Schoolz & Toolz

A Big Idea in Education That May Have Been Wrong All Along

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 02:14:00 +0000

"I submit that rather than spending endless weeks in the classroom plugging away at finding the main idea or drawing conclusions with traditional leveled texts, we make a concerted effort to confront the status quo. Exposing children to grade-level complex texts (as called for in Standard 10), employing carefully crafted text-dependent questions, and building students’ knowledge base ought to be the paramount objectives in our classrooms. In the primary grades, this exposure manifests through read alouds of rich texts, thoughtful discussion, and the explicit commitment to developing students’ fluency. In the intermediate grades, this manifests through consistent exposure and scaffolding so students can read complex texts independently at the upper end of each grade band. In both, it manifests through the building of knowledge about the world from high-volume reading." - Steve Figurelli

YES! I've believed that a major issue of international schools' expectations on fluency and learning in general is a lack of "prior knowledge"; which can be sadly argued as meaning "white western" knowledge. The majority of current decision-makers grew up in a time and place in which we had a collective common experience and therefore a core knowledge base that is reflective in our curriculum goals.

As a librarian, I find it amazing to think that our international students would have any idea if an article in "Time" magazine (online or hard copy) is any more or less valid than one from BBC's "Focus" magazine. National Geographic was a gold standard in information gathering - now it's owned by FOX!

As a North American, I grew up with a general knowledge of news source hierarchy. I was also exposed to numeracy through board games and cards played with older siblings and cousins. My mother was nurse and my father a farmer that discussed birth, life, and death at the dinner table. Our farm was an experiential learning environment - 3 cats can turn into 100 cats very quickly and only certain materials make good river rafts.

TV in the 70s and 80s taught us how to "McGyver" anything and how to examine our own values and social issues in "Family Ties" and "All in the Family". Walt Disney's sunday night programming took us to fantastical worlds and investigative journalism wasn't yet dead. And we read a lot! We read to escape our own little lives, we read to understand our own experiences - Are you there God? It's me Margaret. We read to empathize with others in a tough world. We even read encyclopedias and Reader's Digest when we were bored. We GET all the inferences and imagery of the western canon of literature. A West African child reading text that involves a "babbling brook" may not get the poetic device being used to influence the reader.

I still wonder if this canon of knowledge should even be our end goal in international schools if we hope to move towards conceptual learning... "but that's another story" for the poor tortured Hammy the Hamster.

Posted Aug 5th, 2016 on ASCD Inservice

By Steve Figurelli

If you’ve ever experienced an English language arts classroom—especially at the elementary level—I’m certain you can picture this: 3rd grade children are working in small pockets around the classroom. Some are independently reading a “just right book.” Others are seated in a book club engaged in a dialogue around a work of fiction at their level. Still another group is listening to interactive, leveled e-books on devices. And all of this is happening while the teacher is working with a small group of struggling readers to facilitate a guided reading lesson with a level J book. All students are reading—some are engaged in grade-level texts; some are not, as determined by a running record assessment.

But what if for more than two decades, we’ve been doing it all wrong? What if by leveling children—specifically in the elementary classroom—we as educators have been inadvertently setting up students (specifically those “struggling” readers) to perpetually be behind? And, in spite of our best intentions, what if we have actually sustained (or perhaps slightly widened) the achievement gap?

The Common Core State Standards (and life) call for students to negotiate complex texts. How, then, do we reconcile the fact that for the majority of the time students spend in American classrooms, they only interact with texts at their level and are bombarded with lesson after lesson in grade after grade on, for example, author’s purpose? I have often inwardly questioned the allocation of time we spend in classrooms on comprehension skills. I cringe every time I hear a teacher lamenting that students cannot make inferences, draw conclusions, or identify a cause-and-effect relationship. The truth is, they can. In various contexts in their world (video games, art, sports, film/TV, and even about us as adults) students think critically and employ comprehension skills masterfully. They don’t forget how to do it when they pick up a traditional text.

What’s been most overlooked is that knowledge is the largest factor that affects a student’s reading comprehension ability. Strategies alone won’t solve the problem. To catapult our students to future success, we must build and strengthen their knowledge base and, subsequently, their vocabulary. A child doesn’t simply have one level; rather, a child has many levels depending on knowledge and content.

In some of the most profound research that amplifies the critical nature of building knowledge in students, the “Baseball Study”—conducted in 1988 by Recht and Leslie—found that knowledge of a topic has a much greater effect on comprehension than generalized reading ability. The study illustrated that students at lower reading levels but with sufficient prior knowledge of baseball performed similarly to students at higher reading levels. In fact, statistically speaking, the difference in performance was insignificant.

So what are the implications for instruction in our modern classrooms? Students can think critically. Students know how and can utilize comprehension strategies. The research concludes that it all boils down to knowledge. Students may enter our classrooms with a roughly 30 million word gap. We know that inequity exists based on several factors outside of school. We must commit as an educational entity to maximize our time inside the classroom to expose students to increasingly complex texts to help build their knowledge, their vocabulary, and their understanding of the world. It’s our ethical and moral obligation. “We’ve spent so much time accessing students’ background knowledge, that we’ve ignored the necessity to grow this knowledge,” researcher David Liben poignantly stated during a recent presentation at Student Achievement Partner’s Annual Core Advocate Conference, Elevating Instructional Advocacy, in Denver, Colorado. Leveling students—and only exposing low-ability readers to texts that are “on their level”—may actually preclude them from future success.

I submit that rather than spending endless weeks in the classroom plugging away at finding the main idea or drawing conclusions with traditional leveled texts, we make a concerted effort to confront the status quo. Exposing children to grade-level complex texts (as called for in Standard 10), employing carefully crafted text-dependent questions, and building students’ knowledge base ought to be the paramount objectives in our classrooms. In the primary grades, this exposure manifests through read alouds of rich texts, thoughtful discussion, and the explicit commitment to developing students’ fluency. In the intermediate grades, this manifests through consistent exposure and scaffolding so students can read complex texts independently at the upper end of each grade band. In both, it manifests through the building of knowledge about the world from high-volume reading.

We must also give students multiple opportunities to experience various texts on singular topics to build knowledge and vocabulary. Research by Landauer and Dumais illustrates that “students acquire vocabulary up to four times faster when they read a series of related texts.” Texts sets are a means to this end, as they merge various genres, media, and complexities to capitalize on students’ interests while simultaneously exposing children to a wide range of tier two and three vocabularies. Contemplate reorganizing your classroom library into topics, not levels! Encourage high volume reading, not simply to build students’ knowledge of words and the world but to foster a true love of literacy.

I challenge educators to alter their mindsets regarding teaching a mile wide and inch deep—not only in terms standards but in terms of knowledge. Despite our best intentions, research suggests that we may be approaching reading instruction all wrong. Knowledge, not isolated strategies, drives comprehension. Our kids deserve your reconsideration.

***

Steve Figurelli serves as a supervisor of elementary education with the Public Schools of Edison Township in New Jersey and currently oversees the district’s K–5 science and gifted and talented programs. He is an ASCD Emerging Leader, serves on Remind‘s Teacher Advisory Board, supports instructional advocacy with Student Achievement Partners, co-organizes EdTechNJ, and is a member of the steering committee for the NJ/PA Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers (ECET2) conference. Follow him on Twitter @SteveFigurelli.

More Universal Design for Learning (UDL) needed in the IB

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 14:12:00 +0000

I just finished reading a summary on the need to employ more UDL in IB schools. One of the main challenges for the DP is the very nature of the limited assessment format... which is under pressure from higher education's limited assessment format.

Here is a great list of digital tools to help bring more UDL into your classrooms.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ihsTwYr1kFx9Jb08Z2w5i1MWoxYkRXZbTP4Gcbodp6I/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0

How ‘twisted’ early childhood education has become — from a child development expert

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 03:10:00 +0000

Excerpt from Nancy Carlsson-Paige's acceptance speech for the Deborah Meier Award

I have loved my life’s work – teaching teachers about how young children think, how they learn, how they develop socially, emotionally, morally. I’ve been fascinated with the theories and science of my field and seeing it expressed in the actions and the play of children.

So never in my wildest dreams could I have foreseen the situation we find ourselves in today.

Where education policies that do not reflect what we know about how young children learn could be mandated and followed. We have decades of research in child development and neuroscience that tell us that young children learn actively — they have to move, use their senses, get their hands on things, interact with other kids and teachers, create, invent. But in this twisted time, young children starting public pre-K at the age of 4 are expected to learn through “rigorous instruction.”

And never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that we would have to defend children’s right to play.

Play is the primary engine of human growth; it’s universal – as much as walking and talking. Play is the way children build ideas and how they make sense of their experience and feel safe. Just look at all the math concepts at work in the intricate buildings of kindergartners. Or watch a 4-year-old put on a cape and pretend to be a superhero after witnessing some scary event.

But play is disappearing from classrooms. Even though we know play is learning for young kids, we are seeing it shoved aside to make room for academic instruction and “rigor.”

I could not have foreseen in my wildest dreams that we would have to fight for classrooms for young kids that are developmentally appropriate. Instead of active, hands-on learning, children now sit in chairs for far too much time getting drilled on letters and numbers. Stress levels are up among young kids. Parents and teachers tell me: children worry that they don’t know the right answers; they have nightmares, they pull out their eyelashes, they cry because they don’t want to go to school. Some people call this child abuse and I can’t disagree.

I could not have foreseen in my wildest dreams that we would be up against pressure to test and assess young kids throughout the year often in great excess — often administering multiple tests to children in kindergarten and even pre-K.

LEARNING TO LEARN Developing critical thinking skills

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 23:25:00 +0000

Here's a good lesson on Critical Thinking strategies from the University of Sydney

http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/documents/learning_centre/critical.pdf

MORE LEARNING RESOURCES click here

Greed, competition, and selfishness - the current DNA of schooling

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 17:21:00 +0000

WARNING; I've been watching too much news.

Greed, competition, and selfishness continue to thrive in schools that use traditional subjects and report cards to value a child's worth. Focusing on the shallow goal of "career ready" skills, "test preparation", the SAT, and university essays on "What I Believe (I should say to get me into your university)" drives me crazy!

Just do as you are told and you will get through the next gate... take your golden ticket and follow the yellow line to the dollar signs... keep your head down- ignore the Global Warming signs, avoid the extremists and the outbreaks, eat as much poison as you can, and DO NOT FEEL empathy - it is the sure death of any "winner". Good luck competitors.

Ask any educator at the top of their profession and they will mostly agree... none of this makes sense anymore. But what can we do in a system that is the "game of school"? It has little to do with wonder, discovery, determination, joy, independence, play, exploration, and the freedom to be a naturally developing human being. If we move this way - we will have better "career ready" skills, higher test scores, better SATs, and more impressive university essays - if that is the measure.

Moving away from a content driven subject defined curriculum towards a conceptually based, character driven ecosystem just might change the nature of schooling.

The Common Ground Collaborative hopes to be that change. I hope they are right and I want a ticket!

Competency Learning
Conceptual Learning
Character Learning

Personal Meaning

Learners understand how both personal and social identities are

constructed. They understand the role that beliefs and values

have played in shaping human societies, can articulate their own

beliefs and values and understand where these came from.

These understandings support them both in developing a sense

of personal purpose and in respecting the beliefs and values of

others.

Creative Expression

Learners understand that, while we may not all agree on what is

beautiful, we all respond to beauty. They understand that

humans have always expressed their interpretations of the world

through a rich range of creative media. They understand the

ways in which the arts can influence societal development by

challenging commonly held perspectives with creative ideas.

They recognize that we all have a capacity for creativity. These

understandings equip them both to develop their own creative

potential and to appreciate the creative products of other

individuals and cultures.

Physical Wellbeing

Learners understand the value of physical well-being, of

remaining fit and healthy throughout life. They understand the

contribution of a balanced lifestyle, healthy diet and physical

activity to their overall well-being. They also understand and value

the range of learning embedded in individual and team sports.

These understandings help them leave school “fit for life”.

Systems for Problem-Solving & Predicting

Learners understand that by recognizing and describing patterns

in the world around us, we can both come to understand the

world better and harness that understanding to predict and

manage our environment. They are familiar with a broad range of

systematic ways for describing and modeling the world. These

understandings equip students to translate their natural wonder

about how the world works into inquiries that build knowledge

and understanding.

Sustainable Production and Consumption

Learners understand the central significance of production and

consumption in shaping human society and the impact of these

human activities on local and global environments. They

understand economic systems and how these are interdependent

with both social systems and the natural world. These

understandings equip learners to be innovative producers,

informed consumers and responsible conservers.

Communications Systems

Learners understand how communication systems have shaped

human interactions. They understand how advances in

communication, particularly technological ones, have changed

the way human beings interact, simultaneously enabling certain

possibilities while sometimes diminishing others. These

understandings equip learners to be skilled, ethical users and

consumers of a range of communications media.

Connections to Our Environments

Learners understand how the natural world works. They

understand the concept of interdependence between and within

ecosystems. They also understand the ways in which humans

have manipulated environments and the connection between the

way a space is constructed and the effects that is likely to have

on those who live in or use the space. These understandings

support students in developing a strong sense of their place

within both the natural and built environment and in coming to

value the critical importance of nature to human well-being.

Group Membership

Learners understand the human need to be part of a group. They

understand the forces and influences that shape groups, their

cultures and their power structures. They are able to put these

understandings into historical and geographical contexts to

understand how and why groups are different and the factors

which are likely to cause conflict within and between groups.

These understandings equip learners to work towards a world

with a greater level of social justice and equity

If you build it

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 13:41:00 +0000

IF YOU BUILD IT (Official Trailer) from OCP Media on Vimeo.

Good education starts with an engaging story...but how do we find them?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 13:31:00 +0000

My focus this year is to make deeper connections to our storybooks in our School Library - instead of typing in a book search for "insects", "fantasy", "homes", or "emotions"... I want teachers to find book lists on concepts of; change, causation, open-mindedness, thinking, reflection, empathy, perspective, collaboration, cycles, conflict, adaptation, flexibility, and interdependence.

I think this way of searching tells us a lot about good education - what type of searcher/categorizor are you?

Are you more comfortable in a concrete, linear, structured world? Do you see your business/school/classroom/family embracing the abstract, organic, creative world that is evolving?

If we want our students to walk away from a story about collaboration, thinking, adaptation, empathy...how can we then go on to model the opposite in our school systems and personal lives?

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

Keep your goals to yourself

Learning Environments

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 13:24:00 +0000

DIRECT TEACHING

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Very specific learning targets. Students are told reasons why content is important - helps to clarify lesson objective. Relatively easy to measure student gains. Is a widely accepted instructional method. Good for teaching specific facts and basic skills.	Can stifle teacher creativity. Requires well-organized content preparation and good oral communication skills. Steps must be followed in prescribed order. May not be effective for higher-order thinking skills, depending on the knowledge base and skill of the teacher.	Content must be organized in advance. Teacher should have information about student prerequisites for the lesson.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Helps foster mutual responsibility. Supported by research as an effective technique. Students learn to be patient, less critical and more compassionate.	Some students don't work well this way. Loners find it hard to share answers. Aggressive students try to take over. Bright students tend to act superior.	Decide what skills or knowledge are to be learned. Requires some time to prepare students. to learn how to work in groups.

LECTURE

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Factual material is presented in a direct, logical manner. May provide experiences that inspire - useful for large groups.	Proficient oral skills are necessary. Audience is often passive. Learning is difficult to gauge. Communication is one-way. Not appropriate for children below grade 4.	There should be a clear introduction and summary. Effectiveness related to time and scope of content. Is always audience specific; often includes examples, anecdotes.

LECTURE WITH DISCUSSION

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Involves students, at least after the lecture. Students can question, clarify and challenge. Lecture can be interspersed with discussion.	Time constraints may affect discussion opportunities. Effectiveness is connected to appropriate questions and discussion; often requires teacher to "shift gears" quickly.	Teacher should be prepared to allow questions during lecture, as appropriate. Teacher should also anticipate difficult questions and prepare appropriate responses in advance.

PANEL OF EXPERTS

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Experts present different opinions. Can provoke better discussion than a one person discussion. Frequent change of speaker keeps attention from lagging.	Personalities may overshadow content. Experts are often not effective speakers. Subject may not be in logical order. Not appropriate for elementary age students. Logistics can be troublesome.	Teacher coordinates focus of panel, introduces and summarizes. Teacher briefs panel.

BRAINSTORMING

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Listening exercise that allows creative thinking for new ideas. Encourages full participation because all ideas are equally recorded. Draws on group's knowledge and experience. Spirit of cooperation is created. One idea can spark off other ideas.	Can be unfocused. Needs to be limited to 5 - 7 minutes. Students may have difficulty getting away from known reality. If not managed well, criticism and negative evaluation may occur. Value to students depends in part on their maturity level.	Teacher selects issue. Teacher must be ready to intervene when the process is hopelessly bogged down.

VIDEOTAPES/SLIDES

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Entertaining way of introducing content and raising issues Usually keeps group's attention Looks professional Stimulates discussion	Can raise too many issues to have a focused discussion Discussion may not have full participation Most effective when following discussion	Need to obtain and set up equipment Effective only if teacher prepares for discussion after the presentation

DISCUSSION

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Pools ideas and experiences from group Effective after a presentation, film or experience that needs to be analyzed Allows everyone to participate in an active process	Not practical with more that 20 students A few students can dominate Some students may not participate Is time consuming Can get off the track	Requires careful planning by teacher to guide discussion Requires question outline

SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Allows for participation of everyone Students often more comfortable in small groups Groups can reach consensus	Needs careful thought as to purpose of group Groups may get side tracked<	Need to prepare specific tasks or questions for group to answer

CASE STUDIES

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Develops analytic and problem solving skills Allows for exploration of solutions for complex issues Allows student to apply new knowledge and skills	Students may not see relevance to own situation Insufficient information can lead to inappropriate results Not appropriate for elementary level	Case must be clearly defined Case study must be prepared

ROLE PLAYING

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Introduces problem situation dramatically Provides opportunity for students to assume roles of others and thus appreciate another point of view Allows for exploration of solutions Provides opportunity to practice skills	Some students may be too self-conscious Not appropriate for large groups Some students may feel threatened	Teacher has to define problem situation and roles clearly Teacher must give very clear instructions

WORKSHEET/SURVEYS

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Allows students to think for themselves without being influenced by others Individual thoughts can then be shared in large group	Can be used only for short period of time	Teacher has to prepare handouts

GUEST SPEAKERS

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Personalizes topic Breaks down audience's stereotypes	May not be a good speaker	Contact speakers and coordinate Introduce speaker appropriately

VALUES CLARIFICATION

Advantages	Disadvantages	Preparation
Opportunity to explore values and beliefs Allows students to discuss values in a safe environment Gives structure to discussion	Students may not be honest about their values. Students may be too self-conscious. Students may not be able to articulate their values in an effective way.	Teacher must carefully prepare exercise Teacher must give clear instructions Teacher must prepare discussion questions

Did You Know 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 06:17:00 +0000

My NEW favourite Educational Thought Leader

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 15:58:00 +0000

What do you think education is for?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 10:00:00 +0000

We've been having some very philosophical discussions in our school: what is education really for? Are we producing "career ready" graduates or opening the minds of our youth to a higher purpose?

Of course, I like the latter - but also believe a higher purpose can drive their need to learn the skills and understandings for many careers. This kind of reflection and critical thinking makes my heart soar and I don't think I could stay in a job where it wasn't safe to discuss the very reason you come to work each day.

“…essence of dialectical thinking is the ability to be self-critical. Being able to see that an idea you had or an activity you had engaged in which was correct at one stage can turn into its opposite at another stage; that whenever a person or an organization or a country is in crisis, it is necessary that to look at your own concepts and be critical of them because they may have turned into traps.” Grace Lee Boggs

John Rowan: Dialectical Thinking

Dialectics is a form of thought which goes back a long way. In the West, Heraclitus in Ancient Greece was aware of it, and in the East, there are a number of thinkers who practised it. The Tao-Te-Ching is a good example of dialectical writing.

The first characteristic of dialectical thinking is that it places all the emphasis on change. Instead of talking about static structures, it talks about process and movement. Hence it is in line with all those philosophies which say – “Let’s not be deceived by what it is is now as we perceive it – let’s not pretend we can fix it and label it and turn it into something stiff and immutable – let’s look instead at how it changes.” Hence it denies much of the usefulness of formal logic, which starts from the proposition that “A is A,” and is nothing but A. For dialectics the corresponding proposition is “A is not simply A.” This is even true for things, but much more obviously true for people.

But the second characteristic, which sets it apart from any philosophy which emphasises smooth continuous change or progress, is that it states that the way change takes place is through conflict and opposition. Dialectics is always looking for the contradictions within people or situations as the main guide to what is going on and what is likely to happen. There are in fact three main propositions, which are put forward about opposites and contradictions.

The interdependence of opposites

This is the easiest thing to see: opposites depend on one another. It wouldn’t make sense to talk about darkness if there were no such thing as light. I really start to understand my love at the moment when I permit myself up understand my hate. In practice, each member of a polar opposition seems to need the other to make it what it is.

The inter-penetration of opposites

Here we see that opposites can be found within each other. Just because light is relative to darkness, there is some light in every darkness, and some darkness in every light. There is some hate in every love, and some love in every hate. If we look into one thing hard enough, we can always find its opposite right there. To see this frees us from the “either-or” which can be so oppressive and so stuck.

The unity of opposites

So far we have been talking about relative opposites. But dialectics goes on to say that if we take an opposite to its very ultimate extreme, and make it absolute, it actually turns into its opposite. Thus if we make darkness absolute, we are blind – we can’t see anything. And if we make light absolute, we are equally blind and unable to see. In psychology, the equivalent of this is to idealise something. So if we take love to its extreme, and idealise it, we get morbid dependence, where our whole existence depends completely on the other person. And if we take hate to its extreme, and idealise it, we get morbid counterdependence, where our whole existence again depends completely on the other person. This appreciation of paradox is one of the strengths of the dialectical approach, which makes it superior to linear logic.

A good symbol for these three processes is the Yin-Yang symbol of Taoism. The interdependence of opposites is shown in each half being defined by the contours of the other. The interpenetration of opposites is expressed by having a black spot in the innermost centre of the white area, and a white spot in the innermost centre of the black area. The unity of opposites is shown by the circle surrounding the symbol, which expresses total unity and unbroken serenity in and through all the seeming opposition. It is, after all, one symbol.

The lessons of the dialectic are hard ones. It tells us that any value we have, if held to in a one-sided way, will become an illusion. We shall try to take it as excluding its opposite, but really it will include it. And if we take it to its extreme, and idealise it, it will turn into its opposite. So peace and love, cosmic harmony, the pursuit of happiness and all the rest are doomed, if held to in this exclusive way.

The only values which will be truly stable and coherent are those which include opposition rather than excluding it. And all such values appear to be nonsense, because they must contain paradoxes. “Self-actualization” is one such value, because the concept of the self is self-contradictory, paradoxical and absurd. The self is intensely personal and completely impersonal at one and the same time. It is the lowest of the low and the highest of the high at the same time. And this is why, when we contact the self in a peak experience, our description of what happened is invariably a paradoxical one.

There is a logic of paradox, which enables the intellect to handle it without getting fazed, and its name is the dialectic. It is complex because it involves holding the spring doors of the mind open – hence it often tries to say everything at once. But it shows how we do not have to give up in the face of paradox and abandon the intellect as a hopeless case.

SOME APPLICATIONS OF THE DIALECTIC

How does one actually use dialectical thinking in everyday life? Some say that dialectics is not for everyday life at all – it has to do with “ideas of the horizon” where we are dealing with concepts that are at the very limits of human thought. For everyday life, they say, formal logic is good enough. But I think humanistic psychology has shown us that you can use dialectical thinking even for walking, or driving, or eating, or playing tennis, or any other everyday activity.

TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED

This is one of the most important principles of humanistic psychology. All the time one is questioning the fixed categories, the rigid “shoulds,” the congealed knowledge that stops one seeing the world. Our beliefs are the greatest obstacle to clear perception, and the more we can unfocus from them, the more we can let in.

SPONTANEITY

Again a crucial concept, which dialectical thinking makes easy to understand and easy to do, intellectually, emotionally and intuitively. Spontaneity is obviously a paradoxical quality, which you can only aim at by letting go.

TRANSFORMATION OF QUALITY INTO QUANTITY

This important idea states that by simply adding things, we can eventually arrive at something quite different. In therapy, going intensively into one side of a conflict often brings us more vividly into the other; and if we push the whole conflict hard enough and far enough, a whole new vision may appear.

BREAKING PATTERNS

So the main practical application of the dialectic is in breaking fixed patterns of thought and behaviour. Every time you adopt a regular pattern of washing, dressing, eating and so on, you are avoiding reality. But if awareness of these activities increases, the amount of play involved in them is also likely to increase. Taking responsibility for our actions is choosing our life, and this usually feels good. You can be responsible and playful at the same time, and this is one of the paradoxes in which dialectics delights.

Alternative Education - the time has come

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 12 May 2014 20:34:00 +0000

WOW! Some very powerful ideas here:

http://www.pathsoflearning.net/

The invasion of the educational process by economic forces is clearly evident in the standards-and-testing movement. The corporate state provides the funding for education, considering it an economic investment and expecting a good return. Young people are considered to be intellectual capital, their learning a product with a certain value to the economy. Knowledge is packaged and delivered, increasingly through textbooks and other materials produced by corporations with political connections. Students and teachers are accountable to these investors, and must demonstrate their success in mastering the authorized body of knowledge. There is little recognition of the student as a unique individual, motivated by a spiritual yearning to reach out to the world for purposeful understanding. There is little recognition of teaching as an art form, requiring a carefully honed sensitivity and thoughtful responsiveness, because teachers increasingly become technicians tending to the authorized lessons and administering the prescribed tests. In Steiner’s terms, education has been uprooted from the cultural sphere, where it belongs, and engulfed by the economic sphere, which turns it into a commodity, a soulless object to be bought and sold.

According to various cultural historians whose work has influenced my thinking, modernity essentially views society as a great machine that needs to be managed by expert technicians, a machine whose purpose is to turn natural and human "resources" into commodities and profits. Based on this view, modernity emphasizes rapid progress and growth over tradition and stability. It places a higher value on material wealth than on spiritual richness. It promotes private success over communal responsibility. And it strives for technological mastery rather than respect for the organic processes of nature.

What are some of the characteristics of this human-centered, “green” education? There are many models of alternative, progressive, democratic, and holistic schools, but they share four essential qualities:

Experiential Learning. Learning is more experiential, emergent, organic, cooperative and personal than in standardized school settings. Tests, grades, ranking, honors and other trappings of competitive learning are greatly reduced or completely absent. There is more open discussion and critical questioning in the classroom. Students are more free to pursue personal interests and passions, or a creative effort is made to present an established curriculum in ways that makes it more relevant, meaningful and exciting to students. Indeed, to the extent curriculum is pre-planned, its content is less driven by what corporate leaders and politicians determine “every child needs to know” and more by educators with a philosophical commitment to well rounded personal development and their own personal and professional sensitivity to the learning rhythms of their students.
Community Development. There is a genuine sense of community among students, teachers, and the parents involved in the school. People care about each other and take care of each other. There is little authority exercised solely for the sake of control or impersonal enforcement of rules, although teachers and school administrators take their responsibilities for community functioning seriously. In the terms used by feminist cultural historian Riane Eisler, a school oriented to “partnership” values would exhibit a “hierarchy of actualization” (a management structure that empowers each individual to realize one’s potentials) rather than the more traditional “hierarchy of domination.”
Concern for the inner life. There is respect for students’ interior life and for ultimate questions. At the very least, a holistic learning environment offers periods of time or physical spaces of respite from the competitive materialism, constant noise, distraction, and titillation of modern civilization. Many holistic educators use various practices such as yoga, meditation, journaling, expressive arts, or simply times of quiet to help their students find calm and centering. Moreover, students are encouraged to wonder about deeper questions, about the meaning of life; their existential concerns are taken seriously. This open-ended, student-centered approach encourages a diversity of personal paths and need not involve the explicit teaching of religion or religious values.
Ecological literacy. A holistic learning environment has meaningful connections to the world of nature. The principles of ecology and sustainability are implicit in the structure and content of a holistic education, if not explicitly addressed; there is a deliberate cultivation of what David Orr has called “ecological literacy.” The physical design of holistic schools and classrooms brings nature indoors, or invites students into the surrounding ecosystem. In these spaces, beauty is as important a concern as functionality. We would commonly find gardens, field trips, or other opportunities for contact with nature in the curriculum even in an urban setting.

During the past twenty-five years, education has become ever more standardized, ever more mechanical, as it serves a political and economic agenda of competition, production, and corporate profit. Young people in the present system are not perceived as growing, active human beings who seek meaningful connection to their community, society, and natural world, or to the realm of the spirit, but as units of production whose academic achievements contain primarily economic value. Today, even first graders--six year old children--are rigorously tested to ensure that they fit into the system, while those who resist mechanistic discipline are sedated with powerful drugs. In some schools in the U.S., young children no longer enjoy recess—time to play and relax during the school day—because this is perceived as unproductive and inefficient.

ARE SCHOOLS A WASTE OF TIME?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 18:55:00 +0000

I have been repressing a question that keeps bubbling up in my international educational career...

Are we mostly wasting the time of the children (and parents) we are supposed to be helping?

This thought doesn't stop me from trying hard and caring deeply within the system we are working in because there are random pockets of great learning for pockets of random students - but that level of efficiency wouldn't pass the test in most other industries. But then why should education be under the same microscope of market systems in which an ever increasing GDP is the almighty goal?

Define "AN EDUCATION"

I believe schools for the future will exist to help nurture and develop a whole person: what that looks like for each person is as different as our fingerprints. And when I say person, I mean anyone form 0 to 99. Our current "Age ghettos" of daycare centers, K-12 schools, working adults, and senior homes need to be broken down in order to heal our 1st world societies. We have created ghettos of privilege in our islands of international schools with the false pretence of inclusion. Healthy inclusion of the future will mean a diversity of age, class, race, gender, language, and ability.

I have just come from a conference in Brussels that has given me the power to see the future - and the power to see what future societies may say about our current practices within the FACTORY MODEL (processing batches by age in boxes with separated subject silos for maximum production and external measurement of success).

Our current international schools of CELLS (class groups usually in rooms) AND BELLS (factory schedules for standardized parts for external measurement) can be dressed up, environmentally aware, repackaged and enlightened - but most of them are still organized in the following ways:

Grading - DECEIVING & DISTRACTING
Accreditation systems in foreign lands that drive our international schools - MANIPULATION
Classes by age - FACTORY MODEL FOR EASY PROCESSING
Subjects broken into random topics according to some dead old white guys - OUT OF DATE
Core subjects being are more important (Math, English, Science) - NOT WHOLE PERSON
Thinking that learning in Cells, between Bells, can then be measured meaningfully is DELUSIONAL
Thinking that students can produce evidence of learning in our scheduled lessons is UNFAIR
Teachers are the only ones able to teach - UNTRUE
Not deeply connecting with the local community - LOST OPPORTUNITY
Not helping each child with exactly what they want, when they need it (or don't need it)- LOST TIME
Believing "Personalized Learning" will ever happen if we are still using a Factory Model (no matter how pretty that model might be) is INSANE.

"Drinking the kool-aid" (getting excited in the moment and dazzled by keynote speakers - like David Perkins from Harvard) was a phrase I heard at the airport as we all left Belgium. But in this case, an influential group came together because something NEEDS TO CHANGE - whether they agree on the type of change that will work can be debated. I choose to believe there is something in the air, and it sounds like LEARNER FREEDOM!

More details about the Common Ground Collaborative in my next post.

RELATED:

To Advance Education, We Must First Reimagine Society

What is an education for?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 14:00:00 +0000

Six myths about the foundations of modern education

By David Orr

One of the articles in The Learning Revolution (IC#27)
Originally published in Winter 1991 on page 52
Copyright (c)1991, 1996 by Context Institute

We are accustomed to thinking of learning as good in and of itself. But as environmental educator David Orr reminds us, our education up till now has in some ways created a monster. This essay is adapted from his commencement address to the graduating class of 1990 at Arkansas College. It prompted many in our office to wonder why such speeches are made at the end, rather than the beginning, of the collegiate experience.

David Orr is the founder of the Meadowcreek Project, an environmental education center in Fox, AR, and is currently on the faculty of Oberlin College in Ohio. Reprinted from Ocean Arks International’s excellent quarterly tabloid Annals of Earth, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 1990. Subscriptions $10/year from 10 Shanks Pond Road, Falmouth, MA 02540.

If today is a typical day on planet Earth, we will lose 116 square miles of rainforest, or about an acre a second. We will lose another 72 square miles to encroaching deserts, as a result of human mismanagement and overpopulation. We will lose 40 to 100 species, and no one knows whether the number is 40 or 100. Today the human population will increase by 250,000. And today we will add 2,700 tons of chlorofluorocarbons to the atmosphere and 15 million tons of carbon. Tonight the Earth will be a little hotter, its waters more acidic, and the fabric of life more threadbare.

The truth is that many things on which your future health and prosperity depend are in dire jeopardy: climate stability, the resilience and productivity of natural systems, the beauty of the natural world, and biological diversity.

It is worth noting that this is not the work of ignorant people. It is, rather, largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs. Elie Wiesel made a similar point to the Global Forum in Moscow last winter when he said that the designers and perpetrators of the Holocaust were the heirs of Kant and Goethe. In most respects the Germans were the best educated people on Earth, but their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity. What was wrong with their education? In Wiesel’s words: "It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience."

The same could be said of the way our education has prepared us to think about the natural world. It is a matter of no small consequence that the only people who have lived sustainably on the planet for any length of time could not read, or, like the Amish, do not make a fetish of reading. My point is simply that education is no guarantee of decency, prudence, or wisdom. More of the same kind of education will only compound our problems. This is not an argument for ignorance, but rather a statement that the worth of education must now be measured against the standards of decency and human survival – the issues now looming so large before us in the decade of the 1990s and beyond. It is not education that will save us, but education of a certain kind.

SANE MEANS, MAD ENDS

What went wrong with contemporary culture and with education? There is some insight in literature: Christopher Marlowe’s Faust, who trades his soul for knowledge and power; Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, who refuses to take responsibility for his creation; Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, who says "All my means are sane, my motive and object mad." In these characters we encounter the essence of the modern drive to dominate nature.

Historically, Francis Bacon’s proposed union between knowledge and power foreshadows the contemporary alliance between government, business, and knowledge that has wrought so much mischief. Galileo’s separation of the intellect foreshadows the dominance of the analytical mind over that part given to creativity, humor, and wholeness. And in Descartes’ epistemology, one finds the roots of the radical separation of self and object. Together these three laid the foundations for modern education, foundations now enshrined in myths we have come to accept without question. Let me suggest six.

First, there is the myth that ignorance is a solvable problem. Ignorance is not a solvable problem, but rather an inescapable part of the human condition. The advance of knowledge always carries with it the advance of some form of ignorance. In 1930, after Thomas Midgely Jr. discovered CFCs, what had previously been a piece of trivial ignorance became a critical, life-threatening gap in the human understanding of the biosphere. No one thought to ask "what does this substance do to what?" until the early 1970s, and by 1990 CFCs had created a general thinning of the ozone layer worldwide. With the discovery of CFCs knowledge increased; but like the circumference of an expanding circle, ignorance grew as well.

A second myth is that with enough knowledge and technology we can manage planet Earth.. "Managing the planet" has a nice a ring to it. It appeals to our fascination with digital readouts, computers, buttons and dials. But the complexity of Earth and its life systems can never be safely managed. The ecology of the top inch of topsoil is still largely unknown, as is its relationship to the larger systems of the biosphere.

What might be managed is us: human desires, economies, politics, and communities. But our attention is caught by those things that avoid the hard choices implied by politics, morality, ethics, and common sense. It makes far better sense to reshape ourselves to fit a finite planet than to attempt to reshape the planet to fit our infinite wants.

A third myth is that knowledge is increasing and by implication human goodness. There is an information explosion going on, by which I mean a rapid increase of data, words, and paper. But this explosion should not be taken for an increase in knowledge and wisdom, which cannot so easily by measured. What can be said truthfully is that some knowledge is increasing while other kinds of knowledge are being lost. David Ehrenfeld has pointed out that biology departments no longer hire faculty in such areas as systematics, taxonomy, or ornithology. In other words, important knowledge is being lost because of the recent overemphasis on molecular biology and genetic engineering, which are more lucrative, but not more important, areas of inquiry. We still lack the the science of land health that Aldo Leopold called for half a century ago.

It is not just knowledge in certain areas that we’re losing, but vernacular knowledge as well, by which I mean the knowledge that people have of their places. In the words of Barry Lopez:

"[I am] forced to the realization that something strange, if not dangerous, is afoot. Year by year the number of people with firsthand experience in the land dwindles. Rural populations continue to shift to the cities…. In the wake of this loss of personal and local knowledge, the knowledge from which a real geography is derived, the knowledge on which a country must ultimately stand, has come something hard to define but I think sinister and unsettling."

In the confusion of data with knowledge is a deeper mistake that learning will make us better people. But learning, as Loren Eiseley once said, is endless and "In itself it will never make us ethical [people]." Ultimately, it may be the knowledge of the good that is most threatened by all of our other advances. All things considered, it is possible that we are becoming more ignorant of the things we must know to live well and sustainably on the Earth.

A fourth myth of higher education is that we can adequately restore that which we have dismantled. In the modern curriculum we have fragmented the world into bits and pieces called disciplines and subdisciplines. As a result, after 12 or 16 or 20 years of education, most students graduate without any broad integrated sense of the unity of things. The consequences for their personhood and for the planet are large. For example, we routinely produce economists who lack the most rudimentary knowledge of ecology. This explains why our national accounting systems do not subtract the costs of biotic impoverishment, soil erosion, poisons in the air or water, and resource depletion from gross national product. We add the price of the sale of a bushel of wheat to GNP while forgetting to subtract the three bushels of topsoil lost in its production. As a result of incomplete education, we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that we are much richer than we are.

Fifth, there is a myth that the purpose of education is that of giving you the means for upward mobility and success. Thomas Merton once identified this as the "mass production of people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade." When asked to write about his own success, Merton responded by saying that "if it so happened that I had once written a best seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naiveté, and I would take very good care never to do the same again." His advice to students was to "be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success."

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more "successful" people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.

Finally, there is a myth that our culture represents the pinnacle of human achievement: we alone are modern, technological, and developed. This, of course, represents cultural arrogance of the worst sort, and a gross misreading of history and anthropology. Recently this view has taken the form that we won the cold war and that the triumph of capitalism over communism is complete. Communism failed because it produced too little at too high a cost. But capitalism has also failed because it produces too much, shares too little, also at too high a cost to our children and grandchildren. Communism failed as an ascetic morality. Capitalism failed because it destroys morality altogether. This is not the happy world that any number of feckless advertisers and politicians describe. We have built a world of sybaritic wealth for a few and Calcuttan poverty for a growing underclass. At its worst it is a world of crack on the streets, insensate violence, anomie, and the most desperate kind of poverty. The fact is that we live in a disintegrating culture. In the words of Ron Miller, editor of Holistic Review:

"Our culture does not nourish that which is best or noblest in the human spirit. It does not cultivate vision, imagination, or aesthetic or spiritual sensitivity. It does not encourage gentleness, generosity, caring, or compassion. Increasingly in the late 20th Century, the economic-technocratic-statist worldview has become a monstrous destroyer of what is loving and life-affirming in the human soul."

WHAT EDUCATION MUST BE FOR

Measured against the agenda of human survival, how might we rethink education? Let me suggest six principles.

First, all education is environmental education. By what is included or excluded we teach students that they are part of or apart from the natural world. To teach economics, for example, without reference to the laws of thermodynamics or those of ecology is to teach a fundamentally important ecological lesson: that physics and ecology have nothing to do with the economy. That just happens to be dead wrong. The same is true throughout all of the curriculum.

A second principle comes from the Greek concept of paideia. The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one’s person. Subject matter is simply the tool. Much as one would use a hammer and chisel to carve a block of marble, one uses ideas and knowledge to forge one’s own personhood. For the most part we labor under a confusion of ends and means, thinking that the goal of education is to stuff all kinds of facts, techniques, methods, and information into the student’s mind, regardless of how and with what effect it will be used. The Greeks knew better.

Third, I would like to propose that knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world. The results of a great deal of contemporary research bear resemblance to those foreshadowed by Mary Shelley: monsters of technology and its byproducts for which no one takes responsibility or is even expected to take responsibility. Whose responsibility is Love Canal? Chernobyl? Ozone depletion? The Valdez oil spill? Each of these tragedies were possible because of knowledge created for which no one was ultimately responsible. This may finally come to be seen for what I think it is: a problem of scale. Knowledge of how to do vast and risky things has far outrun our ability to use it responsibly. Some of it cannot be used responsibly, which is to say safely and to consistently good purposes.

Fourth, we cannot say that we know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities. I grew up near Youngstown, Ohio, which was largely destroyed by corporate decisions to "disinvest" in the economy of the region. In this case MBAs, educated in the tools of leveraged buyouts, tax breaks, and capital mobility have done what no invading army could do: they destroyed an American city with total impunity on behalf of something called the "bottom line." But the bottom line for society includes other costs, those of unemployment, crime, higher divorce rates, alcoholism, child abuse, lost savings, and wrecked lives. In this instance what was taught in the business schools and economics departments did not include the value of good communities or the human costs of a narrow destructive economic rationality that valued efficiency and economic abstractions above people and community.

My fifth principle follows and is drawn from William Blake. It has to do with the importance of "minute particulars" and the power of examples over words. Students hear about global responsibility while being educated in institutions that often invest their financial weight in the most irresponsible things. The lessons being taught are those of hypocrisy and ultimately despair. Students learn, without anyone ever saying it, that they are helpless to overcome the frightening gap between ideals and reality. What is desperately needed are faculty and administrators who provide role models of integrity, care, thoughtfulness, and institutions that are capable of embodying ideals wholly and completely in all of their operations.

Finally, I would like to propose that the way learning occurs is as important as the content of particular courses. Process is important for learning. Courses taught as lecture courses tend to induce passivity. Indoor classes create the illusion that learning only occurs inside four walls isolated from what students call without apparent irony the "real world." Dissecting frogs in biology classes teaches lessons about nature that no one would verbally profess. Campus architecture is crystallized pedagogy that often reinforces passivity, monologue, domination, and artificiality. My point is simply that students are being taught in various and subtle ways beyond the content of courses.

Educational Jargon

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 17:03:00 +0000

Here is a great site to help you understand all the educational jargon that comes and goes and gets tweaked.

http://www.beesburg.com/edtools/glossary.html

23 Things for Parents - WEEK 1 COLLABORATION

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:20:00 +0000

Paul and I have started a new session of our Parent workshops. Our first week's theme is "Collaboration". We watched a video; "Howard Rheingold: Way-new collaboration".

Using gmail, we all posted on one shared doc for our first week's assignment: find more resources (books, articles, websites, podcasts or videos) related to the concept of "collaboration".

These parents experienced using a "shared doc" - one document with several editors in real time. Paul and I talked about the ways teachers and students collaborate on shared docs. And we explored "insert comments" and "see revision history" to check who, and when information was added to the document.

Pinterest for Educators and Librarians

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 11:23:00 +0000

As with most tech fads, I sign up, have a look around and try to actually use it as an educator. I eventually drop the tool if there is little value for schools. Pinterest has made it through my test run.

I started using it when we were moving houses - for decorating ideas. Then I created a board to collect recipes; this is the typical fare on Pinterest, Then I discovered "organization ideas". Like a Librarian with rabies, these organizational images appealed to my OCD need to put things in their proper place!

Eventually, I began to see some great ideas for classrooms, libraries, and edtech solutions. As one of my goals this year, I am working with teachers to improve their classroom library spaces.

Classroom Library ideas on my Pinterest

What I offered to my teachers,

Classroom Library Makeover consultation for FREE!

Display the front of books when possible and rotate in new books each week.

Quick book talks (if you know the book, or simply read the book jacket out loud). Books are judged by the cover too often.

Weeding (recycling) worn out classroom books -be brave!

Have a desktop computer set to Destiny Quest/Tumblebooks/JStor/Google Scholar

Classroom book orders (resist the urge to order lots of paper books - buy hard covers)

Environmental psychology (big word for appealing spaces)

Student driven - how would they organize the books? What are their ideas to get others to read or research

Planting the seed for book donations with parents

Classroom Librarian uniform (coat, badge, or hat). This student manages the book/desktop area and School Library connection.

Student Librarian special "visit pass" to the Library to gather books related to units.

Where are you on Bloom's Taxonomy?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 05:21:00 +0000

Why Teacher PD may not be working

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:03:00 +0000

Latest from Sir Ken

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:10:00 +0000

Leadership is Situational

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 22:38:00 +0000

If you could pick a new boss in your organization every 6 months... who would it be?

Ricardo Semler asks why we still run organizations like the military in a world that values Democracy? We even use the same vocabulary as the military; mission, vision, strategy, and hierarchy (organizational chart).

ISB 2012 USED BOOK SALE

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:43:00 +0000

The Curriculum Wars

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 07:37:00 +0000

During a workshop, I was asked to write down my own definition of curriculum. I was stumped. All I could think about was the idea that Doctors decided that woman should lay down on a hospital table to give birth - not because it is better for the woman and child, but because it was better for the Doctor. That image and other quotes from John Taylor Gatto were floating around in my head. "Dumbing Us Down": What does school do to children?

From a recent post on Granted, but… ~ thoughts on education by Grant Wiggins;

Everything you know about curriculum may be wrong. Really.

If curriculum is a tour through what is known, how is knowledge ever advanced?

If learning requires a didactic march through content, why are movies and stories so memorable – often, more memorable than classes we once took?

If a primary goal of education is high-level performance in the world going forward, how can marching through old knowledge out of context optimally prepare us to perform?

If education is about having core knowledge, and we are more and more teaching and testing all this knowledge, why are results on tests like NAEP so universally poor, showing that over decades American students have not progressed much beyond basic “plug and chug”?

So, what is curriculum to a child? Would they choose the same subject areas and plan the same "developmentally appropriate" goals as we do for them? I think that no matter how open, flexible, skills-based, student-centered we think we are... we are still backward planning from "being a good working citizen" down to the "best job" down to university application, down to test-taking skills, down to report cards and bribery tactics, down to kindergarten. All educational systems are starting to realize that something is broken. So far, they have responded by either creating more layers of control or by re-labeling traditional ways.

Dr Seuss Pickup Lines

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:43:00 +0000

Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie Scott-McKenzie) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:27:00 +0000