Well, if Bill Gates says it’s so we might as well consider it to be so.

In a recent talk at a conference in California Bill Gates said that in five years the best education will come from the web. His logic is that the cost of most universities and colleges are out of reach for most people – and that at some point in the future the best lectures will be available for free on the web. So why would anyone go to college? The parties of course!

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university,” he continued.

Actually, I believe there is a good reason for people to still congregate in person – and there will be even more and better reasons to do so in the future – but I think Bill’s point is a good one. If we continue to think of schooling as the accumulation of data and information then the internet is more than sufficient in providing what most people would need. And, as more and more devices become internet savvy and it becomes available any time any where then why wouldn’t we be able to find the information we need when we need it?

So why would we still want to get together?

Collaborative Co-Creation

For one, I believe that more powerful learning experiences can be created by getting people together to collaborate on solving tough, complex, and difficult challenges. A good collaborative process can create conditions where everyone is stretched to learn from each other. A good collaborative process engages people emotionally as well as intellectually – and in my opinion better learning happens when the emotions are engaged.

Most importantly, a good collaborative process can engage people in collaborative co-creation, which for me is possibly the best reason.

We know creativity is important in the future but collaborative co-creation can be so much more powerful. Engaging the group genius is both an art and a science and something that can give all participants involved a very positive and powerful experience.

So will colleges be gone in five years? I doubt it personally, but the reasons for colleges should challenged and possibly re-invented to include collaborative problem solving and collaborative co-creation.

Read the TechCrunch article… where I read about Bill Gate’s statement.

One of my business partners, Jay Smethurst, sent me a link to a great article about a way to think about making changes to the public school system. Bryan Coffman, another partner, had exposed all of us to the idea of something called Wicked Problems some years ago. In this article, the author uses work from someone called Adam Richardson and his book entitled Innovation X: Why a Company’s Toughest Problems Are Its Greatest Advantage to describe a set of problems that go beyond wicked problems. He calls these problems X-Problems (or extreme problems).

Wicked Problems

The wicked problem was a term coined in the 1960′s by mathematician and planner Horst Rittel. He described them as messy, confounding, and aggressive. In 1968, C. West Churchman detailed the issue of wicked problems in an issue of Management Science.

Churchman describes wicked problems as, ” a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.”

Simple Problems: These are problems for which both the problem and solution are easily defined.

Which budget should be used to purchase supplemental materials? Which grade level will require an additional teacher next year? Who is going to teach the new section of Latin? Which classrooms need instructional aides?

Complex Problems: Here the problem is known, but the solution is not.

How can we get students to complete their homework? Which technology is best to introduce into an elementary classroom? Which curriculum will best meet the needs of our students who are two years below grade level? How do we create a system that allows for student input? What is the most effective assessment of reading comprehension for English Learners?  How can we increase teacher collaboration and trust?

Wicked Problems: The challenge here is that neither the problem nor the solution is known. How can you define a good solution when cannot even state what the problem is?

There is no definitive statement of the problem, and each solution reveals new aspects of the problem.

In our work, the more we grappled with these kinds of challenges the more we developed a small understanding of their nature and complexity. We’ve been able to garner a few insights from this.

One insight is the process of solving wicked problems is non-linear.

Most problem solving processes are thought of as a step by step process – moving through the steps in succession and at the end having a solution. Solving (or attempting to solve) wicked problems doesn’t work like that. Solving wicked problems is non-linear. In practice what this means is that the individual or group engaged in the process bounces around to different aspects of the problem solving process – some times jumping to the end first or covering the same ground multiple times.



The other thing we’ve learned about addressing these wicked problesms is that they cannot be solved by one person – and possibly not by a small group of people.

This may seem obvious but attempting to engage in the problem solving process when dealing with these types of challenges is not something to be done alone. They need different perspectives and diversity to have any chance of developing insights. Facilitating this type of problem solving process has numerous nuances that requires a very skilled facilitator to navigate.

eXtreme Problems

From that article the author goes on to describe this other type of problem which he believes makes changing the schooling system is so complex. He says the problems we are attempting to solve are really X-Problems. He says these types of problems have extreme levels of risk along with extreme levels of complexity. He quotes from Adam Richardson:

But there is a problem even more difficult to grapple with than the wicked problem.

It’s called the X-problem. Why X-problems? Adam shares his thinking on why X represents another level of problem.

X is extreme: X-problems are extreme in risk and complexity.

Educating an entire country’s population and building a system that does it in the most effective way is a risky proposition. You can’t build the wrong system. You can’t make a mistake.

X is mysterious: Every X-problem revolves around questions that have never been asked before, or challenges that are unprecedented.

Solving the “problems” of education and doing so in a way that meets all the needs of all the stakeholders now and in the future is going to create some questions that we have never encountered of thought of.

X is a crossroad: A crossroads is a place where things converge together—and diverge outward. At a crossroads one must make a choice among paths, each of which could entail risk or opportunity.

Do we take the road of creativity, technology, brain research, etc? Saying yes to certain solutions requires that we say no to others. Which do we choose?

X means opportunity: X marks the spot for treasure—the winnings that come from finding the problem and capitalizing on it before others can.

Does this help frame the challenges in making changes to the public school system? If it does, and we started addressing some of the issues in this light, how might solutions developing for problems like this? Maybe there won’t be any solution that can be applied system wide?

That’s something I’ve been exploring in my own thinking lately and in a conversation with Bryan he said the following:

I think his definition of X-problems could be simpler. A wicked problem is one that’s complex where neither the true problem nor the true solution is known. An X-problem is simply a wicked problem with a large diversity of stakeholders who are in varying degrees of contention with one another. That would knock a wicked problem out of the park. Our little edge-of-chaos model for collaboration would predict that in such a situation where diversity of stakeholders is super high, that contrary to intuition, the system needs less facilitative behavior between players overall. In other words, since you can’t hope to facilitate a comprehensive solution, little cells of players who are diverse yet have affinities would hive off and build options. This is what happens in private schooling, home schooling, some rural schools where the stakeholder diversity is smaller, etc. It’s also what is happening with our NAPC project (now the Continuum Initiative). Attempts at national or state standards will ultimately fail to produce the right results because the common denominator they seek puts them way off the peaks of the fitness landscape.  So long as we seek system-wide solutions to X-problems, we will continue to fail.

What do you think? How would you see problems of this nature being addressed and possibly solved?

The iPad creates a problem for schools that will be interesting to see how it gets resolved.

The way I see it Apple has solved some problems with the iPad and created some other ones.

The tablet is a new form factor for a device and will clearly have a place in the computing world for some time to come. I feel the iPad solves some specific problems for schools and should really be considered as a schooling device. Some of the problems the iPad solves are simple:

• The small form factor is nearly perfect for reading
• The size and weight is reasonable for carrying around
• The battery can last an entire school day
• The number of apps that will be developed is nearly unlimited

I can’t imagine a scenario where schools wouldn’t want to consider moving to the iPad instead of text books (accept below where I identify one). The size and form factor are perfect. Imagine carrying around a 1.5 pound device instead of a backpack full of books. It’s a no-brainer.

In addition to being an excellent reading device it is perfect for surfing the web, doing research, keeping simple notes (like a notepad), and building simple presentations.

At the same time the iPad – or tablet sized, touch screen computers – create some other problems.

The iPad is NOT a Laptop

A few people in my life have asked me what I think the difference is between an iPad and a laptop. I think the difference is this:

• A laptop is primarily a production device – where consumption has been slowly slipping more and more into the laptop computing world.

• The iPad is primarily a consumption device – with very little producing going on (at this stage of the game – but I imagine we’ll see more and more producing start slipping into the tablet space).

I think the iPad is 80% a consumption device and at most 20% a production device. While on the other hand I think a laptop has the flexibility to cover the other 80% of the territory focused on production (and is pretty comfortable anywhere on that spectrum).

Giving iPads to students creates a problem.

I believe students really need to be creating things and NOT consuming them – so while giving tablet style computers is something I think should happen for many reasons, I’m quite challenged to see how they can be used to enable young people to produce. I think the form factor, size, weight, and user experience is pretty perfect for surfing the web, checking email, reading books, and watching videos. I imagine students will keep a calendar, manage their schedules, keep track of their tasks and homework (if there is such a thing any more) on a device like this. It might actually turn out to be a pretty good drawing machine as well (time will tell). But I’m not sure how much typing will actually get done so I’m imagining there won’t be many novels written using a touch screen on a tablet (again time will tell).

Creating a Bridge

I was perplexed initially when Apple release iWork for iPad. I didn’t quite make the connection at first but now I can see a path for how these applications can help bridge the gap between consuming and producing.

We’ll start with applications like Evernote or any other note taking application. I can imagine young people capturing clips – snippets of text, images, or videos and saving them in their note-taking application for use in a document or some research they are doing for a report.

They can then build an outline in Keynote or Pages and place those snippets into the outline and build the structure of their document.

So while, today, I see the iPad as primarily a consumption device, I imagine over time it will gain some ground on the production side as well.

But if you are in the market for a computer and are trying to decide between a laptop and a tablet style computer I think the criterion to be used is simply this:

• Will you primarily be producing on your new computer or
• Will you primarily be consuming on your new computer?

If your answer is producing I would suggest you go the route of a laptop. I would suggest you only consider moving in the other direction if your answer to the question above starts moving towards 70% consumption. If it gets to that point it probably makes more sense to go the tablet route (the caveat being what type of producing you need to do).

I think we’re making another mistake when it comes to the conversations around motivation. One of my basic premises in writing this blog is that we, the people having a conversation about young people and learning, are continually lead in the wrong direction – or down a rabbit hole – by calling what we do in schools education.

That mistake leads to further mistakes. One of those mistakes is motivation. I’ve argued that extrinsic motivation is has potential short term gains (at best) but long term has more potentially damaging impacts.

We know there are movements for paying teachers based on merit – for performance (getting better test scores). We also know about the experiments taking place where young people are being paid to improve their test scores.

That seems to speak pretty loudly that test scores, and more specifically scores on standardized tests, are what is important in schools.

This Time Magazine article,  Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School? describes the research of Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. in which he discovers bribes do work – for behaviors within a young person’s control – but do not necessarily work for things (like grades) that are subjective and young people cannot control.

Daniel Pink, in his video presentation above and in this CNN article argues that paying for performance (extrinsic rewards) work in a very narrow set of circumstances but for most conditions have long term negative impacts. Paying large bonuses do not produce the kind of results one might think they do. He further argues in his newsletter that merit pay for teachers is a pretty bad idea. He lays creating a system that is actually fair and based on good measures is near impossible and suggests a better alternative for improving performance is to simply raise base pay and creating a way to weed out bad teachers.

In my opinion, finding ways to improve the performance of either students or teachers in a system that is doing the wrong thing isn’t worth putting our energy into. I don’t think the results will get us anywhere closer to an educated populace – but then maybe that’s not what our government and the powers that be really want.

If I were to ask you how much time per day children and teens spend with various media – computers, televisions, video games, etc – what would you say?

Would you imagine it is more time than young people spend in a school on any given day?

In a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation called GENERATION M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds (January 2010) they found that young people spend 7.5 hours per day engaging with various media – but because of multi-tasking they pack 10.75 hours of stuff into that 7. 5 hours (and that’s every single day). And that’s the average! 11-14 year olds pack in 11:53 per day (nearly 12 hours) in total media exposure!

In addition, texting is NOT part of this study however 7th to 12th graders report spending about 1 hour and 35 minutes per day sending or receiving text messages.

Here’s a quote from a press release about that study:

With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth, according to a study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation.  Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week).  And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today.  And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today.

Assuming this is true, what do you think the implications are for schools and schooling? 

If young people spend approximately 6 hours per day in the schooling environment (not counting extra-curricular activities) doing what we might call single tasking while spending about 7.5 hours per day multi-tasking with technology what chance do schools have in getting and keeping their attention – let alone getting them to learn anything?

And, young people spend time using media 7.5 hours per day seven days per week, 365 days per year.

This blog has been attempting to explore the difference between schooling and education. One of the key models I’ve developed to explain this difference is something I call the Spheres of Influence model. The concept originated in some work we did with a school district in southern California back in the early 90s.

The model attempts to visualize several things. 1) Schools operate under a control and compliance operating principle. 2) The organizing principle is a hierarchy however that can be shown in a different way 3) All human beings want to have some control over themselves as well their environment. 4) the model attempts to show different spheres of influence from a systems perspective.

The model begins with the young person in the middle and moves out from there. The classroom is the first sphere of influence, then the school, then the school district. The school board has the most influence over the district with the state department of education influencing the boards and the federal department influencing the states.

The image above is a venn diagram showing these spheres of influence. It’s not to scale or meant to show the difference or amount of influence each sphere has over the other. This model by itself can be a catalyst for conversations about improvements and changes in the system that might be beneficial to the overall outcomes of the system.

At the same time we can also draw another model which reflects the influences in the young person’s life outside of the schooling system. These sets of influences can be considered the education environment (note: I will need to define what I mean by schooling vs education in another blog post).

This set of influences again start with the young person in the center. The family is the immediate sphere of influence around the young person, then the neighborhood and the community. Moving out from there is the city, the state, and then the nation.

The image above left is a venn diagram of these spheres of influence.

Note that the specific types of influences are not shown nor are the degrees of influence each sphere has over the other. Media of all types will show up in this sets of influences.

Again this model can serve in a number of capacities when thinking about making changes or improvements to the lives of young people.

In light of the research shown in the report mentioned above one simple way of looking at these things can be time. A young person spends more time in the model I’m calling education then they do in the model I’m calling schooling.

Research has also shown that young people spend up to 16% of their time in the schooling environment while they spend up to 84% of their time in what I’m calling the education environment.

The model at the top of the page, while not precisely to scale, attempts to show the situation described here.

These models, taken separately or together can provide a perspective and some food for thought when engaging in a process exploring influences in young people’s lives as well as changes that might be made in schools in order to be relevant in today’s world.

What do you think is most important in looking at these models? What kinds of things could you imagine schools doing in order to put them in the education business? What questions do these models raise?

What are the implications of the use and influence of technology and media on these models? and what should be changed in the system of schools and schooling to take advantage of technology and media?

Here are several links to the press release and to the report: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds.

Check out the post at

http://www.innovationlabs.com/2010/01/future-of-business-education/

and let me know what you think. Will business schools be able to make the necessary changes to not only keep up with the changes in society but to lead?

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working with several clients focused on Career and Technical Education. One of the projects involved helping State Directors of CTE craft a vision and a set of principles to guide development of CTE into the future.

The other project focused on helping one state understand and define for themselves what it means to be ‘college and career ready’ (a new jargon that is getting more and more focus and will possibly be made into policy nationwide.

During these sessions, as has been the case for more than 10 years now, there was considerable conversation about the need for, and value of, digital learning portfolios.

As I listened to these conversations it became clearer and clearer to me that the perfect platform for wide spread adoption of a digital online portfolio for schools and learning already exists and is used by more than 300 million people. It’s called Facebook.

It’s so obvious to me that every person that has a profile is already used to creating and sharing some part of themselves with other people – mostly friends – but that this platform can easily be morphed into one that will support digital files and media of all types – allowing people of all ages to share and show-off what they have produced in the context of learning.

Facebook was originally conceived as a tool for people involved in a school to stay in touch with other people they knew from that school. As it has morphed into a social media platform for people of all walks of life the concept is very well accepted and well used (people spend more time on Facebook than they do on just about any other web site).

It makes perfect sense to me that every profile can have an option to add a section specifically designed to ‘show-off’ all forms of self-expression and learning.

If I was an app developer I’d develop that app immediately!

In much of what I write about I am advocating for examining our thinking about why schools exist and trying to understand a little more about what we do in schools and schooling. I am not doing this from an academic perspective. I am a concerned citizen that would like the best for each and every young person in the world – no matter what their background, nationality, religious upbringing, or socio-economic status.

I am inspired by the fact that schools and schooling touch each and every young person at some point in their lives. As such schools and schooling would seem to have a huge potential for making positive changes in the world.

That said, the art an article a colleague of mine sent me earlier today reminded me that there are many places throughout this country where young people are not getting anything close to what could be an amazingly wonderful opportunity to learn and grow and be successful in their lives.

This article reminded me of often heard rhetoric about zero tolerance for violence and gang related activities in schools. This rhetoric often results in perpetuating and increasing violence – it doesn’t reduce violence. Our actions – the actions and behaviors demonstrated by adults – in school settings (which include policies and practices) betray our real underlying philosophies. The results speak for themselves.<

Personally I have zero tolerance for anything that is harmful, disrespectful, or violence perpetrated on or at young people.

For several years now I have been scanning the school oriented press and have found several subjects continually discussed which I feel deserve further exploration and/or understanding. I am often surprised by what passes as news or passes as thoughtful considerations about what to do to improve the schooling process. The amount of violence that young people are exposed to and subjected to does not decrease. Bullying is rampant – both in face to face situations and in online communities.

Most of the strategies being employed to address bullying and violence focus on reducing freedoms, reducing choices, limiting options, and controlling behavior. These strategies are not productive and actually harm young people.

The article referred to above has some pretty strong language in it about this situation. Here’s a quote from the article:

Students being miseducated, mistreated, criminalized and arrested through a form of penal pedagogy in locked down schools that resemble prisons is a vicious and incredibly visible index of the degree to which mainstream politicians and the American public have turned their backs on young people in general and poor minority youth in particular. As schools are reconfigured to resemble prisons, crime becomes the central metaphor used to define the school environment while criminalizing the behavior of young people becomes the most valued strategy in mediating the relationship between educators and students. The consequences of these policies for young people suggest not only an egregious abdication of responsibility – as well as reason, judgment and restraint – on the part of administrators, teachers and parents, but also a new role for schools as they become more prison-like and more segregated as a consequence, eagerly adapting to their role as an adjunct of the punishing state. One wonders how many more kids have to be brutalized in their schools and killed outside of schools before the American public wakes up and takes seriously not only their responsibility to young people, but also their commitment to a mode of politics and a future that is on the side of young people rather than a vision shaped largely by the values of the corporate state and the disciplinary apparatuses of the punishing criminal justice system.

Here’s the link to the whole article.

I know this isn’t the experience at every school – but if it’s happening at one school that is one school too many.

As many as 100 young people have already left one of the schools through these means.

The conversation that has begun is about developing something that will although these young people an opportunity to experience more of life and achieve some or all of their goals – while removing the typecasting and stigma of an ‘uneducated’ person.

I applaud this and really, truly hope that something good can come of it. It even looks like some school personnel are willing to participate in this conversation.

I know it’s hard as someone involved in the schooling system to continue to want to do good – and do the best you can – while all around you there are challenges and criticisms about what’s going on. Much of what’s going on is not your fault. At the same time much of what is going on is actually harming young people.

Do Schools Harm Young People?

The following is part of a note I wrote to my friends in this community. This is the first time I’ve been public in this explicit a way with one of the most important insights I’ve had about schools and schooling.

I am only posting one side of the conversation here. I am not including the many emails that have gone back and forth about why this kind of thing happens (profiling and forced drop-outs) but I am posting my response which refers to how and why I believe some of this activity might come about. I am open to any and all comments and further conversation about this.

Here’s part of my email:

One of the clearest and most powerful ways I can communicate about how schooling and education are different is by using the example of American Indian Boarding Schools. The methodologies used in those schools are the very same methodologies used in every public school in the United States today – in varying degrees and some less than others. We really have to understand that public schools are not healthy for young people. They never were intended to do anything like what we have talked about and what you are talking about doing this evening and with the entire community inclusion and transformation process.

The same tactics and intentions were used in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, to destroy existing native cultures and South Africa during apartheid to control and limit blacks from getting anywhere beyond the ghettos. Schools are tools for white oppressors to dominate and control the poor, native people and people of color – and anyone from another culture.

No one that I know would admit to this publicly. That’s one reason why I’m only copying a few of you.

A few of the tactics that are evident (and this is not an exhaustive list) in the use of schools to destroy people and cultures are:

• taking responsibility away from the parents and family
• separating children from their homes and their parents
• forcing the use of another and non-familiar language (English)
• not allowing elements of existing cultures to be present – be it language, dress, or cultural idiosyncrasies
• celebrating sameness and removing difference
• corporal punishment and force for non-compliance
• grading, ranking, dividing, profiling, and segregating children by achievement or any criteria
• a forced and controlled curriculum
• mandatory attendance
• separating the school from the rest of the community (insulating the school from the community)
• social injustice and inequity

The racial profiling that has been discussed that is happening Capital is likely happening in every school everywhere to some degree or another. This is a natural part of the “schooling” process and one of the reasons I have harped on making this distinction so hard. Needless to say it’s harmful to individuals and ultimately very harmful to society.

What Miguel has suggested for the conversation this evening – and for the larger conversation – is about helping young people feel wanted and to feel a part of something that helps them develop their own identities and self-expression while in the context of learning and serving. These few concepts are anti-thetical to school and schooling and CANNOT be a part of what we know of as school. Something else has to be created to do that.

There is one more thing for this short rave. The young people that are being pushed out and/or dropping out are the smart ones. I doubt that many people around them can see how smart they really are (although John G made reference to this in one of his emails). These young people deserve our respect and our best thinking and resources.

This conversation you will be having this evening and the ones that follow could be the most important conversations any of us have ever had. The seeds for brilliance are there.

Why would it be a surprise that people learn more when they have choice, can take their time, and learn what they want to learn when they want to learn it?

Or why would it be a surprise that a blended situation – some online and some face to face – would produce better results than just one or the other?

What is surprising is that the Department of Education would publish such a study.

To me this is looking in the wrong place for something that isn’t really that important. Online courses simply replicate a methodology that is really only valuable to a small percentage of the population. Rote learning or drill and practice isn’t really an optimal strategy for either online or face to face learning. So replicating what is done in the classrooms in an online environment isn’t any better. What would be interesting to me would be seeing a change in the methods used to learn in either situation. What about experiences? What about making connections to the rest of life? What about theory? What about learning for deeper meaning and wisdom?

An anonymous person commented that there is research that says there are positive effects of incentive based programs. I forwarded that response to David and asked him if he was interested in responded. He sent me the following:

Thanks for passing along my article to those who might listen. Unfortunately we are fighting a losing battle with extrinsic manipulation. It is so easy to implement these programs it is hard to stop politians and administrators. The new pick for Education Secretary Arne Duncan is also an advocate of pay-for-grades and implemented such a program in Chicago. I am fearful we may see an escalation of this thinking during the Obama administration.

I read through each of the studies the person who responded offered. None were credible comparisons of the blatant manipulation offered in the Chicago Public Schools or in Washington D.C.

Offering girls in Kenya scholarships to continue to go to school if they work hard does not compare to throwing money at kids who get A’s, in a fabricated rating system, when they are already guarenteed a free education: Apples and Oranges comparisons. The study from Texas cited on paying students to take AP courses I believe lacks credibility since in order to get the predicted results they wanted they changed systemic factors such as opening AP courses to anyone interested instead of doing what they had always done by limiting class size to class rank. This is only one of a multitude of problems in this study.

The real problem is not how to make a better buggy whip, but should we be making them to begin with. I know I could produce the same positive correlation to improved work by beating children if they do not work hard. But, should we adopt that as a program and then start improving it? Automating or improving a bad process just means you can do something very bad quickly and to a larger number of people. Maybe Harvard would like to promote that study since they seem to be the source of promoting these pay-for-performance programs. I like the line in the movie Jurassic park that goes something like this, “You were so busy trying to see if you could you forgot to think about if you should!”

All of these types of programs and studies take time away from studying and fixing the real problems. No child will say I don’t work hard at school because they do not pay me enough, but they will say it’s boring or my teacher dosn’t care. Who will work on these problems? Let’s work on the real problems preventing high quality work and effort instead manufacturing new problems.

I’m interested in hearing from others about this very important topic.

Sure there has been a push to get technology into schools – but that technology has been viewed and used under the same fundamental operating principle that is driving all schooling (control and compliance) and the methodologies technology has been applied to are the same fundamental concepts as traditional teaching (sit and get; drill and practice).

There is a large amount of data from many sectors of our economy and society that demonstrates increasing rates of change moving towards exponential rates of change. We see increasing rates of change in global population, in consumption of resources, and increasing pollution. We see the same types of changes in the use of technologies like fax machines, cell phones, computers, and the internet. The amount of data being digitized and stored on computers somewhere in the world has followed a similar curve.

Over the last 100 years the system of public schooling (including colleges and universities) has changed some but very little compared to the rest of society. This gap, which we can call an Opportunity Gap, continues to grow. The longer we wait to make necessary changes the worse it will get. And this gap actually explains a lot of what people are experiencing today in public schooling.

Every organization in the world is facing the challenge of managing within this environment of rapid change. In the competitive environment the amount of pressure on companies to adopt and stay competitive is quite significant. Product life cycles for consumer electronics companies in some competitive markets have shrunk from 18 – 24 months to around 6 months and some companies complete the entire cycle from concept, through development, through to the end of a products life in that time period.

More significant for leaders and managers of organizations (especially large ones) is having an understanding of the impact this kind of environment has on ‘how they manage.’ How you manage in an organization that is moving fast – staying up to speed with the rate of change – is different from how you manage in an organization that is moving slower. And managing a slower moving organization that is attempting to close the Opportunity Gap is different still.

Partly because of the fact that schools have been kept separate from the rest of society, and partly because of the slow moving changes within the schooling system, the managers and leaders in that environment have not felt the same kinds of pressures as business leaders. Until recently society has not demanded these leaders to have the same kind of competence. But that luxury is quickly being eroded. Pressure from the outside is growing and the skill sets of school leaders will be challenged significantly.

Here’s a short video that makes the argument for re-inventing schools better than I could with pages or writing:

As noted in one of the first posts on this blog, it was back in 1999 that the first ideas for writing a book emerged. This first inspiration came after visiting with a small group of teachers and having conversations about topics I had thought were common knowledge (topics I had been talking to colleagues about for nearly 20 years at that point).

I was working in a unique and powerful learning environment that reflected an integration of physical space, technology and process. During the conversation we talked about the rate of change, complexity, structures and their influence on behavior, as well as the brain and how humans learn. The original name for this blog, There is No One Right Answer, was an attempt to break through what I call “the right answer syndrome” and get people to think.

Those same topics discussed back in 1999 are still, to this day, not common knowledge – or not knowledge enough to make a difference in what we are doing in our schools. Over the last ten years I have continued to ponder why making necessary changes and improvements in schools and schooling is difficult/challenging. Today my core theory is that most people make the mistake of confusing schooling with education. This mistake is prevalent around the world, in every country, in every walk of life, in governmental circles, in business circles, in churches and religious institutions, and in homes and villages.

My theory is that real, substantive, and necessary changes will not be able to be made until the people involved in schools and schooling make the mental shift and see that schooling is not equal to education. Until that time as that mental shift is made the necessary actions and requisite behaviors will not be made.

Hence, the new name of this blog, Schooling ≠ Education.

I will be persistent in urging people to adopt this point of view and this understanding in the desire to help people see that we will never get the kind of educational experience we truly want for our children unless we make this change first.

Not familiar with Alltop? Check out their site – they aggregate news and blogs under specific topic headings. Check it out.

Here’s the area where I am listed – http://education.alltop.com/ (it’s at the very bottom – but hey, at least I’m there).

Quality Learning: Paying students to learn?
By David P. Langford

In the past, I believed most educators understood the inherent differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and valued the latter over the former. However, this does not seem to be the case. Pay-for-grades, gold stars, student-of-the-month programs and attendance rewards are all too prevalent extrinsic motivators used to push students to do a better job. I’ve found an overwhelming amount of evidence that these schemes do not work in the long term, and can even dangerously affect attitudes toward learning. (Alfie Kohn does an excellent job of compiling the evidence against extrinsic motivators in his books No Contest and Punishment by Reward.) There is no lack of evidence that pay-for-grades programs do not work, so why do schools continue to use them? The short answer is: because they appear to work.

Extrinsic rewards and punishments always seem to work if you do not count the costs. Studies have shown that you can get people to do almost anything if you make the motivator—payment or punishment–strong enough. For example, would you sabotage a colleague for ten dollars? Most people would answer “no.” But what if I upped the stakes? Would you do it for one thousand dollars? Ten thousand? One million? If I continued to increase the reward, most people would agree sooner or later–especially if they got to pick the colleague.

The same principle is true with students. If you pay students to get good grades, more students will get good grades for a while. Very quickly students who were only working to get the reward will discover that it is hard work to maintain good grades, and they will decide it isn’t worth the effort unless the reward is increased, because the motivation for getting good grades is not to learn, but to be rewarded. The concept of “learning” to improve one’s self never comes into play with the reward system. Just as teacher unions negotiate for higher pay, so student “unions” will eventually want to negotiate for a higher reward.

Extrinsic Theory: Improved Grades = Reward

Most always these reward schemes are touted as a “new trial program,” as if the idea of extrinsic motivation is a new one. In Washington D.C., Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who is making a valiant effort to improve a failing system, was asked why they implemented a “new” program that pays students to get good grades and attendance and she responded, “When critics say that it’s sad to pay students, I say it’s sad that only 8% of D.C. eighth-graders are proficient in math. People in the suburbs use incentives for their kids all the time, like giving them $10.00 for an ‘A.’ Kids in our program can save money for college or get a bank account.” (Parade Magazine, November 16, 2008, p. 26.) It’s unfortunate that we have such huge education gaps in this country and I am certain Chancellor Rhee feels the need to do something about it, but the bottom line is that two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because some parents bribe their children to get better grades does not mean we should apply the same principle to all students. We can easily sabotage motivation through the best efforts of well meaning people.

If the pay-for-grades theory is correct, there should not exist a single example of students succeeding on their own. Yet there are thousands–if not millions– of students who work hard because of a love of learning. Dr. W. Edwards Deming often stated that it only takes a single example to invalidate a theory. Having only 8% of students proficient in math is a dismal statistic to face, but the problem is in the system–not the students. Manipulating students with money will improve some students’ performance for a short period of time, but what happens to students when you can no longer afford to pay them and their attachment to learning is for money? Smothering intrinsic motivation is a cost too great for even one student.

Intrinsic Motivation: Acquired Knowledge = Joy in Learning

When learning rewards and punishments are eliminated, systemic performance results will always return to what they were before extrinsic manipulation. Remember, 98% of the problem comes from the system, and students have little or no control over systemic factors. Manipulating student extrinsic motivators does not address the basic cause(s) of the problem. Try asking students with a Force Field Analysis to identify driving and preventing forces of learning, then prioritize the preventing forces with an NGT. You might be shocked to realize that existing factors preventing learning have nothing to do with lack of pay-for-grades. One of the most misguided efforts of quality improvement is trying to improve something that should be eliminated, such as automating grading systems, increasing training for behavior modification or improving the pay-for-grades program. I can guarantee you, in low performing schools there are fundamental problems with:

Teacher training and support
Leadership and management
Process Management
Communication
The way schools are built and maintained
The way technology is being used or not used
Funding for classroom books and materials
Vision and purpose

One of the reasons many extrinsic motivation programs have stayed around for so long and are continually resurrected and improved is because they are convenient for the people managing the system. They keep the focus off leadership and mistakenly place it on the people working in the system. In every education system I have consulted–from the U.S. Naval Academy to primary and secondary schools in the U.S. and Australia to pre-schools in Argentina–the story is the same: we blame students for poor performance without first considering the systemic causes. In psychology this is known as the fundamental attribution error.

If you want a significantly different result, you must first change the system. I applaud Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C. for trying to improve a broken system, and I offer my help. She has made many excellent systemic changes in D.C. such as closing 23 under-populated schools and paying for librarians, art, music and P.E. teachers at remaining schools. These systemic efforts will help to improve student motivation for learning.

Systemic problems are normally out of the circle of influence of students and none of these systemic problems will go away simply by bribing students to work harder within a failing system. Leaders must learn to, as Dr. Deming once said, “work smarter, not harder.” If you want a different result, try changing the system and watch what happens to behavior, instead of continually doing what we have always done by leaving the system alone and trying to change the behavior of the people in it.

©2008 Langford International Inc. All rights reserved.
e-Mail: office@langfordlearning.com
12742 Canyon Creek Road, Molt, MT 59057
Phone: 406-628-2227 Fax: 406-628-2228

Drill and Practice is an instructional strategy developed and used for much of the history of schools and schooling. Many people feel the practice is out of date and not appropriate for meaningful learning to take place. On the other side of the argument, people that still support the idea of drill and practice as an effective teaching methodology suggest that repetition is necessary for the brain to ‘wire’ itself appropriately.

From a web site on instructional strategies:

As an instructional strategy, drill & practice is familiar to all educators… Drill-and-practice, like memorization, involves repetition of specific skills, such as addition and subtraction, or spelling. To be meaningful to learners, the skills built through drill-and-practice should become the building blocks for more meaningful learning.
http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/drill/index.html

From another web site:

Development of basic knowledge and skills to the necessary levels of automatic and errorless performance requires a great deal of drill and practice. . . . drill and practice activities should not be slighted as “low level.” Carried out properly, they appear to be just as essential to complex and creative intellectual performance as they are to the performance of a virtuoso violinist.
http://www.audiblox2000.com/repetition.htm

I believe the accelerating focus on testing has shifted teaching methodologies to be more akin to drill and test. Tests are taking up more time and focus in the school setting. Many people have complained that teachers are teaching to the test at the cost of learning.

So the old method of drill and practice is giving way to the new method of drill and test. Learning suffers as a consequence.

From a Carnegie Mellon article:

A recurring criticism of tests used in high-stakes decision making is that they distort instruction and force teachers to “teach to the test.” The criticism is not without merit. The public pressure on students, teachers, principals, and school superintendents to raise scores on high-stakes tests is tremendous, and the temptation to tailor and restrict instruction to only that which will be tested is almost irresistible.

further it says:

There is a lesson here for teachers and assessment specialists alike. The tension between the instructional and assessment communities, as well the pejorative connotations that “teaching to the test” entails, will continue unabated so long as testing and assessment are seen as something quite apart from instruction and learning, rather than an integrated reflection of what was intentionally taught. To paraphrase A. G. Rud of Purdue University, what is needed is a deliberate attempt on the part of all parties to link curriculum, instruction, assessment, and standards in a more generative and even transparent way.

Disclaimer: I’m not advocating for either of these methodologies. In fact, I don’t recommend either methodology as being the right thing to do in today’s environment. The purpose of pointing out what I think is happening is to support people to make conscious choices – to know what they are doing and why.

In today’s world I recommend a whole person and brain based approach to learning – with the focus on learning NOT on teaching. Drill and practice is a good method for memorization but as I’ve said in another post memorizing is not the same as learning.

1. metal detectors
2. teachers carrying guns
3. creating a positive connection between young people and adults

As many people know metal detectors are becoming a common site in schools these days. Why is that? What does that say about our schools and our society? And the bigger question is, do metal detectors create a safe environment for young people?

In the practice of accelerated learning there is a saying that, “everything speaks.” So what kinds of things might metal detectors say to young people as they enter their school? Do you think it says to them that they are safe? I can imagine metal detectors send another message to young people that they can’t be trusted – and that other people coming into the school cannot be trusted.

In a recent post I showed pictures of hospitals, prisons, and schools. By adding metal detectors schools take one step closer to being a like a prison.

Taking that way of thinking one step further, a Texas school district recently approved the carrying of hand-guns by teachers. Believe it or not, the Texas Governor has given his support of this. Now what kind of environment does that create? And what does that say to the young people in that environment?

Guns don’t kill people, people using guns kill people. And what about ‘mistakes or accidents?’ What happens when some creative young person figures out a way to steal a teacher’s gun they have ‘hidden’ on them or in their classroom? Having a gun in an environment where young people are should be a crime – not a sanctioned activity.

This type of thinking and behavior on the part of adults is so far away from the thinking that is required if we are to develop healthy and wholesome participants in a democratic society. But maybe that isn’t the goal or interest of the people involved in the Texas school district?

What is the purpose of the public schooling system?

North Texas school district will let teachers carry guns
HARROLD, Texas — A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to allow teachers and staff to pack guns for protection when classes begin later this month, a newspaper reported.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry indicated Monday that he supports a school district’s decision to allow teachers and staff to pack guns for protection when classes start this month.

From the ASCD newsletter on educating the Whole Child:

Another good example is the use of metal detectors in schools. In the wake of horrific, terrifying school shootings, districts around the United States added metal detectors at school entrances as a deterrent to those who might be carrying weapons. Many adults in schools and surrounding communities feel safer as a result of this strategy. Yet, no less authorities than the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education say that metal detectors are unlikely to prevent a serious incident of school violence. Rather, they suggest that schools create a climate of safety and respect, free from bullying and filled with opportunities for adults and students to have meaningful relationships and open communication.

» No, whole child education is not easy, and coming close doesn’t quite count. We need your voice to speak out for real policy changes to ensure that each child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. Visit the Policy Blackboard, and use our advocacy tips in your community!

Also from that newsletter, this quote taken from a report on the threat assessment in schools (page 6).

“In an educational setting where there is a climate of safety, adults and students respect each other. This climate is defined and fostered by students having a positive connection to at least one adult in authority. In such a climate, students develop the capacity to talk and openly share their concerns without fear of shame and reprisal.”

School board brings back paddling with parental permission
By JULIE HUBBARD – The Telegraph in Macon
JEFFERSONVILLE, GA. –Twiggs County principals will be pulling out their dusty paddles when school resumes and using them when students act up.
At least that’s the school system’s aim.

Will the public school system ever provide something that young people are interested in and want to participate in? Or does mandatory – by law – mean “do anything to force young people to sit in their chairs, pay attention, and regurgitate bits of data?”

The California legislature has passed a law (awaiting the governor’s signature) authorizing and encouraging school districts to provide non monetary “incentives to middle ad and high school students for achievement or improvement on standardized tests.”

Here’s an article about this.

Buildings are among the most telling artifacts of what we believe, what we value, and what we think. Western Europe’s great cathedrals built in the 12th to 16th centuries leave no doubt about what was most important in their time. While our society in the 21st century is far more diverse, our buildings will speak just as clearly to future generations—including the kids who attend our schools.

What do our school buildings say about what we think is really important? What do schools being built in 2008 around Frederick W. Taylor’s and William Wirt’s ideas from 1908 say to kids about their futures? What do schools that mimic the architecture of other centuries say to the children within them working on digital devices? Are our school buildings saying what we want to convey to teachers and students?

Schools are inherently about the future. We design school facilities to house the education of students for their futures, and we plan those facilities to last for decades. Our challenge is heightened by the most rapid change in all of human history—Moore’s Law, which defines the exponential growth in digital technology, is quickening the pace of change in every aspect of our society. In planning new or renovated school facilities, educators and architects are “futurists’’—the question is whether we recognize and fulfill the responsibility thrust upon us.

Form the Free Dictionary: 

school·ing (skooling) n.

1. Instruction or training given at school.
2. Education obtained through experience or exposure: Her tumultuous childhood was a unique schooling.
3. The training of a horse or a horse and rider in equitation.

From Webster:

Schooling \School”ing\, n.

Discipline; reproof; reprimand; as, he gave his son a good schooling. –Sir W. Scott.

School \School\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Schooled}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Schooling}.]
To tutor; to chide and admonish; to reprove; to subject to systematic discipline; to train.

 

From Wikipedia:

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization). Education means ‘to draw out’, facilitating realization of self-potential and latent talents of an individual. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology —often more profound than they realize—though family teaching may function very informally.

From Wikipedia on Schooling: 

Schools and their teachers have always been under pressure — for instance, pressure to cover the curriculum, to perform well in comparison to other schools, and to avoid the stigma of being “soft” or “spoiling” toward students. Forms of discipline, such as control over when students will and will not speak, and normalized behaviour, such as raising one’s hand to speak, are imposed in the name of greater efficiency. Practitoners of critical pedagogy point out that such disciplinary measures have no positive effect on student learning; indeed, some would argue that disciplinary practices actually detract from learning since they undermine students’ individual dignity and sense of self-worth, the latter occupying a more primary role in students’ hierarchy of needs.

Canadian university faces off with digital generation
By Natasha Elkington
Thu Mar 20, 3:02 PM ET
TORONTO (Reuters) – A Canadian university has instilled a culture of fear by threatening to expel a student for cheating because he set up an online study group on Facebook, critics said this week.

Today 6,000 talented young people will drop out of school.

Today over 9 million children do not have health insurance.

Today 12 young people will commit suicide.

Today 960 children will be victims of a violent crime.

Today only 11 states require credits in a foreign language for students to graduate.

Today African American students are 14 percent of those in school, but only 7 percent of those taking Advanced Placement exams.

Today two-thirds of high school students will be bored in at least one class.

Today 15 million students who need mentors do not have them.

These statistics should make any educator think. Not only should they think about ‘what’ they are doing but they should think about ‘why’ they are doing it. I wonder what good, well intentioned people that are involved in the schooling system say to each other or to themselves when they see the results that this system produces. Do they honestly think we are doing good? Do they think this system as it is currently conceived and operating is something worth continuing?

They must. The aim of the current system must be something they feel comfortable with and can say in some rational fashion that we are moving towards achieving. As stated in a previous post the aim of the current system, whether consciously stated or unconsciously practiced, is to ‘school the population in the basics so they can be good citizens and reduce crime.’

I’m a student of Dr. Deming’s theory of management. He advocated continual, never ending improvement. If the school system we have had any interest in improvement would we be experiencing these kinds of statistics? Since the school system is not continually improving by definition we can say that teachers, administrators and the system itself are NOT LEARNING.

Isn’t it fascinating that there is this entire system that is supposedly designed for ‘learning’ that is engaging millions of people and demonstrates no learning as a consequence of the activities of the system. Doesn’t that make one think? It gets me to think about what is really going on?

This post is inspired by some articles from the ASCD about teaching the whole child. Most of what I’ve read I would whole heartily agree with and support.

This article (link below) asks the question about whether we should really be teaching people to think. The fact that this question is being asked would lead me to believe (or confirm my belief) that thinking is NOT a priority in the current system.

Cover the Material—Or Teach Students to Think?
Marion Brady

To move beyond rote memorization and use a full range of thinking skills, students need to tackle issues straight out of the complex world in which they live.

So here’s today’s project, kids. Get in small groups and put together flowcharts tracing the possible long-range consequences of a new state energy conservation law that says you can’t use any kind of motorized vehicle to travel less than one mile.”

This article goes on to advocate connecting the learning experience to the real world:

Real and Rigorous
A focus on real-world issues can alter the entire culture of a school or school system. It enables students and teachers to experience the “meatiness” of the direct study of reality. It’s unfailingly relevant. It shows respect for students, who become more than mere candidates for the next higher grade. It levels the playing field by not privileging those with superior symbol manipulation skills. It disregards the arbitrary, artificial boundaries of the academic disciplines. It’s easily applicable to the wider world. And it shifts the emphasis from cover-the-material memory work to a full range of thinking skills.

From another article in the same issue of the ASCD magazine, the author is suggesting we need to have a thinking discipline.

What the Future Requires
Today, the information revolution and the ubiquity of search engines have rendered having information much less valuable than knowing how to think with information in novel situations. To thrive in contemporary societies, young people must develop the capacity to think like experts. They must also be able to integrate disciplinary perspectives to understand new phenomena in such fields as medicine, bioethics, climate science, and economic development. In doing so, the disciplined mind resists oversimplification and prepares students to embrace the complexity of the modern world.

Personally I find these arguments to be both encouraging and deeply troubling.

I am encouraged that some educators are advocating for a real, rigorous and connected experience in the learning process. I am troubled that this argument will go no where in the current system.

Here’s another argument which I find both encouraging and troubling. There is a movement building that would have the current system changed to put the focus on 21st Century Skills instead of the basics. 

Voters urge teaching of 21st-century skills
Poll suggests ‘back-to-basics’ approach to education is not enough for nation’s citizens By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News 
The majority of U.S. voters believe schools are not preparing students to compete in the new global economy. In yet another sign that momentum is building for the teaching of so-called “21st-century skills” in the nation’s classrooms, results of a new poll indicate that voters overwhelmingly agree: The skills students need to succeed in the workplace of today are notably different from what they needed 20 years ago.

I’m encouraged that people are aware of the fact we need young people to have a different set of skills and knowledge in order to be successful in the 21st Century. I’m discouraged because changing the ‘what’ of schooling is just like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship is going down if we don’t change the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ as well. Just changing what is taught will only get us more of the same types of statistics listed above.

Study: Texas school system fosters low graduation rates
A study by Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin shows that Texas’ public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates.

By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students, the study found that 60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of English-as-a-second language students did not graduate within five years.

Each year, Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation. Researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent.

The exit of low-achieving students created the appearance of rising test scores and of a narrowing of the achievement gap between white and minority students, thus increasing the schools’ ratings, the study showed.

What’s more, the study indicated that the higher the stakes and the longer such an accountability system governs schools, the more school personnel view students not as children to educate but as potential liabilities or assets for their school’s performance indicators, their own careers or their school’s funding.

Among other findings, the study showed a relationship between the increasing number of dropouts and schools’ rising accountability ratings, finding that the accountability system allows principals to hold back students who are deemed at risk of reducing school scores — but a high proportion of students retained this way end up dropping out.

On the one hand there is ‘evidence’ (please note I am saying that with tongue in cheek!) that incentives are good and help raise test scores. In that same hand there are programs where students are being paid to get good grades or test scores and there are programs to ‘incent’ teachers to raise test scores by giving them pay raises or some kind of bonus. There are people that point to statistics that these things are not only working but they are good. I can imagine these things ‘work’ for some short-term gain but it’s another thing to say they are ‘good.’

Tying Cash Awards to AP-Exam Scores Seen as Paying Off
Is there anything wrong with receiving $500 for a test score? What if that inducement seems to help pull up SAT scores and college-enrollment rates among disadvantaged students?

In the other hand we see recent research that shows this focus on high stakes testing is causing a shift in teaching behavior that results in leaving lots of students behind.

Congratulations on starting your new job with the Gates Foundation!

I appreciate that you are willing to turn your attention from the world of technology to focus on solving some of the world’s most challenging and difficult problems. That is not only admirable but extremely important work. Thank you for taking it on!

Your good friend Warren Buffet says in his rule number one for investors, “never lose money.” I would ask you to consider, as you take your new job, that you make a rule for your philanthropy to “never waste money.”

Education is one of the core areas being targeted in the US program of the Gates Foundation. As part of that focus the foundation has given millions of dollars towards the improvement of public schools and schooling. Putting money towards improving the public school system in the United States is a waste of money. It is also a waste of time and energy.

Our public school system as currently conceived cannot and will not achieve the kinds of outcomes the Foundation along with many countless others wish it would. This system cannot, as currently conceived, create the right kinds of environments and circumstances for young people to have the knowledge and skills needed for being successful in the 21st Century. Things like critical thinking and problem solving skills, creativity and innovation skills, and communication and collaboration skills (as you know these are just a few of the kinds of knowledge and skills people of all ages need to be successful in this day and age). What we need is to rethink and redesign the concept of school and schooling and put money into the creation of new models that will achieve these kinds of results.

The purpose of our public school system must be re-conceived. Reinventing schools and schooling for success in the 21st Century is more important than putting a man on the moon was in the 1960s. And it will take just as much if not more collaboration, time, energy and money. I cannot think of a more important challenge. Our public school system touches every single person in the country and has the potential to leverage our talents, knowledge and skills into solving all other problems facing society.

The money the Gates Foundation has already spent towards making improvements in our schools and schooling is not insignificant. Starting today I believe the place to put that money is where it can make the most difference – and that is in developing and conceiving new models of education, learning, and if still deemed relevant, schools and schooling.

The important and relevant education and learning taking place in this country today is happening via a combination of family life, social interactions and the various forms of media bombarding young people today. There is very little to no important learning taking place in our schools. Sure, there might be the few bright spots on an otherwise dark and dreary scene. But having a few bright spots is not enough and should only serve to inspire us to do more. Not more of the same but more of the ‘different.’

Please consider shifting the focus of your investing towards people and organizations that have the capacity and interest in creating new models of education, schools and schooling. These models can and must be developed simultaneous to the continuation of the ongoing work on the current system. Your money, and the money of the Gates Foundation, could be better spent helping to develop this new system.

I sincerely wish that you enjoy your new job and continue to make an impact on these ‘interesting times’ we are living in!

Michael

This map shows teacher quality, crime, health, safety, building maintenance and other data.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/interactives/dcschools/scorecard.html

As I’ve written before, the purpose of a system is what it does. What a system does betrays the thinking of the people involved in it. Much of that thinking is known and purposeful but some of it is not known.

I’ve also written before that we have a ‘school system’ NOT an ‘education system.’ The distinction is important. The free public school system is designed to ‘school’ the population (the masses). Even venerable private schools are falling to the same thinking that drives the rest of schooling.

Here’s a story in the NY Times about a private school that finds one of its well liked and valuable teachers being censored by the very institution that professes to ‘educate’ its students. The purpose of a system is what it does – NOT what it says it does. This school that professes to educate is CHOOSING to lose this valuable asset (and several other teachers).

When it comes right down to it this is about people. It’s about how people think, what they want, and the values they have about life, about people, about freedom, and about challenging the status quo.

Private School, Public Fuss
By ALLEN SALKIN • Published: November 18, 2007
IT was an “O captain! My captain!” moment.
‘GREAT IS THE TRUTH’ A respected New York school gets some unwanted attention.
Andrew Trees had been informed that his contract at the Horace Mann School, one of the nation’s most academically respected high schools, would not be renewed, and this May he was in his final days. A history teacher who had taught at the private school for six years, Mr. Trees had written a satirical novel, “Academy X,” about an elite school where students and parents resort to bribery and blackmail to ensure Ivy League college admission.

Here’s an article from ABC News that says 10% of the high schools in the US are ‘dropout factories.’ In this article the author is defining a dropout factory as one in which no more than 60% of the students that start the school actually finish (graduate).

I had read at some point that the dropout rate in the US was around 30% (I can’t remember the source of that). That figure may be significantly influenced by schools that are mentioned here in this article – but whatever the figure actually is educators must come to terms with the fact that schools as we know them today produce a significant amount of students that do not finish.

1 in 10 Schools Are ‘Dropout Factories’
By NANCY ZUCKERBROD AP Education Writer • WASHINGTON Oct 30, 2007 (AP)
It’s a nickname no principal could be proud of: “Dropout Factory,” a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That dubious distinction applies to more than one in 10 high schools across America.

In my humble opinion one of the ways to improve these numbers is to make the education system and schools more engaging and connected to the rest of life. The following brief story gives a good example of making schools engaging and meeting young people where they are while at the same time increasing enthusiasm for learning.

This article shows a great example of doing just that:

Hip Hop High: Rhythm and Lyrics Teach Everything from English to Algebra
The musical language of the street has new fans: teachers, who are using it as a classroom tool. • by Eric Hellweg
Like many sixteen-year-olds, Amir Ali spends a lot of time after school talking with friends about sports, girls, and music — specifically, hip-hop music. But last year, during his sophomore year at Lynwood High School, in Lynwood, California, Ali noticed a drastic shift in these spirited afternoon after-school conversations.

As I’ve suggested in previous posts, the ‘curriculum’ is not as important as the ‘method’ employed. We must use the knowledge we have gained about how people learn, use our understanding of the brain as a complex organism and employ the tenants of experiential/project based learning if we have a chance of turning the ‘schooling’ system into an ‘education’ system.

Here’s the article referred to above:

Voters urge teaching of 21st-century skills
Poll suggests ‘back-to-basics’ approach to education is not enough for nation’s citizens
By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News
Results of a new poll commissioned by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills shows the vast majority of U.S. voters believe students are ill-equipped to compete in the global learning environment, and that schools must incorporate 21st-century skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication and self-direction, and computer and technology skills into the curriculum. But the upcoming presidential election, researchers say, presents a perfect opportunity to charter a new path to success for America’s students.

Here’s a quote from the article:

A teacher’s speech is “the commodity she sells to an employer in exchange for her salary,” the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in January. “The Constitution does not enable teachers to present personal views to captive audiences against the instructions of elected officials.”

I wonder how many professional teachers working today would know this? I wonder, if they did know this, if they would say they comply with the law and DO NOT express personal opinions in the classroom?

If I interpret this properly this ‘law’ says that a teacher must ONLY say what they are approved to say by the local School Board. I presume the local School Board takes their mandates from the State School Board, which in turn takes their cues from the Federal Board of Education.

What does this mean to the anyone that is interested in changing education (or transforming education)?

Here’s the article:

Supreme Court denies hearing for fired ‘honk for peace’ teacher
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer • Tuesday, October 2, 2007
An elementary-school teacher who was dismissed after telling her class on the eve of the Iraq war that “I honk for peace” lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal Monday.
The justices, without comment, denied a hearing to Deborah Mayer, who had appealed lower-court decisions upholding an Indiana school district’s refusal to renew her contract in June 2003. The most-recent ruling, by a federal appeals court in Chicago, said teachers in public schools have no constitutional right to express personal opinions in the classroom.

And, if one is involved in education something like this would again make it seem like the only people that know what is good for young people are the people in charge – not the teacher in the classroom.

Taking this to the extreme, as I have suggested in previous posts, the education system is not set up to teach people to think. It also appears that the system isn’t designed for people in the system to think either.

Given the brain research and the knowledge that all people learn in their own unique ways, it is no wonder there are so many young people ‘failing’ this current system. It would be too simplistic on my part to suggest the solution is simply that many of those failing the system simply learn in a different manner and the educators working with them haven’t taken the time to find that style and work with it.

I just read an article about a conference held in South Dakota in which the topic/focus was strategies for teaching Native Americans. As one might imagine some people argued for a strict disciplined approach to academics while others argued for a more culturally sensitive approach.

I had been thinking a lot about educating native peoples – even before I read this article. My intuition has been that putting native people in a classroom, sitting them in rows, forcing them to sit still and then pushing content at them is just wrong. This ‘style’ or ‘method’ of teaching/learning does not take into consideration the cultural background let alone the learning style of the learners.

It appears to me that the way this subject (educating native people) is being approached is a perfect example of forcing a way of working (learning) onto people instead of designing a system that works for the people in it. I can imagine, if we really cared about the education of Native People, that we would design something completely different from what we see today.

Here is the article:

Varied Strategies Sought for Native American Students
Some focus on culture while others emphasize strict academic approach in raising achievement.
By Mary Ann Zehr – Rapid City, S.D.
Educators working to improve the performance of Native American students are struggling to find the right balance between core academics and attention to native culture as a way to help engage and motivate children, according to those at a multistate gathering on the topic here last week.

The unintended consequences of creating the free public school system is the dumbing down of the majority of the population rather than improving the lot of the minority of the population. Literacy levels in this country have actually declined since the introduction of free public schooling. Why is that?

I remember reading a book by John Gatto (former teacher of the year) called Dumbing Us Down: the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling). I’m sorry to say that beyond ‘getting it’ on a superficial level I really missed the point that John was making.

Schools are designed to confuse, and to ‘school’ people – not educate them!

Duh. I guess I really am a slow learner. It brings tears to my eyes to re-read some of what he wrote in that book. The book I wanted to write has already been written!

As I’ve mentioned before there are so many contradicting studies showing results for (or no results) for various aspects of the education system. Here are two studies – one showing improvement in achievement when merit pay plans are used. The other shows that incentives don’t keep teachers from being absent from school.

I’ve argued previously that incentives are NOT good for schools. I believe that incentives, merit pay, pay for performance, and other such measures are a clear signal that there is something wrong with the education system. These measures have been used in business for years and there as well I see them as a sign that there is something wrong with the way the business is managed and run.

Why is it that the Education System is just now grabbing on to these methods? I believe it is because making real and substantive changes are NOT part of the plan nor interest of the people involved in education and education policy. Using incentives and the like are just one more distraction from actually doing something useful to help young people learn.

Study: Student achievement improves under merit-pay plans
Student achievement improves when their teachers are paid for their performance, according to an analysis published in the September issue of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. “The evidence certainly suggests when you offer incentives, you’re likely to get better results,” said co-author Michael J. Podgursky, a University of Missouri-Columbia professor of economics. ScienceDaily (9/4)

Florida incentive programs don’t keep teachers in school
Florida schools aiming to curb teacher absences through incentives found that sick days actually increased at most schools. “Teachers tried very hard about being here because it puts more work on them when they’re out of school,” said elementary principal Helen Gleicher. “When you have a staff that big, things happen.” The Palm Beach Post (9/3)

That got me to think about the origins of public schools in American. It also stimulated me to wonder if American schools were purposefully designed to keep people from learning certain things.

Over the last few weeks I have had an opportunity to explore the original foundations of free public schooling in America. What I learned has helped fill in some blank spots I’ve had about why things don’t change in the education system.

The original founders of public schooling in American and in Britain really didn’t want schools to be a place where smart people attended (or where smart people came out after being there). They wanted schools to be a place where the poor and not so smart could learn discipline and order and how to follow rules (so that society wouldn’t have much crime and problems with them).

I had always thought that schools were designed to produce factory workers and good citizens. Factory workers being people that could work with their hands but not their minds and good citizens being people that could follow the rules. It wasn’t until reading about these origins of public school that I’ve been able to see that being a ‘good citizen’ was the primary reason and that being a good factory worker just happened to be one of the applications of being a good citizen (and factory work was plentiful in the late 1800s and early 1900s).

At the time of creating free public schools there was an existing system and from what I read the majority of parents sent their children to school. But the school system that existed at the time (1800s through around 1870s) was made up of private schools (which were mostly religious). But schools tuitions were paid for by parents. Free public schools were created for the minority that couldn’t afford to go to those religious private schools.

In the 1870′s school became mandatory – law – and every state now has a law that says young people have to go to school at a certain age and must be in school until a certain age.

Over time parents began letting their children go to the free, public schools because of the money (free versus cost seems to win quite often). So now, the free, public school system is the dominant design and private schools are “only for the wealthy.”

Given these early foundations it is pretty clear that changing the existing system is NOT of any priority and would take a significant change in the way of thinking by leaders. Of course there are small pockets of change. Home schooling is a movement away from the public school system. Unschooling is a movement away as well. And of course there are some schools that have bucked the trend and continue to make progress in becoming places of true learning.

While some states and school districts are thinking about using online textbooks that can be updated in real time or that can be custom designed, Texas is going to be using the same text books they’ve had for years – because they are short on money.

Textbooks may be on school desks for a decade
With funds held up by lawmakers, state tries to replenish shelves
12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, July 19, 2007
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News tstutz@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – Texas students will have to use the same textbooks for a few more years while the state braces for a big jump in costs within a few years, largely because of a series of postponed purchases ordered by the Legislature.

I find both the purchasing power of the State of Texas interesting as well as the fact that students will be stuck using very old content in a world that is changing so fast.

Not only are some educators NOT using textbooks, there are some that are experimenting with holding classes online and some even using the virtual world of SecondLife.

Classroom technology goes extreme
By Randy Myers CONTRA COSTA TIMES Article Launched: 07/05/2007 03:03:27 AM PDT
St. Mary’s College professor Barry Eckhouse leaves no paper trail. In fact, he uses no paper at all.

So now what should we do? Things have changed and some countries go to school up to 243 days per year. What do you think?

As I’ve said before the issue is not necessarily time – but method (or process). Much of what is wrong with the way school works today is the same as what was wrong 100 years ago. People learn in different ways and having one way (sit and get) doesn’t work. AND, sitting in a chair for 4 to 6 hours per day isn’t healthy. Humans must have different input and engage all parts of themselves in order to have energy and take in new information.

Here’s the article about summer vacation:

Do Kids Need a Summer Vacation?Why our schoolchildren get to take three months off. By Juliet Lapidos Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2007, at 4:09 PM ET

Are summers without school healthy for kids?

Most American school kids are about three weeks in to their three-month summer vacation. Yet working adults (the Explainer included) spend the better part of June, July, and August toiling away as usual. Why do kids enjoy such generous summer breaks?

Standardized lesson plans irk some Washington educators
As Seattle considers standardizing its curriculum in every classroom, teachers in one Washington district log in to see what pages and subjects they must teach each day. Opponents of across-the-board standardization say it hinders a teacher’s ability to respond to the needs of a particular class, but Bellevue Superintendent Mike Riley says inconsistent curriculum is “at the heart of what’s wrong with education in America.” The Seattle Times (6/24)

The Superintendent is arguing that inconsistent curriculum is “at the heart of what’s wrong with education in America.”

I disagree 100%. What’s wrong with education in America is NOT inconsistent curriculum!

What’s wrong with education in America today is the way the majority of people in America think about education.

The concept of mandatory education – or public education – originated to develop factory workers for the emerging ‘industrial economy’ in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. The system of education we have today is nearly the same as the one conceived and implemented more than 100 years ago.

The desire to standardize education – the curriculum, the teaching, the timing, and the tests – flies in the face of what we have learned about how humans learn. AND, it flies in the face of the fact that the external world – the environment in which the learner lives and the learning should take place – has changed dramatically in the last 100 years!

Standardizing in the way the Superintendent is proposing is a natural and understandable outcome of the way of thinking that dominates our education system. The system has an underlying operating principle of compliance and control. Standardizing the way it is being proposed is a way to control the 100s and 1000s of people involved in the system in the State of Washington. The thinking behind this idea also presumes that learning can be stuffed into people at a particular time, in a particular way – and all the same time and same way – for every 8 year old or every 12 year old in the entire State.

So here we have a well meaning man, in charge of the entire public education system for the State of Washington, mandating a policy that more well meaning people will implement. All these well meaning people, with the best of intentions, will actually be doing harm and creating further problems. The solutions to the problems they create will be looked at through the same lens – that of control and compliance – so those solutions will NOT solve the problem either but continue to make things worse.

The solution is to change the way we think about education and learning.

To contrast what is happening in the State of Washington, here is something happening in the State of New Hampshire:

New Hampshire to develop personalized high school
New Hampshire’s Department of Education wants to develop high schools in which learning is tailored to students’ interests and teachers become mentors instead of lecturers. “If we do this right, why would any kid drop out of high school?” asked Fred Bramante, a state Board of Education member. Education Week (article free to SmartBrief subscribers)/Associated Press (6/26)

This is an example of changing the way we think about education.

Here’s an article about someone that has been doing educational research for 20+ years and has lost his idealism and energy for research being an enabler for change.

Education Research Could Improve Schools, But Probably Won’t
By Ronald A. Wolk
In my idealistic days 25 years ago, I believed that education research would lead us to the promised land of successful schools and high student achievement.

The article gives lots of reasons why research isn’t being used and won’t be as helpful as it could be. The guy goes on to say that we actually need to do the things we think about doing because if we don’t try something how will we ever have the research we need? That speaks to the need for ongoing experimentation as a way to learn.

One of the best strategies there is to keep up with the rate of change is to have many ongoing experiments going in parallel. The learning from these experiments would be iterated into other experiments and this cycle should continue – probably forever. This would make education – and the education system – a system that demonstrates learning and is a learning system (which it currently is not).

In my work with educators I’ve found significant resistance to the idea of doing experiments in education and learning. I have some compassion and understanding for that resistance as I know we are talking about experiments that involve human beings. That said, experimenting is one of the key ways that humans learn.

So how do we reconcile the need to experiment with the need for ‘evidence-based’ research?

Report sees online schools as models for reform
Think tank: Virtual schools are labs of innovation in teaching and learning that can be applied more broadly in K-12 education
By Robert L. Jacobson, Senior Editor
Virtual schooling is driving the very transformation in public education that advocates of school reform long have sought, says a new report. The report urges educators and policy makers to look to virtual schooling as a model for reform strategies that can be applied more broadly to education in general.

This article implies that online and virtual schools are providing an environment to try things that heretofore have not been tried in a physical setting. That’s interesting – and could be very useful. But that is just one place where experiments can and need to happen. They also need to happen in physical settings.

My suggestion is to start learning now and learn as fast as possible. That means we have to do experiments. So let the learning begin!

Schools Plan to Pay Cash for Marks
By JENNIFER MEDINA • Published: June 19, 2007
New York City students could earn as much as $500 a year for doing well on standardized tests and showing up for class in a new program to begin this fall, city officials announced yesterday. And the Harvard economist who created the program is joining the inner circle of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, according to an official briefed on the hiring.

NY is thinking about paying young people to do well on standardized tests.

New York may pay students for high test scores
A Harvard economist has captured the interest of New York City’s mayor with a plan to give students $5 to $50 for high standardized test scores as a way to change behavior and reduce poverty, although a similar plan was dismissed as laughable by some education officials a few years ago. The New York Times (6/9), New York Daily News (6/9)

And here’s the other side of the story – 1000s of young people cheating on high stakes tests in Texas.

Analysis shows TAKS cheating rampant
State says it’s addressed the problem, but News uncovers more than 50,000 cases
05:29 PM CDT on Sunday, June 3, 2007 • By JOSHUA BENTON and HOLLY K. HACKER / The Dallas Morning News jbenton@dallasnews.com; hhacker@dallasnews.com
First of three parts

Tens of thousands of students cheat on the TAKS test every year, including thousands on the high-stakes graduation test, according to an in-depth data analysis by The Dallas Morning News.

This is two sides of the same coin. Unless WE (the infamous we) start thinking differently about this it is only going to get worse.

Schools streamline how math is taught
Same textbooks, same lessons, at the same time
By JESSICA BLANCHARD P-I REPORTER

When Seattle elementary-schoolers open their math textbooks this fall, they’ll all be on the same page — literally.

In an attempt to boost stagnant test scores, elementary teachers will start using the same math textbooks and materials and covering lessons at the same time as their colleagues at other Seattle elementary schools, the School Board decided Wednesday.

I am often amazed that good, well-meaning people, (and supposedly people that know educational theory and how people learn) can somehow ignore the idea that people are all different and come up with something that they are sure will work – for everyone! Is it really possible that something can be good for every single person? Maybe. But what about the idea that we all learn differently and at different times? Maybe I just have it all wrong and we should force every single person in the United States of America to do the exact same thing at the exact same time?

http://www.edutopia.org/node/3285

The name, first used in 1970 by someone called John Holt, but in a recent article in Teacher Magazine it says the movement is growing. There are no hard numbers on how many young people are being unschooled but there are an estimated 1.1million young people being home schooled.

The worry expressed by educators is that young people will lose their way. I wonder. It’s probably true that some people using this approach may lack some content knowledge but isn’t curiosity and a desire to learn (and the ability to learn) more important?

Here’s a link to Unschooling – a web site with resources for and about unschooling.

Here’s Google’s results when searching for unschooling.

He says we all need to develop these five minds in order to be successful in the future. They are: the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind.

Here’s the quote from his article:

The disciplined mind has mastered at least one way of thinking — a distinctive mode of cognition that characterizes a specific scholarly discipline, craft, or profession. Much research conforms that it takes up to ten years to master a discipline. The disciplined mind also knows how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding — in the vernacular, it is highly disciplined. Without at least one discipline under his belt, the individual is destined to march to someone else’s tune.

The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons. Valuable in the past, the capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates.

Building on discipline and synthesis, the creating mind breaks new ground. It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers. Ultimately, these creations must find acceptance among knowledgeable consumers. By virtue of its anchoring in territory that is not yet rule-governed, the creating mind seeks to remain at least one step ahead of even the most sophisticated computers and robots.

Recognizing that nowadays one can no longer remain within one’s shell or on one’s home territory, the respectful mind notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and between human groups, tries to understand these “others,” and seeks to work effectively with them. In a world where we are all interlinked, intolerance or disrespect is no longer a viable option.

Proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind, the ethical mind ponders the nature of one’s work and the needs and deserves of the society in which one lives. This mind conceptualizes how workers can serve purposes beyond self-interest and how citizens can work unselfishly to improve the lot of all. The ethical mind then acts on the basis of these analyses.

Arizona lawmakers offer $1,500 to seniors who finish early
Arizona lawmakers this week signed off on giving $1,500 scholarships to students who complete necessary high school course work by the middle of their senior year. Lawmakers hope the measure will encourage high school students to buckle down; schools will continue to receive student funding for the whole year less the $1,500 advanced to the student. Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)/Capitol Media Services (5/3)

I think this is interesting for a lot of reasons. We know that school is based on the principle of ‘seat time’ – the amount of time a young person is in their seat – and on the principle of ticking off subjects from a list. Does learning matter? I still don’t see anything that tells me that these young people learn anything that will help them to be successful in their life after they leave school. So this incentive motivates young people to get ‘out of school’ and into the rest of their lives – without any clear knowledge they have what they need in order to be successful in that life.

Talk about having our priorities all upside down and backwards.

Children who head to work instead of tests may hurt schools
Some Minnesota school districts are asking parents not to participate in national “Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day” if their students are among those taking standardized tests this week, as missing test-takers put schools at risk of failing. School officials urged parents to instead bring students to the office in the summer or on school holidays. Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul) (4/24)

As Michigan attempts to catch up with the 21st Century, this state must realize that our children have to compete with the children of the world, not just those from adjacent school districts or states. It is imperative that policy makers and educators address the fact that in a hyper-competitive, entrepreneurial, information age, the old way of providing education must be altered — and sooner rather than later. Michigan’s students must be the recipients of an agile system of education and public policies that effect substantive change.

Further on he says,

In a rapidly changing world, staying even is falling behind.

These are well articulated and clear challenges for education – and also one of the clear arguments for there being NO ONE RIGHT ANSWER for public education in this country.

One of the strategies our firm advocates as a viable strategy for enterprises to use to ‘catch up’ or ‘stay even’ is to increase their own capacity to learn. The faster an organization can learn the more capable they are in dealing with/adapting in a world of rapid change.

There are several viable strategies to consider to increase the capacity of an organization to learn. One of these strategies is to have many experiments taking place simultaneously to enable the organization to learn fast. Another way of saying that is to develop a capability to do rapid prototyping. Quick cycles of testing theories (plan, do, study, act).

Another strategy organizations can use is to do things in parallel instead of doing them in a serial fashion (doing things at the same time instead of one after the other). This strategy is not an easy one for older, western educated managers to learn but it’s really important to help shrink life cycles for product development, strategy development and innovation.

Click here to read the entire article by the former Michigan State Superintendent of Schools.

“We don’t see much opportunity for kids to be actively engaged in projects, or teachers interacting with kids individually or in small groups, in ways that could stimulate learning,” he said. “Students learn more math and become more literate when the instruction is focused not just on whether the kids know the right or wrong answer but encouraging understanding on a deeper conceptual level.”

I am an advocate for engaged, project based, collaborative learning – focused on real-world problems. I believe this is one of the only ways to break the bonds that have isolated school and education from the rest of life. We know far too much about the brain and how people actually learn to continue to have 90% of classrooms providing passive learning (lectures).

Access the rest of the article here.

Study: Parent fines fail to curb truancy
Penalizing parents for student truancy doesn’t work, a study finds. While the report’s author noted short-term improvement in some cases, he said there were no long-term beneficial effects on attendance observed in the 150 British districts that were studied over a three-year period. BBC (4/17)

Here is my reply to his blog post:

The model of education presently employed is more than 100 years old. Education has fundamentally NOT changed at all in that time. The model is based on control and compliance and is NOT designed for people to think (or to learn to think). Business, in general, is based on the same fundamental model. In either sphere the one thing required to make a transformation is changing the way people think.

Both education and business are social systems. Social systems are the hardest systems to ‘control.’ Business, as a system has been forced to change. Today there is more tolerance and understanding that thinking, creativity, and innovation are valuable assets (knowledge and skills). Education as a system has, for the most part, kept itself isolated and separate from the rest of the world.

Whether education is a business or not is irrelevant. Some people are more successful running schools like businesses. Some aren’t.

What is relevant is breaking the bonds of isolation and making learning connected to the rest of life. What is relevant is changing the way we think about what school is, what its purpose is, how people learn. One size fits all is NOT a viable strategy. Educators know that. The education system doesn’t.

In some areas of the country the idea of lengthening the school day has been proposed as a way to help ‘failing’ schools. The idea being proposed is to give these schools more time to prepare young people for the tests they must take – and teach subjects that have been dropped from the curriculum (like art, music and drama).

It seems to me that the issue isn’t how long the day is but what is being done during the day that matters. If educators don’t change what they are doing – how they teach – then just giving them more time isn’t going to solve much. In fact, it will probably just make matters worse.

Here’s an article that articulates this ‘solution’ in the New York Times:

Failing Schools See a Solution in Longer Day
by DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Published: March 26, 2007
FALL RIVER, Mass. — States and school districts nationwide are moving to lengthen the day at struggling schools, spurred by grim test results suggesting that more than 10,000 schools are likely to be declared failing under federal law next year.

In some places, like New Mexico, the extra time is being used to ‘tutor’ young people in the subjects they are struggling with.

I’m not sure I really understand why teachers don’t see that teaching is an equal part in the equation of learning. Why is it just the learner that is the ‘problem?’

Truant Maryland students could be denied driver’s license
Maryland lawmakers approved a bill that would deny driver’s licenses to students with 10 or more unexcused absences. Under the bill, each student would have to present an attendance record to the state to get a permit, but students who already have a license would not be at risk of losing it. The Washington Post (3/16)

The sponsor of the bill that passed in the House of Delegates said, “This does give us a tool to use to combat truancy,” said Del. Gerron S. Levi (D), the bill’s House sponsor.

Why not give them a reason to go to school rather then a reason to avoid something else?

OK, so let’s see, I have to go to school so I can get my drivers license, but if I come to school I might win an iPod, and, if I pass a certain exam I can make $250, and if I graduate I could possibly win a car. Hmmm. Why do I need to learn anything? I’ll just sit through this whole boring mess and get the money and the perks!

Truant Maryland students could be denied driver’s license
Maryland lawmakers approved a bill that would deny driver’s licenses to students with 10 or more unexcused absences. Under the bill, each student would have to present an attendance record to the state to get a permit, but students who already have a license would not be at risk of losing it. The Washington Post (3/16)

The sponsor of the bill that passed in the House of Delegates said, “This does give us a tool to use to combat truancy,” said Del. Gerron S. Levi (D), the bill’s House sponsor.

Why not give them a reason to go to school rather then a reason to avoid something else?

OK, so let’s see, I have to go to school so I can get my drivers license, but if I come to school I might win an iPod, and, if I get an A in certain classes I might make $450, and if I graduate I could possibly win a car. Hmmm. Why do I need to learn anything? I’ll just sit through this whole boring mess and get the money and the perks!

I’ve already written about teacher incentives and charging parents if their children don’t come to school or if they miss a parent teacher meeting.

I’ve also written about the different incentives being used on young people: enticing them with iPods, breakfast, paying third graders and paying $5 per A, $4 per B, etc. and offering the enticement of a car for graduating.

Here’s another article along these lines:

A $250 incentive for passing an AP exam
A group of educators and business executives will offer some D.C.-area Advanced Placement students and teachers $250 for each passing score on science, English and math tests. In Dallas, where a similar program launched more than a decade ago, the number of passing AP scores in 10 targeted high schools increased from 71 in 1995 to 877 in 2006. The Washington Post (3/9)

The reason I was saying this is the beginning of the end is because if this continues and one school finds out about some incentive another school has; or schools in one state find out about something going on in another state; the only logical outcome of all this is an escalation of this kind of thinking with the need for greater and greater rewards being offered.

This is NOT SUSTAINABLE!

What’s quite interesting to me is that most of the educators I speak with already know this – but they haven’t figured out how to create an experience that is engaging and desirable by the young people that come to their schools. What will it take for the kind of change that is needed to actually occur?

Survey: Many U.S. high school students bored in class
POSTED: 12:15 p.m. EST, February 28, 2007
CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) — A majority of U.S. high school students say they get bored in class every day, and more than one out of five has considered dropping out, according to a survey released Wednesday.

This video shows an example of what might be possible if schools is project based – and connected to the real world (note: I’m not 100% sure this isn’t an advertisement for the software being used but I still like the idea).

I appreciate the intense effort and thinking that has gone into this report – and I feel the findings expressed in this report should generate some very valuable conversations in communities and states around the US.

My concern about a report like this – and the discussions that might follow – is that many people may decide that what is needed in order to improve education is to do what we are doing now – accept more, harder, faster or longer. My opinion about doing more of what we are doing now in the public education system is that results will only get worse.

Here’s an example of a school system thinking that doing the same thing they are doing now, just more of it, will keep young people from quiting school. I think they will find, if they do this, they will only cause more young people to quit.

Durham: Keep kids in school to 18
With more teens quitting school, a debate reignites over whether North Carolina should boost its mandatory attendance age.

Here’s a completely different example of a state thinking about limiting the options young people have to force them to stay in school.

Lawmakers could limit jobs for high schoolers
Data suggests that 150,000 students drop out of California’s schools every year. To curb that trend, state lawmakers are looking into legislative options on such things as limiting the number of jobs for high schoolers or adding after-school tutoring. Hearings on those proposals and others will continue through March 14. The Sacramento Bee (Calif.) (free registration) (2/20)

Bush wants more money for merit pay
The Bush administration wants $199 million to put in its year-old Teacher Incentive Fund, a system that would extend merit pay to teachers who improve student achievement in low-income schools. Last year, the government awarded 16 grants totaling $40 million. The Washington Times (2/11)

So here’s a school district that wants to charge parents money every day their child misses school.

Scotts Valley parents asked to pay $36.13 if their kid skips school
By Matt King MediaNews
SCOTTS VALLEY – Parents whose kids take a day off from school will be asked to open their wallets. That will be $36.13, please.

That seemed like a good idea at the time. That was 1992.

I just looked to see if that corporation was around. The New American Schools Development Corporation has merged with the American Institutes for Research (which means it is no longer around). I couldn’t find any thing about them. Maybe it’s there I just didn’t see it.

So what is the US doing to insure that young people are prepared and can thrive in the 21st Century? No Child Left Behind! Get young people to pass high stakes tests every few years and other kinds of tests every year and walla! Presto, Chango! Magic happens and a new system emerges!

I get more concerned every day about the state of the education system in the US. Here is a few comments that give me hope – but I can say, even though people might know what to do, actually doing it is a lot harder (especially within the system as it currently exists).

We have to not think of education as the sole province of schools, but, rather, begin to create what we at the institute call smart education systems. And I want to make it clear I didn’t say smart school systems. We need to develop a range of cognitive abilities, social skills, and communication skills. There’s considerable work that students have to do inside the schools, but they also have to have support in applying that knowledge to real-world problems.

Which means they have to do a considerable amount of engaged learning in their family and community settings. We have to think about how to build a smart education system that integrates the assets of municipal agencies such as housing departments, parks and recreation departments, or cultural-affairs departments so that, particularly in disadvantaged communities, students and their families begin to get the supports they need to hone higher-level skills.

You can read the whole article here if you have interest: Apostle of Change

Here’s a short video on Web 2.0 – which is already changing the way people interact, publish and access information on the web.

Relearning Learning-Applying the Long Tail to Learning
The challenge of 21st century education will be leveraging the abundant resources of the web – this very long tail of interests – into a “circle of knowledge-building and sharing.” Perhaps, Brown proposes, the formal curriculum of schools will encompass both a minimal core “that gets at the essence of critical thinking,” paired with “passion-based learning,” where kids connect to niche communities on the web, deeply exploring certain subjects. Brown envisions education becoming “an act of re-creation and productive inquiry,” that will form the basis for a new culture of learning.

Bill proposes fining parents who miss teacher meetings
A bill introduced in the Texas Legislature would impose a $500 fine on parents who miss conferences with their child’s teachers. The representative who filed the bill said it was designed to encourage parents to be more involved with their child’s education. CNN/Associated Press (2/1)

I’ve written in a previous post about how the education system is based on a model of compliance. One of the results of a compliance type environment is these acts of desperation – to force compliance where voluntary compliance isn’t taking place.

Instead we should be spending our resources creating a system that instills intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm for learning with voluntary participation from everyone involved – young people and parents and teachers and community members.

Here’s another example of the desperate attempts to get young people to come to school or keep them from skipping school:

Truancy attacked with iPods, food
Schools throughout the nation are enticing students with everything from breakfast to iPods to keep them in school. Attacks on truancy help boost academic performance, administrators say.

Extrinsic motivation slowly destroys self esteem, dignity, cooperation and a yearning for learning – all of which are innate and high early in life. They are diminished throughout our life by what Dr. Deming calls the forces of destruction – of which extrinsic motivation is one of these destructive forces.

This is a great video by a guy named Ken Robinson at the TED conference in February 2006.

Children starting school this year will retire in 2065 or there abouts. Can the education system as we know it help these young people to succeed in that world?

One of the best arguments for reinventing public education is that it is still very much the same as it was when it was designed and it is out of touch with the current world – what to say of the world of tomorrow. The public school system was designed to produce factory workers (as stated previously).

In a recent interview with Edutopia Alvin Toffler explains his point of view about what might need to be done with the public school system. In the article he says, in answer to the question, How does that system fit into a world where assembly lines have gone away?

It doesn’t. The public school system is designed to produce a workforce for an economy that will not be there. And therefore, with all the best intentions in the world, we’re stealing the kids’ future.

In the article he poses several questions

Do I have all the answers for how to replace it? No. But it seems to me that before we can get serious about creating an appropriate education system for the world that’s coming and that these kids will have to operate within, we have to ask some really fundamental questions. And some of these questions are scary. For example: Should education be compulsory? And, if so, for who? Why does everybody have to start at age five? Maybe some kids should start at age eight and work fast. Or vice versa. Why is everything massified in the system, rather than individualized in the system? New technologies make possible customization in a way that the old system — everybody reading the same textbook at the same time — did not offer.

Some of the answers to these questions might lead us to a system that is customized for each individual and where there is No One Right Answer for public education. In the article he also espouses several ideas I’ve discussed and will discuss further in future posts – integrating ‘school’ into life and the community.

To read the entire interview, click here…

This will spiral to a system that is so distorted and has absolutely nothing to do with learning.

Mixed feelings over bonus pay
On Tuesday, the Houston Independent School District began giving out the first of its $14 million set-aside for performance pay to those teachers who raise student test scores. Some teachers are concerned that the pay will create rifts among those teachers who reap bonuses averaging $1,800 and those who get nothing. Houston Chronicle (1/24)

If it isn’t already obvious, a person that is motivated by extrinsic rewards must continue to get greater and greater rewards or they will become disappointed and lose interest.

If we make a similar extrapolation about the prevailing education system and how many educators use competition and external rewards as motivators it would make sense that educators would at some point pay people to not only attend school but also pay them for doing well on tests.

Both of these things are happening now. Here’s the latest:

Ohio District Tests Performance Pay—for Students
Geralyn Raach, a teacher at Central Elementary School, has a favorite slogan for motivating her 3rd graders to put in their best effort, but it’s not what you would expect. Borrowing a line from the movie “Jerry Maguire,”the veteran teacher likes to call out, “Show me the money!”

And here is an older article on parents paying their children for grades:

Parents Offer Kids Pay for Good Grades
Sat Aug 12, 2006 10:13 AM EDT
Ben Feller, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON — Sure, learning is its own reward. But some kids respond best to cash. Andrew Waller’s grades soared when his parents started offering $5 for A’s and $4 for B’s. Now he pockets about $25 each report card, saving it for video games and summer camp.

As I read through this post I realized that there are some people that might feel this is a good idea – motivating young people to ‘stay in school’ or ‘do good in school.’ Isn’t it obvious that schools in themselves are creating the need for this kind of behavior (on the part of the school districts, on the part of the parents, and on the part of the young people)?

If schools were designed as places of learning, where there was discovery and intrigue and mystery and curiosity – and god forbid, fun – young people would be naturally motivated not only to go there but on their own accord to continue to want more!

MIT and Wharton are experimenting with having up to a million people write a book on how community process influences and changes business. What’s amazing about this so far is that people participating are not only writing the book but they are changing the software being used to write the book.

This process could significantly change many creative endeavors.

If you would like to contribute to this book go to We are Smarter than Me.

The culture of high stakes testing is toxic. It not only takes the oxygen out of the work, it also makes all the wrong things important, as if they are the right things. For example, high stakes testing treats students, teachers and data as “commodities” to be manipulated as variables in some kind of strange economy or in some perverse experiment. In addition, I believe high stakes testing freezes the current system in place treating current practice as if it is good practice and practice that should be continued even though the whole point of accountability is to improve the system where a lot of current practice does not work. High stakes testing standardizes the current schooling model assuming it can work for all students, in all settings and under all conditions and we know that it does not and we know that it cannot. High stakes testing prevents the very innovation we should be encouraging.

Click here to read his entire remarks at the 2006 Leadership for Classroom Assessment Conference.

The education system is built on a model that values compliance and control – with the underlying organizational structure being a hierarchy (sometimes euphamistically called the chain of blame). In an environment where compliance and control are valued choice is like a virus that stimulates all the host organisms defense mechanisms.

For there to be real choice in the education system there would need to be, at minimum, a loosening of the compliance and control structures that are overtly in place. These structures would be things like policies and practices, bell schedules and curriculum. Once these structures are changed (even just a little) a threat to the inherent compliance and control structures would develop – and this is something that most educators will avoid like the plague. These deeper control structures are things like educational philosophy, values, and beliefs, etc.

Educators will avoid changes to these inherent structures for many reasons – not the least of which is simply peer pressure. In order to survive in the system they work in educators will be hard pressed to continue to comply with this system. A change to these deeper structurs would require a system change and that is not something the average teacher signed up for.

Here’s an example of what I mean: an environment where choice is valued is an environment where order emerges not where order is mandated and controlled. An environment of this kind might appear messy and noisy – and even though there might be a lot of learning taking place that is not what is valued. What is valued is compliance and control (NOT learning - and often, for real learning to take place it might be noisy and messy!).

The reason choice is important to me is Choice is one of the items on my list of what makes a quality learning experience: “one where learners experience choices in what and how they learn.”

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)!

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)

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Here’s a short paragraph from the web site describing the show:

Middle School Confessions provides a provocative and sometimes disturbing look at the inner lives of today’s adolescents, and the efforts of adults to connect and help the kids they care about to navigate this treacherous rite of passage.

MAKE IT REAL
Doing leads to learning. Instead of confronting students (or employees) with abstract concepts, take the lesson out into the real world. Make it real: That’s what Bob Moses did when he created the Algebra Project. He took his middle-school students around Boston in search of experiences that demonstrated the practical uses of math. A ride on the subway became a lesson in coordinate graphing and negative numbers. When Moses taught students about displacement, he had them measure the dimensions of their own bodies. Students always had to “participate in a physical event.” Follow-up studies have confirmed the benefits of Moses’ experiential curriculum. Ninety-two percent of his Algebra Project graduates in Cambridge went on to upper-level math courses, twice the rate of students not in the program. The same philosophy works outside the classroom, too. Look at Toyota. In many ways, its Georgetown, KY, manufacturing plant is a school that happens to produce cars. Because Toyota doesn’t distinguish between learning and doing, it’s willing to stop the assembly line any time a problem crops up on the floor. With its philosophy of constant self-improvement, turning out slightly fewer engines each day is a small price to pay for teaching its workers how to turn out better ones. (Seed 19 Jul 2006)

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

I’ve asked them to experience Social Networking and explore sites like Blogger, Flickr, MySpace and sites like classmates.com. I’ve asked them to become familiar with podcasts, YouTube, and experience Wikipedia.

Finally, I’ve asked them to become familiar with massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG).

In reading an innovation blog called Sharkride I just learned about an online game being used for an entire course for credit at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Their Econ 201 course is a microeconomics course which will be taught via an online video game! The principles of microeconomics are taught by “following an alien species that must learn how to survive after crash-landing on a futuristic, post-apocalyptic earth.”

This is an perfect example of what is coming and a small glimpse into the future of interactive learning.

Guggenheim Study Suggests Arts Education Benefits Literacy Skills
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: July 27, 2006
In an era of widespread cuts in public-school art programs, the question has become increasingly relevant: does learning about paintings and sculpture help children become better students in other areas?

—-

From the posts I’ve made previously to this one should be able to discern my point of view about all this. There are currently 49 million k-12 students in the US in public education (an additional 5.1 million in k-12 private schools). If there are 49 million students then there are 49 million different ways of learning. The education system needs to account for variety not remove it as it currently does.

It seems the mayor isn’t happy about the school system (one of the largest in the US). It appears the Mayor tried to take over and that got some people upset (OK – more then upset). In a compromise proposal the Mayor suggested he take over the budget for the school system and leave the curriculum and instruction part in the hands of educators.

What is really going on here? What could the mayor do to help the school system? And what would having control of the purse strings do to help?

Maybe the Mayor wanted to get in there before something like this happened:

California’s Low-Income Schools to Get High-Tech Windfall
More than $400 million from a 2004 settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft will be used for technology education.
By Arin Gencer, Times Staff Writer
July 27, 2006

Maybe the Mayor wanted to get his hands on the money from the Microsoft settlement?

——

Seriously, the education system is in trouble. But what makes things worse in my mind is people that can actually make a difference seem to find ways to become even more adversarial then they already are. What if the Mayor went to the school system and the teachers union and tried to find a way to work with them to overcome the challenges they all face?

Maybe the mayor’s recent appointment of a ‘deputy mayor for education’ will help?

Mayor set to appoint new schools aide to ease takeover bid
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES – In his bid for more power over public schools, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is set to appoint a veteran educator to a post designed to ease tensions between City Hall and public school officials opposed to the plan, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Seems to me if the Mayor is going to be the leader he wants to be he needs to get everyone to work together as if they are on the same team.

My response was simple. No one taught us to talk. No one taught us to walk.

Learning is a natural and intrinsic part of begin a human being. The way I would teach reading is to have a rich environment for young people to be in. A rich environment that includes lots of stimulus, multi-aged people, and of course, in this context, people reading. In other words, I would start by taking advantage of the natural inherent desire that exists in all young people to want to learn and to be curious about the world around them. With this natural curiosity ignited there would be plenty of opportunities to read with lots of tools around to keep the curiosity at a high level AND at the same time to give young people an opportunity to experiment, to make mistakes and to experience of success.

The environment we now call school are not learning environments. They are designed to limit the natural curiosity and desire to learn in a person (of all ages).

In a recent article in the NY Times we see the extreme of where this current system has come – 180 degrees from what I suggest above.

Less play for kindergartners
Pressure to teach reading and math to youngsters as soon as possible is forcing many kindergartners to forego play, to the dismay of teachers and parents who say the unstructured time allows children to learn social and other skills. At one academically demanding Brooklyn charter school, kindergartners no longer have time for naps, recess or show-and-tell.

——

The absurdity of this is beyond comment and yet well meaning and well intentioned people make these rules.

1) the system is designed ‘perfectly’ to do what it does. It is designed to limit how and what people think and to prepare them to follow orders (be compliant) so they can be good factory workers and good citizens and not rock the boat. It is not in the interest of the body politic to make changes to a system that works as good as this one does (keeping the majority of the people participating in it within a narrow thought bandwidth).

2) the education system has been one of the only systems that has been able to keep itself isolated from the rest of the world such that it didn’t change while the rest of the world was changing. The current education system is essentially the same as it was 100 years ago.

3) good, sincere people, with good intentions work in the current system. Asking them to change the system is like asking pygmies in the middle of the amazon to change their system (how could you know what you don’t know?)

4) in my experience, working with educators that are attempting to make changes from within the system is akin to trying to rebuild a 747 while flying it. How can you keep flying, keep everyone on board safe and secure, while at the same time take the plane apart and rebuild it into something completely different?

5) changing the education system is equivalent to putting a man on the moon in terms of what it would take to make the education system requisite with the rest of the world (the current world) let alone anticipatory (preparing young people for a tomorrow that is nothing like today).

6) changing the education system used to be one of the most worthwhile endeavors there could be as the education system touched and influenced more human beings then just about anything else. Today, education actually takes place somewhere other then in schools. The entertainment industry could be how most education takes place today (the entertainment industry includes all media like the internet, TV, movies, music, video games, as well as local bars, clubs, county fairs, plays, concerts, etc.)

7) changing schools is still a worthwhile endeavor

I was left feeling sad and disappointed that our current school system doesn’t account for the fact that students are people too!

The design of school environments, the curriculum, the delivery method and the methods for giving and getting feedback do not consider young people as people – with feelings, needs, and emotional challenges in their lives.

In this documentary the young people featured were very articulate about their needs – and the pressures they experience. They could communicate very well about their sexual desires – and beliefs – as well as their feelings about their experiences at school and their experiences with adults.

How can people learn in an environment where they are not supported as people?

The documentary left me feeling more dubious about public schools and the ever increasing challenges of creating a true environment for learning.

Besides validating the fact that is current generation – what to say of the next generation – is technology literate and very comfortable with using technology, this article also points to a huge concern that will only get worse – the marketers will market to younger and younger people and the way they will do it is nothing like what we’re used to. It will be so embedded in the technology and their experience they may or may not be able to tell the difference.

Young Consumers Are The First ‘Technology Everywhere’ Generation
Young consumers are using more technology at a younger age to connect with more people than ever before, according to a survey of more than 5,000 US and Canadian online youth between the ages of 12 and 21 by Forrester Research. For example, 87% of 15-year-olds use instant messaging, while nearly half of 12- to 14-year-olds have a mobile phone.

“Marketing executives have been staring in wonder at their own tech-savvy children and asking, ‘Are all teenagers as wired as my own kids?’” said Chris Charron, vice president and research director at Forrester Research. “The answer is ‘yes.’ We are seeing a generation of young people for whom technology is not just a nice-to-have � it’s a critical part of their lives. There’s been a lot of speculation about the breadth and depth of technology use among young people. This data begins to codify that discussion.”

Forrester surveyed young consumers regarding their use of various devices, gaming, online activities, music downloads and file sharing, communication technologies, and attitudes toward media and advertising. Among the highlights:

• Young people are communication junkies. Eighty-three percent use IM versus just 32 percent of online adults. More than three out of four young consumers have a mobile phone.
• MP3 players top the device wish list. Twenty-five percent of young consumers said they plan to purchase an MP3 player in the next 12 months.
• Entertainment grabs their online time. Young consumers spend almost 11 hours per week online, while nearly one in five of the youngest of this group (ages 12 to 17) spend 20 hours or more per week online.
• Youth got game. Eighty-eight percent of boys ages 12 to 17 own a game console, compared with 63 percent of girls the same age. Fifty-five percent of boys would rather play games than watch TV.
• Young consumers represent the social marketing vanguard. Fifty-two percent say they rely on recommendations from friends or family when making a purchase, compared with just 34 percent of adults.
• Marketers Need To Reach Young Consumers On Their Terms

“These consumers are a portrait of the future,” said Charron. “Companies should look to this younger generation for inspiration in the design of new products and services.”
The Forrester study also dispels a myth about young consumers and advertising. Young consumers are more open to advertising than their parents are, although both generations are skeptical of the ads that they encounter.

“Young consumers have no preconceived notions of what advertising should be,” said Charron. “They have no problem with the lines between advertising and editorial being blurry. Because they have grown up to be more self-reliant in a digital environment, they have confidence in their ability to distinguish between the two. And there’s more good news for marketers: The viral nature of their communication with each other is a behavior that marketers can tap into.”