Archive for the ‘General Education News’ Category

Reading Rainbow = Democratic Education?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Reading RainbowRemember this show?   Watched it, like I did, when you were younger?  Loved the theme music?  Or perhaps you just heard about it last week when it was reported that it is ending its 26-year run.  Regardless, it is indeed a sad day.  I was inspired to write about it here after reading an excellent post about it on the PopTen blog.  Blogger Morgan Holzer does a great job of capturing the joy and spirit of Reading Rainbow, highlighting some of the great books profiled.

I especially want to point out Morgan’s description of how young people were involved in the show:

Reading was an adventure to be had. It took you to new worlds where anything was possible, and to top it off, you (a kid!) got to review the book in the end. And while pundits decry television, movies, and gaming for dumbing down our youth, I have to say, this is a huge blow as well.

I loved how LeVar Burton (yes, like many others out there I think of him even more as Geordie LaForge from Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as Kunta Kinte from Alex Haley’s Roots) would always bring in the youth-recommendation section by saying, “But. . . you don’t have to take MY word for it.”

Go Reading Rainbow for respecting young people to review and promote books themselves, and to have the adult host of the show defer to young people rather than saying he is the one to trust on reading!  Maybe it was a gimmick to make kids laugh.  But I have a feeling there was someone, or someones, on the team creating that show who realized that young people will often listen more to their peers, and that young people themselves have something important to say – in this case, about books.

That belief in and support in the voices of youth – youth voice – is an essential part of democratic education, of good and meaningful education.  For that reason, and for the many memories I have of LeVar helping me learn how to make pizza and explore strange new worlds of books, I salute Reading Rainbow and thank you for your many years of reading advocacy and youth empowerment.

Posted in Democratic Education, General Education News, Youth Voice/Youth Rights | No Comments »

Rewards for Students Questioned in NY Times Article

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

With the growing trend in school districts around the country to reward students and teachers based largely on test scores, it was with great excitement that I saw the following headline on the front-page of today’s New York Times’ Science section: “Rewards for Students Under a Microscope.”  This is especially good to see considering that the NY Times Editorial Page has consistently supported such rewards as good educational practice.

The article, by reporter Lisa Guernsey, opens with a great summary of the critique of rewards for students:

For decades, psychologists have warned against giving children prizes or money for their performance in school. “Extrinsic” rewards, they say — a stuffed animal for a 4-year-old who learns her alphabet, cash for a good report card in middle or high school — can undermine the joy of learning for its own sake and can even lead to cheating.

Guernsey then goes on to mention and quote some of the leading educators and psychologists who have long been publicizing the negative effects of rewards on students’ intrinsic motivation and enjoyment for learning, including education writer Alfie Kohn and University of Rochester psychology researchers Ed Deci and Richard Ryan. Here’s an excerpt from the Times article:

Research suggests that rewards may work in the short term but have damaging effects in the long term.

One of the first such studies was published in 1971 by Edward L. Deci, a psychologist at the University of Rochester, who reported that once the incentives stopped coming, students showed less interest in the task at hand than those who received no reward.

This kind of psychological research was popularized by the writer Alfie Kohn, whose 1993 book “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise and Other Bribes” is still often cited by educators and parents. Mr. Kohn says he sees “social amnesia” in the renewed interest in incentive programs.

“If we’re using gimmicks like rewards to try to improve achievement without regard to how they affect kids’ desire to learn,” he said, “we kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”

I particularly was interested in this study by Stanford psychologist Mark Lepper:

Why does motivation seem to fall away? Some researchers theorize that even at an early age, children can sense that someone is trying to control their behavior. Their reaction is to resist. “One of the central questions is to consider how children think about this,” said Mark R. Lepper, a psychologist at Stanford whose 1973 study of 50 preschool-age children came to a conclusion similar to Dr. Deci’s. “Are they saying, ‘Oh, I see, they are just bribing me’?”

If there is one thing that my work with young people in both conventional and freedom-based environments has shown me, it is that young people can very easily tell when adults have an ulterior motive for what they say or suggest to students.  And over time, this leads to young people becoming more and more wary of teachers and adults to the point that they find it hard to trust adults and even avoid their gaze, for fear that adults will tell them to do something else or make a critical judgment.

Yet as Guernsey states, it is clear whose influence now reigns in education circles:

.  . . many economists and businesspeople disagree [with the critiques of performance rewards], and their views often prevail in the educational marketplace.

The article presents this perspective, including quoting Roland Fryer, Harvard economist who served from 2007-2008 as Chief Equality Officer with the NYC Department of Education, during which time he promoted and designed student and teacher incentive programs.  (By the way, not to dismiss the contributions of economists, but should an economist be the sole person leading school improvement efforts? At the least an experienced K-12 educator ought to be part of the leadership, no?). Fryer makes the following point,

“We have to get beyond our biases,” said Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard University who is designing and testing several reward programs. “Fortunately, the scientific method allows us to get to most of those biases and let the data do the talking.”

But what data?  And what other data might we be ignoring?

This is the essential point for me: that the issue here is not whether rewards increase test scores.  As Kohn, Deci, Ryan, and Lepper all point out, any short term gains (and one could question whether an increase in a dubiously-worthy multiple-choice test is actually a “gain” in anything meaningful) pale in comparison to the very real and long-term damage inflicted on many young people who are subjected to rewards systems: namely, that rewards systems very often are associated with diminished student interest and motivation for the activity or topic that was paired with a reward.  And there is a great deal of data to back this up (just Google “Ed Deci” or “Alfie Kohn” to find a ton).

So, sure, some students may increase their test scores when offered a reward for doing so, and certainly more students will take tests that have rewards tied to them, especially students from lower-income families, something Deci points out in his insightful comment, “‘There are suggestions of students making in the thousands of dollars,’ he said. ‘The stress of that, for kids from homes with no money, I frankly think it’s unconscionable.’”

But at what long-term cost to young people? Less interest and intrinsic motivation in the activity, increased stress and competition, even lower quality work, as Lepper’s study indicates.

This, then, is what happens when there is a dominant economic and business influence in education: increased student output through whatever means are necessary, without much regard to the fact that young people are human beings with personalities, emotions, and rights that ought not be dismissed or abused in the name of increased performance.

Yet now with the massive economic crisis stemming from the deplorable business practices of late, we should be ever-more critical and wary of economic- and business-driven reforms throughout society, most especially in the social sectors such as education.  I’ll end with a provocative comment from “a.r., Los Angeles” on the NY Times website from a reader of the article:

Isn’t the recent financial debacle proof enough that a) money as a motivator can lead to very bad things and b) economics does not provide a perfect model for human behavior? And why are poor kids our de facto guinea pigs in this social science experiment?

Indeed, why?

Posted in Education Policy, General Education News, Research and Reports, Youth Voice/Youth Rights | 2 Comments »

How to Talk to People about Democratic Education

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times op-ed columnist who has powerfully highlighted lesser-known fights for justice, including the conflicts in Sudan and the trafficking of girls and women around the world, has recently entered the national dialogue on education with some op-eds.  Kristof’s points are important for those in the democratic education world to consider, not only because of the platform he has as a columnist for the Times, but also because the arguments he makes reflect commonly-held assumptions about what is “good” education.  As Melia Dicker has written recently (thanks for the inspiration, Melia), we do our cause a huge disservice by responding with anger or dismissiveness rather than listening and understanding others’ perspectives, followed by responding with empathy, personal stories, and respectful questions and dialogue.

In his most recent column in today’s Times, Kristof speaks about education as the nation’s most crucial issue, and celebrates the influx of education funding that will result from the newly-passed $787 billion stimulus bill, of which $100 billion or more will go to education.  I agree with him that additional funding can do wonders: we need more funding in order to improve the awful conditions in so many schools that Jonathan Kozol and others have unearthed, as well as to prevent the firing of teachers and the increasing of class sizes (not to mention one of the most important funding aid needed in education, that of equitable funding for students in all districts so that communities with lower property tax intake can receive additional support – though that is highly controversial and not part of this spending bill).

But it is Kristof’s suggestions to solve the education crisis that I want to address.  He focuses on the need for better teachers, saying, “good teachers matter more than anything; they are astonishingly important.”  It would be hard for me to disagree, in that it surely matters a great deal what kind of adults are with our young people each day.  And from my own experiences, he does have a point that many of “America’s best teachers overwhelmingly teach America’s most privileged students.”  While I take issue with that generalization and know that many wonderful and committed teachers work with disadvantaged students, I also personally know a great many inspiring, passionate, and dedicated people who either work in private schools or have fled teaching altogether.

However, what Kristof may not have considered is that some of these dedicated educators have fled to less restrictive schools or from the teaching profession completely not because they lack a sense of duty to those less privileged, but because the standardization of the learning process and the high-stakes element of assessment – that is, the anti-learning, anxiety-provoking system of rewards and punishments doled out to teachers, students, and schools based largely on the multiple-choice test scores of students – that are required of public schools drives such creative and inspiring people away.  It seems entirely understandable that “good” teachers, even those deeply committed to social justice, who want to bring in their own personality and passions and to inspire the curiosity and independence of young people, would choose to work in a school that supports such personalization and flexibility in learning.  Or simply leave education.

Which makes me think that perhaps what is needed are not necessarily or only “good” teachers, but also a critical look at the impacts that the standardization and high-stakes testing movement is having on student motivation for learning and teacher motivation to teach.

And going even deeper, I’d like to talk to Kristof about how we determine what is a “good” teacher, or what it means to be a “successful” student or school.  I have seen some amazing teachers.  I think of one great teacher who would always take whatever time was necessary to have extensive conversations with each of her students about the students’ interests and help them determine the next steps they should take to pursue those interests, be they genetic engineering, music composing and performing, or computer programming (her school allowed for such open conversation during the school day).  And I think of an incredibly successful high school where students can teach classes to other students, choose from an exciting array of relevant classes, pursue independent study in topics of interest, take internships with businesses or artists in the neighborhood, and participate equally with teachers in the decision-making processes of the school.  [Some of these schools are listed here, and there are many other great schools and teachers doing similar great work around the country].

So when I think of “good” or “great” in education, I immediately think of such things as support for curiosity and individual interest, deep intellectual engagement, community participation in the governing of the school, and the development of strong relationships among students and adults.  And I find it odd that so many people, including progressive social justice fighters such as Kristof, look immediately for results on multiple-choice test scores to determine “success.”  Where in that determination is the individuality, the heart, the intellectual engagement, and the social sense that we want most for ourselves, for others, and supposedly for our children?

To be clear, I do believe that the development of reading and writing and math and other academic skills are important for success in life.  But, the question I’d like to respectfully ask those who make comments such as those by Kristof is, “At what cost?”  At what cost to young people do we focus on improving test scores?  What is the cost of adding more and more high-stakes tests?  Of longer school days filled with more test prep (such as that at the KIPP schools Kristof and others have been talking about lately)?  Of standardization in learning where individual interest must be put aside in favor of the same curriculum for all students?  Isn’t it possible to build environments that support young people to develop those academic skills while also developing self-determination, compassion for others, and deep critical thinking? At the very least, we need to consider answers to these questions.

Since the overwhelming majority of us went to traditional, conventional schools and currently send our children to such schools, we have long been immersed in the conventional wisdom about education, e.g. that high test scores = “good,” that rewards and punishments are beneficial, that everyone needs to learn the same thing at the same time.  So it is not a surprise to me that most people support such traditional ideas.  In fact, in high school I was as high-achieving, test-cramming of a student as you’d ever meet.  It was not until late college that I heard about other approaches to teaching and learning and realized that perhaps I had been wrong all along: that the stress and pressure from the school and from myself only hurt me and stifled my own sense of discovery about who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.

So my hope now is that we can help people like Nicholas Kristof and the many others out there who believe in freedom, personal responsibility, shared decision-making, and social justice, to bring those deeply-held democratic values into the education sphere and give young people the chance to develop as complete human beings, to find their spark and niche in this world, and to help build a more productive, sustainable, and peaceful society.

***

I crafted these thoughts here as a response to Kristof and his op-ed, but I wrote it in part to think about how we talk with others about democratic education, especially those who seem to reflect common assumptions that we find questionable.  In my response here I’ve tried to do follow a few principles:

  • Be empathetic: acknowledge the others’ perspective, let them know you are listening to them
  • Identify points of agreement
  • Bring in one’s own self and personal stories about education
  • Respectfully question and start a dialogue regarding commonly-held assumptions and points of difference. One thing to remember about this is to not dismiss the opinion with which you disagree, but to mention that you understand how and why they may hold such a belief (e.g. they went through conventional schooling themself).   Otherwise you run the risk of coming off as arrogant and may make the other person dislike you or simply stop listening.
  • Frame your position within a larger societal vision and grounded in democratic values. This deeper framework can connect with people when educational terminology such as student-directed learning and democratic decision-making may be too abstract or different from the norm to capture their attention and interest. Plus, it shows that democratic education exists within a long and broad fight for human freedom and that it has great potential to positively impact the direction that our society takes in the future.
  • Humor.  (Actually, I didn’t bring in this element – I focus so much on ideas that I find myself forgetting to bring in humor.  It’s something I want to work on and that I think can be a great part of discussing these often intense issues).

***

Well, that’s a start on this topic of how we talk to others about education.  I’ll write more here on this as time goes on, and would love to hear what others think.

…By the way, I want to salute Nicholas Kristof for his own respectful entry into the education arena, acknowledging in an online post his own lack of experience with this topic.  Which brings to mind another key element to bring to the dialogue: humility.  Thanks, Nicholas.

Posted in Democratic Education, Education Advocacy, Education Policy, Framing and Public Outreach, General Education News | 1 Comment »

New Web Forum on Education

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Hey educator-bloggers, blogger-educators, student-bloggers, blogger-students, non-bloggers, and everyone in between – I’m excited to learn about the new web 2.0 site and blog dedicated to education from the Change.org folks.  As I’ve mentioned last week, Change.org aims to serve as as “the central platform informing and empowering movements for social change around the most important issues of our time.”   They organize the “Ideas” campaigned I blogged about (which is now on the second round of voting for their Top 10 Ideas through Janury 15, go and vote!)

Change.org is organized by topic area, and a recent addition to their topics included one for “Public Education” at the appealing URL, education.change.org.  The centerpiece of each topic area is a blog, which for Public Education is managed by Clay Burrell, a Humanities teacher who lives in Korea and also has a personal blog at Beyond School.  Based on what appears to be the central role of the blog on the site, Clay’s influence over the education converation might be very high.  He has already brought in a guest blogger and anyone can comment on posts, but Clay’s role seems oddly large considering the open and decentralized nature of Change.org’s mission.

Also, terming the group “public education” as opposed to just “education” or “learning” is an interesting choice and one I could quibble with in various ways (while I strongly support the spirit of public education and seek democratic educational change of the public education system, doesn’t that term leave out most of early childhood education, independent K-12 schools and colleges, informal learning, and more?  But that’s a big topic for another day).

Nonetheless, I urge folks to take a look at the site, register (it’s a simple process), and consider contributing to the dialogue.  What excites me about this forum is that Change.org already is a network of many thousands of people, they have a visually appealing and user-friendly site, and the set-up is designed to empower the numerous folks out there thinking and doing education, as Clay mentions in a recent post:

It’s early days yet on this space – we’ve only been up for three days – but one of my hopes is that it can become a repository of first-hand accounts by readers of direct experiences unavailable in the mainstream press. Those accounts can have value, I’m convinced.

One educator whose name I continually see popping up in virtually all virtual education conversations including education.change.org is Philip Kovacs, and I just wanted to give Philip a shout out here and recognize his unending energy to advocate for democratic education and the need to unite our education system and society with our democratic values.  I met Philip, an education professor, writer, and activist in Alabama, at the 2008 American Education Research Association gathering in NYC, and am honored to consider him a colleague and friend. Keep up the great work, Philip; and everyone else – keep an eye out for Philip’s wise commentary.

Posted in General Education News, Technology and Youth Democracy | 1 Comment »

Parent-teacher-STUDENT conferences

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

I had the pleasure of waking up to The New York Times this morning in Minnesota, where I am for the holidays.  My in-laws receive the Times on Sundays, along with their great local paper, Pioneer Press.  But being from New York, I do admit to a special connection with the Times, a paper I have subscribed to when I lived in Michigan, Albany, NY, as well as summers in Minnesota.

Amidst other year-end news, I was happily surprised to find in the National section an article entitled, “The Parent-Teacher Talk Gains a New Participant.”  The subtitle is even more provocative: “Schools Bring Students Into the Process.”  Here’s a blurb:

Student-led conferences are gaining ground at elementary and middle schools nationwide, said Patti Kinney, an associate director for middle-level services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals in Virginia.

Although researchers have long hailed the benefits of such conferences — anointing students as the main stakeholders in their education, accountable for their performance during the school day and responsible for their academic future — their popularity appears to be increasing in part because of the rapidly shifting demographics at public schools nationwide.

The article describes how in several communities with large numbers of immigrant and working-class families, student-led conferences bring more parents into the schools.   That’s a laudable goal, and one I applaud in and of itself in terms of engaging families in the process of education who may not otherwise feel comfortable in educational conversations or meeting one-on-one with a teacher.   Young people’s familiarity with their teachers and schools can be an important bridge to engaging their parents in dialogue about education and their children’s lives at school.

I thought this was an excellent article, one that highlights the significance of the voices of young people and their parents.  There are pearls of wisdom sprinkled throughout the piece, such as:

“…a true dialogue concerning a student’s academic progress is impossible without both the child and the parent engaged and present,”

…and this quote from a mother who attends a school that involves students as leaders of conferences: “‘My daughter is learning that the teacher is not responsible for her learning. Cierra knows that she is responsible for her own success.’”

There is also a reference to other members of families being invited to attend conferences at some schools, including grandparents, siblings, and aunts and uncles.  That made me think of powerful forms of authentic assessment in which students give presentations and defenses of their learning to the school community and family members, such as what goes on at the New York State Performance Standards Consortium schools, or at democratic schools such as The New School in Delaware and Jefferson County Open School in Colorado.

It is just a short leap from involving students in conferences with parents and teachers to involving students in designing and presenting assessments of learning (in fact conventional wisdom, something I find myself parting from more often than not, might sooner support greater voice for older students, which is why this article particularly caught my eye).   And perhaps just another couple of small steps to involving students in other realms such as conflict resolution, curriculum development, school-wide decision-making processes, and educational policy-making forums.

We can begin to climb these steps together if we open the educational dialogue with this key principle noted in the NY Times article: “students as the main stakeholders in their education.”  Start there and the rest follows suit.

A final note – what’s especially exciting to me is that this article discussed a practice of deep, genuine student voice in a completely natural and comfortable way that the broad public can appreciate and rally behind.  I believe there’s something there to learn from in terms of how to advocate successfully for youth voice and democratic education.  Let’s take note.

Posted in Democratic Education, General Education News, Youth Voice/Youth Rights | No Comments »

“Edupunk”

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

The term “edupunk” made it into the New York Times list of 2008 buzzwords.  Here’s their description of the term:

 Edupunk: A style of hands-on self-education that benefits the student without concern for curriculums or the interests of schools, corporations or governments. In other words, an autodidactic approach that spurns commercialism, mass-market approaches and top-down goal-setting. Coined by Jim Groom, an “instructional technologist” at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.

Check out Wikipedia’s entry for Edupunk, and consider expanding the article.  It could use some references to educational philosophies that have been around for decades or even centuries: democratic education (that Wikipedia article needs to be created and not just re-directed to democratic schools, but that’s another conversation), libertarian education, Summerhill School, self-directed learning, student-centered education, unschooling, and more.

I especially like the Wikipedia list of autodidacts.  It includes Mark Twain, whose notable quote I just saw on an Eco-Pack cereal bag from Nature’s Path, namely: “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”  (Sorry for the corporate reference, though an organic cereal – among other products – company that uses eco bags for packaging is not such a bad company to highlight, is it?)

Anyone interested in helping to flesh out Wikipedia’s articles on education and democratic education-related issues?  Let me know.

Posted in Democratic Education, General Education News | No Comments »

Education and Human Rights

Monday, April 30th, 2007

The notion that every child has a right to education may seem so obvious that we actually end up ignoring the deeper ramifications of what this statement means. Simply having a system of public schools is not sufficient.

Several organizations and groups are doing powerful work to frame educational discourse within the context of human rights. Yes! Magazine’s recent issue features an article describing the efforts of the Independent Commission on Public Education (ICOPE) towards whole school reform in New York City based on the human rights of students, parents, and local communities.

The Human Right to Education Program of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), which is working with ICOPE on New York City reform, has a wealth of resources available on their website including links to the various international agreements ensuring the right to education. For instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 reads:

1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

The section in italics is particularly interesting, as the current educational focus on a rigid academic curriculum, standardized testing, disrespectful attitudes to young people, little opportunity for empowerment and self-direction, and a hierarchical governance structure are completely at odds with the rights of young people and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. NESRI provides references to other international documents that provide for the right to education in similar terms, including the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A recent research report by NESRI entitled Deprived of Dignity shows how middle and high school students in New York City and Los Angeles are mistreated and disrespected, and discusses how a human rights framework can help understand the harm being done to young people as well as provide a framework for changing these practices and creating an education based on human rights.

So what does an education based on human rights look like? Here are the principles NESRI sets out:

Individual Rights: Every individual child must have equal access to a quality education adapted to meet his or her needs.
Aims of education: The aims of education must be directed toward the development of each child’s personality and full potential, preparing children to participate in society and to do work that is rewarding and reasonably remunerative, and to continue learning throughout life.
Dignity: Schools must respect the inherent dignity of every child creating an environment of respect and tolerance in the classroom, preventing practices and disciplinary policies that cause harm or humiliation to children, and promoting self-confidence and self-expression.
Equity: There must be equitable distribution of resources in education across communities according to need.
Non-Discrimination: The government must ensure that the human right to education “will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
Participation: Students, parents and communities have the right to participate in decisions that affect their schools and the right to education.

The only suggestion I would make to this excellent list is to draw on the tradition of Democratic Education, which calls for democracy and human rights in education, and add the following:

Self-Determination: Each young person has the right to direct his/her own education and to have a voice regarding all decisions that affect him/her.

Without that last principle, educational settings would violate the basic principle outlined in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Posted in Democratic Education, General Education News, NYC Education, Research and Reports | No Comments »

Preventing Virginia Tech

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

The New York Times reported on a Senate committee that met yesterday to consider ways in which to prevent tragedies such as that of the recent shootings at Virginia Tech. After watching some of the committee meeting on C-Span and reading the Times article, I am once again deeply frustrated about the direction of the conversations following this tragedy (I say once again since this is the same pattern seen in the aftermath to Columbine and the various other school shootings in recent memory).

The focus in the Senate meeting and from the media in general is on how an institution can better recognize students with serious issues and deal with them. While this is certainly an important responsibility of a learning institution, K-12 or higher education, there is precious little discussion about a more fundamental issue: how a learning institution (or any institution in society) might be organized from the ground up so as to provide every individual with the support, care, and attention that all humans need and which is essential in an effort to prevent attacks such as this from happening.

This is not about blame, and I in no way join those who are blaming Virginia Tech for this tragedy. The deeper issue is that most media and our society in general rarely go to the root of issues. In this case, we must have a larger conversation about what makes up a healthy environment.

Regarding Columbine and other shootings in K-12 education, what is the effect of a factory-style structure wherein students shuffle from one room to the next being told what to do by others for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 10 months a year, and for 13 years in a row? (Not to mention the time outside of school doing homework and studying for the ever-increasing number of standardized high-stakes tests). Where is the caring, the personalized attention, the ability of young people to feel a sense of empowerment over their lives and their learning? On the college level, what is the effect of classes filled with hundreds of students, campuses filled with thousands, faculty who are encouraged to focus more on their own research or teaching than the lives and personalities of their students, and course requirements that leave little room for self-directed learning? Once again, this conventional structure lacks the caring, attention, and support that young people need to gain a strong sense of self and a connection to other human beings.

We need to broaden our understanding of what education is for. While the content curriculum, especially at the higher education level, is highly important, as important or even moreso is the hidden curriculum. Learning organizations “teach” not only content, but also values, relationships, and ways of being in the world. We must stop ignoring this truth.

What does this mean in practice? What can we do in schools and colleges on a fundamental level to prevent something like Virginia Tech? There is much we can do, and I could not even attempt an exhaustive list. But a few ideas might include:

- have conversations about the purpose of education at K-12 schools and college campuses around the country
- create smaller learning environments and break down larger environments into smaller learning communities
- establish a strong advisory system
- provide opportunities for students to take some control and initiative in designing their own education
- increase the number of teachers/faculty to students
- establish democratic and open conflict resolution systems to enable students and teachers/faculty to work together to solve problems
- engage students and adults together in making decisions about the organization

To add to this important conversation, I urge people to read a powerful piece by Chris Mercogliano, long-time teacher and director of The Albany Free School and author of Teaching the Restless, and Making it Up As We Go Along, responding to the Columbine tragedy in 1999. His words ring just as true today:

“The Teachings of Tragedy” (after clicking, scroll down briefly to the start of the article).

Posted in Education Policy, General Education News | No Comments »

More, More, More!

Monday, March 26th, 2007

Many politicians, district administrators, and school leaders around the country are implementing or considering longer days and extended school years for those schools that have been labelled failing or whose test scores are lower compared to other schools.

Here’s a link to a New York Times article, March 26, 2007. (requires logging in)

This misguided and dangerous proposition seems to follow the principle that if something isn’t working, it just needs more of the same. This policy is wrong in any field – business, politics, medicine, etc. – but it is especially detrimental when we are talking about the development and lives of young people.

Most of the schools that have already made this transition or are now considering it are located in inner cities, and are populated by students from largely low-income and minority families. Subjecting young people in this demographic to additional coercive educational practices can only increase the negative effects of the current conventional system, leading to greater and deeper alienation, dislike of learning, rebellion, and stifling of creativity and personality for the majority of students.

While it is possible that some, perhaps even most, students may show a gain in test scores, the question that MUST be asked is, “At what cost?” This plan attempts to force dubiously-valuable gains in test scores at the expense of students’ curiosity, interests, individual differences, enjoyment of learning, and true intellectual, personal, and social development.

We must engage with legislators, school officials, and others to assert that instead of more of the same damaging educational practices, young people need an education that follows a different paradigm – an empowering educational approach in which students have the opportunity to experience self-direction and take control of their lives and learning with the guidance and support of caring adults and other students.

Posted in Education Policy, General Education News | No Comments »

Gates and the U.S. Congress

Monday, March 12th, 2007

Unfortunately, it seems that every day Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation get further and further away from their educational roots. Just this past week, as picked up by the Associated Press, Gates testified to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, largely regarding educational issues. However, instead of emphasizing the deep significance of small schools, personalization, and relevancy in education, as was Gates’s powerful stance until recently, he spoke mainly about the need for higher national standards:

“We simply cannot sustain an economy based on innovation unless our citizens are educated in math, science and engineering,” said Gates.

Yet once again Gates doesn’t reconcile the inherent conflict between higher standards/required coursework and the qualities of innovation and discovery. While increasing requirements for students may sound right at first glance, the result of such an exansion of coercive practices in education is to expand the stifling of children’s learning that is already happening to such a large degree in conventional educatinal practice. Simply because we want something to happen (i.e. have young people learn science and math well enough to become innovators in this field), it does not follow that we should require the completion of certain classes or work. Often the act of mandating something causes an individual to dislike or rebel from whaveter it is we are requiring.

Perhaps Gates and others advocating a push for more standards in math/science education and otherwise should listen to the advice of preeminent scientist Albert Einsten, who famously said:

“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” (emphasis added) (in Goodman, 1962, p. 6)

Gates had it right initially, when most of his foundation support went to helping large schools convert into smaller schools, and to the start-up and strengthening of small schools around the country. Such notable schools included the Met Schools in Rhode Island and The Liberty School in Maine, both of which feature self-directed learning and democratic practices.

But we may yet have a chance to influence Gates. After speaking of personalization, relationships, relevance, smallness, and innovative schools for so long, he can’t switch over to his new higher standards mantra for too long before realizing the hypocrisy of trying to mandate innovation, and the sterility of educational practice without the “holy curiosity of inquiry” that can only flourish in freedom.

Reference:
Goodman, P. (1964). Compulsory mis-education and the community of scholars. New York: Vintage Books.

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