Tag Archives: policy

School and Student restraint and confinement

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I watched this CBS special report about the use of “solitary confinement” and restraints in US schools and have been thinking about it all week. Disturbing. View it below.

It was a good reminder, disturbing as it is. A reminder to me that our schools must be abandoned. They can’t be fixed or repaired. They are broken and must be replaced. If I hear the word school reform one more time, I think I’m going to burst …..

 

My sister and I often have the same argument (she’s also a teacher and I’ll offer the disclaimer that she thinks I’m detached from the reality on the ground, in academia, training teachers etc… but forgets I spent years in classrooms long before she ever thought of teaching.). My sister would be all in favor of these kinds of “treatments”.  I think a lot of practicing teachers would also. Of course they would never do things “so extreme”, or so they’d say. But it is a very, very slippery slope – controlling students in these manners.

My sister is at school for and loves the obedient, eager students. The insolent, disobedient, disrespectful students she detests. And she’ll tell you there are so many of them! She feels they are the product of a society that gives them too many rights, that allows them too much freedom. What they need is to do a good days work, discipline and to see how the real world works.  I disagree.

Student behavior (or misbehavior) is a product and reaction to the present wider society and culture. No amount of coersion, shock therapy or force will change that. If teachers want “better” behaved students in school – they need to join a wider revolution within society and make for change. As it stands our society, our families produce these “problem” students.  A teacher, like any citizen IS part of the problem.  We can’t punish students and make the world turn back into 1953.

Furthermore, we have an environment in school and out that treats children as second class citizens. Students today grow up so fast, gain so much “intelligence” so quick – of course they figure out quickly how irrelevant school is in this day and age. How they have no rights and are daily ordered like prisoners to do this, go here, be that. What might Carl Rogers say at how ill school is at the most fundamental feature of education – creating strong social relationships and personal “value”.  As he says, student must feel “at a deep level that their subjective experience is both respected and progressively understood.”

The cure is not more restraints, nor more punishments. Education, teaching is about “doing no harm” and creating citizens and a society we want. Why do we continue down the road of competition and ranking students by intelligence when the end goal is to create a well adjusted individual? Shouldn’t the students we applaud be those who are happy, who have independent personalities and inner strength and will?

I look at our society and I feel shame. Perhaps besides being a teacher, that is why I am a poet. I want the world to see how shameful it is, as it is.  I’m shamed that we would do these things to children. I’m shamed that our culture is so militant and violent, passively violent.  I’m shamed how the Ultimate Fighter can be part of school curriculum yet peace is given such short thrift. I’m ashamed that teachers don’t have the freedom to teach nor students the freedom or permission to learn. I’m ashamed how students spend hours and hours in school and learn all the wrong things. I’m ashamed how teachers the world over never, ever, ever ask their students what they’d like to learn today.

Last week, took down Summerhill from my bookshelf for a read on the toilet. I read over his thoughts describing the difference between license and freedom – the free and unfree child. They should be required reading for all teachers. I’ll end with a few quotes

I believe to impose anything by authority is wrong (in school). The child should not do anything until he comes to the opinion – his own opinion – that it should be done. The curse of humanity is the external compulsion whether it comes from the Pope or the state or the teacher or the parent. It is fascism in toto. pg 114.

It is this distinction between freedom and license that many parents cannot grasp.  In the disciplined home (school), the children have no rights. In the spoiled home (school), they have all the rights. The proper home is on e in whcih children and adults have equal rights. And the same applies to school.pg 107

People who protest the granting of freedom to children (students) and use this argument (that life is hard, we need to teach children to obey and have discipline – my entry), do not realize that they start with an unfounded assumption – the assumption that a child will not grow or develop unless forced to do so. Yet the entire thirty nine years of experience of Summerhill disproves this assumption.  pg. 109

People are always saying to me, “But how will your free children ever adapt themselves to the drudgery of life? I hope that these free children will be pioneers in abolishing the drudgery of life. pg 114.

Call me a rosy, academic idealistic, my sister certainly would. But look around, do you see much else working?  I do hope one day to have my own school and “cultivez ma jardin” and be the change through some boots on the ground. Until then, these mere words and a beating heart must suffice.

 PS. I wanted to throw a lot of links/references into this post but decided against. Used my own voice and that should suffice.

Linguistic Chauvinism

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I just finished watching my daily hour of PBS news and I’m irate. Sometimes American insularity and small mindedness is cute and amusing (as De Tocqueville imagined) but sometimes it isn’t. Listening to a Republican senator ramble on about how “English First” is what true Americans insist on, just “got my goat” – a policy and mindset that is simply racist and racism to me isn’t very American. I’m speaking about the Republican fantasy of creating an America where everyone speaks English and drinks beer and goes to church – that’s it in a nutshell.

English Only is something I’ve seen as a teacher in our school system. Question.

A teacher has 1.5 hours a day for “English”. In the grade 4 class are many ESL students. The teacher allows students to read for pleasure for 30 minutes of the period. The students can choose their own book. Some of the ESL students choose books in their own language – Tamil, Irdu, Farsi, Somali, Korean. The teacher allows this, no questions asked. Should the teacher be reprimanded?

I’ll give you my answer in a moment but I’ll first take the long route.

There is a very deep misunderstanding of the relationship bwtween literacy in an L1 and literacy in an L2. Most, many teachers too, believe that they are distinct and separate. You gain competence in each separately. If you want to get better at English, read English. If you want to get better at Icelandic, watch Icelandic movies.

This is a very dangerous myth pervading our profession, us English teachers. Literacy is not discrete knowledge. There is only one kind of literacy and it isn’t language specific. It is something deep and beyond a language itself. It is a way of thinking about text, sound and “fury”. As you build literacy in one language, you so build literacy in another….. The best thing you can do for a young second language student especially is to not neglect their own L1 literacy and language skills. These are crucial and make for a successful, intelligent adult. Here’s a presentation that gives a great overview of this topic – a must read. Also, this book is the ideal reference for any serious teacher’s shelf.

Durgunoglu, A. & Goldenberg, C. (Eds.) (2010). Language and literacy development in bilingual settings. New York: Guilford.

Now back to the question. No, certainly not, the teacher shouldn’t be reprimanded but applauded. But the reality is quite different. That example is true and what I used to do in my own ESL classroom. However, I had to do it secretly, in our little portable, with the children sworn to a code of secrecy (no kidding). Otherwise, I’d have been asked to explain and despite research and truth on my side,  power and old perceptions would win the day. We’d all be “English Only”.

And that’s the card Republican’s are playing. No thought about what’s right, what’s researched, what helps a student succeed in the long term. Only subversive thoughts of purity and cleanliness (to borrow Claude Levi Strauss’ term for the most evil and universal archetype. ).

A country is its people. Period. Not its language or the color of its eyes or the money in its bank. Let’s get our students loving language and the learning will arrive. To end my rant – some levity, some comedy. You’ll enjoy this if you’ve read this far….

The new “way” forward

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Sometimes one is surprised by how life conspires to throw things into your path. In doing so, you just have to trip over them, notice them and come upon a clearer view and vision of “the way” and what is there.

I’ve been training teachers for a number of years. In that training, I’ve always accented two approaches; teaching less to achieve more and the benefits of using technology (properly). Slowly but surely over the years, I’ve sniffed a new “way” in the air and teachers realizing more and more that we need to do things differently or risk irrelevance.

3 things of late have been thrown into my path and clarifying my own view of “the way” forward.

1. Last week presented at RSCon3 on The Flipped Curriculum. Great response and many emails from teachers offering their own versions of “flipped”. Great.

2. Then, listening to the radio yesterday and hearing a teacher comment, “I only teach as little as I have to” – meaning that the accent wasn’t on teaching but the students learning and teaching themselves individually or as a group.

3. Reading the local newspaper today, the North Bay Nugget. Read a sterling column by a local, level headed man, John R. Hunt. I’ll post when it goes online. He tells of a blind girl who failed high school despite how they “cared”. She finally got her degree (and straight As) through independent learning and “less” teaching. A cry for more innovation, more ways for informal learning to be recognized. Spot on.

The times are a changing. We need to harness the passionate minds of our youth. We can only do that if we “teacher less” and let them run more in the field of possibility, now provided by technology. Not a call for teachers to lose their jobs, just for those jobs to be transformed and energized. Let’s start, let’s change.

Assembly Line Education

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As this video suggests, we have to get out of the “assembly line” approach to education. It isn’t easy, we are addicted to quantifying “learning”. We are addicted to “cosmetic tinkering”. We are addicted to the “herding” of children into rooms. We are infact scared of the truth.  (see John Taylor Gatto for a whole plethora of info. on the history of the assembly line education following the Prussian model)

Most of us teachers pretend we are “modern”. I don’t think we are at all. Mostly because the underlying principles which maintain the factory approach, still rule. Timetables – punch in, punch out. Memorization, recall. A focus on efficiencies, rules, order. Age grouping. Class lists. Command and control from curriculum bosses. I could go on and on ….. don’t let all the fancy “reform” ideas fool you. If you teach these days, you are most likely dancing to the tune of a grammaphone.

Yesterday, attended a delightful talk by Kieran Egan about his Learning In Depth initiative. He’s one of my heroes, for many reasons but mostly for his focus on what works in student development/learning. Students connecting with ideas in a passionate, literate, human way.  Creating learners rather than creating “knowers”.  Here’s one other teacher’s appeal.

Let me be frank and “take out the cork”. School is so irrelevant these days. Truly. That’s sad, I’m saddened that these places of so much potential – do so little to light a fire and better the world.

I joked during Kieran’s talk about “not letting schools get hold of this” (his project), “they’d ruin it”.  And that is true. Why? That’s what we have to look at.

I see 3 fundamental problems with schooling. Unless these are fixed, we don’t stand a hope in hell of “reform”.

1. It’s compulsory. Meaning, there is no value given to work done outside the factory. The informal side (but I hate this term) has no relevance but truly that’s where things are happening in our world.

2. It’s one size fits all.  Students are grouped by age when there are more important criteria to consider – learning style, personality, interests, skills, maturity level, motivation/goals for learning etc…. Further, there is little attention to which teachers get which students. A crucial thing in the whole mix. Please read Ira Socol for a full report on this “illness”. 

3. Learning is commanded. We know this doesn’t work these days. Knowledge is too vast, we can’t control it any more. It’s about “how” not “what” these days. Yet we continue with this silly model of “the system” dictates, “you” regurgitate. No matter how you lipstick it – it still is this pitbull approach which we go by.

It would be a long discussion to address all the issues in these 3 points. Let me just pose a few questions to leave you thinking – a few questions about point #3 – the command approach.

Why don’t we have schools where the students decide what to learn?

Why can’t they learn the basics through things that they are “sparked by” instead of having to wait hours to ask a question or days until the curriculum hits upon something they are passionate about?

Why can’t we let go? Why can’t we start educating children to be adults instead of just “better children”?

Knowledge is now accessible to most in Western societies. The school no longer has a stranglehold on “the rabbit in the hat”. So why don’t we let students run free in the garden of knowing? Why do we keep the apples hidden away?

How can we bring back student interest in school? So they want to go to school for knowledge’s sake and not just sports or to socialize with their friends?  What if Johnny went to school to learn what he wanted?

Ending with a few thoughts from “Kids Aren’t Cars”.

If you enjoyed this post – you might like “Giving Students Room To Do Their Own Thing.”

 

Public Education Interventions

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public school defined

Public health intervention more than any other “science” has done more for humankind than anything else over the last 200 years. Forget industrialization, forget inventions – how we live in abundance and health is most definitely related to the things put into place by public health: sanitation, universal medical treatments like vaccination, pre/post natal care, medical screening, public safety measures and so much more…..

 

I find it curious that we don’t have “public education intervention” as a core policy and fundamental tenent of creating a society that is educated. There should be an office in every country/city with a budget and the power to effect these kind of “pan” educational changes.

 

We know the effects that poverty has on education. High drop out rates, delinquency, school violence, decreased motivation, poor results/grades etc….. Why not  focus efforts away from better tests, more “X” in schools, fancy textbooks, better teachers (yes, I mean this), decreasing standards etc…. They are only dealing with the symptoms of a much wider problems – call it, “the poverty of stimulus” problem. 

 

Children that are poor under perform for the following reasons. 

 

1. Poor nutrition. This effects their day to day learning and more so, their development. Physical development of nerves, tissue, the whole physical system is retarded. 

 

2. Health. They live with limited access to proper health monitoring. Children in many places live in poor environments where health is effected by unsanitary and impurities (toxins, like lead are more prevelent in poor environments). 

 

3. Poor inputs.  Families are more prone to disruption, violence, stress. This effects children. Their home environments lack books, internet access, critical  conversation.  Role models stressing the value of education are lacking and in total there is a poor stimulus. Children don’t learn because their environment is “intellectually” poor. 

 

I think we need a new science in education – the science of Public Education Intervention. Let’s put our dollars into attacking poverty. If we do – we’ll get many more results than better tests and more assessments. Let’s stop such magic shell games. 

 

Stephen Krashen bless his soul, has focused on this important issue. Watch this interview with him (he’s in marvellous form) and think about what if…. What if put huge resources into enriching the educational access and environments of all children. What if we put our efforts towards creating the conditions for proper learning rather than the “dog eat dog” world which now exists?  Education should not be a way out of poverty. Education is about a lot more …….

 

Here’s  a doc. that discusses the above – from a Canadian perspective. 

 

 

 

Imagine…. (a poem about school)

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imagine7a-11pq5vi

Imagine a classroom where there is no teaching                                                      only learning.

Imagine a classroom where there is no leader
only common purpose.

Imagine a classroom where there is no remembering                                             only experiencing

Imagine a classroom where there is no teacher                                                       only students.

Imagine a classroom where there is no objective                                                    only curiosity.

Imagine a classroom where there is no hesitation                                                  only hunger.

Imagine a classroom where there is no competiton                                               only pride of self.

Imagine a classroom where there is no textbook
only creation.

Imagine a classroom where there is are no walls                                                     only  horizon.

Imagine a classroom where there is no teaching                                                         only learning.

Imagine.  It’s easy if you try.

___________________________

Listen to the original song and share with your students. What do they imagine about education and school? Here’s what some elementary school students wrote me when I asked their class to give me questions they’d like to know answers about! Imagine if they had the time to explore as they wanted?

Hype that’s not my type

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hypeI read a lot about the “new paradigm” that is occuring in education. There is a lot for us teachers and particularly those in leadership positions to think about.

I really do hear some things repeated over and over again – that I just won’t buy into. I don’t believe the hype. These ideas seem so obvious and so clear that to me, they must be a lie. Reality is crooked and operates on her own principles – not the nice, clean kitchen cupboards we like to stack away our beliefs in.

So in brief and to maybe get others thinking a little “outside the box” – here are 4 things that are being hyped in the educational world that I disagree with completely. (and a joke for each that I hope will support my argument or if not, at least give you a chuckle)

1. The world is changing so fast.

Wooo there! It may appear that things are changing but as the old saying goes, “la plus ca change, la plus c’est la meme chose”. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Education still is about people, communication, knowing, doing.

We get too carried away in all the hype: how the world is changing at a stunning pace, we are educating for new jobs we don’t know about, technological tools arrive anew every day, the sky is falling etc….

I don’t buy into it. We still will need pen and paper, we still will have to talk with students and acquire knowledge that goes between our two ears. The hype only distracts us from the objective of education – to create a happy, caring and thoughtful person. I don’t care the decade or the hype. That will always remain THE goal.

Two russian jews talking:
- Abram, why are you saving money ? Don’t you know that we are going to the Communism and when we get there no one will need any money at all.
- I am saving for my way back.


2. Testing, particularly standardized testing, is evil.
Testing will always be with us. We need it and it is particularly useful to students, teachers, administrators alike. Tests have their place. They aren’t evil.

The problem is not the test but teachers being told or directed to “teach to the test”. This should be the evil – not the test itself. In my years in education, contrary to the hype, most students benefit and like the tests – just not the classroom time spent teaching to a test.

Tests should measure the knowledge or performance of the student (as much as that is possible) but not be held up as some hurdle to jump over or some “place” to reach. They should provide information to both teachers and students about the process of learning. They are temporary and disposable – not something that we should record ad infinitium. That said, they aren’t evil – only how they are used.

Abram and his friend Saul are out for a walk. They pass a Catholic church with a sign out front, “$1,000 to Anyone who Converts.” Saul decides to go in and see what it is all about.

Hours go by. Finally he comes out and meets Abram. “So” says Abram, “What happened?”

“I converted”, said Saul.

“No kidding” says Abram. “Did you get the $1,000 bucks?”

Saul replied, “Is that all you people think about?”

3. Content is dead, information is everywhere. We don’t need to “know stuff”.

This one really gets my goat! Memorization, knowing will always be a vital part of intelligence. No matter how quick you can google something or how perfect the retrieval of information. Students still need stuff in their head to mix and churn and access in the quiet of their mind. Content will always be important.

We should still be thinking of what students need to know. There is a center that should hold. Around this, let the student learn skills and ways of processing this information. But let’s not abandon land to swim in water where we’ll never find our feet a place to stand….

A man is driving down the highway.   A woman is driving up the same road. When they meet, the woman screams out the window, “Pig!” The man screams back, “Bitch!”

The man rounds the next corner, hits a huge pig in the middle of the road and dies.

4.  Qualifications are a must. We need more diplomas, more certificates, tighter controls.

The world of education (and particularly ELT – English Language Teaching ) is going down a road that leads into  a desert.  There is a drive away from merit in our world and into “programs” and “credentials”.
I’m totally against this direction, for many sane reasons.  The onus should always be on what a person can do, not what they did in a course . Credentials by default create barriers to real learning and to real discourse. They divide and create cliques. They restrict access  based on financial ability and how things look on paper. They hinder by making knowledge about the cosmetic and not attuned to any reality (think of how many students you know with high TOEIC scores who can’t even order pizza over the phone in English).

A man walks into a pet store and asks to see the parrots.  The store owner shows him two beautiful parrots. One for $5,000 and one for $10,000. The man asks, why the difference in price.

The store owner answers, “The first one sings every aria Mozart wrote. But the second, sings all of Mozart and Wagner too. “  “However, there is one out back for $30,000.”

“Holy cow!” the man says. “What can that parrot do?”

The man answers, “We don’t know, he’s totally quiet.” “But the other two call him Maestro.”

The “other side” of being a teacher

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revolutionThis month I’ve had my head full of “spring” and in particular that spring 40 some years ago in 1968 when students around the world became very “educated” and aware and sought to change things for the better. I didn’t live through that spring and I don’t condone everything that happened then BUT it was something I feel is missing in students/teachers these days — a sense that teaching is not just about the subject but also about LIFE. That teaching should follow the Socratic dictum of helping lead students to be SCEPTICS and who critically challenge the present order — all in the name of the “good”.

Students nowadays are more concerned than ever with “business”. Not just the subject of business and getting a better job but also qualifications, diplomas, certificates, marks, status. This culture is very conservative and doesn’t seek to challenge the authorities or question the very fundamentals of our society (because that would endanger their “position” and future). It is as if students these days, especially in university, feel that they have to keep quiet, feel they should just party and get good marks because “protest” and student movements would threaten their future possibility within society. This I believe profoundly effects our world.

We need students who question and challenge. Without these “soil turners”, the world just keeps spinning in violence, keeps along the same “moral/immoral” path and there is in a way, so much less salvation, less “spirit” in this world. My own hope is/was that the internet might be a way to fan the flames of youthful inquiry, protest against injustice. I”m not so sure……..

I remain convinced, we missed the boat so long ago in ’68. Yes, the cries and demands at that time have changed things in some ways — race, women, liberality, a peppering of more freedom. Still, the flower never bloomed on the stem. So many great critical theorists in education tried and offered solutions to the educational malaise in 1968 and thereabouts — I think of Illych’s incredible pamphlet, “Deschooling” or Postman’s “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” — both babies of that time’s bathwater. Yet their ideas and vision is left unfulfilled (though still as valid today as ever). The question is “why”?

The recent French movie, Cannes Palme D’Or winner, “Entre les Murs” – “Between the walls”, about a French teacher who challenges authority and his students really showcases what hasn’t happened in teaching worldwide. So few educators like this or like Sidney Portier in “To Sir with Love”, so few teachers who teach the other side — not the subject but “consciousness” and making students aware of the conditions in which they live. Today, so few teachers “risk” and take their students into that place where they truly become aware and in control of their own reality. So few teachers ever ask their students to “fight the power” and try for Socrates notion of “the good”.

Teaching, especially teaching EFL, is not just about the “subject”. It is about human relationships and engagement. It is about trying to affect eternity and in my estimation the greatest thing a teacher can do is to “lead”. This is teaching at its best. Lead. Lead your students to think outside the box and always be full of spring…..

Here are a couple videos which challenge the present status quo, especially the war in Iraq. We need more teachers to ask of their students — “why is the world full of violence?” , our future demands it……… I reject our present climate of teaching — the very apolitical sense and fear which pervades teaching. It is truly sad. The teacher’s role is not just the subject but THE subject — the good……

 

I’m reminded of my own reading of de Tocqueville and his prescient view of “democratic despotism” and the teacher’s job being to awaken others out of this ever present threat. He writes…

“For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? ….After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.”
 

 

He called for a “vigilant” population — informed through education. I call on all teachers to rise to that challenge and standard. And maybe question, with passion like Pink (and hasn’t changed at all with Obama……)

More about “getting out of the way”

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einstein1The objective of education is learning. Or not even that, I’ll interject. More exactly, the true objective is “contentment”, a well adjusted individual.

And the only way to reach this objective is to tap into the “feeling good about oneself” that is always there in each student. To give them success, that feeling of success that they define and set. And you do it by rubbing relationships together and giving students the space and freedom to be. The space to do what they can and want to do, what they can dream to do – not what you’d want them to do or what you’d want them to dream about or what the “state” would deem proper.

Anyone who’s read my blog more than a week knows I keep coming back to this one salient point. Teachers need to seek their own demise. Teachers need to have the courage to get out of the way and let their students climb, fall, reach, fail.

Nuff said. Watch this video on how students can “learn” from their own volition and drive. How teachers CAN get out of the way and still be successful teachers.

(see the previous post about “giving students room” – here.

Make 3 wishes….

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three_wishesI really believe in the power of faith. Long ago, I remember reading C.S. Lewis’ poignant, “The Problem with Pain” and noting his wonderful philosophy of simply acting as if something were true. That if we pretend the world is so, it might just become so….

So since this is the new year, I’d like to share my faith with you – by making 3 wishes for English language teaching. 3 things I wish would happen in the new year or even right away.  After mine – it’s your turn. Make your own blog post or share in some way, your own 3 wishes for the future of ELT.

[ and here is my own gift - my recipe for the 3 wishes game. Students love it and can play the genie and produce lots of language! Download the 3 Wishes Game files]

My 3 wishes.

1.  That teachers give over more control to students. More control over the learning process and the content/curriculum.  The answers are easy to get – we just have to let them off the leash. Truly.

2.  That ELT become less provincial and truly adopt and borrow more from the regular world of educational research and theory. This has been called for again and again but has yet to happen. We need to move towards a focus on delivery and instruction and away from methods and applied lingo (oops, linguistics).

3.  That more teachers begin to come online WITH their students. Why the divide? If you can be together in a classroom, why not online? Let’s bring the learning to this fantastic freeway (and if I had a 4th wish – it would be to keep that freeway FREE).

And since we are talking about wishes…… why not visit Akinator! Your students won’t ever get enough of him.

Self Directed Learning – Part 1

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illichIf I could meet just one guy who I’d like to chat about the future and place of education in the world – it would be a toss up between Ivan Illich and John Taylor Gatto. Illich the intellectual, the piercing and challenging mind – Gatto, the more matter of fact, direct working guy. Today – I’d like to talk about Illich.

I do believe that we are slowly, “deschooling”. What we are doing online as bloggers, eteachers, sharers – is such. Illich in the sparkling podcasts below from 1968, tells it exactly as it is TODAY. Meaning, we have started unschooling but instead of a new form of nourishment for the brain, a new direction whereby citizens, students are empowered – we are still in the grips of a school system that is quite irrelevant to the needs and benefit of citizens. A school system that isn’t working and essentially assembly line and out of date.

My hope, as Illich outlines, is in “learning networks” – not just what you see here on the internet but in others taking things into their own hands and creating a world where a person’s worth is not in their labor or their mind but in their capacity to learn AS THEY SEE FIT. No reins, no guru, method. Limited authority. Just the freedom to be where their mind beckons. As Illich says, “the little spark” that allows us, offers us the opportunity to “dance to our own drummer”, to open our own doors and be the WE that we want to be.

I have taken notes from these lectures and will post up thoughts along with relevant excerpts in part 2. I’ll add my thoughts about the future of learning and in particular – Self Directed Learning. For now, please enjoy and savor. Also, read his mini book. An important document for all educators – 1968 or 2010. After Deschooling What? by Ivan Illich

Illich on Deschooling

If you liked this – you might enjoy: Killing Creativity or Teacher’s Who Needs Them?

Age and ELTing

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courtesy SteenDoessing

courtesy SteenDoessing

Let me start by asking this – do you love your teaching job?

Let me now ask, can you imagine teaching until you die?

I can. I really can. I don’t know what the future holds but right here, right now, I can imagine being old and teaching, loving teaching.

Now let me ask – do you think you’d be allowed to? Teach that is – when you’re say 68 years young or 72/73? Probably not and I think that unfortunate. And it happens to a helluvalot of teachers, day in and year out.

This post is to bring this issue into the light of day. Please tell me what you think by commenting….

I am raising this issue because this year, I’ve got contacted quite a few times by teachers who love teaching, with a lot of experience but who can’t get a job doing what they love. Why? They are “too old”.

And I’m at a loss as to what I can advise.

I tell them that they can find a job, if they truly love teaching. Just hang in there, I say. Some school will want them. Too often then not, that isn’t true. Too often then not, they have to go further afield, further out on the fringes of the ELT world. And I think that is wrong.

Now I know governments have to operate by rules. I know private schools prefer blonde and bouncy. Now I know that teaching is a demanding job. I know all this – what I don’t know is why someone in good health, with a vast amount of experience, can’t find a job teaching? Why the bias, why don’t we stop this and raise our voices in our staff rooms, lunch rooms and board rooms?

And it is even just as bad getting elderly people into our classrooms when they are NOT even teachers! As a public school teacher, I advocated bringing the elderly in our community, into our school’s classrooms. I got nowhere! It was an insurance issue. Parents would complain, yadda yadda yadda…. Our class had to be satisfied trekking to the old age home once a week. God forbid they’d show up in our classroom – though many could have worked me under the table!

What I’m asking is — why the societal and institutional bias against the elderly teaching our children, either formally for pay or informally, for the love of it?

What are your thoughts and experiences?

To those teachers I’ve emailed about this – keep looking. It’s worth it.

Using Technology the “Right” way

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Around the education/technology twitterverse, there has been a lot of hand-wringing and “I told you so s” about THIS article  on TES, “Byte the Dust”. Basically, it outlines how tens of millions of dollars/pounds of educational technology are laying around gathering dust. This follows another study which reported that children with home computers had lower test scores.

Some educators are (and I think without reading the article in full), clapping and saying – there you go, we don’t need this waste nor technology in our classrooms! The traditional approach works just as well, thank you! – Like these teachers who commented on the ELT Tech blog.

That’s sad.

For one, they didn’t read the article in full. If they did, they’d have seen there is a lot of common sense in the many quotes/responses of the teachers in those schools. I’ve outlined them below.

For two, the only thing the article highlights is how in cahoots education is with business – how education isn’t about what works but rather, who can sell and buy from whom. It is an indictment of “Edubusiness” not the use of technology in the classroom.

Technology is an essential component of education. You can’t throw out this pencil and go back to scratching with limestone. It has its place and effect/need. However, you don’t need to spend billions on fancy doohickeys, widgets and doodads from Acme Inc. This is what you need.

1. Broadband internet access and a project/screen. All schools, all classrooms.

– There are plenty of free, safe resources online for students. Web 2.0 as it grows, will only make this more so. My own content rich community is one shining example – it is ELT but you can learn everything you’d want there and it is all what is freely available on the internet, gathered and supported in one place/community/portal.

2. Teachers trained in the technology and the resources available. The overspending on useless techno gadgetry is only rivaled by the underspending on the training of teachers (and ongoing support for) in educational technology. There is a plethora of evidence that the bane of technology in education is how school administrators just throw technology into schools without any support or training.

3. Access to computers for all school children and new ways to integrate this within the curriculum. We NEED better curriculum developers in the school systems – ones with know how about technology.

4. The promotion of a new “paradigm” where learning can happen outside school hours and online AND be accredited. We have to find a way to value what students do on their own time/dime. The school system can’t continue to have 4 walls.

Here are some quotes from the article which support my contentions:

“ICT is essential in schools, but schools are in danger of buying white elephant technology,” he adds. “There are so many flash salesmen and it

is important that we’re not swept into the mentality of ‘new is always

the best’.” – too much business in the educational pudding.

“Every school needs to think about how it uses technology.” –
Technology isn’t bad, we just need to do it better.

“Teachers don’t want fancy new gizmos; they want something that does what they want it to do,” =
Keep it simple (and cheap) – a screen / computer and the internet.

“If they have a bad experience with a piece of software they tend not to go back to it,” -
Teachers need support and ongoing training in technology

He’d make different decisions about the wireless network he had installed in 2002 as it proved too slow for pupils to be able to use portable kit around

the school.-
Broadband for all schools – the governments MUST do this

Mr Taylor says they are now looking to move towards tablets and hand-held devices.-
It’s about the students having access – doesn’t matter the device but get them access to one! (but I’d invest in cell phones – they are the future of educational technology and what students use every day.)

Yes, at the end of the day technology is a tool but a VERY special tool and I reject those who say that it doesn’t count. For better or worse, like the book, it is transforming how we act, interact with the world. We’d better use it as educators – for the betterment of the world and to make sure our job still counts.

To the ELT luddites out there. Take a look at my ALICE or the use of Karaoke or our Quizlet group or this phenomenal online pronunciation site – Phonetiks. Then tell me it doesn’t matter or make a difference to student learning…..

Find out more about using technology on my ELT and Tech wiki. Take a watch of the PBS doc. “Digital Nation”. Fascinating. And ponder these thoughts….

Find more videos like this on EFL CLASSROOM 2.0

Education by Lottery – right or wrong?

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Last week I watched this 60 minutes episode about “lucky” kids winning paid boarding school education. Education by lottery.

I don’t know why but I found it deeply disturbing. So disturbing, I just couldn’t even write about it. So I let it fester and digest until I could better grasp what it really was that hit me so hard.

On the face of it, seems like a wonderful thing. Wow! A whole high school education paid for and not just any high school education – a private school education! A chance to get out of the ghetto and learn unplagued of social problems and the pressures of inner city urban teen culture. A chance to be valued for who and what you are and not your “rep” or your “image”.

Or is this so?

I really think we should be fixing the problem at the roots, not creating more “educational ghettos”. That’s what bothered me.

Call me a dinosaur but I’m a big believer in public education. A “good” public education for all — and how it really creates a society and allows through knowledge and learning, a democracy to survive. Call me a believer in civilization – not power.

I’ve spent a lot of time around boarding schools and the children of very rich kids. I value a liberal education and the opportunities these students have – opportunities to think, be challenged and grow intellectually. The trouble is, I don’t want that to be on the backs of a population that doesn’t get the same advantages. And that is what disturbs me – that this sort of thing, this education “by lottery” will further create haves and have nots. I’d much rather these gentlemen take their time and money (and don’t think for a moment this is all “charity” – but that’s another blog post) and work in the communities/neighborhoods of the inner cities. Work there to build an equitable and possible better tomorrow. We don’t need charity in education and we don’t need educational ghettos.

This week, I watched the following video of Chomsky answering a question about education. He outlines so well the problem of institutionalization and conformity in education. That those who succeed, those like the kids of the rich, are those most able to conform, obey and follow. They are smart enough to know that they just have to go through the “nonsense” of education to get where they can enjoy life. Many or most inner city kids don’t conform, and for very good reasons. They don’t need more schooling, they need more education. Let’s give them that, more freedom to be who they are and how they are – instead of keeping them in educational ghettos – be they Ivy league prep school or Washington Heights Public H.S. That’s the problem as I see and I thank Chomsky for reminded me about it (even if he did so way back in 1990).

How do you see it? How did this episode and “lottery” effect you?


The “subversive” teacher

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Are you a subversive teacher?

A teacher is that rare individual who coaxes the existing knowledge systems of his students out of hiding, drags every last tentacle of the monster from the depths into broad daylight, hoses off the slime, wrestles it to the ground when it puts up a fight, and finally gives it a heart transplant. That’s subversion. That’s teaching.
- Thor May, Subversive Teaching

In my discussions with working teachers – those times we just let our thoughts take us places (and I try to do this every session, let them use their English in a free way) – in these discussions we always reach conclusions which contrast with the “official line”. We conclude that a lot of what we do is, “playing school”

This could be about curriculum. The teacher MUST teach the book but it is awful and boring. So the teacher is subversive and covers the book quickly while providing creative, effective instruction for students the rest of the time. The teacher brings the hidden curriculum to the fore but in a quiet, “unofficial” way.

This could be about assessment. The teacher MUST assess students but is not given the time or maybe has to use high stakes methods which really don’t give a good indication of the student’s effort, progress. So the teacher fudges the numbers and blends things – making sure that those students who don’t fit into the regular testing mould – get their due.

We might not go so far as Robin Williams and have students rip out the thoughts of J. Evans Pritchard but good teachers do similar things.

Teachers subvert. In our discussions we always talk about how we smile, nod and keep things pretty while doing some other things which we really know will help students learn. It is our classroom after all, despite all other pretensions. Good teachers know how to be subversive. Not in any rebellious or revolutionary sense but in a quiet way, a subtle way.

Without teachers doing these subversive things every day, I don’t think there would be a lot of progress in “official” education. I really do. Partly it is a coping mechanism but mostly, it is teachers being true to the real spirit of education which isn’t “a book” , “a curriculum” , a competition” but rather connecting with learner’s and motivating them to discover, to learn.

Two books that have influenced my thinking are now classics and they speak in a similar vein. Postman and Weingartner’s, Teaching as a Subversive Activity and Illych’s – Deschooling, I highly recommend both. They still apply today, these ideas of slowly changing the system through what we do in our classrooms, in education. (I especially love Postman’s thoughts about Teacher’s College and designing curriculum).

Are you a subversive teacher?

teaching as a subversive activity.pdf

AfterDeschoolingWhatIvanIllich.pdf