to endure or enjoy?

Life that is.

What does it take to truly enjoy what you do and not merely endure it?  Too many settle with plodding, with getting by, getting through the days, waiting for the weekend… that’s not a full life, certainly not human flourishing.

Our life work should be engaged with doing what we are, not just what you do.  Make what you do who you are.  Not many find this.  Not many find what moves them: what they are both good at and passionate about.  Why is that?  Sadly, traditional education doesn’t help.  It buries our talents, hides them, makes us think that we don’t even have any.

We need to transform education.  TRANSFORM. Not repair, not adjust, not tweak.  The old model is just that, old.  It makes no sense today (if it ever did).  The world over people are looking to “fix” education.  It’s time for a seismic shift.

Not convinced?  See what one of our friends has to say here:

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go to school, get a job

Really? Is that the equation?  Is that what it’s for? Education?  That’s pretty narrow.

Today’s world, “they” tell us, is not a world of single-career lives.  We’ll all have many jobs, many careers.  How do you go to school for that?  Ask around at work what people studied in school and what their work is now and has been.  See how many are working in the field they “went to school for”.  If they are over the age of 30 they likely have already started on their second, third?, career.

What school needs to “teach” is adaptation, resourcefulness, creative thinking.  With this under your belt you can handle whatever, manage to find your way through and make something rewarding of your life.  Maybe even make a contribution along the way.

Find a school that does this.  Find an alternative approach that has ditched the tired and worn, and today insufficient, traditional model of education, because it is no longer serving life.  You need a better option.  You need an education that will equip you for the unknown, the “yet to be encountered or considered”.

Don’t go to school to get a job, go to school to get a life.

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learning from Locke

John Locke was an English philosopher.  He was well regarded by America’s Founding Fathers.  Not generally remembered for his writings on education, he did apply his general realist philosophy to the question of education.

Locke said “…I think I may say, that, of all the [people] we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.”  What he is saying here is that people are not born a certain way, not destined to be one kind of person or another, but rather, BECOME.  And the education of people is what makes them.

Today our traditional schools are making people into something that does not serve them, or at least does not suitably prepare them in the best manner possible.

We need schools that understand the profound truth of Locke’s statement: that people are made or broken by what they experience, that education is what helps to make us and that anything short of the ideal is dangerous.

We need to move now.  We need to create awareness around this today.

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the looming teacher battle

The NY Times, in it’s Magazine section (May 23), tackled one of the most challenging areas of education reform.  Bravo.  Even raising the issue is dangerous.  Teachers unions.  Only the brave teachers will come out in favor of changing the game here.  The biggest issue is quality control and job security – seniority.  Unions typically work with the approach that after just a few years of work a teacher has a job for life – barring EXTREME behaviors.  You practically have to commit a criminal act to lose a teaching job these days.

Yes, teachers have a tough job.  No one debates that.  Yes, all kinds of children show up at school not prepared to learn, ill-equipped.  There are innumerable challenges of every kind.  But, the fact remains that regardless of school district, state, socio-economic population, etc…. there remain teachers who get the job done nuder those circumstances and those that do not.  It’s not sufficient to argue that “I can’t teach these kids”…. you find a way, many have.

In most jobs, you either get the job done well or your employer will find someone else who can.  Nothing else makes sense.  Don’t rail against right-wingers and the market… you’d do the same thing if you were an employer, if you’re honest you’ll recognize this.  Nothing efficient ever got achieved by people whose jobs were guaranteed.

Let’s change this part of the education conversation too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?scp=1&sq=teachers%20union&st=cse

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From Birth

It is too critical to not have this idea become one of the foundations of “the new education” (what shall we call the conversation once it’s changed?)

The idea is this: that education starts at birth.  We need to broaden the concept of education from the restrictive traditional one of “passing along data/information”.  If this is all that we do with education and schools then we will not (are not, have not been) prepare people to live their lives in the world.  Isn’t this the goal of education?  How can it not be?

Once we’ve “got” the idea that education is much bigger, broader, and deeper than the simple and narrow understanding of education as “acquiring information about important stuff” , then we’ll grasp that education starts at birth.  Education is all that we do in our waking hours.  The child from birth is learning at  a phenomenal rate without any external guidance.  Nature wants to live and flourish, right?  You have to pick this up and run with it.

EVERYTHING that this newborn does amounts to LEARNING, and it doesn’t stop – never.  Sounds easy, simple, yes.  Yet, there is no shortage of clever parents who would agree with this abstraction all the while doing things with their child that teach them something completely unhelpful, because learning happens all the time, from birth.  These clever parents have no idea, it seems, that their interactions with their children, their policies and practices all have an effect: their child is learning stuff that these parents would actually rather not have them learn.  They just have no awareness that they are teaching them this stuff.  Often it’s dependency-creating stuff: we’re getting ready to go somewhere and the child has forgotten something that they will need (clothing item, food, something).  Out of a desire to avoid a meltdown, avoid being inconvenienced themselves somehow, just feeling bad for the child.. or some other reason, the parent finds a way to “fix” the situation.  Doesn’t matter how clever the approach is, the result is that they have “saved” the child and what the child has learned is that “things will work out somehow. I don;t have to pay attention, think carefully, plan…..”.  Necessarily this is what they are learning. NOT a good life skill.

You can TALK about whatever you want with the child to try to still have them learn the right thing in this situation but they won’t.   You learn by doing, there’s no way around that, from day 1.

So- let’s find a way to get this info out there.  Let’s work to change part of the conversation so that people understand that learning starts at birth, and what that truly means.

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difference, not disability

As we learn more about how learners are not all the same, about how there are not only styles of learners but also different forms of learning, it becomes very clear that we have to stop equating students who are “learning different” with having a disability that needs to be corrected.

We have to change the cultural attitude that students with learning differences need to be “fixed”.  What is becoming clear is that different is simply different, often.  Einstein was likely a very different learner, and would very likely have been “diagnosed” had he been a child in school today. But it is the very nature of his learning difference that made it possible for him to discover the things he did.

We need to begin appreciating and celebrating all styles and forms of learning if we are to solve the problems that are present and that will come our way.  We need the talents and skills of all people, and too often when we “fix” children’s learning style/form we curtail the very ability that would have allowed them to shine.

A great place to start is the newly published book Different Learners by Jane Healy.

Different Learners: Identifying, Preventing, and Treating Your Child's Learning Problems

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some are so confused

You know that our traditional system of education is truly messed when even the edu-pundits don’t know how to think.  Diane Ravitch has changed her mind.  Nothing wrong with that by itself  – we make mistakes, learn more, get better information… the right thing to do is revisit opinions and positions.  Ravitch, a one-time supporter of testing and school choice has decided that both are worthy of the trash heap now.  She just doesn’t know how to think about them, though.

She dumps school choice because vouchers and charter schools are not consistently proving to be better than regular public systems.  While the recent results here are true, it is partly because the choice model is not being implemented fairly and fully. It’s more that can be delved into here, but the whole charter system in many states is quite, shall we say, “unclean”.  The main point, though, isn’t whether they are showing better results, the main point about school choice is that IT’S THE MORAL THING TO DO.  Parents should be able to send their children to the school of their choice because it is their tax dollars that are supporting the system. Don’t take away choice because some schools aren’t performing well… they will improve if there’s a need to.  Remember: NOT having choice didn’t give us quality schools in the first place.

Plus, how can Ravitch attack choice on practical grounds when the measure of quality is testing.  Reports tell us that the “scores” are inconsistent and at times no better, or worse, than some regular public schools.  But wait, Ravitch is against testing too.  She doesn’t think that it accurately tells us what we need to know about student knowledge and progress.  How can you use a measuring stick that you say doesn’t measure?  Is this very simple flaw in her thinking so difficult to see?  And SHE’S got a national voice in the education reform conversation?  Where’s the hope?

Sure testing is not the best approach.  We know that.  But Ravitch’s about-face isn’t based on a proper understanding of what learning is and how it happens, its’ just a backlash to the “teaching to the test”  result of a test-centric climate that has evolved after NCLB (which she supported, before).  Her criticism is that all this testing focus has taken us away from delivering a full and proper curriculum.  Oh?  Right?  Like the really good system that was in place before NCLB?  Look, Ms. Ravitch, it was the terribly poor system that you railed against in supporting NCLB that you are now saying we need to reinstate.

Such a muddle.  Is she really interested in what’s best for students?  Does she have a clue as to what that is?  It’s muddled thinking like hers that is the biggest problem with traditional education: too many people are NOT learning how to think, because traditional education is not, was never, focused on developing thinking.

All together now: this is why we need to change the education conversation!  It’s the conversation that is wrong, not the details of it (they are irrelevant).   Shades of Marshall McLuhan.

book review here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/books/review/Wolfe-t.html?scp=2&sq=diane%20ravitch&st=cse

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don’t pretend with cucumbers

Anyone who works with children of any age please take note: don’t play with fire.

One of the pie-in-the-sky, somewhat tired cliches of aspiring educateurs is to “keep lit the flame of passionate inquiry” in children/students/people.  I’m all for it.  I’m big-time in favor of poetic pronunciations purporting to pursue the proverbial “good” of education: keeping that flame alive.

But when we offer to students well-meaning opportunities to get involved with something meaningful, too often the offering ends up “playing at”, pretending, approximating.  It’s like giving your four year old a wooden cucumber to cut because he likes to “cook”.  Give him a cucumber.  Don’t pretend to cook – let him cook.  There’s a significant difference between truly taking on a real experience, challenge or responsibility and tokenistic attempts at the same.

Sure, teachers like to parade a class of children one day down to the food bank or soup kitchen in order to offer an experience that will be illuminating.  Does it make a difference?  If a child chooses to get involved and take on a role like this, let them, encourage them – but make it meaningful.  Make it a responsibility.  Make it real.  The value of really doing it – for real – is that it is REAL.  There’s no substitute for the real.  You can’t fake it, you can’t approximate it.

The fire within the soul of every person deserves to burn strong and wild.  Feed that fire with real experience.  Feed it anything else and you’re asking for trouble.

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what grades ruin

Here’s a touchy subject.  Of course, any time you take on the status quo, the system, the “familiar” you run the risk of hitting some sensitive buttons, some sacred cows… and some “third rails”.  This be one?

How did we ever end up with letter and number grades as a way of evaluating student work?  I’ve gone down this road of inquiry before, and we’ll surely revisit it again.

The history of grading is murky. There are a few conjectures around its origin, but it seems pretty clear that no one really knows how it all got started.  It doesn’t seem altogether far-fetched that a science-based culture would find it useful to measure student achievement and progress.  How else to know if they’re learning anything?  How else to know if they are improving year over year?

There are alternatives of course. And, the “side effects” of testing are not to be discounted.  There’s an emphasis on “right answers” of course, with the goal becoming the coveted “100%” or “A+” or “perfect!”.   Mistakes become “bad things” to be avoided at all cost – thereby introducing a lack of risk taking, little desire to innovate, or try something new.  Oh no, play it safe – go for the grade, it’s all that matters.  You can’t undo this – they go together.  The emphasis of learning ends up all twisted and wrong-headed.

With grade-getting motivation is  located OUTSIDE of the learner – don’t we know the value of INtrinsic motivation??

There’s no time/space here to consider the question of HOW you grade.  Goodness no.  That’s a whole other piece, er, essay – make that dissertation!

Also let’s not forget the stress  and anxiety….

Let’s change the conversation folks!  Let’s talk about evaluating a student’s work by looking at it and talking about it.  How could we improve?  What parts didn’t make sense?  What creative ideas were put out there? Where to go next?

There’s so much more we could do than issue letters and numbers to student’s work.  How degrading!

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it’s about the person

“It’s dawning on people that education should be about the development of the person and not about knowing things – specific, discreet facts”.  Dr. Steven Hughes, pediatric neuropsychologist, Univ. Of MN.

Wow. Maybe we’ll get there.

What’s this?  Education is about “the development of the person”?  This is rad man.  This guy better be careful, he’s going to upset some folks. The same one’s I’m going to upset.

What IS education?  Let us never lose sight of that.  Define your mission and don’t forget it.  It is the guide.  So when schools set out, traditional schools, they are doing what they intend to do.  Let’s be fair. Traditional schools are NOT about innovation, creative thought, moving the walls, or shaking things up.  They are about doing what is done, learning how to fit in, conform – “this is how we do it around here” mentality.

This is why the conversation needs changing.  We need to tap our glasses, get the attention of our audience and shift the conversation to human flourishing.  Who’s against that?  This is what Dr. Hughes is suggesting: developing each and every person’s talents and gifts.  We all have them. An education should be about helping us discover what ours our, not telling us how to be.

I hope it’s “dawning” on more people.

See Dr. Hughes full 4+ minute piece here:

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