Dangerously Irrelevant

Biosciences will hire no dropouts

Richard Longworth says…

Men and women who carried lunch pails and spent their days on assembly lines could earn good wages, own their own homes, feed their families, and keep a cottage by the lake. It was a safe, solid way of life, and it didn’t require much book learning. One step up the ladder stood the trades, the jobs in construction and nursing and repair. The junior colleges and vocational schools taught these trades and taught them well. If they didn’t teach much science or math, that was all right, because only students going to universities needed that knowledge. . . . The Midwest has lost the knack to compete in the new economy, and the schools have lost their ability to teach it. (pp. 179–180)

Globalization may be the most egalitarian force in history. . . . If you’re good, you’ve got a chance. If you've got the education and the skills, the door is open. But if you don’t . . . you’re out of luck. . . . If the Midwest’s future contains manufacturing, it will be high-end, high-tech manufacturing, demanding two-year degrees at the least. Biosciences will hire no dropouts. (pp. 172–173)

[Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism]

They are totally unqualified for any job other than the ones they just lost

Richard Longworth says…

State officials know perfectly well that globalization will swallow their traditional industries. But they’re stuck. Workers vote, and a voter who has just lost his job will be an angry voter. . . . Every time a factory dies, its workers go from a private payroll to the public dole; . . . unemployment pay and retraining costs take money away from programs, such as education, that might offer some advantage in the new economy. And so the pressure builds to subsidize the old industries, to do anything to keep them from moving away. . . . The time and money [states] spend trying to keep twentieth-century jobs prevent them from creating twenty-first century jobs. (pp. 35–36)

The dirty little secret of Midwestern manufacturing is that many workers are high school dropouts, uneducated, some virtually illiterate. They could build refrigerators, sure. But they are totally unqualified for any job other than the ones they just lost. (p. 56)

[Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism]

Any job that does not require face-to-face contact with a customer can be outsourced

Richard Longworth says…

Most of [the] earlier outsourcing dealt with manufacturing and factory workers. . . . The newest wave is different. It’s white-collar outsourcing . . . and it can hit anyone whose job isn’t absolutely nailed down. . . . Basically, any job that does not require face-to-face contact with a customer can be outsourced. Defense attorneys who must appear in a Wisconsin court cannot be in India, but real estate lawyers searching titles can. An Indiana X-ray technician has to be in the same room with the patient; the doctors who read the X-rays can be anywhere. Barbers in Columbus, taxi drivers in Chicago, and kindergarten teachers in Des Moines are outsource-proof. Stockbrokers and tax accountants aren’t. All this is happening now. . . . ‘Anything that can be sent over a wire can be outsourced, anything fungible is up for grabs, any tradable service anywhere in the world. Fifty percent of global GDP is services, and a lot of that is tradable.' (pp. 11–12)

[Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism]

Get comfortable with discomfort

Michael Port says…

When we are thinking small, we crave preordained outcomes. We want to know what’s going to happen before we begin. Control is an illusion. The need to know how and where prevents all progress. Outcomes are not the starting point. . . . When we seek to control it, it’s because we fear the unknown, the out of control. What we fear is reality because ultimately it can never be controlled. [The Think Big Manifesto, pp. 106–107]

Related posts

• Rise up
• The potential of our success makes [others] face their own universe, so constricted by their small thoughts
• We are the biggest obstacle
• We are squandering the gifts of the universe

We are squandering the gifts of the universe

Michael Port says…

With small thinking, we cannot grow – intellectually, spiritually, creatively, emotionally, financially. And when we cannot grow, society cannot grow. It cannot advance. It cannot develop. Small thinking is an ultimately autodestructive path. . . . The only reward of small thinking will be paid in the common currency of all small thinking – unaccomplished dreams. . . . No growth – not spiritual, emotional, professional, or social – is possible in this kind of environment. We are squandering the gifts of the universe. [The Think Big Manifesto, pp. 52–53]

Related posts

• Rise up
• The potential of our success makes [others] face their own universe, so constricted by their small thoughts
• We are the biggest obstacle

We are the biggest obstacle

Michael Port says…

Revolution is about one person at a time experiencing their own personal empowerment against an existing, deficient (small thinking) system. (p. 13)

We are the biggest obstacle that stands in the way of our doing big things in the world. We are our own worst enemies. (p. 22)

[The Think Big Manifesto]

Related posts

• Rise up
• The potential of our success makes [others] face their own universe, so constricted by their small thoughts 

The potential of our success makes [others] face their own universe, so constricted by their small thoughts

Michael Port says…

We will be ridiculed for declaring ourselves to be big thinkers. To declare anything is to take a chance, to put ourselves on the line, to risk failure. . . . 

When we take risks, we scare other people (and most of all ourselves), because those others see the glimmer of possibilities that they are not even reaching for, because the potential of our success makes them face their own universe, so constricted by their small thoughts.

We will be put down for our efforts. Others will revel in our failures along the way. In the German language, there's even a word for it: schadenfreude. To feel pleasure at someone else's misfortune. Small, small thinking.

We may lose faith in ourselves at points along the way. Worse, we will be intentionally thwarted by small thinking people who fear big thinking because it threatens their comfortable power base.

Together we will find our warrior core, our inner strength, the root of big thinking, and nothing and no one can thwart us. [The Think Big Manifesto, pp. 36-37]

[see yesterday's post, Rise Up]

Rise up

Michael Port says…

The time has come. We cannot wait anymore. For years, we have hidden behind our own small thoughts or let ourselves be held back by other small thinking people who don’t believe in us. Worse still, we have been rejected as marginal, unrealistic, dreamers, idealists, maybe even delusional. Family, friends, colleagues, and others (not to mention our own selves) have tried to negate us, eliminate us, and silence us. We will not stand for it anymore. We say – bring it on. Our personal revolution from small thinking to big thinking is now. We will make public our aim to think big about our goals, our intentions, and, yes, our dreams.

There’s more. We will collaborate, cooperate, and join forces with other big thinkers to bring about the larger revolution our society needs if it is to survive.

You want to think big. I want to think big. Together, we will think even bigger. [The Think Big Manifesto, p. 34]

Should students be treated like customers?

From Mike Sansone:

I once asked a teacher what would happen if they treated their students like customers, with a design philosophy of customer experience in mind. The teacher was taken aback. She said the day she treats her students like customers is the day she would lose control of the room.

At that moment, I knew she was standing on the line of irrelevancy -- and about to cross over. The reality is, she should have been looking for ways to share control rather than try to own it alone.

Hmmm… reminds me a bit of this Robert Fried quote.

In other news, student enrollments in more-personalized choice options such as charter schools, virtual schools, alternative schools, and home schooling continue to rise…

Incumbents v. revolutionaries

Incumbents very seldom invent the future.

– Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, in Dinosaur at the Gate

The President is calling

The President is calling:

I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

President Barack Obama, March 10, 2009

Alia iacta est. How will we answer the call?

The Iowa series - Wrap-up

I've had a lot of fun guest blogging over at The Des Moines Register this week. For those of you who would like to have a single link that you can forward to others, you can use this web address:

http://snipurl.com/iowaseries

Here are links to each of the five posts here at Dangerously Irrelevant:

• Iowa - 21st century curricula
• Iowa - A robust system of online learning
• Iowa - A computer in every hand
• Iowa - Invest in leadership
• Iowa - Better information

Happy reading!

The Game of School - Wrap-up

I’ve had a lot of fun these past ten days posting quotes from Robert Fried’s The Game of School. I think Fried does a fabulous job of highlighting how schools as institutions have largely moved away from many of our desired ends for students and their learning. Not always, not for every kid, but mostly… And, as I hope you have seen for the past 10 days, he’s also eminently quotable.

Here’s a quick list of all of the posts:

• Passive acceptance of student boredom
• Wasting our children’s time
• When it’s time to worry
• The game that demoralizes even when we win
• Our temples of knowledge are lost opportunities
• Learning and power
• Test score burrito
• Complicit in the atrophy of our children’s learning spirit
• When teachers get stuck
• Are we willing to roll up our sleeves?

I also have Fried’s books, The Passionate Learner and The Passionate Teacher, sitting on my shelf. I’m looking forward to digging into those as well.

For those of you who noted that you were inspired to go out and get a copy of The Game of School, I hope that you enjoy the book as much as I did. Happy reading!

Are we willing to roll up our sleeves?

Robert Fried says…

[I]f what we seek is a learning partnership with students, we cannot remain aloof from them or be seen as demanding their respect as a matter of right. Nor can we be viewed as seeking to “buy them off” by offering them a light workload in exchange for minimal compliance and decent behavior on their part. . . . We have to earn their respect . . . by being willing to roll up our sleeves as learners ourselves and to engage them in the pursuit of knowledge worth knowing, of skills worth gaining. [The Game of School, p. 117]

When teachers get stuck

Robert Fried says…

When student resistance to classroom learning is seen as typical and inevitable, and teachers console each other to “just hang on till June,” that . . . is being stuck.

The worst part of being stuck comes when you begin to think that what you are experiencing is the inevitable condition of being a teacher.

To be stuck as a teacher is . . . . dangerous to your spirit. You feel that your school is a place where authentic teaching and learning happen only rarely. It is the rare student who seems to genuinely appreciate what you have to offer, the rare class that responds well to the instruction you have meticulously planned for them. You consider yourself lucky if “most of the kids are paying attention, most of the time,” or if your latest lesson “seemed to go over okay.” You face the daily grind of instructional delivery, content coverage, student apathy, and grade consciousness. Your own learning streams seem to have dried up even as each new school year presents its complement of pedagogical challenges.

When you are stuck, it is not at all clear that there is anything you can do to resolve the situation you’re in. The horizons of your job look unchanging and unchangeable. . . . In such cases teachers stop seeing students, colleagues, and administrators as individuals capable of enhancing their effectiveness, but instead view them as “forces I have to contend with.”

As teachers, we pour incredible energy into our daily work. . . . Such an outpouring of energy and concern is tolerable as long as we are getting something back – so long as the flow of energy goes two ways, and we receive from our students and colleagues and, occasionally, parents as well, sufficient evidence that our efforts are having a real impact, that our caring is appreciated. But when the energy flow seems decidedly one-directional – outward and away – we begin to burn out. [The Game of School, pp. 153–155]

Complicit in the atrophy of our children's learning spirit

Robert Fried says…

We [parents] become so confused, so conflicted, so fearful that unless we keep our children’s minds “on task,” aiming for the honor roll, the advanced placement courses, the grade-point average of life, we will damage their chances to access the next set of elite learning venues, be they the elementary school’s gifted-and-talented program, the high school’s honors classes, an Ivy League college, or a top-ranked graduate program. Such pressures can easily thwart our desire to see the children in our lives as happy, curious, confident, and enthusiastic learners. We see the contrast between how our children respond to the things they love to learn and how they resist or rebel against the boredom and inanity of much of their schoolwork. But we bite our tongues and (still confused) become complicit in the atrophy of our children’s learning spirit in furtherance of their academic careers. [The Game of School, pp. 80–81]

Test score burrito

Robert Fried says…

Like Jacob, the biblical youth who sold his patrimony to his brother Esau for the equivalent of a Big Mac, our youth are cajoled into giving up their independent spirit of learning, their spiritual heritage as self-motivated seekers, to get a test score burrito or a report card wrap.

The ultimate irony of this transference is that those few students who manage to retain their independent learning spirit . . . are likely to be better positioned to blossom academically and vocationally than those who pursue academic achievement through the Game. It is from that minority unencumbered by pseudo-goals that we get most of our inventors, entrepeneurs, artists, and scientists. What leads to success at higher levels of abstraction and study is precisely this ability to turn from the expected to pursue the intriguing . . . to awaken to the new theory or pattern amid the cacophony of conventional thinking. [The Game of School, p. 80]

Learning and power

Robert Fried says…

There is quite likely no substitute for the experience of feeling empowered . . . if we hope for children to pursue learning enthusiastically within the structure of a classroom or a school. Learning and power are inextricably linked. [The Game of School, p. 65]

Our temples of knowledge are lost opportunities

Robert Fried says…

We have opted not to create schools as places where children’s curiosity, sensory awareness, power, and communication can flourish, but rather to erect temples of knowledge where we sit them down, tell them a lot of stuff we think is important, try to control their restless curiosity, and test them to see how well they’ve listened to us. [The Game of School, pp. 58–59]

The game that demoralizes even when we win

Robert Fried says…

The place we call school or college, which should be our society’s most vital promoter of learning, too often instead creates the field on which we learn to play a game that demoralizes us even when we are winners (and can permanently scar us when we lose). In the daily course of attending school, as they do what their teachers ask and strive to earn good grades, our children unknowingly substitute lesser goals for an invaluable goal they were born with: the pursuit of learning for its own sake. [The Game of School, p. 33]

When it's time to worry

Robert Fried says…

There is a simple test we can perform to find out whether or not our children are truly learning. We can ask them, not the usual question, “How was school today, Honey?” or “What did she teach you in your math class?” but rather, “Did you learn anything in school today that you really want to know more about?” If the answer is … usually no, you have cause for worry - even if your child brings home a good report card. [The Game of School, p. 7]

Wasting our children's time

Robert Fried says…

[F]ar too much of the time our children spend in school is wasted. . . .

[M]ost of what they experience during school hours passes over them like the shadow of a cloud, or through them like an undigested seed. They may be present in the classroom, but they are not really there. Their pencils may be chugging away on the worksheets or the writing prompts or math problems laid out for them, but their intelligence is running on two cylinders at best. They pay some attention to what their teacher happens to be telling them, but their imagination has moved elsewhere. . . .

And, worst of all, by the time our kids have reached fourth or fifth grade, they think what they are experiencing in school is normal. [The Game of School, p. 1]

Passive acceptance of student boredom

Robert Fried says…

[A]mid all the accounts … of kids complaining to each other about how bored they are with many of their classes, why do we accept this so passively, without arguing for the right to be learning something of value? [The Game of School, p. xii]

Slide - Teachers and technology

[Download this file: png ppt pptx]

[from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Letter to My Colleagues]

Slide - Incremental change

[Download this file: png ppt pptx]

[from Clarence Fisher, Literacy as Battleground (and Miguel Guhlin!)]

Not so irrelevant 013

My latest roundup of links and tools…

When did the IT staff get promoted above the superintendent?

Will Richardson notes:

[A] school superintendent I spoke with … lamented the fact that his IT staff wouldn’t give him access to YouTube and even Wikipedia.

See also my older post: Principal blogging not allowed.

Math and motocross

Check out this sweet series of motocross math videos at HotChalk. The brains behind the math? Former guest blogger Jason Dyer!

“I didn’t know Sasquatch was real.”

Fun with the Pacific Tree Octopus!

Maybe we should do this for teachers and administrators too

"Seventy-one-year-old Peggy McIntyre needs to learn as much as she can about Windows before 8 a.m. Or else."

Post-Gutenberg economics

It’s now a publish-then-filter world. Clay Shirky notes that “we’re clocking a singularity a week at this point.”

We need to educate our educators

Seth Godin says:

It’s easy to be against something you’re afraid of. And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand.

Open your brain, open your model of education

The Education Innovation blog has an interesting post on closed v. open models of education. [Note to self: this might be the world’s longest URL]

Some good thinking going on here

Thanks to Mike Sansone, I recently discovered the Union Square Ventures blog. In Power to the People, they state:

[W]e believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.

In Why the Flow of Innovation Has Reversed, they note:

[T]he vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. . . . [O]ne reason this is happening is that the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering.

Students aren’t the only ones missing the big picture

The Florida Department of Education is concerned that students are missing the big picture when it comes to science. A task force stated that “teachers should provide a broader focus on scientific concepts and process in a 'big picture' sense.” Hmmm… I wonder if that means the Department is going to narrow down the list of required science standards and also pare down the size of approved textbooks. I’m guessing not. Download the full report if you dare.

Disempowered today = disempowered tomorrow

I left this comment at Jim Gates’ Tipline blog:

Students who aren't fluid technology users today will be the low-wage workers and disempowered citizens of tomorrow.

I want it right THERE

Finally, if you’re anal-retentive about your Windows taskbar like I am, check out Taskbar Shuffle.

Not so irrelevant 012

Three great questions

I especially like the last of these three questions from Rodney Trice. We should be asking teachers and principals that question more often (and just that directly).

• How do you intend to bring the global community into your classroom?
• How will you prepare students for a future that is relatively unknown?
• How you will eliminate the racial predictability of achievement outcomes in your classroom?

This just in: Teenagers play video games!

All kidding aside, the latest report from the amazing Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that kids - even girls! – are up to their eyeballs in video games.

We’ll stick to the tried and (not) true

Nope, sorry. iPods are not allowed. Back to the old way. Too bad it doesn’t work as well. Gotta do it anyway. Oh, and I love how the music players are categorically, by definition, a ‘distraction’ (if not in actuality). Who needs reality when we have these little educational policy fantasy worlds that we can create for ourselves?

Throw da bums out!

After attempts to bring in turnaround experts didn’t work, the state of Maryland is increasingly leaning toward completely restructuring schools that are academically unsuccessful. State schools Superintendent Nancy Grasmick says:

We are very comfortable being more aggressive about this. We have seen much better results [when the staff is replaced].

Blog like a farmer

I ran across an old post by Mike Sansone, one of my Iowa blogging buddies. I really like his metaphor that blogging should be like farming.

Scorecards

I bet parents and community members would really like to see scorecards like this one (maybe with different data) for their local schools. I know some schools and districts already do this. Hopefully they use line graphs rather than tables of numbers. Could you tell the essential story of a school district with 10 key, well-done graphs? I bet you could!

No writing in journalism class?

Check out this excellent article about the NYU journalism student who got in trouble for blogging about her class. [hat tip to Tim Stahmer]

I got no money, honey

Did you catch Edutopia’s advice on how to innovate without extra money or support?

Spend hours on content you can find with Google in 3 seconds!

One of my favorite things about Wes Fryer is his ability to highlight the ridiculous. I also enjoy his irreverance (“Behold! I hold aloft the holy words!”), particularly when I have the same experience at my kids’ school.

Speaking of Google…

Finally, I’m digging Google Chrome. it’s now my default browser and I’m using Firefox less and less (and I love Firefox). Chrome is much faster. I also like that each tab is a separate process; I have yet to have a browser hang…

'I don't believe the general public respects teachers as much as they did'

Over on the World Class Schools for Iowa blog, Linda Fandel of the Des Moines Register interviewed Chris Bern, new president of the Iowa State Education Association. At the end of the interview, Fandel asked Bern if teachers were treated with respect by students. Here is Bern’s reply:

Our students still have very much Midwest values, and most parents raise their children to respect their elders. Is it the same as it was 20 years ago? No, but then it's not that way with the general public, either. The way people behave is different than it was 20 years ago with regard to each other. I don't believe the general public respects teachers as much as they did [emphasis added].

Here are the first seven reader comments following the interview (click on the image for a larger version):

Yeah, I’d say he’s right…

Our policies have to shift

Al Gore said:

We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift.

He was talking about global climate change but he might as well have been talking about our attempts to transition schools into the 21st century…

Compare and contrast - Don't ask questions

Postman & Weingartner (1968, p. 23) noted:

Knowledge is produced in response to questions. And new knowledge results from the asking of new questions; quite often new questions about old questions. Here is the point: Once you have learned how to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know. . . . The most important intellectual ability man has yet developed -€“ the art and science of asking questions -€“ is not taught in school! Moreover it is not "€œtaught" in the most devastating way possible: by arranging the environment so that significant question asking is not valued.

In the news this week, a teacher may get fired because his students thought and acted independently?

More than 160 students in six different classes at Intermediate School 318 in the South Bronx - virtually the entire eighth grade - refused to take last Wednesday's three-hour practice exam for next month's statewide social studies test. Instead, the students handed in blank exams. Then they submitted signed petitions with a list of grievances to school Principal Maria Lopez and the Department of Education. . . . School administrators blamed the boycott on a 30-year-old probationary social studies teacher, Douglas Avella. . . . A few days later, in a reprimand letter, Lopez accused Avella of initiating the boycott and taking "actions [that] caused a riot at the school." . . . "They're saying Mr. Avella made us do this," said Johnny Cruz, 15, another boycott leader. "They don't think we have brains of our own, like we're robots. We students wanted to make this statement. The school is oppressing us too much with all these tests."

So what if schools don’t prepare kids for the 21st century?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before as a blogger: resurrect an old post. Over the past few months I’ve read all or some of Innovation Nation, Five Regions of the Future, Sixteen Trends, and The 2010 Meltdown. I then decided it was time to finally read Teaching as a Subversive Activity and The End of Education. So I started on the former and then today I picked up the latest issue of Educational Leadership, which is focused on reshaping high schools. As the echoes of K-12 naysayers reverberated through my head, I found myself asking once again:

So what if schools don’t adjust to the demands of the digital, global economy? So what if schools don’t prepare kids for the 21st century?

As McLuhan stated, school may be irrelevant. As Wiener noted, schools may shield children from reality. As Gardner said, schools may educate for obsolescence. As Bruner stated, schools may not develop intelligence. As Rogers noted, schools may not promote significant learnings. As Friedenberg said, schools may punish creativity and independence [all closely quoted from Postman & Weingartner, 1968, p. xiv). And yet the economy chugs along, sometimes up, sometimes down, but mostly up. And the overall well-being of most citizens continues to improve by most historical measures.

So, without further ado, below is my post from March 2007, which I’m hoping will spark some additional conversation 14 months later, particularly now that both the TechLearning blog and Dangerously Irrelevant have larger audiences. I hope you find the post to still be as challenging and relevant today as I do.

– – – – –

Overblown alarmism and empty rhetoric

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

[Law students learn to argue both sides of any issue because as attorneys they may be hired for either side of a case. Knowledge of the other side’s arguments also allows attorneys to counter those arguments and thus strengthen their own side. So with that in mind, here’s a little contrarian perspective on School 2.0. As technology advocates, we must be able to offer real solutions, not just empty rhetoric.]

Dear School 2.0 advocates,

We’ve heard it all before. The sky is falling. America is in danger of losing its role as lead actor on the global stage. What else is new?

National commissions? Esteemed task forces? Corporate leaders as education critics? We’ll see your Bill Gates and raise you a Sputnik.

We heard it in the 1950s:

We are engaged in a grim duel. We are beginning to recognize the threat to American technical supremacy which could materialize if Russia succeeds in her ambitious program of achieving world scientific and engineering supremacy by turning out vast numbers of well-trained scientists and engineers. . . We have let our educational problem grow much too big for comfort and safety. We are beginning to see now that we must solve it without delay. - Admiral Hyman Rickover, 1959

We heard it in the 1980s:

The risk is not only that the Japanese make automobiles more efficiently than Americans and have government subsidies for development and export. It is not just that the South Koreans recently built the world's most efficient steel mill, or that American machine tools, once the pride of the world, are being displaced by German products. It is also that these developments signify a redistribution of trained capability throughout the globe. . . If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all--old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority. Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the "information age" we are entering. - A Nation at Risk, 1983

We heard it in the 1990s:

America’s education system is broken. - IBM CEO Louis Gerstner, 1994

And we’re hearing it again today:

Whereas for most of the 20th century the United States could take pride in having the best-educated workforce in the world, that is no longer true. Over the past 30 years, one country after another has surpassed us. . . . While our international counterparts are increasingly getting more education, their young people are getting a better education as well. . . . Our relative position in the world's education league tables [continues] its long slow decline. - The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 2006

America’s high schools are obsolete. - Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, 2005

And yet, somehow, despite our educational system’s long history of alleged mediocrity, our country and our economy keep chugging along quite nicely. Our standard of living is the envy of most of the world. Our gross domestic product per capita literally dwarfs those of China or India, the latest international competition du jour. Despite our country’s creativity-stifling schools, our citizens and workers continue, quite astonishingly, to build upon our nation’s well recognized and long-standing traditions of innovation and excellence to create new products, new systems, and new markets.

We’ve heard it all before. Creative thinking. Problem solving. Independent, self-directed learning. Daniel Pink, Richard Florida, John Seely Brown…

Ho hum. Ever heard of progressive education? The turn of the LAST century? Summerhill? John Dewey? Neil Postman? The 1960s? Been there, done that. Why is THIS time any different? Why is it that THIS time we should replace the entire system?

Yes, we get it. Most kids think schools are boring. Big surprise. John Goodlad told us that long ago. As if we needed ANYONE to tell us that. Isn’t that just the way school is?

Fine. School 2.0 is the “right” thing to do. Technology has the potential to transform education. Our educational institutions could be doing so much more. Educators should feel more of a moral imperative to do things differently. Blah blah blah… Let’s be honest: isn’t this true for ANY bureaucratic government entity? Do we really expect our public schools to be any different?

We’ve heard it all before. The status quo is inadequate. Too many kids drop out, our assessment systems are all wrong, and we’re squandering our children’s future. The problem is that you offer no concrete, tangible, publicly- and politically-viable alternatives.

It’s easy to throw stones at glass houses. It’s much harder to replace a venerable system that’s served us well for a century with something else. The old saw, “Never make a complaint without offering potential solutions” applies here in spades. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say that we “tore down the walls” tomorrow. What would education look like instead? How would we ever get there from where we are now? How are you going to persuade educators, and politicians, and your local community members that this is worth moving toward? That it’s not just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking?

What’s your plan? We mean a real plan. Not just “kids learning independently on matters of personal interest, taking advantage of the power of digital technology to help them do so.” What will the structures look like? Policies? Laws? Funding streams? How will we know if kids have learned anything important? How will we handle parents’ very real needs for someone to take their kids while they go to work?

Quit offering us wishes. Quit offering us dreams. Quit preaching to us about what is morally right and educationally appropriate. Help us realize, in terms we can understand, what this new thing might actually look like AT SCALE and how we might reasonably get here. Even if we agree with you that this is important, without a vision AND a plan we’re just as stuck as you are.

We’ve heard it all before. What else you got?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

[Law students learn to argue both sides of any issue because as attorneys they may be hired for either side of a case. Knowledge of the other side’s arguments also allows attorneys to counter those arguments and thus strengthen their own side. So with that in mind, here’s a little contrarian perspective on School 2.0. As technology advocates, we must be able to offer real solutions, not just empty rhetoric.]

Dear School 2.0 advocates,

We’ve heard it all before. The sky is falling. America is in danger of losing its role as lead actor on the global stage. What else is new?

National commissions? Esteemed task forces? Corporate leaders as education critics? We’ll see your Bill Gates and raise you a Sputnik.

We heard it in the 1950s:

We are engaged in a grim duel. We are beginning to recognize the threat to American technical supremacy which could materialize if Russia succeeds in her ambitious program of achieving world scientific and engineering supremacy by turning out vast numbers of well-trained scientists and engineers. . . We have let our educational problem grow much too big for comfort and safety. We are beginning to see now that we must solve it without delay. - Admiral Hyman Rickover, 1959

We heard it in the 1980s:

The risk is not only that the Japanese make automobiles more efficiently than Americans and have government subsidies for development and export. It is not just that the South Koreans recently built the world's most efficient steel mill, or that American machine tools, once the pride of the world, are being displaced by German products. It is also that these developments signify a redistribution of trained capability throughout the globe. . . If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all--old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority. Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the "information age" we are entering. - A Nation at Risk, 1983

We heard it in the 1990s:

America’s education system is broken. - IBM CEO Louis Gerstner, 1994

And we’re hearing it again today:

Whereas for most of the 20th century the United States could take pride in having the best-educated workforce in the world, that is no longer true. Over the past 30 years, one country after another has surpassed us. . . . While our international counterparts are increasingly getting more education, their young people are getting a better education as well. . . . Our relative position in the world's education league tables [continues] its long slow decline. - The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 2006

America’s high schools are obsolete. - Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, 2005

And yet, somehow, despite our educational system’s long history of alleged mediocrity, our country and our economy keep chugging along quite nicely. Our standard of living is the envy of most of the world. Our gross domestic product per capita literally dwarfs those of China or India, the latest international competition du jour. Despite our country’s creativity-stifling schools, our citizens and workers continue, quite astonishingly, to build upon our nation’s well recognized and long-standing traditions of innovation and excellence to create new products, new systems, and new markets.

We’ve heard it all before. Creative thinking. Problem solving. Independent, self-directed learning. Daniel Pink, Richard Florida, John Seely Brown…

Ho hum. Ever heard of progressive education? The turn of the LAST century? Summerhill? John Dewey? Neil Postman? The 1960s? Been there, done that. Why is THIS time any different? Why is it that THIS time we should replace the entire system?

Yes, we get it. Most kids think schools are boring. Big surprise. John Goodlad told us that long ago. As if we needed ANYONE to tell us that. Isn’t that just the way school is?

Fine. School 2.0 is the “right” thing to do. Technology has the potential to transform education. Our educational institutions could be doing so much more. Educators should feel more of a moral imperative to do things differently. Blah blah blah… Let’s be honest: isn’t this true for ANY bureaucratic government entity? Do we really expect our public schools to be any different?

We’ve heard it all before. The status quo is inadequate. Too many kids drop out, our assessment systems are all wrong, and we’re squandering our children’s future. The problem is that you offer no concrete, tangible, publicly- and politically-viable alternatives.

It’s easy to throw stones at glass houses. It’s much harder to replace a venerable system that’s served us well for a century with something else. The old saw, “Never make a complaint without offering potential solutions” applies here in spades. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say that we “tore down the walls” tomorrow. What would education look like instead? How would we ever get there from where we are now? How are you going to persuade educators, and politicians, and your local community members that this is worth moving toward? That it’s not just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking?

What’s your plan? We mean a real plan. Not just “kids learning independently on matters of personal interest, taking advantage of the power of digital technology to help them do so.” What will the structures look like? Policies? Laws? Funding streams? How will we know if kids have learned anything important? How will we handle parents’ very real needs for someone to take their kids while they go to work?

Quit offering us wishes. Quit offering us dreams. Quit preaching to us about what is morally right and educationally appropriate. Help us realize, in terms we can understand, what this new thing might actually look like AT SCALE and how we might reasonably get here. Even if we agree with you that this is important, without a vision AND a plan we’re just as stuck as you are.

We’ve heard it all before. What else you got?

Compare and contrast - Video games as educational tools

Dr. Jim Gee notes:

If learning always operates well within the learner's resources, then all that happens is that the learner's behaviors get more and more routinized, as the learner continues to experience success by doing the same things. This is good ... for learning and practicing fluent and masterful performance ... but is not good for developing newer and higher skills. However, if learning operates outside one's resources, the learner is simply frustrated and gives up.

Good video games ... build in many opportunities for learners to operate at the outer edge of their regime of competence, thereby causing them to rethink their routinized mastery and move, within the game and themselves, to a new level. Indeed, for many learners it is these times ... when learning is most exciting and rewarding. Sadly in school, many so-called advantaged learners rarely get to operate at the edge of their regime of competence as they coast along in a curriculum that makes few real demands on them. At the same time, less advantaged learners are repeatedly asked to operate outside their regime of competence.

[Video games] build into their designs and encourage good principles of learning … that are better than those in many of our skill-and-drill, back-to-basics, test-them-until-they-drop schools.

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. [pp. 70, 205]

In contrast, here are current teachers’ beliefs (click on graph for full report):

Not so irrelevant 008

My latest roundup of links and tools…

I read blocked blogs

• I’m gettin’ me some of these super-cool buttons (made by Stephanie Sandifer; inspired by Bud Hunt). What a great thing to hand out to administrators!

Are you up to the challenge?

• The 2008 Comment Challenge is now on (and, hey, recognize a fantastic commenter!)

Why K-12 educators shake their heads at academia

• Rick Hess perfectly captures one of my primary complaints about academia, which is that much of what we do is completely inaccessible (and/or meaningless) to K-12 educators

No hand-held electronics in front of the kids!

I was incredulous to read ... the decision by the London Catholic School Board in Ontario banning hand held electronic devices in schools. . . . Even more bizarrely ... school board employees are only allowed to use these devices "in areas from which students are excluded." Taken to its logical extent then this includes staff also being unable to use digital cameras to record student work or projects, create and listen to podcasts and so on.
– Gareth Long

Like Alfie Kohn, Dan Meyer forces us to rethink / justify

• Who do we think we are?
• The difference between us and them
• Sobriety

New tools I’m finding quite useful

• Taboo Firefox extension
• FeedDemon RSS reader

The impetus is on us, not them

Help a teacher develop an integrated lesson [that] ... focuses on a local issue of real importance, in which they, their families, and/or others in their community have a genuine stake and interest. If their learning is situated in that type of context, I think you’ll find the impact of their learning experiences will be far greater, and many more of them will learn digital literacy skills alongside traditional literacy skills. Teaching in a problem-based learning environment is a lot more work than simply lecturing and delivering content to students, but it is the type of learning environment our students need to remain engaged in school work. Too many kids today are BORED by school. As the adults running our schools, it is our responsibility to remedy this situation.
– Wesley Fryer

A couple of gems from Clay Burell…

• Muhammad Ali: A D- student or an F- school?
• Education as pretense: Schooly “speeches” versus real “talks”

And a couple more from Gerald Bracey

• Proficient readers: Dear Strong American Schools (be wary of those NAEP proficiency levels!)
• A test everyone will fail

We are a little egocentric, aren’t we?

• Fujitsu’s world map (thanks, Brett!)

And, finally, a reminder from John Pederson

• Don’t count your Twitter followers

One year ago: Well, what's your answer? and Principal blogging not allowed

Cynicism or hope?

We have a choice to make for ourselves and the organizations that we lead: cynicism or hope. Moving forward or remaining still. Not starry-eyed, quixotic optimism but a realistic, determined belief that we can figure this out and do this. Or a stagnant, regressive retrenching, an unwillingness to invest in the proven and potential capacity of humanity. Which will you choose?

And when today cynics dismiss as and impossible dream or naïve idealism proposals to create the institutions of a truly global society let us remind them that people used to think black civil rights a distant dream, the end of the cold war an impossible hope, the ending of apartheid in our generation the work of dreamers, debt relief for the poorest countries an unrealisable idea ... And so let us have confidence we can discover anew in ourselves the values we share in common,  ... and let us have confidence we can create a global covenant across nations to make peace and prosperity real in our generation.

 - Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister (courtesy of Richard Florida)

Make something happen

Hey, principals! Superintendents! Teachers!*

On a related note, here’s what I’ve been saying a lot lately…

* Seth Godin, Free Prize Inside (p. 47)

Some thoughts on math

From Roger Schank at The Pulse:

[T]there is no evidence whatsoever, that accumulation of facts and background knowledge are the same thing. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Facts learned out of context and apart from actual real world experience that is repeated over and over are not retained. . . .

[K]ids don’t like math much and it is clear why. They find it boring and irrelevant to anything they care about doing. If you think math is so important, then why not teach it within a meaningful context, like business, or running a school doing the kind of math you had to do to do that – which certainly wasn’t algebra II. There is plenty of evidence that shows that teaching math within a real and meaningful context works a whole lot better than shoving it down their throats and following that with a multiple choice test. . . .

[T]here is no evidence whosoever that says that a nation that is trailing in math test scores will somehow trail in GDP or whatever it is you really care about. This is just plain silly, but we keep repeating the mantra  that we are behind Korea in math as if it has been proven that this matters in some way. . . .

[N]early every grown adult has forgotten whatever algebra he or she ever learned to pass those silly tests, so it is clear that algebra is meaningless for adult life. I ask every important person in public life that I meet to tell me The Quadratic Formula. No one has ever been able to do so.

From David Thornburg at The Pulse:

Recent pronouncements from Washington regarding math education have suggested that pedagogical points of view don't matter in the teaching of mathematics. For example: "There is no basis in research for favoring teacher-based or student-centered instruction," Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, the chairman of the panel, said at a briefing last Wednesday. "People may retain their strongly held philosophical inclinations, but the research does not show that either is better than the other."

Well, actually, Larry, if you read the “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” document (National Academies Press, 2007) you will likely be shocked to learn that, in fact, there are two methodologies proven to improve math proficiency: Statewide specialty high schools (e.g., IMSA) and inquiry-driven project-based learning (e.g., constructionism.) Now it may well be that Dr. Faulkner has more reliable sources than those at the National Academy of Science and other groups that contributed to this 591 page report on the challenge faced by the US in the areas of science and math education. However, let's assume for the moment that the National Academies tend to use fairly reliable folks to generate their reports. In this case, then Faulkner is simply flat out wrong. There IS research showing that one methodology is better than another, and I just cited it. The fact that this research was reported by the same government that claims it does not exist is a puzzlement at best, and an example of the “big lie” at worst. Faulkner's strategy seems to be that, if you lie to the American public loudly enough, it will believe you.

Great questions from Michael Wesch

Ask students these two questions from Michael Wesch:

• How many of you do not actually 'like' school?  (probably many hands)
• How many of you do not like learning?  (probably no hands)

These two questions would be great conversation starters regarding the difference between school and learning. I wonder how many middle and high schools would see little difference in their results for these two questions. I'm guessing very few...

Everything is a marketing interaction

Every time you interact with a customer, you're engaging in marketing. Doesn't matter if you're instituting a policy, gaining some data, delivering an invoice... it's a marketing interaction.

… When you yell at a classroom full of kids because one kid misbehaved, that's a marketing decision.

from Seth Godin, What’s the point of this interaction?

Some great quotes

From Simon Evans:

Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in a different time.  – Hebrew proverb

From Greg Farr:

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.  – Jacob Bronowski

From Richard Florida:

In the US, there are nine cities with more than 1m inhabitants. In China, there are 49. You can be travelling across China, arrive in a city that is twice the size of Houston, and think: I've never even heard of this place.  – Rob Gifford

Knowledge differentials cause discomfort

From Wikinomics (p. 47):

[T]his is the first time in human history when children are authorities on something really important.

Think about that for a minute, because the implications are huge. The authors go on to remind us that

Today young people are authorities on the digital revolution that is changing every institution in society. . . . While their parents were passive consumers of media, youth today are active creators of media content and hungry for interaction.

Interview with Chris Craft

Is it already July 3? Way back on June 20 I had the pleasure of talking with Chris Craft about online learning for a class he's taking. The focus was mainly on higher education but much of our conversation was relevant to the K-12 world as well. Chris posted our discussion as a podcast in case you'd like to hear it:

• Interview with Chris Craft (23:46)

No pain, no gain

I'll tell you something I've noticed from visiting a lot of American schools: the more traditional the teacher, the grimmer the mood. These classrooms don't always resemble Dickensian factories, mind you, but if you watch the kids' faces (or the teachers'), the phrase 'joy of discovery' probably won't leap to mind. And here's the interesting part: the people who defend the Old School usually don't deny that this is true, and they don't even seem to mind. Sometimes they actually take a perverse pride in presiding over (or sending their kids to) this bleak house because for them that constitutes proof that real education is happening. No pain, no gain.
  - Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve, p. 108

Change diagram 05

[from http://tinyurl.com/bkbtk]

No one jumps a 20 foot chasm in two 10 foot jumps.
   - Miguel Guhlin (comment at Remote Access)

Change quote(s) 05

Some quotes that I've used on this blog in the past...

They say, “Sure, we need change.”
I say we need revolution now.

They say, “We can’t handle this much change.”
I say, “Your job and career are in jeopardy; what other options do you have?”

They say, “Times are changing.”
I say, “Everything has already changed. Tomorrow is the first day of your revolution . . . or you’re toast.”

They say I’m extreme.
I say I’m a realist.

  - Seth Godin, The Big Moo, pp. 49-50

Change quote 04

One step is easy. One step isn’t enough.

Two steps is tempting. Two steps means that everyone understands what you’re up to when you pitch an idea to them.

Three steps changes the game. Organizations that think three steps ahead are the groundbreakers and the pathfinders. They’re the ones inventing the next generation, the people who are undoing the very foundations that your organization depends on.

Three steps is difficult. It’s difficult to sell, even more difficult to build, and almost impossible to get your mother-in-law (or your boss) to understand. Three steps - that’s what’s worth building.

  - Seth Godin, The Big Moo, pp. 41–42

Change quote(s) 03

Most organizations are paralyzed, stuck in a rut, staring at the growth paradox. On one hand, they understand all the good things that will come with growth. On the other, they’re afraid, petrified that growth means change, change means risk . . . Nobody wants to screw up and ruin a good thing, so the organization just sits there, motionless.
  - Seth Godin, The Big Moo, p. xv

and

Panicking when something really bad happens is counterproductive. . . . Taking action today on a long-term problem is easier, cheaper, more effective, and far less time consuming than waiting for it to become an emergency. The time to panic . . . is today. Why not start panicking in advance? Why not start taking emergency measures while there’s still a chance that those emergency measures will actually accomplish something? Every organization that gets into trouble falters because it waited too long to do the stuff that should have been done a long time ago. Panic early, not late, and your fire drills will actually pay off.
  - Seth Godin, The Big Moo, pp. 30–31

and

Anxiety is the false fear that corrupts your life. Anxiety is what happens when you imagine possible negative outcomes instead of embracing the reality of now. Anxiety is also the reason that organizations overstudy opportunities - and then hesitate to take action until it’s too late.
  - Seth Godin, The Big Moo, p. 51

Change quote 02

Measure just about anything, and the distribution . . . almost always comes out as a perfect bell curve. . . . [The bell curve] even applies to the energy and creativity of entire organizations. . . . The most fascinating thing about the bell curve is that some people and some organizations naturally gravitate to a certain section. . . . The trick, then, is not to wait for your [world] to change before changing where you are on the curve. The trick is to change your organization’s instinctual location on the curve. if you get used to being exceptional, you’ll probably stay there.
  - Seth Godin, The Big Moo, pp. 49-50

Change quote 01

There are two kinds of organizations. One kind likes to be on the cutting edge . . . to embrace the new. The other kind fears that, and holds back. . . . [Organizations] that are good at being edgy will always find a way to thrive. . . . What do you do when the [world] is moving away from you, not toward you? If you wait too long, it'll be too late to do much of anything at all. Instead, recognize that change is coming, that the reality you operate in is dying out, and start practicing how to do the next big thing. Betting on change is always the safest bet available.
  - Seth Godin, The Big Moo, pp. 90-91

Subculture or community?

Here's a great quote by Dr. Kevin Dettmar, professor of English and cultural studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, from his recent article, Earbuds and Mosh Pits, in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

A subculture is just a community with a bad reputation.

MySpace, anyone?

Doing the right thing

From Seth Godin:

When there's a gap between someone doing her job and doing the right thing, then management has failed.

I bet we could come up with some examples of this in schools...