A slightly more complete thought on dignity

In a previous blog post I discussed how popular humanist and neoliberal ideals are at odds with "drill-and-kill" techniques that seem useful in early mathematics education and language learning. I argued that teachers who inherit those beliefs around dignity, flexibility, and creativity might fail their students by refusing the seeming mindlessness or baseness of times tables flash cards, for example. I didn't provide a solution, merely the question: The more interesting task here is to critically examine the feeling that making students do 1,000 reps of something is undignified, unbecoming of a STEAM-pilled creative free-thinking future middle manager. Well, yesterday I was reading an interview with Guyanese author David Dabydeen (the author of A Harlot's Progress, my favorite novel1). And he said something fascinating: And we had an art exercise book to do drawings and paintings and [my teacher] said, your task today, and he wrote it out on the blackboard, write out – I still…