“The dominant American attitude toward schooling these days, embodied in all these changes, is a fundamentally new level of distrust. We don’t trust teachers’ judgment, so we constrain their choices…. We don’t trust the public school system as a whole, so we allow those furthest removed from the schoolhouse to dictate policy that fundamentally changes the daily interactions that take place within schools… But whatever the origins, social distrust plays itself out in education in the form of draconian attempts to ‘restore accountability’ through standardized schooling and increasing bureaucratization… which fuels the very distrust they are aimed to cure.” [p. 2]

Deborah wrote this in 2002, but I think as true as it may have been then, it is becoming more and more true today. High stakes accountability, restrictive teacher/student Internet filtering, prescriptive curriculum, publisher driven textbooks and tests, federal mandates, business-led initiatives, … Has the teacher and educational leader been reduced to a pawn in the matrix of an externally controlled American education system? Diane Ravitch just wrote a wonderful blog post related to this idea: “Why Business Leaders Should Not Be in the Driver’s Seat“. You should check it out if this interests you. What happened to educational leaders/authorities (past and present) being the ones that direct policies and direction in education? Are we all just laying down and letting the machine steamroll us? We, the people? Will educational transformation require a revolution by we, the people?

Please share your thoughts as I wrestle with this. I’ll be sharing more from her book in upcoming posts.

1. Children are adaptable.
2. G00d [muppets] take time to evolve.
3. Change is unavoidable.
4. “C” is for competition (not just cookie).
5. Freshen up.
6. Learn from your mistakes.
7. Keep it simple.
8. Push the envelope.

I am not going to make this a long narrative, but just simply want to quickly reflect on each of these lessons.

Children are adaptable: The certainly are. What comes to mind here though, is that children both adapt to good things in their environment as well as to not so good things. In schools, my concern is that children have adapted all too much to our didactic, passive, rote methods of teaching. I see this when they arrive at the college/university level. Many are struggling to battle this all-too familiar adaptation they have masterfully undergone for 12 or so years. Although, I must say many gladly rise to the challenge and move from the “feed me” “hoop jumping” and “minimum criteria” types of environments when relevant opportunities are placed before them, but it can be a struggle, nonetheless.

Good [muppets] take time to evolve: The evolutionary process can be indeed slow. Many of us get frustrated with the lack of evolutionary speed in schools. However, one key principle of evolution is that of natural selection. Wikipedia defines this as “is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations.” So, what are those traits (often influenced by environment, not just heredity) in education that seem most dominant and lead to their survival, while others just don’t seem to gain a significant foothold? Why is it that the progressive vision for education conceptualized by the likes of John Dewey, Johann Pestalozzi, Friedrich Froebel, Jerome Bruner… and their contemporaries like Herb Kohl, Deborah Meier, Ted Sizer, and others… seem so hard to achieve?

Change is unavoidable: So why does education spend so much of its efforts on avoiding change, not the superficial window dressing kind of change, but substantial, revolutionary change? It seems that we are living the axiom, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Coming back to evolution, what are those most dominant traits that keep us from substantial change?

“C” is for competition: We have moved to this very competitive model of education over the past years. We are competing and ranking internationally on assessments like TIMSS. We rank and compete internally (NAEP)with one another for the top districts, top schools, top scores, quickest to meet AYP, top students,… We are competing for federal dollars that get dangled like carrots in front of hungry rabbits (Race to the Top, NCLB,…). (If you haven’t watched this lecture given by Yong Zhao, especially the first part of it, it is worth your time.) Competition often serves to make us better. But it is in defining “better” and “success” that we have become lost. As with Faust, have we make a bargain with the devil that has robbed us of what Dewey and other progressives understood as being most valuable?

“Jefferson told us where to look to see if a nation is a success. He did not say to look at test scores. Instead, he said to look at ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ ” (Keith Baker, 2007)

And then, Alfie Kohn and  Dean Shareski remind us all of the importance of joy in learning, both for teachers and students. Is that one of those traits that will selectively be extinguished if we let it?

Freshen Up: Who can argue with giving things a fresh look. However, too often we have giving things in education a “fresh look” in the name of meaningful change. Many folks see the addition of the interactive white board, for example, as a symbol of the 21st century classroom – a needed facelift to the aging chalkboard. They are nice and the technology is impressive. However, when major budget dollars are allocated to “fresh look” kinds of changes without any meaningful change or innovation ever happening, the result can often be no more than expensive window dressing. And then there are the schools that really need freshen up… paint, roof, air conditioning, pencil sharpeners that work, desks that aren’t broken, computers that run, physical education, art, and music equipment,… What are we doing?

Learn from your mistakes: In education, and elsewhere, we love to report on mistakes, humiliate and criticize those who make mistakes, and grade mistakes as a form of punishment rather than constructive feedback. Many have learned to avoid taking risks for fear of the consequences of making mistakes. The fact is, we learn best through our mistakes when a grade is not the end of the learning cycle. Programers understand this. Debugging is a powerful and critical part of the programming process, as it is in the learning process. Seymour Papert, Gary Stager, and others have been and continue to be passionate proponents of children learning through programming, through meaningful projects, and learning by doing meaningful, relevant, and therefore engaging things. Somehow, with current educational policy, we are not learning from our mistakes. Instead, we seem to be making the same ones over and over again. This brings me back to evolution and natural selection. What’s driving this perpetuation of the same?

Keep it simple (stupid): Embrace and keep what works. There is no need to make things overly complicated. Some of the most effective pedagogies and learning principles are not all that complicated when it comes down to it. Often, it is the limiting structures, policies, roadblocks, and other expectations that over-complicate things.

Push the envelope: To me, this is my daily challenge when it comes to growth. I try to convey this to my students ad nauseum. The opposite of this is status quo. Don’t rock the boat. Do what’s familiar. Keep things comfortable… all the enemies of business… and education. It’s about growth – becoming and remaining a professional. I am so appreciative of the countless people in my personal learning network (PLN) that share evidence of this every day. One thing that my learning network has done for me is that it has broken down the walls of isolation and has connected me to educators and experts who are truly doing great things around the globe with their students. We do not have to feel (and be) limited by those within our physical circles of influence. Too often, teachers feel isolated and become tunnel-visioned, thinking that what they see and experience around them is indeed reality on a larger scale. I am thankful to say that it isn’t. My students are beginning to understand this – that they don’t have to limit their imagination – that they can connect with inspiring, passionate and excellent teachers and experts in so many ways never before possible – that they indeed have a voice that can make a difference.

As I conclude, what has struck me in writing this morning is that many of these lessons are interrelated, making meaningful and substantial change difficult. As such, I have certainly not done each justice in my narrative here. Are we really learning from these lessons? How do these lessons resonate with you? I’d love to hear what you think.

Who would your Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Ernie, Bert, or Snuffleupagus of education be?

What were some of the attributes that got applicants hired?
- Passion
- Excitement & contagious enthusiasm
- Skillfulness
- Expertise
- Practice that matched the “golden résumé”

To cut costs, the school will have no deans, substitute teachers, assistants, and teachers will work longer hours, more days, as well as have more students. There will be no job security and teachers can be “fired at will”.

Teachers will be paid… wait for it … … $125,000/yr. – not to mention up to $25,000 in performance-based bonuses in the second year.

I love this quotation from one of the hired teachers though:

“This could be unsettling were it not for the excitement of working with a team of master teachers, all of whom are motivated to help every student succeed, with no excuses and no blame.”

So, would you want to work in such an environment where passion, enthusiasm, creativity, skillfulness, expertise, personal accountability, and a love of learning permeated everything that takes place?

It will be interesting to see what transpires here, but there are certainly some key ingredients here for a wonderful school. The salary is certainly eye-catching, but notice the money is not being spent on interactive white boards and other “high-tech” accoutrements… yet. The initial investment is in the teachers themselves.

I like that.

…

Are you seeing your students as an impetus for change? I’m not seeing it all that much yet with my students, but I am salivating for the day when it happens on a grand scale! Bring it [them] on!

…and the lives of your students, and perhaps children, become more and more digital…

it becomes increasingly imperative that we all understand the implications, and yes, the ramifications of the digital tracks that we leave behind. To me, in one sense, this becomes a fantastic challenge… as the image below communicates. When we begin to understand the power that we hold and the reach that our online

activities have, the challenge becomes to live up to that potential. The students that we teach need to get this. Many adults need to get this. I am still working on getting this.

Yes, we all make mistakes and realize just how easy it is to mess up. But as I told one of my students the other day as we discussed these messy issues, if one lives with integrity, any messups are largely recoverable. If one lives recklessly, the dirty footprints that we leave on-line will end up haunting us potentially forever. Sure, you can hire one of the new companies that have emerged, online reputation managers, but they can’t work magic.

So, what better challenge than to publish worthy and quality intellectual property… to leave digital footprints that reflect, as the image above states, “good stuff”. Being “googleable” can mean searching oneself and finding nothing, mediocre to bad “stuff”, or excellence. In our present digital landscape, the first two results are not desirable in the least. For our students, this concept is quickly becoming imperative.

For many, this becomes problematic on school time, as completed worsheets are going to impress no one if published on-line. Publishing school fights, pranks, or other acts of lunacy on YouTube fills the void.

And beware… repercussions can be just a tweet away.

Pedagogical leaders are calling upon the schools to free themselves from tradition and subject matter. Whatever students learn should be relevant to their future lives and work. It is it foolish to saturate them with a mass of knowledge that can have little application for the lives which most of them must inevitably lead. They are sure to become disappointed and discontented, and who knows where all this discontent might lead. Abandon your antiquated academic ideals and instead adapt education to the real life and real needs of your students.

So, who’s making such claims?

Ellwood P. Cubberley, dean of the education school at Stanford…

….. 1911!

(Adapted from Diane Ravitch’s post, 21st Century Skills: An Old Familiar Song

To quote Ravitch some more:

“The problem with skills-driven approaches to learning is that there are so many things we need to know that cannot be learned by hand-on experiences. The educated person learns not only from his or her own experience, but from the hard-earned experience of others. We do not restart the world anew in each generation. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. What matters most in the use of our brains is our capacity to make generalizations, to see beyond our own immediate experience. The intelligent person, the one who truly is a practitioner of critical thinking, has the learned capacity to understand the lessons of history, to engage in the adventures of literature, to grasp the inner logic of science and mathematics, and to realize the meaning of philosophical debates by studying them. Through literature, for example, we have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another person, to walk in their shoes, to experience life as it was lived in another century and another culture, to live vicariously beyond the bounds of our own time and family and place. What a gift! How sad to refuse it!

Until we teach our teachers and our students to love knowledge and to love learning, we cannot expect them to use their minds well.“

I could quote it all, but instead, go read Diane Ravitch’s entire statement. It is time well spent.

There have been a number of critics (here, here, here) who have critiqued the commonly used term, “21st century skills” to represent a new skillset that students and workers must possess in this global and highly digital society and economy.

But from this article, it is pretty clear that Obama does not have a clue what 21st century skills really entails. In ths Eschoolnews article, he is quoted as saying (my thoughts in red):

“Without a workforce trained in math, science and technology, and the other skills of the 21st century (so now math and science are skills of the 21st century?), our companies will innovate less, our economy will grow less, and our nation will be less competitive. If we want to out-compete the world tomorrow, we must out-educate (test?) the world today,” Obama said. He added: “While technology has transformed just about every aspect of our lives–from the way we travel, to the way we communicate, to the way we look after our health–one of the places where we’ve failed to seize its full potential is in the classroom. (This is quite true. I have no problem with this statement.)

“Imagine a future where our children are more motivated because they aren’t just learning on blackboards, but on new whiteboards with digital touch screens (So, simply replacing chalkboards…(they aren’t all black these days, senator) with digital whiteboards will revolutionize education. Huh.); where every student in a classroom has a laptop at [his or her] desk; where [students] don’t just do book reports but design PowerPoint presentations (Great! Let’s spend all of that money on technology infrastructure, software, and hardware so students can do PowerPoint book report presentations from their laptops. There’s innovation for you!) ; where they don’t just write papers, but they build web sites (with text copied and pasted from the Internet and from textbooks?); where research isn’t done just by taking a book out of the library, but by eMailing experts in the field (Okay…that’s actually a great idea.); and where teachers are less a source of knowledge than a coach for how best to use it and obtain knowledge(Again, a great idea, but not new in the 21st century either.). By fostering innovation (But what’s the innovation in all of this?), we can help make sure every school in America is a school of the future.

“And that’s what we’re going to do when I’m president. We will help schools integrate technology into their curriculum, so we can make sure public school students are fluent in the digital language of the 21st-century economy. We’ll teach our students not only math and science, but teamwork and critical thinking and communication skills (I hate to be a party pooper here, but these are not new in the 21st century.), because that’s how we’ll make sure they’re prepared for today’s workplace.”

So, what are we left with here? A plug for digital whiteboards, laptops, authoring websites, PowerPoint ad nauseum, and a little constructivist philosophy thrown in the mix. Oh yes, math and science is important. This is not the stuff that great speeches are made of. This is not the rhetoric of an informed politician. And the biggest slap is the subheading to the article: “GOP largely silent on 21st-century skills”. I guess they need to throw some of these terms around as well to make us all happy. Well, I certainly am not happy about what I read. I hope you are not, either. We have been struggling with these learning issues for decades now. Throwing technology into the mix is not the silver bullet. We know that. And funny, but there is no mention of any (with the exception of math and science and the hint of technology-based standardized testing) of this on his webpage regarding educational policy.

So, Mr. Obama (you should read through this), what really needs to happen to see teaching and learning innovation in our nation’s schools? Unless you have that figured out, all of the money you allocate to your “plan for change” will just be more of the same. At least we can use a digital white board to project PowerPoint presentations, right?