(This is gonna be a tough post to write. Not that blogging shouldn’t be tough to begin with. But this one feels like it might be harder than most.)
By all accounts, it’s been a crappy week for education. To be honest, I haven’t participated in much of it, but reading the accounts from Chris and Bud and others, and some of the Tweets from Sunday’s Education Nation sessions, it’s hard not to sense the anger, frustration, sadness and even paranoia that has infected our little part of the education world. While I know it was all heartfelt and sincere, I think I turned it all off on Sunday when a Twitter thread started to assume that certain books about the mess we’re in had been somehow pulled from Amazon by NBC so as not to interfere with its one-sided reality about what fixes we all need to make education better. It goes without saying that it was much more fun watching Tucker win his soccer game and the Jets beat up on the Dolphins than watch the attempted dismemberment of the profession live and in Tweeting color.
But the last few days have me wondering a few things, among them, how many people are really tuned into this “conversation”, how many of those will still be tuned in a month from now, and, the toughest one, are we just asking the wrong questions to begin with?
NBC understands as well as anyone the short attention span theater that is most effective to deliver a message to an increasingly dumbed down populace in this country. Crank up the machine for a few days of flooding, intensive marketing under the guise of “conversation” in sound bites and then run to the next crisis. And the irony is that education really is failing if the vast majority of people go no further than to tune into Brian Williams or Oprah for an hour, receive the intended message, and then return to their lives thinking schools are broken and that billionaire-funded charters are the answer. Mission accomplished. (Of course the greater irony is that “student achievement” really has nothing to do with the critical thinking necessary to even attempt to navigate this morass of pseudo research and rock star opinion.) My sense is that very, very few people are “engaged” in these ideas, and most of them that are are angry. And rightfully so. NBC has the money and the bandwidth and the agenda in their pockets. “We” have a lot of passionate, kid-loving change agents who see the world a bit differently and are growing increasingly frustrated at our lack of a seat at the table.
But I guess I’m just wondering, do we even want a seat at that table? Are NBC and Oprah, and to a certain extent even the growing heroes in the movement like Diane Ravitch engaged in a debate that, at the end of the day, is going to be worth the time and energy we’re spending on it?
And this is where it gets really hard for me, because while in my heart I know that to not fight these battles in the short term to preserve the very best of what schools and classrooms are and can be would dishonor the teachers and students currently in the system, I’m continually persuaded that at the end of the day, the focus on “fixing” schools occurs at the expense of a focus on expanding the learning opportunities we give our students. I wish the two were the same, that better learning was seen as the impetus for better schools. But right now, to the mainstream at least, better “knowing” means better schools. Say what you will about online social learning tools, the networks and communities that so many of us are engaging in do afford deep, rich learning in ways that physical space cannot match. (And yes, we can say the same about physical space.) The mainstream is not yet open to the opportunities for learning our students now have, due in large measure to these technologies, and it’s nowhere near open to the idea that because of these innovations, the best outcome for our kids may be “schools” that look very little like what they look like today.
We need to be open to those ideas and more.
This post, “We’re Not Waiting for Superman, We Are Empowering Superheroes” by Diana Rhoten of Startl is the latest of many to push me in this direction. In it, she suggests that we are faced with a “massive, radical, design challenge,” that “we need to reframe the problem and the conversation, from one about re-forming schooling to one about re-thinking education and re-imagining learning.” So much of what she says in this post makes sense to me. Here’s one snip especially:
Our vision of technologically enabled learning is not one of the lone child sitting at her desktop (or laptop) passively consuming PDFs or browsing Web pages. We believe the potential of technology for learning is much greater. We believe its power resides in its ability to deliver active and interactive experiences where a learner participates in the very construction of knowledge by crafting and curating, mixing and re-mixing information with digital tools, a process which can be and should be greatly augmented by online and offline social interactions between friends, in a community of peers, or an extended network of people (both professional and amateur) who share her interests.
Technology is just a tool. Its effects ultimately depend on the people who use them, how and where. Thus, technology does not negate the role of people or place in learning, but it does change their definitions and their dynamics. And, so just as we design new technologies for learning, we must also consider the contexts for learning that will facilitate their best use … whether that is at school, at home, at the library, on the job, or a place we have not yet imagined.
And she frames what I think is a coherent (for these times, at least) vision for innovation on the edges (echoing Christensen) when she says:
We believe the edge is place in the system where the risk of failure and the opportunity for success are most allowable, and we want to be the people who to take the risk to demonstrate the opportunity. We’re not Pollyannaish about the challenges of working on the edge. We know much of what we try will fail; that’s what innovation is about. We also know that it will take time for the work we support to travel from the early adopters to the mainstream, but we don’t see an alternative. Better to demonstrate what could be than to wait for what might be.
Exactly. We should all be innovating, testing new models, failing, reflecting, trying anew, sharing the learning with others who are working on the edges in their own classrooms and projects. It’s one of the great pieces of what we do at PLP, because we are innovating and succeding and failing and rethinking on the edge. And I know that’s hard because it’s not valued and supported in most places, and I know most teachers simply can’t or won’t. It’s too hard. There’s no time. Too many barriers. But those that can, must right now. Because the reality is we simply don’t have the media, the money or the muscle to compete with the current narrative about schools, and to fret over that fact I think cuts deeply into what energy we do have to think clearly about what’s best for our kids. And because in the long run, this conversation can’t be about schools first. It has to be about learning. And through that lens, we need to be advocates for whatever is best for our kids, whether at times that might be a technology over a teacher, an online community over a school, a passion based project over a one-size fits all curriculum, a chance to create with strangers of all ages over a classroom of same-age kids working hard to game the system. Those types of innovations will at some point get the notice of the mainstream.
Let NBC and Bill Gates and Oprah have at the “fixing schools” conversation. Let’s keep our energies and our laser like focus on the learning, in whatever form that takes.
I agree, while I see the value in many conversations on Twitter that deal with public perception, the problems with the Secretary of Education, etc. they often are just as much of a distraction. I don’t know how much emotional energy I have wasted on these topics lately, but I can say it has been too much.
I have always seen Twitter and blogging as ways to improve my teaching and more importantly my students’ learning. I think I have neglected that to a certain extent lately, I know I have been difficult to bear personally.
It is time to refocus, spend much more time on the things I can control in my classroom, and as my students say, “Do work”.
What you’re missing is that if we lose this larger policy battle, which we might, all conversations end. It is a battle for democracy in education.
Agreed! You just type quicker than me 🙂
Until the next president takes office. Then the boat will change to another course.
Except that this President has taken Bush’s NCLB and set it on hyperspeed.
Hey, Tom. I’m really curious as to how we go about “winning” this policy battle at this particular moment in history. I mean I’m sure there are gains to be made by maximizing our networks and the social media we have available to us. But in the near term, the monied interests have all the cards. And while we all hoped for the political vision and will to move in a different direction, that has disappointingly not happened. So, what would you suggest?
Hey Will,
There are a few different fronts engaged at the same time. There’s a hard push now to privatize education, de-professionalize teaching, define education as “college and career readiness” and make the whole thing hinge on a very select group of data metrics. That has to be turned back. It is a defensive struggle of existential importance. For now it primarily directly impacts those of us in cities.
Then there is the “crisis” you refer to later in your piece regarding response to technological change, as well as the classic war of attrition between progressives and traditionalists. These will go on, but, as I say, if we lose the first one, we don’t get any real say about the rest.
The biggest thing is that We Have Not Yet Begun To Fight. The mass of rank and file teachers is not engaged. Elite opinion for the moment regards this stuff as Conventional Wisdom — they’re surprised by the pushback even just in the Education Nation bit.
Let me put it this way — if the people manning the booth at ISTE from the Department of Education knew they were going to get crap from teachers for four days, it would make a difference. There needs to be some negative energy.
Thanks for the follow up, Tom.
But I’ll ask again…how best to turn this back? Get the rank and file to scream what exactly, and to whom? And how?
How do we “turn this back” and to what end? What are the fresh ideas about schools and education that scale that can pull people into an engaged debate?
Will, is anything that you (or I or Gary or Tom or …) advocate ‘scalable’ in the near future? I’m not sure it is because of legacy structures and mindsets and because of lack of capacity (understanding, knowledge, skills) of existing personnel and the profs that prepare them.
Which is exactly my point. Innovating on the edges of our classrooms and schools where and when we can seems to be the best use of our time and energy, especially when we can’t yet get our brains around what the ” new story” is.
What I’m saying is that it is the summer of 1941, the Panzers are rolling across the Baltic States, and we’re Leningrad, and right now we need all the workers to go out into the suburbs and start digging ditches and tank traps to stop the bastards. Then we can worry about our counter-offensive and establishing a Worker’s Paradise on Earth.
I think there is a 20% to 30% chance that this process will break public education and turn it into a privately run, mostly online system of test preparation where the kinds of thing you (Will) and I really care about will simply be defined as “not a part of public education,” and thus irrelevant. Right now I’m primarily concerned with that not happening.
And the details of the counter message aren’t so important, any more than what the Tea Partiers actually say matters. Who even knows? They’re loud and they vote.
As succinct as you are, you still added two too many words.
It is a battle for democracy.
I watched a small portion of the MSNBC Education Nation. But I think you hit it on the head when you talked about how NBC will just move on to the next crisis next week. It’s a lot of talk and not a lot of action. I didn’t see it to be worth my time. I think it’s a better use of our time to “infiltrate” administrator conferences, the non-tech ones, and give them concrete examples of how technology can transfer the learning in their schools. That’s where our “bandwidth” comes from. I always here complaints at tech conferences that “administrators never come.” OK, go where they are. Give them examples. Work with them. Too often those who make decisions won’t step off the proverbial cliff like many of us have. So meet them where they are comfortable. They may see this “new thing” at a conference they’ve been attending for years, and that’s where the light bulb comes on and they start asking questions back in their districts. I think what we do in our learning space is extremely valuable, but many administrators are intimidated by our learning space, so we need to take what we’ve learned and go to their learning space.
What’s different here is that NBC is creating a crisis and that crisis affects us.
So then how do we get NBC (or any of the other networks) to see our side of the story? If that’s all it takes – a major news network to say “this is the way things are.”
NBC isn’t creating this crisis? Education has been in crisis since the 60s. Why is this one different?
Will,
Do you really think that education has been in crisis since the 1960s? If so, what made the 60s the turning point. I suspect that you and I would have perceived that schools were not fulfilling their potential at any time in history.
What’s different now is the “sudden emergency of bad teachers” being propagated by the rich and powerful. Is THIS crisis real? Who stands to profit from it? Where do you they think they will find all of the magical teachers to replace all of the ones that Rhee, Booker, Oprah, Klein, Gates, NBC, Kopp and Newsweek wish to fire?
Guess my re-reading of Neil Postman from 1968 has blurred my thinking. Silly me. ;0)
What if schools never had that potential to fill? Doesn’t the structure of the institution inherently limit it’s potential? And when we’re talking about kids and learning and education, shouldn’t the structure be as close to “limitless” as it can be? That was never the idea behind schools, as Ira Socol has so generously chronicled.
I agree that the teacher bashing is beyond the pale and that the money surrounding all of these cries for change is different. And I’m not saying those questions aren’t worth addressing. My fear is that we get too caught up in that to adequately assist children in learning in all those ways that the system wasn’t designed for.
Any room these days to be subversive?
Subversion isn’t a great career path, but I do what I can.
I may even be too radical for The Huffington Post.
I think schools can be a lot more limitless. If you’re shooting for infinite limitlessness, then we might have an issue.
Isn’t protecting kids from KIPP and Rhee worthy enough of our energies?
I always struggle with these kinds of conversations because as motivated as I am to see teaching and learning changing in my own classroom—I teach sixth graders—I’m still working within a system of rules and requirements that I have no control over.
There’s real pressure to give district mandated multiple choice exams. There’s real pressure to follow predetermined pacing guides. There’s real pressure when test scores don’t align with expectations.
Talking about taking a stand is one thing. Actually doing it in the face of all of those pressures when you’re working from the bottom rung of the professional ladder is completely different.
And that worries me.
Until the working leadership of schools and districts is willing to change, I think we’re screwed. Risk-taking from the classroom level is just too dangerous for enough teachers to step forward and lead without the support of the individuals with organizational juice.
Boy, that’s depressing….
But boy, that’s true.
Bill
@Bill – Your comment reminded me of a post by Doug Johnson titled Who Doesn’t Get It. He states, ‘Most administrators “get it” just fine – they just have a different reality that makes our “it” less important to them than it is to us…The only “it” some principals will be “getting” is how to raise the reading or math scores of certain groups of kids.’
The reality is that it’s risky for administrators to be innovative right now, too.
Will,
I would ask the same of you and people I respect as I would ask of Michelle Rhee and Bill Gates, “And what do YOU mean by learning?” The title of a critically important book by a psychologist/educator Seymour Sarason – http://amzn.to/aNbdwU
Sarason was a prolific and prescient genius whose voice is absent from these discussions while we still look towards too many pop business authors and bloggers (IMHO) for wisdom.
In 1990, Sarason published The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It’s Too Late. Sarason and Holt and Papert and Patri and Kohl and Meier and Sizer should inform and frame our discussions about what to do “Monday AND someday.”
That said, I fully appreciate the perspective suggesting that we should keep our heads down, focus on our jobs and ignore the popular culture. However, I believe that we do so at our peril.
We do students no good when we teach them the lessons of helplessness or tacit acquiescence by our example.
How much more battering can teachers withstand? Who in their right mind will be the next teacher? How will a teacher afford to support a family when the public schools are handed over to billionaire industrialists?
I fully appreciate that not every citizen can doeverything that is required to make our society more just and our schools more productive contexts for learning, but we must do something. Everyone can play a role.
If anything, we need to be move out of the shadows of “the network” and find ways to have our voices heard on the dominant media of our times – and that includes going to local school board meetings and speaking. You CAN change your little corner of the world in profound ways by doing something as simple as speaking at a Board meeting. I can tell you from experience that bringing ten people to a school board meeting can improve the lives of thousands of children.
If you teach social studies, perhaps you can do a better job of explaining the contribution of unions to the progress of America. Perhaps you can help children understand that every American gets to contribute to the public debate and has a right to organize. That way they can yell, “bullshit,” when Tom VanderArk, Oprah or NBC News portray Michelle Rhee as a victim when the voters of her community rejected her and her policies at the ballot box.
The age of Dale Carnegie (google him) are over. We live in the land of Breitbard and Hannity and Beck. We cannot pretend otherwise. We might need to strike or stomp our feet or yell, “Hell no!” Remaining silent or even genteel is fatal.
The dreams for a creative, democratic and socially just educational system are well documented. It’s now time for some action!
So that’s a fair question. Not to take the easy way out, but I do think the description above comes pretty close. Activities where the “learner participates in the very construction of knowledge by crafting and curating, mixing and re-mixing information with digital tools, a process which can be and should be greatly augmented by online and offline social interactions between friends, in a community of peers, or an extended network of people (both professional and amateur) who share her interests.”
That’s not to say that learning doesn’t occur without digital tools. No question. But I do believe that more and more of what we learn will take place in these types of interactions with technology.
Interested in how you would define it.
Yes Will
I have found in my work in Public Media that it is better to work with one or 2 stations and help them make the change on the edge – SHOW the new. It has been very much harder work than I had thought because while we knew sort of where we had to go – as you do in Ed – actually getting there is sooooo hard.
BUT we are in sight of the promised land now – and by having a new reality – we can be a beacon for others.
Can you find a school board on the edge and focus there – and leave the Oprahs and all well intentioned but energy consuming talkers outside
Will,
A wonderful piece that gives me great room for thought. I was especially touched with your words regarding the need for all of us to be “innovating, testing new models, failing, reflecting…” This I will share with my staff.
I don’t have time to immerse myself in the Oprah debate. Let them talk. There is much work to be done and I refuse to waste what precious time I have getting caught up in what they have to say. I know they have big microphones… but we sre blessed with the gems. We are, every day, given opportunity to stand in the halls of our schools and talk face to face with the future as it pours from the doors of our school busses. We hold a great deal of power in this regard. If used with thought, with heart, responsiblity and focus our children and the future of education will be in good hands. Your direction then about where we should go comes at a critical time.
Thank you for always thinking. Thank you for forcing me to think deeply about what I do.
Deb Sisco
I highly recommend three books:
Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?
by Susan Ohanian and Kathy Emery
Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality – Gerald Bracey’s last book published in 2009
The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America’s Public Schools was published in 1995 by Berliner and Biddle
I want to recommend one book. With all the talk of comparing out education system to other countries it is a must read:
Yong Zhao
Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, 2009, Alexandria, VA, ASCD.
A few random thoughts:
1. Once created, the ultimate goal of any organization is self-preservation. In an era of disruption, the status quo and its defenders disappear eventually, but they will kick back hard the entire way: http://bit.ly/9NhGod
2. Politicians, corporate bigwigs, and others – even educators (gasp!) – always have created policy crises to try and meet their specific agendas. I’m not sure this time is any different, either in scale or scope.
3. Will, many people would read your call for innovation/experimentation above and say, “Right! Charter schools!” And yet I’m not sure that’s what you’re saying…
4. If we’re going to take away folks’ conception of what schools should look like, we need to replace it with something. And we’re back to that ‘we need to tell a new story’ idea of David Warlick’s (and others): http://bit.ly/c2xn3j
5. ‘Firing bad teachers’ is not THE solution. But it is A solution (of many) to an issue that plagues American education. Is it sufficient by itself? Hell, no. Is it necessary? Yep (if teachers want public credibility).
6. I agree with you and Diana Rhoten: we need to focus on the learning, not the schooling. But that’s an awfully hard (and/or scary) concept for most folks to wrap their heads around…
Scott,
Two thoughts:
1) One needs to question the plague of bad teachers. is it really worse today than ever before? Has the epidemic of “bad teachers” risen to the level of corporate funded media dedicating millions of dollars worth of air-time to it? Who stands to profit from this curious epidemic and lethal response?
I won’t even wade into the waters of the subjectivity regarding defining bad teaching. I take serious issue with the self-conscious proclamations of teaching excellence as discussed in the recent “I guess I suck as a teacher” blogfest.
2) I guess I need to do a much better job of sharing the work that I’ve done to create rich productive contexts for learning in which the most at-risk learners in society succeed in ways others might find remarkable.
That however requires a great deal of unpaid work and time I do not have.
3) Since Education Nation, Oprah and even Diane Ravitch’s book do not concern themselves with learning, but rather on policy, I’ll answer your vision question with my thoughts on governance.
I advocate radical democracy as represented by the following ideas in “The Stager Plan”:
• Universal public school choice in which every child in a state has the right to attend any other school in that state. Equitable funding and transportation costs will be paid by the state. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.’s school funding equalization constitutional amendment might be considered.
• Single-payer teacher contracts. Every teacher is employed by the state, even if hired by a local school or district. This allows the teacher greater mobility than is found in most US states. The benefits of such mobility are numerous.
• Every school is in essence a charter school where all curriculum, staffing, facilities, pedagogical philosophy and assessment are decided upon democratically by the teachers and parents in that school
Charter school proponents talk a good game about innovation, competition and R&D, but only for their children or when they want to subject children of color to schools they would never condone for children they love.
Well, the Stager plan simply stated above does not require private schools or the transfer of public treasure to private hands. It gives parents maximum involvement, freedom and responsibility for the education of their children. It allows multiple educational models to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Parents and children can ASSESS each school by voting with their feet. The Stager plan also addresses the current apartheid education system underway since desegregation laws have been rolled back.
You asked what I would do!
Your thoughts?
Gary
Gary,
“The Stager Plan” sounds good to me!
I was just noting that people are going to map the concept of ‘charter schools’ onto Will’s idea of experimentation. That’s what many see as the vehicle for such innovation. If that’s what Will wants, great. If not, he’s going to have to reclaim that conversation too.
Many of us are working hard to share our ideas of what ‘the new story’ should be. Unfortunately, we’re all still vastly outnumbered. Keep working hard. Will and I and others will too!
No, I don’t think we have a greater percentage of bad teachers than we had in the past. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem that needs to be addressed (in an intelligent, humane way).
For the record, I’m not discussing charter schools as being a part of “innovating on the edges” with technology and learning. I don’t think many are making that connection.
@gary Great plan. Gov. Christie in NJ has just signed a law that allows #1 given the caveat that the preferred school isn’t at capacity. Unfortunately, the local school district will be responsible for the transportation costs for kids needing to be bussed to choice schools less than 20 miles away from the home district school. Of course, there is no money for that.
That would be a start, but there would still be great challenges. For example, how do you involve communities in the development of curriculum when the community is not confident in their ability to do so and their greatest concern is just the ability of their children to get to school in one piece. Or, the school districts that struggle with millions of dollars in general fund encroachment due to meeting the needs of federally mandated special education children? I’m sure there are a bazillion more examples and you are right creating a new system nation wide would require lots of time and money and the herculean effort on par with multiple D-Day Invasions (sacrifices not ignored). No easy task. All this banter back and forth regarding changing education on the “social” networks, the quicky conferences of pockets of “innovation” that only seem to fuel the online banter, and our leaders (political and media) turning the whole issue into sound bites and “Oprah” shows only exacerbate the problem. The issue with how to best educate our children vanishes and the “problem” becomes more of a switch to drive the direction of a lethargic public. For some in this great country there is no problem with public education; for others, it’s devastating. The disparity between the two and the reasons are as numerous as capillaries in the tip of your finger. The complete solutions, currently, are too few.
Before the teacher comes the student. Before the book comes the student. Without the need and the desire to know, there is no school, no teacher, no education, no learning materials. The student is the foundation of any structure built to educate. Structures can change, materials can become virtual, but the student’s demand for knowledge, through necessity or longing, will always be the core of learning.
So Will I come back – talk got us no where in Pub Media – But experimenting at a station did – I don’t think that we lack ideas – we lack a better alternative that people can see and touch.
Is there a receptive place – usually a place in dire straits – with a great leader – where you can work new ideas out in practice?
Wow, a lot going on here. For me as the director of curriculum for a public school system, the question isn’t raising a voice against the pundits at NBC or keep on keeping on, but rather it is both and yes it is exhausting and energizing.
Today I visited an 11th grade American Studies II course. There the co-teachers and their students were presenting in small teams a global issue they wanted their class to consider taking on. Each team had researched specific global issues and related organizations and then made their pitch to their fellow students. Students mixed and remixed video in their presentations and the subject matter they addressed situated their concern well beyond the borders of NJ or the US. What does might mean (and to whom) to be a global citizen is a question these students are spending the year studying. This first move was designed to enage students in the idea of commitment to something greater than one’s self. A year ago, this course, the co teaching, and the emphasis on global citizenry was not present. A lot has changed in a few months.
Let the pundits talk for they will anyway and we should respond to these commentaries with measured and appropriate voice. I plan to keep on standing up for public education and do so by continuing to privilege learning at all levels. Will, your presentation in June at MHS stirred something. Now alongside common core, we have NCTEs 21st century framework and the conversation is extending well beyond our physical border.
It is in our everyday actions that revolution actually finds breath.
Read what my 13 year-old nephew has to say on the matter.
http://bit.ly/9TfoRi
As upset as I was this week with the inclusion of teachers and parents in all of these media events — I am even more upset that we didn’t have a significant representation of students.
One of the biggest missing components in most school improvement initiatives is “student voice.”
This is a topic for a blog post… will work on that and avoid leaving an essay-length comment on the issue of “student voice.”
Gary — thank you so much for sharing the email from your nephew. Students have much more wisdom than we give them credit for.
I will just say this – most of you commenting here are not now, or have ever been elementary teachers where the vast bulk and insidiousness of NCLB has sat for really 10 years. The elementary schools, and really the Title 1 elementary schools have been buried more than most of you really understand.
This NBC mess has brought it to the fore and made it visible for you, but it has been the no. 1 reason things haven’t changed. What it has done to the culture of schools at the lowest grades is making teachers run scared. I have written blog posts, emails and more during the NBC ed week. I have been talking to teachers both at my school and elsewhere, and maybe 1% even have a clue anything is happening and they are mostly thrilled not to know. I’m not saying that is good – but they are so scared, they don’t want to know.
We can jump down their throats about that and tell them to stand up and fight … but first walk a mile … well you know. I try hard to lead them, inform them, make them see what is happening, but most are shells that just want to know what the new principal wants as far as paperwork, lesson plans and so forth – that has been their experience in teaching. If a teacher at a Title 1 elementary school has 10 years or less of experience that has ALWAYS been how school has worked (I’m sure there are exceptions).
My point – what Tom says about standing up … it better happen now … we are losing much worse than you realize … so where do I sign up?
Brian, I am and have been an elementary teacher in a Title 1 school ever since NCLB. I agree that many teachers are scared, but there are also some that just plain don’t care. They wouldn’t teach any differently regardless of what the next program is.
Be that as it may, sign me up too.
William – Agreed – how many have been taught not to care (not all certainly) – just run the program. What’s there to care about – you don’t get kudos for caring … you get kudos for “results” – results ARE caring … how many of those teachers are diamonds in the rough?? Just asking.
As you say, there is no external value in a teacher that cares more about students than test scores in this school climate. I can honestly say I was a piece of coal for a long time. There are many others waiting to be heated and pressurized.
I’ve been pushing the tech envelope in learning for a LONG time. In the last few months I’ve found the need to put my energy elsewhere.
With apologies to Bogie, it doesn’t take much to see that the protestations and eloquent cases brought by edtechbloggers don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world of edreform. Nope. Not right now.
I see one thing that encourages me. Folks who have not had much experience using technology in their classrooms are now using it to push back on edreform.
I just participated in an Elluminate session organized by Teachers Letters to Obama, a Facebook group. It was fascinating, and it gave me hope. Jesse Turner spoke eloquently. Anthony Cody had the big picture. Of the 60+ participants, I did not see a single edublogger – well, maybe Nancy Flannigan. But I knew many, because I’ve been following their blogs, exchanging emails, reading/commenting on their Facebook pages, Daily Kos writings, and so on. Because they realize the very future of education in this country is at stake.
I encourage those who mostly hang out with tech folks to engage in the greater conversation. Elsewise, there will soon be no public schools to use these fantastic new technologies in. – Mark
re. Will and Gary’s exchange about has education changed since the 60s
What has changed is the economy. In the 60s there were a much higher percentage of trade and well paid unskilled jobs, kids who dropped out of school still had a good future to look forward to.
Gary, I think The Stager Plan is a good thought experiment about what might be possible in a society without social class. Meanwhile in class society everything that exists does exist for a reason and the present discourse is dominated by class interests. The education reform tail doesn’t wag the wider society dog, it’s the other way around. That doesn’t mean your thought experiment isn’t a good one but it needs to be situated in a broader discourse.
But I think you are wrong in one aspect. Those who claim public education fails many Disadvantaged kids are not wrong and even though some or many who are promoting this do it mainly to control teachers and not to improve schools, nevertheless, the critique cannot be dismissed out of hand as though it has been manufactured out of thin air.
If we misidentify the problems, we’ll only find the correct solution through dumb luck. Better would be to talk about the actual problems at hand.
Schools were designed using a factory model to train factory workers to fill the massive amounts of new jobs in the factories created during the industrial revolution.
The key word there is factory. It’s systematized production of the lowest common denominator. There was never any intention to produce artists, entrepreneurs, free thinkers, or any other type of non-factory-working citizen.
What progressive educators want is to take a dumbed down factory model and turn it into a beacon of hope for education across the globe. Good luck with that.
Perhaps a better strategy would be to burn the current model to the ground and start over. The private market is your BEST hope for building what you want.
The government will protect the status quo to the death because it’s infiltrated the school system to not only create factory workers, but factory workers who LOVE government, LOVE welfare, LOVE socialism, and LOVE everything else that makes government bigger and stronger.
If you’re a TRUE educator, you should be fuming that politicians have hijacked the public school system to create masses of future pro-government, anti-freedom voters. Make no mistake that government fully intends to enslave the youth and create a society of dependents. That’s child abuse and it’s an attack on our liberty.
The factory worker is not smart, can’t think for him or herself, can’t problem solve, won’t take a stand against anything, won’t ever produce new ideas, won’t challenge the status quo, and the list goes on. That’s a perfect citizen in the eyes of an overbearing government. Why change that model?
Trying to find a solution through government will be like trying to break a window with a water balloon.
I think there are a lot of great thoughts in this post, but I strongly disagree that we can afford to give up a seat at the table, for one main reason: how teachers are evaluated (and compensated) is changing around the country. In NYC, the biggest school district in the country, we are about to go the negotiating table to determine a new teacher evaluation system. If those of us who want to push students to be good, critical 21st century citizens are not at the table, an evaluation system will be created that places perverse incentives for teachers and administrators to fight against the kind of learning we know our students need. I agree that it might be worthwhile to stay on the fringe with somethings, but we can’t allow ourselves to be blindsided by the changes the Rhee/Canada/Klein/Duncan cabal want to put in place that will eliminate the hope of getting more to join us on the fringe.
Kevin,
My understanding of history and the battle b/w contending forces is that the result of the battle was a compromise. As such the resulting school system contains elements of both factory and enlightenment and the battle b/w those elements continues. Your argument that the school system is pure factory model and therefore ought to be burnt to the ground cannot be demonstrated by mere assertion. It would require a real historical analysis.
It’s simpler than that.
When factory-type jobs exploded on the scene there was very little supply to fill them. The school systems were altered to produce workers to rapidly fill those jobs. And they’ve never re-adjusted since.
There was no battle, just an economic situation that demanded attention. Unfortunately, once the government has control of something you rarely get that control back. As you’re seeing now, that creates an inefficient and undesirable situation.
This post strikes a serious nerve, one that needs to be hit. We can sit around all day and agree with each other about what we don’t like about this system or we can do what we have to do to change it. We don’t have the money or bandwidth, but we do have the kids. They hold more power than any network……If we do right by them..and they know…they will work out the rest for us all.
How do we as teachers, who are as trapped in this 19th century construct as our students, begin to influence the “powers that be” into changing a system that is no longer meeting the needs of anyone? Well, that is without loosing our source of income. Do we really need to influence those outside the system or can we build change from within by working colaboratively, but subversively? I feel like a revolutionary in the Bush Whitehouse!
Hey Tom,
I appreciated your post a great deal. I have always firmly believed that I have to focus my energy on the changes I can make happen most effectively. While I know I don’t have the ear of the policy makers, I do have the ear of my students and parents, and THEY need to push their elected officials to make changes. We push, but we are employees; we’re not supposed to be happy, just “not bothered enough to rock the boat.” But the other stakeholders in the education debate have to make their voices heard. I know it is horrifying to educators to do, but perhaps we need to let go the control over what is best for students, and place more of the responsibility of what changes need to be made upon the shoulders of the parents. We continue to effect the changes which need to be made by doing what teachers have always done, in the best and most informed ways we know how.
Sorry, the comment above was intended for Will, or for the readers in general. I had Tom on the brain. Apoligies, WIll.
My mission statement is pretty much “Inflict ‘Tom on the brain’ on as many people as possible,” so I’m happy to see I had the desired effect on Todd!
If we want to improve the education, and improve what kids learn, we need a clear and simple way to express it.
Until I find a better way, I am telling people that the goal of education for the first few years should be to teach kids how to learn on their own. Once they have the knowledge and skills to know how to learn, the goal of education should be to give them engaging assignments so that they can learn on their own and with their peers, to get some feedback on how they are doing, and to intervene where there are problems.
Winning in public education is about teaching students to think and problem solve. Everything else is a waste of time, including, worrying about whether charter schools are a good or bad thing. If public school teachers can’t figure out how to teach all students to engage in thinking and problem solving, then let someone else do so.
I agree that it will take a collective action in all localities to make this happen, but this collectivity must commit and agree on an approach that is systematic able to be repeated.
Where are the common standards for all states? Where are the common assessments? How will the fearful open themselves to learning when they’ve been teaching a “certain way” for years and are afraid they may not know how to change?
How about all teachers involving themselves in professional learning communities, creating units of instruction using Understanding by Design, following state and “Federal” standards, and teaching daily lessons based upon assessment of what students do and don’t know?
Anyone?
I agree, learning should be our focus here and not the school. Many programs and institution are using technology for learning. There are even online courses such as online MBA or even doctoral. But it doesn’t mean that if they’re using technology means it’s a better school.
It depends on how it is utilized and it’s effect on people’s learning. Technology has now been offering different tools that we should take advantage of. It must now be limited to sending files online and letting the students read. Like you said, we have to be innovative to be able to come up with a better learning method.
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When I think of learning i atomatically think that the children know who they are, but they don’t really have an idea where they came from. I feel children need to learn more about their heritage than anything else. Start teaching them from home and find a way to have them learn more at school. Were all from the same planet, yet we all have our differences in culture, tradition, language and so on. I strongly reccomend to teach the importance of their self, who they are and where they come from. I guess i’d say thats where you start learning first, so why not carry it on.
People young and old have different stratagies in ways of teaching and learning.However and whatever they use as a teaching tool should be ok just as long as they know what material their using, know what their teaching and have the understanding that not all people are at the same level in understanding in what is being taught.What i’m trying to say is have different methods of teaching ,for those that didn’t understand the first time.Thats were we learn from our mistakes,correct ourselves and learn to have patience.
Are our children gonna become robots? Have we created something to show no emotions?
We are forgetting to high light the friendships that we made that helped us go through a year or two.
“Technology is just a tool. Its effects ultimately depend on the people who use them, how and where.” Agree on that but what do a number of students do once they get home? Are they back on the latest technology created?