Posts from — September 2006

I was just searching through a slew of articles on education and found this one by a teacher that supports what I was saying about testing not being the right thing for young people – but he’s coming at it from the other side – measuring good teachers. His argument is that you can’t measure a good teacher by what students get on a test. I agree!

In the pursuit of classroom alchemy
BY JEFF LANTOS
I’m beginning my 20th year of teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and if I’ve learned anything, it is that good teaching cannot be measured quantitatively.

So what’s important?

Is it important to you that your child or young person can remember facts? or is it important to you that your child can think?

I’ve often heard teachers saying that they want to teach students to think. But I’ve wondered if there is a teacher in the entire public school system that would know what to do with a classroom full of people that actually do think! Schools as currently designed are not made for young people to think. Thinkers would maintain and grow their natural powers of inquiry and discovery. They would ask questions! I’m not so sure there are many teachers around that would know what to do if their classroom asked questions (lots of questions)!

What is learning? How does learning happen? and what is the difference between learning and knowing? and more importantly for schools, what is the difference between learning, knowing and memory.

My premise is that schools have evolved to a point where, no matter what educators and the public believe, they have confused learning, knowing and memory. AND, even more important, schools teach and test for memory. Tests are not designed to measure how much one knows but how much one remembers.

I believe the whole premise of school and education is upside down and backwards. The brain is a connection making machine yet education disconnects ’subjects’ from their context and often from their environment so no (or little) connection can be made.

What is learning?
Learning is connected with emotion. When learning happens there is some emotional experience tied to the learning experience. This emotion can be as simple as a struggle or it can be more complex like elation, frustration, joy, disappointment, etc. But, there is no learning without emotion. There is no learning without trial and error – which produces emotion (persistence, determination, struggle, frustration, challenge, etc.). Mistake making is a very important part of learning.

What is Knowing?
How do I know I know?
Knowing happens when ‘data’ or facts are connected with a context (information about the data) and an experience (an interaction with the data). Often, the experience involves learning (and emotion) but there is no ‘knowing’ without the context and experience(s).

What is Memory?
Memory is simply re-collection and re-calling and re-taining information (data). This re-collection and re-calling can be of anything – facts, figures, images, experiences, etc. But memory is very different from learning. With memory there is no learning – unless it is the learning that ‘I forgot’ and/or ‘I remembered’ something.

Why is this important?
If we are going to develop schools that are really learning environments than the emphasis will need to be on experiences that are connected to life and that have emotion with them. The emphasis needs to move away from recollection and recall and towards life.

Here’s an example of how this kind of thinking manifests in the public school system. Social studies – the study of stuff that has to with relevant issues – is losing out to more emphasis and reading and math scores (that’s scores on tests that measure what is remembered not what one knows).

NPR: Social studies sidelined by NCLB demands
National Public Radio correspondent Liane Hansen discusses the current state of social studies education with Fred Risinger, former coordinator of social studies education at Indiana University. Due to NCLB pressures to improve math and reading scores, Risinger argues, students today aren’t learning about contemporary issues or other parts of the world and thus are missing out on the information they need to become engaged and effective citizens. (Audio player required)

Do you think that social networking has an impact on young people and their learning? The growth of social networking sites like MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, etc. has grown so much that there are now millions of people enrolled and expressing themselves on these and other sites. Check out the current list of social networking sites on wikipedia (the largest and most used encyclopedia in the world – user generated and user monitored).

Talk about taking the physical world into the digital world. The New Media Consortium (a consortium of nearly 200 colleges and universities) have created a virtual ‘campus’ in SecondLife.

Check out this ‘seriously engaging‘ movie about the campus!

and check out this blog on the comings and goings in this virtual world.

Here’s a blurb about the virtual campus:

The NMC Campus is a virtual laboratory available to NMC member institutions and their faculty. Located in the virtual world of Second Life, it has been carefully constructed to provide researchers and students dozens of prebuilt settings for experiments in social interaction in 3-D space. These settings are expressly designed to encourage explorations along dimensions such as formal and informal; traditional and nontraditional; real and surreal; serious and playlike; and other continua as may be defined.

There’s a lot of hubbub about the use of digital text books in education – or the purchasing of laptops for students instead of text books. Here’s an innovation that demonstrates the blending of both the physical and digital worlds. This magazine is available in print form and is also available as a ‘flip book’ online.

NEW! Digital Edutopia
JUST LIKE THE PRINT MAGAZINE. DIFFERENT DELIVERY.
Check out our new electronic magazine presented in a flip-the-page format. Edutopia can now be viewed anywhere, anytime on the Web. Instant delivery, easy to read, portable, searchable text, and environmentally friendly. To get on our list for upcoming information on how to subscribe, send an email to digitaledutopia@edutopia.org.

Connecting learning to the world and to life is one of the items on my list of what a quality education is. I don’t believe that educators purposefully limit the learning experiences of young people. I have experienced educators being incredibly sincere – with the highest and best of intentions. The limitation is in the educational model and the system within which these people work. Dr. Deming told us that systems actually produced behavior. Put the same people in a different system and get different behavior.

About 5 or 6 years ago we did a small engagement with the Milwaukee Public School system. In one of the sessions we facilitated with them we brought 30 inner city youth out to a YMCA camp for the weekend. This was the first time any of these young people had been outside the inner city. We played stick ball on ice, played in the snow and did some design work with these young people on defining what a healthy community is.

All young people need an opportunity to experience their community – and the natural environment around them – as part of their learning experience.

Here’s an article about Nature Deficit Disorder. It describes the remarkable fact that too many young people go through their early lives without the connection to their natural environment – and this article reminds us that Howard Gardner has added Naturalist Intelligence as an eight intelligence.

Curing Nature Deficit Disorder
By Milton Chen
Helping students develop their nature quotient provides a valuable pathway for developing the other intelligences.

There is research that says public schools and private schools are not much different. There is research that says private schools are better then public schools. There is research that says public schools are better then charter schools. I’m sure there is research that says charter schools are better then public schools.

Does it matter?

What does matter is that a young person learns what is possible for them and they grow to realize their full potentia. What does matter is a school – any school – provides a quality education for young people and enables them to develop and achieve their goals in life. What is a quality education? Every parent and young person must decide for themselves but here’s my opinion for what it’s worth:

A quality education is:

• one where the young person is first and foremost
• one where the whole person is respected and appreciated
• one where learning is emphasized over testing
• one where whole brain learning methods are employed
• one where improvement is measured and celebrated
• one where learning is connected and relevant to life
• one where personal growth is as important as ‘academics’
• one where learners experience choices in what and how they learn
• one where teachers are learners, facilitators and guides
• one that includes the whole family in the process
• one that is connected to the community
• one that is safe, engaging and fun
• one with a family atmosphere

That’s my starting list.

What’s your list that makes up a quality education?

The other night 20/20 replayed it’s report called Stupid in America about education and how we are short changing our young people. I can imagine how upset educators were seeing and hearing what John Stossel reported.

I’m not 100% sure that vouchers or school choice is the ultimate solution but it is one voice (maybe a voice getting louder) that is screaming for educational reform and improvement. Proponents suggest that competition will get us better schools and better educated young people. I think they are right to some degree but I’m not sure that competition is a long term solution either.

It seems hypocritical that educators say that family involvement (parent involvement) and community involvement are improvement changes that are necessary but yet educators feel threatened when faced with the possibility of parents choosing where their children go to school.

Choice is something that I’ve proposed for young people as part of their learning experience. Choice is something that will make a difference. But choice alone won’t solve educations problems. The educational model most change as well.

Maybe vouchers and school choice will get the ball rolling but it should not be seen as the end.