Tag Archives: schooling

Low Impact Teaching

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Over the last 5 to 10 years, I’ve been developing new ideas about how we should be teaching in our classrooms.   These ideas have changed as the possibilities and promises of educational technology have become reality.

The most fundamental of these ideas are always revolving around learning and the student. The possibility to differentiate and deliver personlized study to students is the most important possibility before us teachers. Technology allows us to tailor curriculum, materials, delivery to and for each student. It allows us to correct the most horrid feature of schooling – that everyone learns the same thing, at the same time, at the same rate.

Here are three approaches that I espouse and have worked to develop.

SCC, student created content    Students create the content that will be the basis of their language learning. We start from the students’ world and understandings and build on that. A teacher elicits language from the students, forming a material. This material is the basis for further language activities and practice. The teacher is the facilitator and organizes the language practice and learning of students – there is no direct instruction.

The Flipped Classroom for ELT    Students can learn and practice the structures, vocabulary and content of our language classrooms through mediated self directed learning. Either in a computer lab or BYOD class at school or as homework.  No longer do classes need a teacher in the front, leading the whole group.   Classroom time is taken up with actual production and the teacher having direct time with the students assessing, getting feedback, engaging.  The teacher no longer has to spend time (usually wasted), teaching infront of the class a language point or eliciting language for a group on a topic probably only 2 or 3 students are interested in.

Low Impact Teaching     I’ve long had a big interest in the work of Sugata Mitra and especially his concept of MIT – Minimally Invasive Teaching.  Now, he’s developed it along the principles of allowing learners maximum autonomy in the class and to allow for “self organizing learning environments” (SOLE).  I go a little further and more broad with my concept of low impact teaching (and I highly recommend Kevin Gidden’s DNT – Do Nothing Teaching approach).

Low impact classrooms are classrooms where a teacher is not the dominant focus, the central power and puppeteer. EFL has always been for better or worse, led by a teaching model where the native speaker was the primary source of authentic language/input.  Nowadays this shouldn’t be so and needn’t be so. Students in most parts of the world have access, immediate access to all kinds of spoken English, even at an appropriate level.   So now, the role of the teacher shouldn’t be one that dominates and talks but one that organizes and disappears.  The best teachers are invisible, just like the best use of technology is.

Low impact teaching is about organizing the environment in which the students will learn and then, as I’ve referred to Sugata Mitra’s approach – “going away”.  It is about driving back into the learning environment organic, intrinsic student motivation, curiosity and independent learning.  And that is the end goal of all education, helping to create a learner that will learn when we are not there, when nobody else is looking …… Low Impact Teaching is “I’m going away now” teaching – where the teacher doesn’t tell the student the answer but teaches slow and allows the learner to learn for themselves. It is about putting students back in control. Low impact  teaching but high impact learning.

It’s so energizing to be involved in education at this moment of time. Beyond opportunity, we teachers must realize there is a heavy responsibility on our shoulders to not let things get hijacked and to push for change, be disruptive and enact approaches like Low Impact Teaching or the Flipped model in our classrooms.  Once we’ve changed the existing cultural paradigm of teaching, I’m sure we can then take school out of the walls it inhabits and into the wide open world where it will best flourish and nurture students.

 

What is your metaphor?

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Metaphors are powerful things for teachers.  They are the very building blocks of thought and allow us to see what isn’t there, to connect on a higher level to hidden realities.   Cynthia Ozick in her timeless essay, “Metaphor and Memory”  talks of metaphor as

“inhabiting language in its most concrete. As the shocking extension of the unknown into our most intimate, most feeling, most private selves, metaphor is the enemy of abstraction. “

Think of how powerful this famous metaphor of Shakespeare allows us to understand what life and the world we live in, is.

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”

Metaphors can help teachers see who they are and where they are going, they are a driving force in our professional development. In my own teaching, I’ve borrowed an idea from Finney Cherian, asking my teachers to bring in an object that they believe represents themselves as a teacher. They explain to classmates how the object represents themselves as a teacher. I’ve had students bring in baseball gloves, Q-tips, medals and even toilet paper!  What’s crucial is that this becomes a metaphor around which they can clearly see themselves as a teacher. It helps them begin their life as a teacher on solid ground.  The object I chose was a chalkbrush.  It represents what I feel is the ephemeral, ever changing nature of teaching. Also, that we can begin each day with a clean slate, ever hopeful. We don’t accumulate but are in the act, we teach in the here and now.

What is your metaphor? 

 


As I mentioned, metaphors are the building blocks of thought, as argued by George Lakoff. He outlines how our thought and conceptual systems would break down without the concrete stickiness of metaphor. They link the real and the ideal. They are what makes us human, so human. His “Metaphors we live by” is a great read.  Metaphors have been the basis of all great inventions and breakthroughs in knowledge. With the proper metaphor, things become clear and what was hidden, revealed.  Think of Einstein imagining a man running through a telegraph wire and keeping up with the message. Think of Farnsworth plowing a field back and forth and imagining how an image could be scanned as a series of lines for transmission, the basis of electronic broadcasting and TV.  Think back further of Archimedes and his Eureka! in the bathtub as the water rose (and arriving at a way to measure the mass of an intricate object).  Think of  Faraday and his vision of lines of force which led to the invention of the electric motor.  Lastly (but we could go on forever concerning great advances and thought) Kekule who gave us the greatest discovery of organic chemistry ( that organic compounds are not open structures but chains or “rings”) after seeing a snake bite its tail.

Metaphors allow us to link “like to like”, to make x=y, to give a name of one thing to another. It is magical and like some kind of thought full homeopathic cure, we can build from two “likes”, a healthy, new, greater idea.

I think linguistics, education, learning how we learn language, needs a metaphor. A metaphor that will allow us teachers to understand how language takes birth and grows in a person.  Chomsky comes closest with his use of “growth” and that language isn’t built but is organic and grows like a plant. But we need more metaphors in language and about learning – metaphors to help us understand what we do and guide us teachers.

Michael McCarthy uses the geographical metaphor of “confluence” to suggest how two speakers engage in conversation and negotiate meaning (confluency). A wonderful way to understand this complex process, by analogy to two rivers meeting and mingling.

We might also ask how we could use metaphors in our own teaching, how they might allow students to conceptualize language and understand that which  is foreign. Metaphors are the means by which we organize information and we might ask how a knowledge of semiotics and metonymy might inform teachers and help learners in their study of English.  Imagine a course of English study where language was not just thematic but properly metaphorical?

I’d like to have more metaphors about teaching, about learning, about language acquisition …… do you have any to share? 

Here is a nice article detailing various metaphors about school/schooling

 

Student Learning and Trust

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 One thing that I’ve concluded after a few decades in school systems is they operate with a profound distrust of students. Distrust that left on their own students would want to learn something, even choose to learn.

It’s true.  Even the most well intentioned teachers I speak with have a belief that children need to be cajoled, pushed, prodded and controlled – all so they will do the work and learn something.

This pessimism pervades our profession.  I say it without disrespecting the profession and the hard work that is done, day in and day out by teachers who “are there”.  Doing more than most in our society to help the future.  But a truth is a truth and it is what it is.

Children are the only segment of our population confined against their will. We call it “compulsory education”. I believe the problem begins there, caging our children and making school into a punishment rather than a place you want to go to.

It is sad and based on my own experience I reject this belief, a belief that rests too much within the domain of “power”.  You see, if you give the powerless any sort of power, of course, in the short term, they’ll run with it . Students will loaf and be at ease, do little and cruise.  But give it time, trust them and show you trust them – they’ll show you what they are made of.   It’s true and I’ve seen it.

What we lack in our educational system is patience.  We are so, so, reactive. Myopic.  And trust is not a short term relationship but something that like faith, lasts and endures. We need to trust students and let them do of their own and follow the path of self-direction. If we don’t, we create widgets, we create citizens who can’t think for themselves, who just follow the leaders ….. and we know where that end – blind obedience.

Do you trust your students? REALLY trust them?  I hope so……     I hope we start to give students the freedom to be their own method rather than have them follow our own. Learning is always a path trodden by just one.

I’ll end with a fav. song….. about luv but also about teaching (which is but luv in another dress)

Commencement. Commencing What?

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Tomorrow my students are graduating with their B.Ed. There will be the usual big ceremony, the speeches, the dinner and so on and so on….. Each year over and over like a giant gristmill.

I’m happy with my students. So happy. Also very proud of this bunch of new teachers, they kept their idealism and passion all year and no doubt will bring this energy into teaching, into education. I’m so happy they are graduating. However, I’m not going to be there.

More and more, coming to the realization (for me) that graduation isn’t celebrating the right things. Rather, it is celebrating completions rather than beginnings. Or rather beginnings rather than continuings. It is all about “getting them out the door”. Schools and higher education especially, have become depersonalizing exercises and experiences. Big business. I’m generalizing of course, I know there are programs out there that keep more community after graduation than just sending an alumni donation request and a reunion appeal. I know there are schools out there who are more about fostering lifelong learning than making the time students spend there into a competitive 100m dash. I know. However, it’s summer and again I’m discontent, so I’m not going.

A few commencement addresses this season (yeah, it is a season, kind of like sports, a lifting of the cup and then it is a whole new go around) have tried to be honest about what school is. Michael Lewis stirred things up by bluntly telling graduates they were “lucky” and there (at Princeton) because of luck, not merit. David McCullough looked graduates straight in the eye and told them “you’re not special”. Hard realism and though it has good shock value, it is not the message I would give. I’ll let you guess what I’d do (if you’ve read this far) but it would be similar to the exhortation of my fav. graduation speech by Bill Cosby.

I’m not making much sense and now talking to myself, about why I’m not going to commencement. Usually the truest things are those you are least able to describe…….


Find more videos like this on EFL CLASSROOM 2.0
If you liked this post, you might enjoy – Teaching is …

The main reason for P.D.

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This morning spent some time reading and thinking about professional development for teachers. It’s an important issue – especially these days with the public demanding we root out “bad” teachers and set up systems of evaluating teachers.

Most good educational systems ask teachers to (even demand by law) engage in some form of professional development. This can take many forms but is usually formal and involves conferences, additional qualification courses, workshops, online engagement (twitter, blogs, collaboration), staff meetings etc…. Constant through all this is some level of reflection on practice.

I think all of this is great but we also should ask ourselves the rationale for this. Why do we do these things as teachers? The most obvious answer I hear is that it increases our skills as teachers. And I guess that is a good thing but I really think there is a deeper and more important purpose to formal or informal (just thinking about your classes, self learning, talking to peers/friends) PD.

I think we MUST engage in professional development because it allows us to see the value of ourselves.

Learning is such an invisible and slow act. We don’t see the results of our hard work instantly like a carpenter, a sales clerk, a plumber. There is no immediate effect to our “cause”. It can be disheartening to work day in and day out and feel you aren’t getting anywhere, not see any tangible returns. When a plumber fixes the toilet, they see the immediate result that it now flushes well and a family will be able to safely “do their number 2″. When a teacher teaches the reasons behind the second world war – it is almost impossible to see if students “got it” nor if it will have any effect on their “being” and actions as a human being. It is an invisible art we are engaged in, for the most part. We can’t see our work’s value (beyond a pay check and other tangible perks).

We need a way to keep intouch with our work’s true value. I think professional development can do that.

PD brings us into a wider community. It keeps us in touch with our worth, keeps us knowing we are worthy and making a difference in a very big way. It teaches that our “slow” is also “so powerful” and important to society.

So I want teachers undertaking PD to think of this some time. See PD not just as skill development but as a way of celebrating and understanding our larger value to our world tomorrow.

The Flipped Curriculum – a presentation

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I had a great time presenting some of my ideas on The Flipped Curriculum at RSCON 3. Thanks to all who attended. Here’s the “short” version, a rerecord. Please go to the webpage I mention, for videos, resources, readings on the Flipped Curriculum. Aplogizes for the low volume! But I”m killing two birds with one stone – also showing you a site I love and with lots of potential - Knovio.

I’ll post up shortly, my own thoughts about the sessions I attended. A valuable conference and let’s keep walking down this road of educational reform!

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. 

 

 

 

Apple or Google?

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expertsWhich side do you generally side with when making decisions? Do you make decisions based on your expert knowledge and experience or do you lean towards the data and numbers?

I’m asking because I’ve had some interesting conversations in this regard, with a colleague. How some companies (or people) make decisions based on their own sniffer. How others are very rational and go where the numbers and crowd (or mob) point.

The question isn’t just academic. When related to education I think it really has some significance.

Of course we have all the data driven, test score driven administrative tom follery. I’m not going to discuss this silly stuff. If you can’t see that emperor has no clothes, well, then dream on…..

No, I want to look at how teachers make decisions in their own classroom. Are we like Apple, generals and experts that know and with our charts, handouts, videos, textbooks – steering the ship of students? Or are we listening to students and letting them take hold of the wheel and allowing them to steer the ship?

Of course, most teachers will say that they are the later, they are googlites, they listen to their students. This is the mantra of modern education. However, me thinks this is only cosmetic. Look deeper and almost all teachers are governing their class as “experts”. We truly don’t go down to the level of students or listen to them. We all say that we “listen” and are “data informed” but when push comes to shove – I believe we teach as we were taught. We perpetuate a worn and bedraggled and very much irrelevant orthodoxy. All the while propping up and rationalizing our methods, our job, by saying we are listening to the students, we are listening to the data. However, the facts are out there for all to see. School is Kafkaesque, a nightmare we can’t wake up from.

When I’ve asked the teachers in my curriculum development courses – they’ve almost all said they do needs surveys, they ask students, make changes. But if I ask deeper questions, it gets complicated. They still keep to a regiment, they still dictate that all students use x, y and z and better get to this or that objective. They are still steering the bus and unfortunately, I think too many students are being run over by it – however good their intentions.

Even Dogme, the notion that students guide the learning and are the “material” is suspect. I’d even say, very “Apple” and “Steve Jobs”. At the end of the day, the dogme teacher is, well let’s be honest, “dogmatic” and espousing an approach. What about the students? What if they say, let’s use Touchstone? What then?

I’m just throwing this out there so we might waken Freire from his grave. Truly question the power relationship in our classrooms. Because that’s very much why the “Expert” approach reigns despite all the pretense. And that is truly why too much of education is flywheel and not enough sparkplug. People are doing it for “power” not for the sake of learning.

Something to think about – which side are you on?

The #1 …. (myth in education)

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Number One** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s number 1.

Learning = School = Education

mark_twain_educationLearning is not 9 to 3, Mon. to Friday. Learning is not with a teacher and sitting at a desk. Learning is not a diploma or certificate. Learning is 24/7, learning is in our own hands, learning is possible without school.

Slowly the myth that learning only takes place in school, is being eroded through the pervasiveness of new technologies allowing people to connect and access knowledge. The library is much more powerful than it once was. People are waking up to the concept of self-directed learning, independent study……. Soon we won’t be asking, “So, what college did you go to?” but rather, “So, where did you learn about “x”?”.

It isn’t anything new, as Twain suggested long ago. Many of the men we herald as “geniuses” didn’t get much from school. The list would be too long to mention here.

Right now, we are experiencing a tipping point I believe. Things are going the way of allowing for more informal learning to be “accredited” and given credence. As the formal side (schools, government, institutions) begins to recognize informal learning and learning outside “4 walls” and a school, we will see a flourishing of human potential and creativity. I truly believe this. Let’s keep going forward!

A couple of reads on this topic.

1. John Taylor Gatto.
2. OECD report on informal learning + country practices.
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If you liked this post, you might like: Self directed learning or Teachers. Who needs them?

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.

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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?

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.

How to discern a “fit and fun” classroom

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faludy_gyorgyWith the events in Egypt unrolling these past days, my mind has been on them and also on the wider question, what makes a “liveable” country?

I took down from my bookshelf, a treasured book, Notes from the Rainforest, by Gyorgy Faludy. Gyorgy is/was a mind like no other. He had traveled and lived all over the world and on one small page, he listed his 10 requirements for a country. If it didn’t have at least 5 of them, he recommended running for the nearest border.

I’ve been honored to visit a lot of classrooms. And I think, the same question is valid for a classroom, as for a country. So I thought it would be interesting to list Gyorgy’s points and then write up a similar dictum for that of a classroom. Be prepared – some of my own statements are meant to challenge and be extreme. Here we go….  What others could you add?

1. Freedom to leave without an exit visa or baggage search is assumed.

1a. Classrooms have children there that want to be there. If they don’t, they are free to leave and do something else. What a child didn’t achieve in one class IS NOT counted against them in the next.
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2. Faces of the population are generally cheerful.

2a. Students are relaxed and smile a lot. They are free to laugh and show their emotions.
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3. Public rudeness is rare.

3a. Students respect their classmates and address them in a polite fashion.
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4. Fairly elaborate manners are expected of everyone after the age of seven.

4a. Students have been taught how to behave in the classroom. There are routines and expectations.
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5. Public libraries are uncensored, well-stocked, and much-used.

5a. The class has lots of books (a mini library), materials, decoration – all accessible for student learning and borrowing.
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6. Little or no hunger or squalor is evident and the accumulation of wealth is not generally thought of as the Meaning of Life.

6a. All students have access to nutritious food. Poverty is not a barrier to learning at school. The classroom has no obvious social pecking order.
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7. Violence is rare and , among the police, severely forbidden.

7a. Students are not punished corporally nor with emotion. All forms of violence are not tolerated (by students or teachers) and disqualify a person from the class.   Violence by teachers, strictly forbidden.
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8. A general attitude of “live and let live” is seen.

8a. The classroom is not driven by “results”. It does what it can one day and that is enough. There is no “guilt” of not keeping up.
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9. No political prisoners are taken.

9a. The classroom is void of religious, political and social indoctrination. It is a place of tolerance of ideas and where ideas are thought about and challenged, not gulped down.
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10. Few are destitute and those are charitably treated.

10a. The disabled (learning / mental / physical) are a part of the classroom (for part of the day) and are seen as equals in all ways.

Faludy, Gyorgy., Notes from the rainforest.
1988, Hounslow Press, Willowdale, Canada.

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?

Teachers – who needs them?

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encouragementI just came home from the movies.  In the film I saw (The Kids Are Alright), one character when asked why he dropped out of school says, “I just thought it was a big waste of money for something I could learn myself, from a book.”

This was something I had realized early, sitting in the town library one “PD” or professional development day, years ago in grade 8. I was flipping through a National Geographic and chanced upon an article about Jane Goodall. I was stoked, we had been talking about chimpanzees in class!  I started reading and wondered why we’d learnt none of this in class! OMG! And then it dawned on me – I could learn from a book. School was for sports and girls but really ineffective when it came to learning.

As the years went on, I realized more. That actually I had been wrong. Not that school wasn’t a more effective way “to learn”. No. I understood that a book really wasn’t as perfect a tool of learning. For the cerebral and imaginative – a book was great. But for show and tell, for constructive learning, participation, modeling – it was a dud. You couldn’t learn how to build anything from Popular Mechanics, you’d only learn how to talk about it, write about it and comment on it. Books weren’t a replacement for teachers or schooling. There was still a need for teachers and people in the learning equation.

Now, (and isn’t it ironic, me a 20 year in, teacher), I’m not so sure. I think we don’t need teachers. Nor schools. Now before you go further, take a deep breath and allow me to explain, explain how I’ve become such a heretic. I’ll keep it short, I promise.

After hearing the line the film, it dawned on me that it should be updated to, “I just thought it was a big waste of money for something I could learn online”.  The internet has allowed us, the amateur, to prosper. We can teach each other but more importantly we can show, demonstrate and learn not only in a “reading” way but also in a “real” way. Teachers are everywhere online – they are the mailmen, the musicians, on video, on screencasts. They are you and me.

Even more important is the notion of authority. School has survived because of authority. In a way, it is kind of like a prison sentence. You have little say over it, you MUST and there is so little opportunity for rehabilitation or reform. It is a process that you have to undertake in order to be part of society. You are punished if you don’t. It is mass social programming, dollar driven, even more so today. So school and education continues with only polite postering about reform and change. It is self perpetuating. No wonder that the calls for radical reform of education of the 60′s are still so relevant, loud and true.

I’m a student of the enlightenment and believe that learning is liberating and beneficial to all humanity. Illuminating, labitur lux, it lets the light in. It benefits us all and all the splendors around us come from ideas and education. However, everything has its time and place. Schools too, designed as mass market assembly lines,  disseminating discrete, memorizable bits of public knowledge are long useless and defunct. If mankind is to develop, we must go from the public realm and into the private – from the liberation of the mass to the liberation of the self.

Mark Twain said, “don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education.”  So true. But if you think about his words, you also can gather the notion that we shouldn’t throw away schooling. He doesn’t say that, nor I think believed it. School is great and necessary. I wouldn’t have given my best years to a classroom, if I hadn’t believed so. But we should take the teacher out of the school and make school a place of learning not teaching or being taught. Teachers should become mentors, motivators, encouragers, friends, councillors, anything but what they are at present. Students should get help,  not be told what nor how to learn. They can figure it out, evolution tells us so.

In the weeks to follow, I hope to elaborate on these few late night thoughts I’ve laid out. Lots about “Superman” and the snake oil salesmen in the education business. Lots more about self-learning and the possibilities of technology as a liberating force. Stay tuned.

I also highly recommend Andrew Finch’s “Teachers, Who Needs Them”. It’s a good read from a good man.

A couple quotes on the tip of my brain to end.

Learning is not a spectator sport.  ( why do we make it so with our schools?)

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
– Thomas Carruthers


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No More Excuses!!!!!

by

I watched this part of 60 Minutes this evening. Whatever else, it stimulates the mind and gets one thinking about both A) Why some kids are not as “smart” and B) Who is responsible?

A) My own opinion is that there are very large social issues that must be tackled. I commend people, courageous people like Geoffrey Canada – those who pay it back and who fight each day and give their heart to education, without holding punches. Kudos.

However, the root of the problem must be addressed. The racism that still exists, the divide of rich/poor and how those born into poverty have little chance but military enlistment and “luck” to get out. It is a cultural problem and we have to solve it within our society and with dialogue, honest dialogue. IT IS NOT A SCHOOL PROBLEM.

B) One amazing sentence struck me during this video. Canada said, “We will no longer put the blame on the students”. Hallelluja! We need each teacher, each person involved in education to take up this call and take up this “Educational Hippocratic oath”. It won’t solve everything but it will start things. I’ve worked in too many schools and heard too often this tired, “I give up”, “I blame them” refrain…. No more…. Each student can be walked into the light and we need those who see the light. The rest – get out and collect a paycheck elsewhere…