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Nancy
Ichinaga, of Los Angeles, was the principal of Bennett-Kew Elementary
School in Inglewood from 1974 to 2000. She previously worked at
public schools in Oakland, Tulare County, and in Los Angeles as
a teacher, school psychologist, and school principal. Ms. Ichinaga
earned a bachelor of education degree from the University of Hawaii
and a master of arts degree from the University of California, Los
Angeles. She was one of the few principals in California who refused
to adopt the whole language reading program. |
"Whole
language should not be a reading program. Their methodology is wrong.
Because they thought kids could learn to read just like they could
learn how to speak. And reading is a skill that has to be taught."
"I
don't know how Proposition 13 had anything to do with teaching kids."
"I
think every school should be an independent entity with a good administrator
who knows what her job is, or his job is. And if you have that,
then the state can just kind of oversee it."
"I'm
from Hawaii, where racial prejudice is the worst sin. And I'm not
going to tolerate any of it here. These kids can learn, they will
learn, and you will teach them."
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JOHN
MERROW
Talk to me about fads in education.
NANCY ICHINAGA
There are fads in education where people just get on the bandwagon
and do what others are doing without thinking through whether it meets
what their objectives are, or their goals are. And they do that because
they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing. They don't have
any clear objectives. I've always had clear objectives. I knew I wanted
my kids to learn how to read so they could be smart enough to go on
to college. I didn't want my kids to be dishwashers and gardeners
like their parents. I always wanted to make sure that they came to
school, they learn and they became scholars.
JOHN MERROW
You do have children of dishwashers and gardeners.
NANCY ICHINAGA
Yes. All my Hispanic children, their parents work as dishwashers,
waiters and as gardeners. Low level skill jobs.
JOHN MERROW
Give me opinion of some of these fads. Ebonics.
NANCY ICHINAGA
Oh, now, that's foolish. Ebonics is the language of the streets and
of the home, but not in the school. The kids need to learn proper
English, or standard English if they're going to function in this
world.
JOHN MERROW
The new math.
NANCY ICHINAGA
The new math is not new. It's been around since 1960s. They believe
that because they really don't understand what it is that they're
supposed to teach the kids. Or they think that kids should learn whatever
they want to learn. You know, that's a remnant of the progressive
system.
JOHN MERROW
Whole language.
NANCY ICHINAGA
Whole language should not be a reading program. Their methodology
is wrong. Because they thought kids could learn to read just like
they could learn how to speak. And reading is a skill that has to
be taught. So, you know, when it came out and we got the whole language
readers, one of the books was "Sun And Shadows." The kids
could read the word "shadows" in that book. But when you
show them the word shadows in isolation, they had no idea what it
was because they had learned to use that word in context, but not
the word itself.
JOHN MERROW
Are there more fads coming?
NANCY ICHINAGA
There always will be fads, and some people will follow them. Unless
you're sure what it is you want to teach the kids, or what your objective
is in terms of educating the kids, you're not going to be able to
look at the fads critically. You have to look at them critically,
and take what works and the others, just discard them.
JOHN MERROW
Learning styles.
NANCY ICHINAGA
For the most part, most kids will learn what you teach them. Now,
there are a few kids you have to pull aside and teach them separately
because they just can't seem to learn in a large group. And you may
say that's a different learning style. But no, I don't really put
much value in that terminology.
JOHN MERROW
California seems particularly prone to faddishness that sweeps the
whole state.
NANCY ICHINAGA
The whole state was like that in the 1980s when they adopted the whole
language. We were already using Open Court. It was 1985. And then
the state boards said that Open Court is not on the state adopted
list because of it's emphasis on phonics. So we wrote all kinds of
letters to the Curriculum Commission, to the State Board. We protested.
And so they changed their minds and they allowed us to use Open Court.
JOHN MERROW
Some say that this stems from Proposition 13 which centralized authority.
NANCY ICHINAGA
Proposition 13 is what took the tax money
away from schools, that's all I know. But how it influenced education,
you can use any excuse to justify all the things you've done that
don't make any sense. I don't know how Proposition 13 had anything
to do with teaching kids.
JOHN MERROW
The question of authority in schools, you don't think it should be
at the state?
NANCY ICHINAGA
I think every school should be an independent entity with a good administrator
who knows what her job is, or his job is. And if you have that, then
the state can just kind of oversee it. And the state will keep the
schools accountable. The accountability measures is what the state
should do, not on how to get there.
JOHN MERROW
You're clearly a very successful school principal. Are there secrets
to success?
NANCY ICHINAGA
They're not secrets, they're just common sense. I'm a behaviorist.
I look at a problem and the steps to solve that problem. My kids,
when I first came here, couldn't read. I had a school full of illiterates,
and nobody knew how to teach them. Because they had been doing the
progressive education system. I looked at that and I said, "Is
that what you guys want to do?" They said no, they wanted to
teach the kids. I said, "I don't want you writing your own curriculum,
because experts have already written curriculum. So what we need to
do is look for a series that has a sequenced curriculum in teaching
kids how to read." And that's what we did.
JOHN MERROW
So the secret was just doing the work.
NANCY ICHINAGA
Doing the work, but knowing what it is you have to do. Our job was
not to make kids happy. The whole thrust of education at that point
was to keep kids happy and to let them do what they wanted to do because
then they would learn better. Then they would have self-esteem. And
that was what was going on here. And when I came, of course, nobody
could read. And nobody knew how to teach.
JOHN MERROW
But they felt good.
NANCY ICHINAGA
They're supposed to have felt good. But they were naughty. They were
totally undisciplined because they did what they wanted to do. So
we had to change that.
JOHN MERROW
So it was educational decisions, not Proposition 13?
NANCY ICHINAGA
What's the value in blaming Proposition 13 as to why California schools
went down like that in eighties? It went down like that because the
State Department and the curriculum commission were all of one mind.
They were all for whole language.
JOHN MERROW
So money isn’t a problem.
NANCY ICHINAGA
There's not enough money, but you can't make any excuses as
to why your kids aren't learning. I mean, that's the whole national
pastime. Oh, they're poor. They come from minority groups. They can't
learn.
My teachers told me that the first year I was here. The school used
to be all white. And then the freeway came and took away all the houses
and turned them into low income housing. And so suddenly the school,
which was 90 percent white, became 90 percent black. And when I looked
at the test scores, it was three percentile, I said, "Whoa, this
is terrible. Either they're all retarded, or you guys haven't been
teaching them. Now, which one is it?" Now, one of the teachers
very quietly said, "Well, what did you expect? The kids are all
black now." And that really got me very angry. I said, "What?
You're telling me that the kids have to be white in order to be able
to learn?" And of course nobody answered me. I said, "Well,
I don't believe that." I said, "I'm from Hawaii, where racial
prejudice is the worst sin. And I'm not going to tolerate any of it
here. These kids can learn, they will learn, and you will teach them.
If you don't want to do that, you need to go someplace else."
And so we settled that within two months, and most of the teachers
wanted to teach. They want their kids to succeed. So you have that
going for you. So you can't lose. That's how I feel. |
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