Posts tagged ‘education’

Sep 17

Envy, lust, greed, complusory education

Is forced education–and the consequential imprisonment of children–a good thing or a bad thing?

The author of an interesting article over at Psychology Today says it’s bad thing. Peter Gray of the Freedom to Learn : The Roles of Play and Curiosity as Foundations for Learning blog suggests that perhaps we could do school differently if we re-think the issue of compulsory education.

Gray also suggests that there are seven sins associated with forcing kids to attend school. He spends significant time explaining his seven sins but I’ve pasted just a taste below:

Denial of liberty on the basis of age.
In my system of values, and in that long endorsed by democratic thinkers, it is wrong to deny anyone liberty without just cause
Fostering of shame, on the one hand, and hubris, on the other.
It is not easy to force people to do what they do not want to do. We no longer use the cane, as schoolmasters once did, but instead rely on a system of incessant testing, grading, and ranking of children compared with their peers.
Interference with the development of cooperation and nurturance.
We are an intensely social species, designed for cooperation. Children naturally want to help their friends, and even in school they find ways to do so. But our competition-based system of ranking and grading students works against the cooperative drive.
Interference with the development of personal responsibility and self-direction
A theme of the entire series of essays in this blog is that children are biologically predisposed to take responsibility for their own education. They play and explore in ways that allow them to learn about the social and physical world around them. They think about their own future and take steps to prepare themselves for it. By confining children to school and to other adult-directed settings, and by filling their time with assignments, we deprive them of the opportunities and time they need to assume such responsibility.
Linking of learning with fear, loathing, and drudgery.
For many students, school generates intense anxiety associated with learning.
Inhibition of critical thinking.
Presumably, one of the great general goals of education is the promotion of critical thinking. But despite all the lip service that educators devote to that goal, most students–including most “honors students”–learn to avoid thinking critically about their schoolwork.
Reduction in diversity of skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking.
By forcing all schoolchildren through the same standard curriculum, we reduce their opportunities to follow alternative pathways.

Gray admits that his seven sins are “not novel” but I do think that he puts a unique spin on how he presents them. I believe that many teachers work very hard to counter-act these tendencies of the larger educational system. Gray claims that the system works against them.

And while I agree with Gray’s comments, I am also convinced that too many teachers contribute to the problems he describes. I would add an eighth sin – too many teachers and their administrators are too comfortable as part of the system.

One of the basic ideas of economics is that people change only when there are sufficient incentives. Tenured educators often don’t see enough incentive to work against Gray’s seven sins. We need to find ways of encouraging teachers to be more proactive in making changes in their behavior.

More and more I’m becoming a fan of Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system. Rhee pushed for a two-tier teacher contract system last year that would allow teachers to earn higher salaries for better teaching. The system pushed back and that idea is now gone. But I still like the idea.

If we truly want learners to be successful in a different world, than those in charge of the learning will need to start acting differently.

Sep 16

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“Video games are the future in education”

National Public Radio recently posted an interview between Will Wright and Dr. E. O. Wilson.

Wilson is professor emeritus at Harvard University and biologist, is a two-time Pulitzer-winning ant expert who helped develop theories of island biogeography, chemical ecology, and sociobiology. A leader in the modern environmental movement, Wilson has devoted his life to understanding how all forms of life are connected.

Wright is famous for creating The Sims, the best selling video game in history and Spore, a recent game incorporating many science themes. One of Wright’s first games, SimAnt, is based partially on the work of Wilson.

During the conversation, the first question Wright asked was if Wilson saw a role for games in the educational process.

I’ll go to an even more radical position,” Wilson said. I think games are the future in education. We’re going through a rapid transition now. We’re about to leave print and textbooks behind.

Wilson elaborated further:

. . . for the most part, we are teaching children the wrong way. When children went out in Paleolithic times, they went with adults and they learned everything they needed to learn by participating in the process. That’s the way the human mind is programmed to learn.

Wilson also suggested that virtual reality “can be a steppingstone to the real world.”

This is nothing new. More experts are saying the same thing about the power of games and simulations as learning engines.

But what I enjoyed was the ability of both men to have a conversation that integrated science into a variety of other fields. I don’t think we do this enough in our classrooms. Too often, our conversations and work is focused on a narrow range – names, dates, places, people – without giving kids a chance to explore the relationships between our content and literature, for example.

Listening to the conversation was a good reminder about how important it is for kids to see history as a story connected to a much bigger world.

Image sources – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson, http://www.flickr.com/photos/sketch22/420745216

Aug 14

Tip of the Week – Starting School

If you haven’t started school already, you will be there soon. And it’s always nice to have some activities, tips and tricks up your sleeve when you do!

I talked to several teachers and asked what they needed most at the start of school and they all said basically the same thing:

Fun activities
Organizational strategies
Classroom management ideas

So . . . here ya go!

Fun activities

Organizational strategies

Classroom management ideas

Good luck and have fun!

Aug 3

Your right to boredom management

Apparently some of us in the office have accumulated too much stuff over the last few years. This morning the boss ordered everyone to go through book shelves and file cabinets in an effort to spruce up the place. We’re to throw out anything not up-to-date or being used.

As part of the process, I ran across an article titled Boredom and Its Opposite.

Authors Richard Strong, Harvey Silver, Matthew Perini and Greg Tuculescu use Adam Phillips 1993 definition of boredom

A form of depression—a kind of anger turned inward; and
A longing for that which will transform the self, making life and learning meaningful.

to help us understand how we can do our jobs more effectively.

The authors challenge us:

Instead of asking, Am I boring?, we can ask, When are students most likely to be interested enough to overcome the boredom that occasionally haunts almost any sustained act of learning? In other words, When and under what conditions do students care enough to work hard? This question shifts attention away from an obsession with boredom and toward a more productive fascination with ordinary human interest.

My notes in the margin talk about the authors mentioning the similarity between boredom and pain. And based on a document handed to me several weeks ago during kidney stone adventure, a Boredom Management document comes to mind.

Patient’s Students’ Rights and Responsibilities for Pain Boredom Management

Patients Students are involved in all aspects of their care, including managing pain boredom effectively. Patients Students have the right to the appropriate assessment and management of pain boredom including, but not limited to:

Information about pain boredom and pain boredom relief measures.
Treatment by concerned staff educators who are committed to pain boredom prevention and management.
Health Education professionals who respond to reports of pain boredom.
Staff Educators who demonstrate belief and acknowledgment of reports of pain boredom.
Staff Educators trained in pain boredom management.

The Patient’s Student’s Responsibilities:

Asking what to expect regarding pain boredom and pain boredom management.
Discussing pain boredom relief options with the health care educational team.
Working with the health care educational team to develop a pain boredom management program.
Asking for pain boredom relief or management when pain boredom first begins.
Helping the health care educational team assess the pain boredom.
Telling the health care educational team when the pain boredom is not relieved or managed.

It’s a different way to think about my responsibilities as a teacher as well as what students need to do. The article is incredibly interesting and as you prep for returning back to the classroom, something that is worth your time!

Jul 15

The best educators are all heretics

I had the chance to listen to Seth Godin the other day. You know . . . author of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, The Purple Cow and Small is the New Big?

No?

Well . . . he’s not really an education guy. He’s a marketing guy. But he said some things the other day that I think can apply to us.

Like many others before him, Godin compared K-12 education to the traditional factory system. And not in a good way. Not really a novel idea but he went on to suggest what I think is a novel solution.

You ready?

Create a tribe.

That’s right. A tribe.

In his latest book and during his keynote, Godin suggests that all people want to belong to a special group, that we all want to be “insiders,” that we want to belong to a tribe. It could be the Red Sox Nation, the Red Hat Club, the Red Hot Chili Peppers fan club or the Red Cross 10 Gallon donor group. His point is that people have been joining tribes forever.

And he suggests that we as educators can use this desire to join tribes to our benefit. If we truly want to change the educational system, it will have to come through the work of a group of dedicated people. And to be successful, this new tribe must be led.

And led not just by any kind of leader. Godin makes a very strong case that:

every successful tribe is led by a heretic.

I love that quote!

Change is hard, especially in education, and it take people who are willing to bend the rules a bit (and maybe break them once in a while) for real change to happen.

And the scary thing is that many of the leaders now in place – principals, superintendents and Boards of Education – are often not heretics. They like things to be stable and comfortable and “manageable.”

(One exception might be Michelle Rhee of the Washington DC school district. Rhe has offered teachers the option of merit pay, closed poor performing schools and fired administrators – all while saying “what happens to kids is what’s most important.” Heresy!)

Godin suggests that it’s up to you, the point of the spear, to make sure that true change occurs. And I see his idea apply both directly in the classroom and in the larger education realm.

How to effect change?

There is no Tribes for Dummies book but . . .

Challenge the status quo
Create a culture that encourages positive deviancy, a change for the better
Develop the idea of “insiders”
Create a culture that stands for something
Be curious about everything
Be charismatic – “Charisma doesn’t make a leader, being a leader makes you charismatic.”
Communicate a ton
Connect with your insiders

He ended with the phrase:

2v4

If you are doing this 2 people, you fail. If you do this 4 people, you succeed.

I’m still working through this in my own head and will be going back to his book to review. But I like Godin’s very positive attitude that we can effect change and that we can improve education.

If nothing else, Godin’s ideas make me feel optimistic about the future of K-12 education. And I like that!

Jun 8

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Rising above IQ

I need to get this book.

Richard Nisbett has written what seems like a must-read for educators and, more specifically, education leaders titled Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count.

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, columnist Nicholas D. Kristof talks about Nisbett’s book and what it might mean for our education system.

These three groups (Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks) may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture — which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children — and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.

Richard Nisbett cites each of these groups in his superb recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, argues that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable and owes little or nothing to genetics.

Kristof talks about Nisbett’s research and agrees with Nisbett’s argument that perhaps intelligence is less dependent on genetics and more dependent on culture and hard work.

. . . the evidence is overwhelming that what is distinctive about these three groups is not innate advantage but rather a tendency to get the most out of the firepower they have.

This seems to support some of what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Outliers. It’s an interesting concept and one that we as educators need to pay more attention to. If it’s not so much about genetics and more about environment / culture, then we as educators (and society) have a responsibility that goes beyond just filling our students heads with content.

What else?

It’s that the most decisive weapons in the war on poverty aren’t transfer payments but education, education, education. For at-risk households, that starts with social workers making visits to encourage such basic practices as talking to children.

The next step is intensive early childhood programs, followed by improved elementary and high schools and programs to defray college costs.

Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”

One more book added to the summer reading list!