "on burning black eyes." While one member of the group sings the others play imaginary musical instruments.

AS THE show ended in the Loker School, children in a combined third and first grade class were directed to break into huddles and make plans to act out different animals and toys in a designated room in the house. Three students crawled in a line like train cars while two bobbed their shoulders playing a cat and leopard. To shouts of "We couldn't tell they were in a kitchen" the animals began to pretend to sniff for food in a refrigerator and a shelf above their heads. A second group pantomimed a skunk stamping his foot, and a horse, hyena, duck, pig, and monkey in a farmyard. Three boys played electric football characters who continually ran into walls.

These animal pantomimes and the sensory training in the earlier Tribal Players skits eventually lead up to full improvisations. A group enacted wind-up toys who ran low on energy and shouted to be wound up again. Another group played race cars, an announcer ran around balls on an imaginary pool table, and a group improvised on the theme of being lost in the woods. "Children are the center of our curriculum," said Anne McNamara. "Other thins revolve around them. We can completely justify 'How Can I Tell You" in our curriculum. It's a beginning and a middle and with it we can teach kids how to make long sentences without lists and diagrams. Teachers used to say, 'I've taught possessives for a year and they still can't use them right.' That doesn't happen anymore."

"How Can I Tell You" occupies a vital place in the restructured curricula in the Angier and Loker Schools. "Kids who were slow readers have become much more communicative and much more interested," said Anne McNamara, "and incidentally, they read much better." The value of curriculum reform independent of changes in society is questionable. Motivation to learn is not dependent solely on relationships in the classroom. Pleasing television shows cannot erase the effects of alienation and exploitation. But curriculum planning and teaching methods can take advantage of some of what is known about child development. A classroom structured around a child's needs and desires will be a happier and more productive place than one planned for someone else's purposes. A fourth grade class's improvisation of animals escaped from a barnyard and recaptured by a farmer and his family evoked my memories of long rows of very hard desks, very soft pencils, and very long sentences.