Does Environment Matter? What Do Classrooms Say About Our Philosophy?

I just became aware of an architectural contest to design new classrooms. In looking at the winners - it's easy to see why we are still in the mess we're in. Only one of these offers something that might be a little different from what we already have in classrooms that were designed over 100 years ago.

Why is that?

Environments and structures create behavior and the form of our classrooms are no exception. We can learn a lot about ourselves by looking at our physical environments. Our homes, work places, hospitals, and schools tell us a lot about our philosophy - the way we think and what we value.

Schools and classrooms are fundamentally about compliance and the physical environment supports that. These are NOT places where creativity are valued. These are NOT places where social interaction are valued. These are NOT places where exploration and discovery happens.

Early research into teaching and learning shows that a single adult can control about 19 young people. Classrooms were designed with this kind of knowledge in mind - and they still are even though most classrooms today have upwards of 30 young people in them.

If we continue to design what we've always designed there is no hope in having what happens in these rooms be any different than what has been happening in these rooms for nearly 150 years now.

Do Schools Harm Children?

Some friends of mine are engaged in instigating a really important conversation in their community. Minority parents and students have been attempting to show how the schools are profiling certain young people as potential gang members and forcing them in one way or another to leave school - primarily to improve their drop-out and graduation numbers.

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.

Quality Learning: Paying students to learn?

David Langford is one of the smartest and best consultants I know working in the schooling world. His knowledge and experience of quality and it's application to schooling is beyond par. The following article came in a recent email newsletter from him. I couldn't say it any better! I've copied the newsletter in its entirety. Enjoy.

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

"Smart Drugs" for Young People

Making the mistake of thinking that schooling is education can lead to a very large number of additional choices that make sense in one context but are completely different in another context. If we continue to think about schooling the way we do we will force young people to do things they are not meant to do nor do they do naturally. 

Here's a perfect example of the kind of thinking that will ultimately lead to more problems than it solves. Researchers are predicting the development and use of 'smart drugs' for 'enhancing' the memory, attention, mood, or motivation of young people.

Think about this. These are the things that 'schooling' values and requires: memory, attention, mood, and motivation. 

The fundamental underpinnings of schooling has the need to control the behavior of the 'student' in order for them to demonstrate they can repeat the desired behavior (repeat behavior and also regurgitate desired bits of content to demonstrate both paying attention and the form a learning that is valued by schooling - memory).

In fact repitition is the primary tool used to 'teach' specific subjects. 

It makes sense then  that at some point people involved with schooling would conjur up the 'bright idea' to develop drugs as a tool to enhance the things that are valued.

These same things that are valued in the current schooling system are some of the primary reasons why there are so many dropouts. The reason why mood, motivation, and attention are lacking in the schooling system is because the experience is NOT interesting nor connected to any other aspect of young people's lives. Humans have a natural ability to pay attention and be motivated when there is something that is interesting to them. People will naturally remember what they 'learned' when the experience they have is both interesting and challenging, and has some emotional component to the experience. 

Here is the article that stimulated this blog post:

Schoolchildren could be given 'smart drugs' in a bid to boost brainpower
By LAURA CLARK - Last updated at 9:32 PM on 19th September 2008

Schools will soon have to ensure all pupils have access to brain-enhancing 'smart drugs', according to officially funded experts.

They said teachers risk claims of bias against poorer children if they fail to give all pupils the same chance to take a new generation of pills which boost attention, concentration and memory.

Researchers predict that within a generation, cognition enhancing drugs - or 'cogs' - will be so advanced that parents and teachers will be able to 'manipulate biology' to enhance pupils' brainpower.

---

It also predicted that within 25 years, so-called 'smart drugs' will be specific enough for pupils to choose drugs for particular mental faculties.

These could include improving memory, attention, mood or motivation.

Where are the people advocating for the interests of young people? How could we allow this thinking to continue and come to fruition. It is wrong and damaging. But without a change in thinking about the difference between schooling and education this kind of thing is almost inevitable. 

What Does Architecture Tell Us About Learning?

Over the last 20+ years my firm has worked with large groups to accelerate and enhance their ability to learn and collaborate. This work results in increasing the productivity of the group - often accomplishing weeks, months, or years worth of work in a matter of days. To aide us in accomplishing these results we use a creative physical environment that allows information to move along with the people (most everything in the environment has wheels!).

The idea that human interaction can be enhanced by the environment is something we take for granted. It is so much a part of what we do we often forget that this way of thinking and working is not common for much of the world. 

The concept that work environments can contribute to or inhibit the productivity of the people in those environments is not new.  What might be new however is the idea that the people that work in the environment could/should participate in the design process - to determine the environment within which they will work.

From an article in Education Week by Frank Kelly:

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.

What does the architecture of our school buildings tell us about the activities that take place in them? How do those buildings influence learning (positively or negatively)? How can we re-conceive the physical environment so it encourages and enables the type of learning required for success in the 21st Century?

In the 70's I came upon a book that contained photographs of the architecture - buildings - of schools, hospitals, and prisons. I haven't been able to find that book but I did find some photos that might give an idea of what this book showed. 

School, Hospital, or Prison? When looking at the pictures that follow, which one is a school, a hospital, or a prison?

What does this say about the way we think about the activities that take place in each of these buildings? 

In a recent NY Times article entitled, Technology Reshapes America's Classrooms, it suggested the activities in the 'school of the future' will be different from the activities that take place in the current schools. But what does the building look like? Have they considered the physical environment when developing this new school? Were teachers involved in the design process to 're-think' the way they interacted with young people, the type of learning taking place and how the physical environment might enable this?

Here's a short quote from that article:

Education experts say her school, the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Boston, offers a glimpse into the future.

It has no textbooks. Students receive laptops at the start of each day, returning them at the end. Teachers and students maintain blogs. Staff and parents chat on instant messaging software. Assignments are submitted through electronic "drop boxes" on the school's Web site.

"The dog ate my homework" is no excuse here.

The experiment at Frederick began two years ago at cost of about $2 million, but last year was the first in which all 7th and 8th grade students received laptops. Classwork is done in Google Inc's free applications like Google Docs, or Apple's iMovie and specialized educational software like FASTT Math.

"Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed," said Debra Socia, principal of the school in Dorchester, a tough Boston district prone to crime and poor schools.

We won't really see different types of knowledge, behaviors and skills being learned in our schools until we see the types of environments that learning takes place in re-thought and re-designed.

Answers: the pictures above from top to bottom are   1) hospital   2) prison   3) hospital   4) hospital   5) prison   6) school   7) school - (the label on this was 'school for blacks')

Sensitivity to Initial Conditions

There is a concept in the theory of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) that suggests systems are significantly influenced by their initial conditions. Complex Adaptive Systems develop patterns of 'order' that emerge out of the seemingly chaotic 'soup' of interactions between lots and lots of 'agents' (independent agents following 'rules' to guide their behavior). 

Anyone that has been involved with public education can see that the school system is a very complex system. There are a great many rules that guide the behavior of everyone involved (everyone! including parents, teachers, administrators, young people, and the communities in which schools exist).

I've been in many situations over the last 25 years where teachers and administrators were asked, what the future of school 'should be.' Or they were asked, what kinds of things would need to happen to make schools 'ideal.' 

The kinds of answers that were given will not surprise anyone. These answers have been the same or similar with a few variations in almost every setting I've been in. 

The kinds of things that were suggested included:

• community involvement
  
• parent involvement
  
• creativity
  
• personalized learning
  
• problem solving
  
• thinking skills
  
• alternative assessments
  
• choice
• brain-based learning

I could go on - but the point is, when asked, most people want the same or similar things for schools (and for the young people) but why aren't those thing happening? or better said, why aren't those things happening in a systematic and systemwide way (all of these things are happening in little bits somewhere in some school or district - but no where is the kind of schooling we need for young people to be successful in the 21st Century happening in a systemic way).

Why is that? 

I would contend the reason schools and schooling is the way it is - is because of the initial conditions that were present when the idea of free public schooling was conceived. In other words, the patterns established at the early stages of the development of the schooling system are the very same patterns that make it difficult, if not impossible, for schools and schooling to do the things on the list above.

In other posts in this blog I have written about some of the original conditions. 

The free public school system was created to 'school' the 20% of the young people that were too poor to attend a private (meaning a paid) school. The intention for this free public school system was to provide 'the basics' (reading, writing, and arithmetic) so that these poor young people would be good citizens and there would be less crime.

In another recent post the origins of the high school system was discussed. High schools were designed to educate about 5% of the young men in this country so they could make the connection between elementary school and higher education (college). High schools were designed to be 'feeder' schools for colleges.

From a recent article by ASCD Executive Director, Gene Carter: 

This month, as high school students across the United States receive their diplomas, our failure to improve that system will be evident in the number of students who don't. Studies of graduation rates indicate that nearly one-third of high school students drop out before graduating. That means that one student drops out every 26 seconds; between 6,000 and 7,000 drop out every school day; and 1.2 million drop out every year. Among African American and Hispanic students, the graduation rate is about 55 percent, or roughly one in every two students.

Furthermore, the studies raise questions about whether the students who do graduate will be prepared with the problem-solving, critical-thinking, and oral and written communication skills needed to succeed in an increasingly global market—questions that are echoed in the public's perception of high schools as reported in last year's Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll. The poll found that 40 percent of respondents do not think most public school students leave high school prepared for college, while 50 percent think the same students do not leave school prepared to do skilled jobs.

Today the cry is to transform schools to teach 21st Century Skills. These include life and career skills, innovation and learning skills, as well as information, media and technology skills.

It is clear that schools and schooling as we know them have not changed much since their conception. Sensitivity to initial conditions - and the patterns initially established when schools were first implemented - make changing schools very difficult. Even when we know what 'should be done' it still isn't. 

That makes me think that we need to change our thinking about what schools and schooling are, why they exist, and what they should do. Schools and schooling must be re-conceived and re-designed if we are to establish patterns that can be useful and successful now and in the future.

Where Did High School Come From

This blog is about building a case for redesigning our public schools. In several posts I have commented about the fact our schools are based on a model that was conceived and implemented some time around the 1870's. And it hasn't changed much. 

One thing I didn't know is where the design for high school came from. In reading the first chapter of a book called, Personalizing the High School Experience for Each Student, I have learned that it comes from a model to reach about 5% of the young people in this country - and it was developed in the 1890's. 

In a previous post I included a table that shows the graduation rates in US High Schools. Now that I understand that High School was really designed to graduate about 5% of the population I think we can reasonably say it's a miracle that more than 50% actually graduate. 

In our work we make a distinction between incremental innovation and breakthrough innovation. In a previous post I've asked the question whether schools as we know them need to be improved or redesigned. 

I hope we can see that it's time to provide support for the re-invention of public schools and to move beyond incremental improvements and get to breakthroughs. We are, or were, the innovation leader in the world. With a public school system that we have now that leadership is surely in jeopardy. 

Here's a quote from the first chapter of that book:

In the 1890s, Harvard College, a regional institute of higher education, desired to become a national university. To guide Harvard leaders in how to do this and to ensure that they would be getting students from across the country who were properly prepared to be successful in higher education, the college convened the Carnegie Commission. Yes, we're talking about that Carnegie Commission—the commission that decided that our high school students needed to earn course credits based on seat time. This 19th century concept, which is based solely on educating students who would be able to go on to Harvard, is still the basic organizing structure of our high schools in the 21st century.

The United States in the 1890s was a country whose population felt that an education past the 4th grade was a waste of time for most individuals. It was a country where high school was only for those who needed the connection between elementary school and higher education. It was a country where very few women and at most 5 percent of the young men went to college. That's who our high schools were designed to educate: 5 percent of our young men. The rest of our adolescents were employed in our mills, mines, and farms.

Schooling vs Education

I've been remembering - and thinking about - the fact that words and language have a lot of power. There are studies and entire bodies of knowledge about the power of words and the connection between words and mental images and mental models. 

For many years I have considered the system of public schools in this country to be an 'education system.' It wasn't until recently when I really understood the roots of the free public school system that I understood that the network of teachers and schools in this country was not intended to be an education system - but a schooling system. 

Does it matter? What's the difference between schooling and education? 

In many dictionary definitions for school and schooling the use of the word education finds its way into the text. In the following definitions from the web I have purposefully chosen a number of the sentences that do not refer to education. This may shed some light on this subject - or it may tend to annoy people. But let's look anyway.

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.

In my mind understanding the difference between schooling and educating is important. One reason this is important is because the system of schooling uses discipline and extrinsic motivation as a modality and a methodology - to "motivate" young people to learn. The formation of the free public school system in the United States was intended to provide the bare minimum for the poor to become good citizens.

A system of education uses intrinsic motivation and the natural desire of humans to learn and improve. A system based on internal motivation will support a person to achieve their full potential (move towards achieving their full potential) while a system of schooling will be satisfied with a minimum standard.

A system of schooling will intend to control and use discipline when students become noisy or out of control. A system of education will be based on relationships and respect. Discipline will be something one does because it is in their best interest and not because it is enforced from outside.

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.

I think one of the reasons people involved in the public schooling system experience frustration when they attempt to make changes or improve is because there is confusion between what is schooling and what is education. I believe some of this confusion is caused because there is often overlapping and contradictory goals and objectives in each 'system.' 

Anyone engaged in a process of improvements would do themselves well by understanding these distinctions and clarifying their own goals and objectives relative to each system.

University Doesn't Get IT

Here's an example of a University doing the very thing that will inhibit their students from taking risks and thinking. Toronto's Ryerson University has threatened to expel a student for setting up a study group on Facebook. Can you imagine? I'm almost at a loss for words. This is so silly and short sighted. Actually it is a perfect example of the administrations 'theory of business' (which in this case also betrays their theory of learning and their theory of knowledge). Schools are based on control and compliance and use fear to motivate. That is exactly what the culture created by high stakes testing does. It is the exact opposite of what I would want in a culture and in a learning environment. 

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.

Model Behavior - Texas School System Causing Dropouts

Now this is interesting. The Texas School System's method of accountability was the model for No Child Left Behind. Recent research shows that very same school system is actually losing a lot of students - and by not counting low-achieving students in their statistics they were able to show rising test scores. Actual facts are that Texas is graduating only 33% of their students. The research also shows that the longer this system of accountability is in place the worse it will get. Here's the full text of the article I read: 

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.

Open Letter to Bill Gates

Dear Bill,

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

Free - but Mandatory - Education

In May we visited Johannesburg, South Africa. While there we were fortunate to visit Soweto and to visit a small school. While there we learned some about Apartheid and how the whites used the education system to keep the blacks from learning much that might help them beyond being capable of much more than menial labor.

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.

Industrial versus Knowledge Based

In a very early post to this blog I wrote about the hierarchic organizational model and how model is out of sync with the current environment the education system finds itself a part of.

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...