The Core Knowledge Blog

I teach in New York City, ostensibly one of the most successful districts in the nation. Our reforms are second to none. Test scores soar year after year. We buy the best new products and quickly toss out the old. When I began teaching in Brooklyn, I thought I would teach literature and writing. I quickly learned that literature was outmoded and “accountable talk” all the rage. It was once a phrase in lowercase. How it has grown!

You attended school in the bad old traditional days. Don’t deny it. Back then, the teacher lectured while you took notes, read dead authors, and regurgitated dry facts. There was no class discussion. You were never encouraged to think for yourself. It’s a miracle that you read the paper now-or read at all, for that matter.

Today, you would not have to suffer. Schools across the country have purchased and mandated an exciting new type of classroom conversation called Accountable Talk®.

“Purchased classroom conversation?” you might gasp. Hold it! Your question doesn’t conform to Accountable Talk® format. You must phrase your question thus: “It seems to me that you said that schools have purchased their own classroom conversation. Is that what you meant?” Yes, that was my drift.

Coined in the 1990s by the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, the phrase “accountable talk” refers to a mode of classroom conversation that emphasizes (you guessed it) accountability: justifying one’s statements, responding to others, and staying within the boundaries of the topic. Beyond that, it is now a brand name and a product. In 2007, the Institute for Learning began displaying a service mark (SM) next to the phrase. In 2008, Accountable Talk® became a registered trademark. In other words, we must now purchase our own classroom conversation-or rather, our district purchases it for us and requires that we place it on our tongues.

What kind of talk have we purchased? Accountable Talk® embraces conventions of so-called academic conversation: starter phrases, social cues, and habits of referring to the text. The basic principle–that we must substantiate what we say-has generally been part of any good class discussion, but Accountable Talk® makes the conventions explicit and requires total compliance with its rules. It is intended especially for children who lack exposure to such conventions of speech. In moderation, it makes sense. But does it really reproduce academic conversation? Or does it require us to give up an element of intellectual freedom: our choice of wording and phrasing, within reason?

Suppose I decided to hold a class discussion without Accountable Talk®. If I admitted openly that it was not Accountable Talk®, I would be flouting district mandates. If I called it Accountable Talk® but didn’t conform to its protocol, I would break trademark law. In other words, teachers are now bound by both district regulations and trademark law to acknowledge and adhere to a particular kind of classroom talk. This should raise some concern and questions if not outright alarm. Our speech, of all things, should be protected from branding and marketing. The Founding Fathers did not foresee that someone might appropriate, sell, and mandate a style of speech.

Trademark concerns aside, I object to a mere three aspects of Accountable Talk®: the accountability, the talk, and the poor prose resulting from the two.

In education, “accountability” suggests a wrongdoing: we are made “accountable” so that we can no longer slip by with poor practice. Why, then, must a good class discussion be called “accountable”? Shouldn’t it be driven by something deeper, like desire for truth, curiosity about the subject, and respect for others? Accountability should not be our highest ideal; it has value and meaning only when higher principles are in place. Those principles present, a class discussion needs no special name. Accountable talk could help us out of a bog; but once we can breathe and walk, we should make full use of our faculties, using the words and phrases that seem best. One does not have to be “accountable” at every moment; there is room, in a good class discussion, for exclamations, tangents, and incomplete ideas.

As for talk, there is too much of it in our classrooms already. Students must constantly “turn and talk”; “peer-edit,” “engage in group work,” and “share out.” They sit facing each other, so that teachers won’t distract them. Students rarely learn how to listen, take in ideas and language, and think independently. Consider, for instance, the “turn and talk” technique. Instead of taking in a story that the teacher is reading aloud, students are instructed periodically to turn and talk about it with a partner. This breaks up their private thoughts and requires them to consult with someone else. One recalls David Riesman’s observation in The Lonely Crowd regarding “that rapid circulation of tastes which is a prelude to other-directed socialization.” Contemplation cedes to buzz. The buzz, in turn, creates a market for talk products, which require services, consultants, and a brand.   

Of course there should be some discussion in the classroom, but now it has risen to the status of a petty god. Teachers and students alike must be trained in this sort of talk so that they will practice it correctly. As a consequence, the emphasis is often on the talk itself. Administrators conducting spot-checks want to see evidence of it; they are pleased when they see students turning and talking to their partners. It matters little whether they can recite and interpret Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” or give a thoughtful definition of democracy. What matters is that they are talking. This makes careful, sustained thought difficult if not impossible.

Let’s be reasonable, though. If we disregard the accountability, talk, and trademark, Accountable Talk® is a fine idea-except that it isn’t. Its emphasis on process results in bad prose. In a typical Accountable Talk® discussion, students put great effort into their beginning and ending phrases. A student might comment: “I would like to add on to what Jeremy said by saying that the picture shows a covered wagon. Does anyone care to concur, challenge, or add on?” The student thus conveys: “the picture shows a covered wagon” but adds twenty-two extraneous words for the sake of compliance. No one notices; it all sounds good. Checklist conditions have been met. The sentences, replete with verbiage, sound “academic.” We can all go to sleep. But some of us stay up late remembering the fiery, pithy, lovely language we love. Such memory offers hope: it has no trademark yet.

Diana Senechal teaches theatre and ESL at P.S. 108, an official Core Knowledge school in New York City.  She has a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale. Her translations of the Lithuanian poetry of Tomas Venclova appeared this fall in a new volume, The Junction.