The Role of Teacher

With the growing integration of technology in education and life and the emphasis on personalized and competency-based approaches in the classroom, the role of the teacher is changing dramatically. It is no longer enough for us to present information to students and then test them on it with some worksheets or questions from a textbook in between to let students “practice”. Teachers who are actively engaging the changes in the world and classroom in an effort to do what’s best for student learning are discovering that as we do what’s best for students, the traditional role of “teacher” is fading. A reflective lot by nature, educators are struggling to find new ways to describe what we do. Common terms I’ve heard recently are: guide, mentor, and facilitator.

I’ve been teaching math in a blended learning environment for three semesters, and when asked how my perception of my own role has changed, I called myself a “tool maker”. Perhaps in the evolution of education, we are seeing the emergence of a new “species” of educator: “magister faber” (the teacher who creates/makes). This kind of educator engages in a process of designing and engineering learning experiences that engage students in a process of experimentation, discovery, and knowledge building through activity. Allow me to present a sketch of magister faber:

Considered “out there” or “pushing the boundaries” by his colleagues and administrators, Mr. Smith saw that his methods of presenting information, assigning homework, and quizzing and testing students on material was not producing high levels of learning for all students. Perhaps his students had changed, perhaps the world had changed, perhaps the state tests had changed; but regardless of the cause, there were students who just didn’t “get it”, and Mr. Smith knew that presenting more of the same wasn’t going to help them. At the same time, Mr. Smith recognized that the world had become information rich, and that students had a plethora of information at their hands. What students needed to learn was how to tell the important information from the unimportant (spot the signal amidst the noise), and then how to assess and think critically about information.

Taking a step back, Mr. Smith went to his state standards and developed specific measurable student performance tasks with rubrics that lined up with the standards. Then he grouped these tasks into clusters and looked for applications of these tasks in the world. Mr. Smith began presenting his students with challenges and tasks, and then worked with them and encouraged them to work with each other to solve these challenges and perform tasks that demonstrated their mastery or proficiency in various domains. When students fell short of proficiency in a domain, they were given other opportunities to grow and develop the necessary skills until they got it. Students progressed at different rates, and Mr. Smith had a difficult time fixing a “grade” on his students’ work at a specific time, but his students were actively engaged in the learning experiences he had designed, and often commented that it didn’t feel like “school work”.

Some of the ideas in this sketch involve parts of competency-based learning, project or problem-based learning, personalization, and blended learning (allowing student control over the rate at which they learn, the method of learning, the method of assessment, sometimes even the content), but ultimately, this sketch is about an educator who becomes a learning engineer for his students. If Mr. Smith’s method is so good for students, why isn’t everyone doing it? There are many reasons, but here are a few points:

1. It’s hard to fit new learning experiences into traditional grading and grade-reporting practices. As I have implemented various forms of competency-based education in my classroom, I have always run up against the wall of having to assign a numerical grade to each student at the end of each quarter. Educational systems need to be open to new ways of reporting and recording student learning: portfolios with artifacts, videos of students doing things, projects with a product that serves as a demonstration of learning.

2. In my sketch, I glossed over the part of the story where Mr. Smith spent his entire summer reading, researching, and designing those awesome learning experiences that engaged his students. I also didn’t mention that he did it all without getting paid more than his colleagues who didn’t spend their summer doing that. Time and money are serious limiting factors for educators. If we truly value student learning and we want teachers to invest their time in designing learning experiences for students, we need to give them the time to do it, and compensate them for their work.

3. I didn’t mention in my sketch what happened when Mr. Smith’s students took the state mandated standardized test at the end of the year. The early evidence from teachers who are adopting these new learning practices seems to indicate that students who learn in this environment actually do better on standardized tests than they would have if they had been taught in a more traditional learning environment. But whether or not this is true, I wonder: how good are state standardized tests at measuring personalized student learning? In some states, teacher compensation is being tied to student scores on state standardized tests, and so it is understandable that teachers would be reluctant to change everything they do when it could impact their salary and job security.

4. Lack of knowledge and training also holds back well-intentioned teachers. Most teachers didn’t learn about cognition, neuro-science, brain-based research, design principles, etc. in their teachers training programs. The skill set required to be a learning-centered teacher is a shift from what was required of traditional teachers. I think colleges are still adjusting to this, and even if every college started turning out new teachers who were trained in these skills tomorrow, the majority of the teachers in the country are not new-hires. Teachers need support and training in how to design engaging student learning experiences.

5. The last reason I want to mention here is fear. Some teachers are afraid of taking risks, of doing something different, of letting different students produce different end products, of how parents, students, colleagues, and administrators will react to what they’re doing.

What I’ve put forward here is nothing more than a discussion of a shift from teacher teaching to student learning. For the past one hundred years or so, in the United States, we have had an educational system that put a teaching teacher (i.e. a lecturing teacher) at the center. We fixed curricula (what will be learned and in what order) for our core subjects. We created tests to “measure” students based on these fixed curricula (although I’m not sure exactly what those tests really measure).

If we’re going to shift to an educational system focused on student learning, then we will need to give students choices around what they learn, how they learn it, when they learn it, and how and when they demonstrate their mastery of the material. We will also need to support and train teachers through this transition and beyond. A teacher with a growth-mindset who models continual learning for students is an essential piece of a true student-learning centered educational system. And while all of these changes may be scary (to all stakeholders), the alternative of continuing to do what we’ve always done and allow some students to simply not “get it” is even scarier.

PD: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Over the past five years I have attended hundreds of hours of professional development (PD for short) as a teacher. This includes everything from monthly staff meetings and department meetings to hour-long weekly PD sessions on a variety of topics to “beginning of year PD days” to day-long sessions, and week-long conferences. I even participated in an on-going nine month PD that met for a half-day once each month. And my title for this post sums up my experiences pretty well.

If you’re not an educator, there is an expectation in the United States for educators that we continually grow and develop as professionals by expanding our own learning in our content area as well as in the field of education. Most schools start the year with a few “PD Days” that don’t typically involve much development. They usually cover mundane maintenance information. They’re dull days spent sitting listening to other people talk at you about retirement benefits, insurance, emergency procedures, etc. Don’t get me wrong: emergency procedures are important. In fact, they’re so important, it’s probably not a good idea to sandwich them between mind-numbing sessions on insurance and SMSs and LMSs, etc.

For the record, I’m a huge fan of professional development and the concept and inspiration behind professional development, when it’s done well. That last clause is really key, because too often it’s not done well. And too often things are labeled as “professional development” that aren’t really professional development at all. But enough lead-in. I recently had a very good professional development, and I was reflecting on how much bad PD I’ve sat through, and what the difference is, and I thought perhaps I’d lay out some personal observations on what makes professional development good. So here we go…

1) It’s led by teachers. The best professional development experiences I’ve had have been organized and led by teachers. This is a challenge because teachers are already over-worked and under-paid; so putting on a quality professional development experience for colleagues takes time that teachers often don’t have. Administrators need to identify teacher leaders and find ways to free up their time so they can develop and execute quality PD for their colleagues. Teachers who are “in the trenches” speak to the experience of other educators in a way that “experts” and administrators cannot.

2) It’s practical. When teachers sign up for (or are forced to attend) professional development, they want to walk away from the hour/day/week with something tangible that they can implement in their classrooms to improve student learning. I’m not really interested in sitting through a day-long conference about why I should integrate social justice topics into my classroom. I would much prefer to spend a day walking through actual social justice themed lessons that I can use in my own classroom. I was at a conference in Grand Rapids a couple summers ago, and the presenters treated us like a class and actually did a lesson with us, and then gave us the lesson plan.

3) It’s interactive. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat through PD about interactive learning or projected based learning that was delivered as a lecture. Talk about a total disconnect! Setup your PD to reflect what you’re trying to share. If it’s a PD on flipping the classroom, e-mail participants a link to a video you want them to watch the night before. I went to a day-long PD on using the socratic method in classrooms, and the presenter broke us up into groups and ran the whole day like he would run a classroom, constantly modeling the socratic method and how it can be used with students.

4) There are materials (handouts, etc.) available after the presentation, and the presentation itself is recorded and shared (or at least the powerpoint is uploaded). This is especially true at conferences. When I attend 5-6 1-1.5 hour sessions every day for a couple days in a row, it gets to be a bit of an overload, and at the end of the day, it helps to have a website where I can download materials or the presentation itself and re-watch it (even a week or a month later, when I’m thinking “What did that lady say?”).

iNACOL 2013

I have just finished attending my first iNACOL conference. Imagine a group of educators gathering with a common dream to improve educational experiences for students. One of the things that most impressed me with this conference was that despite the fact that everyone at the conference was interested in using technology in their classrooms, that was not the focus. Everything was focused on students, and improving education for them. I was awed and inspired and challenged by the presenters and my fellow conference attendees.

Here are a sampling of the "big ideas" I took away from my first iNACOL:

We are striving to prepare an ever more diverse population of students for an increasingly challenging and rapidly changing future. The problems we face in modernity are more complex than those of the past, and today's students need to be tomorrow's leaders and problem solvers. We have a duty to prepare students to meet their future with confidence, capacity, and competency. Dewey said it best: ""

As educators, we need to develop a critical understanding of how the brain works, and specifically how the brain learns (cognitive science), so that we can apply that knowledge in our classrooms to solve problems.

We cannot rely on technology to solve our educational problems. We need brain research-based solutions that are student centered. Technology can be used as a tool to implement our solutions and scale them, but the technology itself will never solve our problems.

We must become design experts, understanding how to engage students in relevant issues, training them to think critically, analytically, quantitatively, qualitatively, globally, locally, etc. Everything we do should start with the student experience, and we should build out from there.

We need to train students to solve problems that are based in the real world.

We need to give students choice in what they learn, how they learn it, and when they learn it. We need to empower students to drive their own personalized education and hold them to high standards when demonstrating their mastery of material.

Some traits of successful persons in the future will be: adaptability, creativity, learn from mistakes, perseverance, the ability to understand complex systems without being reductionist, growth oriented, curious, able to make connections...

The Arts and Sciences in Education

The Washington Post recently posed this on its website (link here):

Humanities majors: Make your case

The demand for employees skilled in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields continues to rise, as does the cost of education. So, does the United States need more humanities majors? Or should students pass on the humanities in favor of STEM degrees? And, if they do, will it help the United States maintain an innovation edge? Guest writers have made the “yes” and “no” case both on TV and with us here. Now, it’s your turn. Do we need more humanities majors? Cast your vote, and then defend it in the comments below.

YES: We need more humanities majors
NO: We don’t need more humanities majors

Begin Commentary:

There has been a lot of ink in the press lately about the liberal arts and their "value" (a word which sometimes obscures more than it reveals). The above poll from the Washington Post is just the most recent example. In this post I'd like to suggest that the question above is not framed properly. It pits "STEM" fields against the "humanities". This, to me, is a false dichotomy. I have a BA in mathematics, and then went back to school to pursue post BA education in classical languages (Greek and Latin). I did both, because both enriched me as a person. Both gave me valid and useful perspectives and tools. Both taught me to think about things in new ways. Both challenged me to stretch my understanding of myself, our world, and contemporary issues.

I would like to humbly suggest that any life that is deprived of either science and math OR the humanities (art, music, history, literature, language study, etc.) is incomplete. And that an individual's education should not be about "getting a job" or "maintaining an innovation edge", but about improving one's self. Education isn't a means to a goal; it is the goal. (Thank you Andrew Abbott, for that insight!)

Furthermore, I would suggest that both the arts and the sciences achieve their greatest significance when they learn from one another. The study of science and mathematics can bring new insight to the fields traditionally assigned to the humanities, and the humanities can inform science and mathematics. I believe the world might be a better place if a few more scientists read a little more Kurt Vonnegut and Plato, and a few more literature majors took the time to learn Calculus and Physics.

In the words of Alfred North Whitehead, "You cannot divide the seamless cloak of knowledge." And to borrow from Aaron Sorkin's dialogue in "The West Wing" (in the episode "Gone Quiet"), "There is a connection between progress of a society and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo Da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was the age of Shakespeare."

School and Education

“High school, it seems, has changed. It has become competitive. Young men and women — 13 to 18 years old — must work more or less tirelessly to ensure their spot at a college deemed worthy to them and their families. So rather than living their adolescent lives — lives brimming with desires and vitality, with vim, vigor, and brewing lust — these kids are working at old age homes, cramming for tests, popping Adderall just to make the literal and proverbial grade. And for what? So they can go to a school that puts them in debt for the rest of their lives. School has become a great vehicle of capitalism: it quashes the revolution implicit in adolescence while simultaneously fomenting perpetual indebtedness.” (Daniel Coffeen)

Comments:

I'll get back to Vonnegut and Player Piano soon, but I wanted to share this quote I found online. I don't necessarily agree with everything in the quote, but I think the author has a point that in developing an educational system for teenagers, we've lost some of what makes this time of life unique and enjoyable. I particularly like his point at the end. Real education should challenge students to think and live outside the constraints of the previous generation. It should push us into new frontiers and experiences to enrich and deepen our understanding of the human experience. Unfortunately, I think, too often, we get caught up in the informational side of education and forget the formative side of it. Education should impact who we are throughout our lives; it should be about more than just memorizing information for an exam (something I think about a lot this time of year with exams around the corner or just behind us).

New Blended Learning Video!

In a previous post I mentioned my school's integration of "blended learning" and talked a little about why I'm excited about this opportunity. I decided to make a brief video explaining what blended learning is and what some of its advantages are. Check it out!

Blended Learning

Being an educator, I try to stay abreast of current educational trends. The rise of online learning opportunities over the past few years has been vertiginous (MOOCs, iTunesU, The Great Courses, nearly every university, and most states offer an online option for high school public students). At my own school, we have launched an online branch of our school, which makes us one of the first Catholic schools to delve into the world of online learning. I have been impressed (and sometimes not impressed) to varying degrees with the options I've seen. But there is a third way...

Blended learning takes the best of what online learning has to offer and combines it with the best of what human classroom teachers have to offer. In blended learning, students take classes on a computer in the context of a brick-and-mortar school with other students, sports, electives, clubs, theater, etc. And then teachers pull students out in small groups (or one-on-one) to introduce new concepts, remediate learning problems, extend coursework into real world application projects, and challenge students with enrichment.

Some of my colleagues and I have been in Michigan for the past two days touring schools which are trying to implement this new blended learning concept. We have seen lots of good stuff. I've been considerably more impressed with blended learning than straight online courses. The combination of online and human work and interaction, when done well, seems to be a winning combination.

As I tell my students, we have to let the computer do what it does best: assess for rote memorization and short answer questions, crunch large amounts of information quickly, give students instant feedback on formative and summation assessments, display digital learning content that actually helps students grow conceptually, and engage students with multi-media. We also have to let human teachers do what we do best: engage students in critical thinking, extended dialogue, meta-analysis, inspiration, application, the joys of learning, the personal touch, intervention, and reading the affect of the student. With a computer doing its part and a human teacher doing her/his part, students get the best of both worlds and can thrive. I'm excited about this new opportunity on the frontier of education.

Deliberation vs. Reaction: Education as Mystery

There was an excellent article in the NY Times on Sunday entitled "The Secret to Fixing Bad Schools" by David Kirp. He talks about a school district that is having tremendous success educating a demographic that traditionally does not perform well in school. Most of their ideas are common sense, but toward the end of the article he said this:

School officials flock to Union City and other districts that have beaten the odds, eager for a quick fix. But they’re on a fool’s errand. These places — and there are a host of them, largely unsung — didn’t become exemplars by behaving like magpies, taking shiny bits and pieces and gluing them together. Instead, each devised a long-term strategy reaching from preschool to high school. Each keeps learning from experience and tinkering with its model.

Upon reflection, this quote seemed to encapsulate nicely a tendency I've seen in many schools: to react instead of deliberating, planning, and executing. The essence of what makes a school great (i.e. solid curriculum, eager students, and a wise faculty) has not changed since Plato opened his Academy thousands of years ago. 

Yet in the United States, we are always looking for the panacea for our education "problems". We have become so obsessed with "evidence" (evidence of what?), "standards" (which, oddly, are open to wide interpretation and often are not standard at all), and "accountability" (accountable to whom? and for what?), that we have lost sight of the real purpose of schools: they should be a place for students to discover themselves and the world, a place focused on learning. The complication is that learning is an organic process; authentic learning doesn't happen on time tables. 

We are so hell-bent on trying to quantify and measure learning (which, I think the argument could be made, is a fools errand), that we have lost the essence of what makes learning great. In place of the living organic process that is authentic learning, we have substituted something dead, because it is easier to measure, because it stands still for us. 

Like an avid collector of butterflies, in trying to capture and, literally, "pin-down" a rare beautiful specimen, we have forgotten that to pin it down, we had to first kill it. In so doing, we took it out of its context. Butterflies weren't meant to be looked at in collections pinned-down to Styrofoam; they were meant to be seen in a fleeting glance, riding on the wind, passing us by before heading on to some other place, mysterious, tenuous, and elusive. So too with learning.

I would argue that we need to recapture, reconnect with, the elusive and mysterious side of learning, and embrace the fact that learning is not always perfectly describable and quantifiable. There are valid non-quantitative ways of evaluating learning. That, I believe, is the territory we must explore if we are to make our education system great.

The Search for Elusive Success...

I had another "teachable moment" in class the other day. A student was commenting on how little he enjoyed doing math problems. I said that throughout our lives, we all must perform certain tasks which we do not particularly enjoy. I went on to say that learning to hunker down and perform distasteful tasks was one of the keys to success. This was relatively effective in terms of getting students to "hunker down" and work on a problem they had little interest in. However, I started wondering two things: 1) do I really believe that performing unpleasant/distasteful/unenjoyable tasks is a key to success? ; and 2) is that statement true? i.e. Is performing unpleasant tasks actually a key to success?

Upon consideration of question #1 above, I wondered whether "success" was the right word to use when defining a state in which I had to perform unpleasant tasks on a regular basis. I had the uncanny sense that my own investigation into "success" had suddenly caused the ground to fall out beneath my feet. Perhaps, a clear and sensible definition of "success" would be the best place to begin this investigation. Merriam-Webster defines it as: "a favorable or desired outcome ; the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence." While that definition is not extra-ordinarily helpful, it does bring up a point worth noting: success can be a singular achievement (e.g. success on a test or success in a sporting match) or success can be a state of being (e.g. someone can be described as a "successful" person).

The achievement of singular success (on, say, a test), can be achieved by performing certain tasks that may be less than pleasant (i.e. hours of studying). However, I am thinking of some other success singularities for which preparation can be enjoyable: practicing a recital piece on a musical instrument, or preparing to give a complex and deep lecture, or practicing for a big sporting match. So it seems that tackling some unpleasant tasks can sometimes help us be successful on a singular achievement. We have thus inadvertently stumbled upon half of an answer to question #2!

It is worth a digression here to wonder why it is that studying for a big test seems like such a chore? I wonder if it could be because so much of what so many of us are tested on holds so little of our interest. Rare indeed is the test which measures our knowledge/performance on a topic/skill of practical life application in which we are deeply interested and invested. Preparation for such a test would, perhaps, be considerably more enjoyable, and might be more akin to preparing a recital piece or practicing for Friday's "big game". End digression.

Considering our second sense of "success", the state of being, is more complicated. Certainly, if I spent a large portion of my time doing tasks that I found distasteful, I would not consider myself to be successful, in the general sense. However, could it be that the pathway to becoming a successful person lies through these kinds of tasks? Indeed it might, and I cannot think of a single successful person whose life story does not include hardships and drudgery that had to be handled along the way. Really, when one considers the question from a broader perspective: aren't hardships and (at least occasional) unpleasant tasks part of the human condition? Whose life is so charmed as to be devoid of hardship?

But what seems unique or distinctive of successful people is that while handling hardships, these people focus on some long-term goal, and they continue to persevere and work toward that goal, even in the midst of hardships. Perhaps success, in the general sense, comes from being able to persevere through hardships. In which case, as it turns out, I may have revealed a deeper truth about life when I advised my students that learning to "knuckle down" and get through something unpleasant would help them be successful in life.

As a final coda, before closing, I would like to point out that I still think my above digression concerning the content of "school" is something we in the educational establishment are going to have to confront sooner or later. The disconnect between what we teach and the lived experience of our students is reaching untenable levels. We can drive the change or the change can drive us, but I suspect that things cannot remain static much longer.

Keep reading! And a very merry Christmas to you and yours!

Education and Life

Quick note: I apologize for my recent lack of posting. Between the holidays, the book I'm editing, and the end of semester for the classes I'm teaching, I'm a little swamped. But I have not abandoned this blog. I'll just be posting with less frequency over the next couple of weeks. You can expect me to return to a more regular schedule around Christmas time. Cheers!

Some titles for this post I considered and then rejected: "Education and Real Life" and "Real Life vs. Education" and "Real Life vs. School". First of all, I have an inherent distaste for the phrase "real life". Isn't all life real? If it isn't real, if, for example, it's a dream (or a work of fiction/fantasy), can it be life? And certainly anything that happens in the context of a persons life must be "real" in the sense that the person exists and the events actually happened. Secondly, I disliked the idea of pitting education and school against "life" (real or imagined), as if I were announcing the heavy-weight boxing matchup of the decade. I don't see life as being in a fight or competition with education/school. I see education as that disposition which helps a person become more fully himself or herself (i.e. which frees her/him); and I see school as one place people go to get that education.

This post is inspired by a conversation I had with some of my students the other day. In my (mostly senior) pre-calculus class, I had posited a particularly challenging conundrum on the board: the kind of problem that makes students groan and teachers grin, the kind of problem that research tells us we should be using to challenge students to think critically, to gather information, and to synthesize information to reach new conclusions/solutions. My students assailed me with the familiar refrain: "When are we ever going to use this in real life?!" [Note well, dear reader, the usage of that distasteful phrase "real life"; as if seniors in high school don't consider pre-calculus class to be real OR lively!]

At this point, I spotted a "teachable moment", and stopped our usual discourse on mathematics to diverge into a meta-analysis of why we engage in this business called "school". I said, "Okay, is your boss at work going to ask you to write an equation for the distance between any point on a specified function and the origin? No. But one day your boss will come to you, sit down, and explain a very complicated problem. Then your boss will say to you, "fix it." And she will get up and walk away, fully expecting that you will fix it. There will be no hand-holding, textbooks, hints, etc. You will need to analyze the problem, creatively synthesize a solution using what you know or what you can teach yourself, and then implement the solution. That's what this problem is helping you cultivate: the practice (the art) of deep analytical thinking, creative visioning (seeing beyond what is: into the nebula of what is possible), and practical implementation. And that's a skill you'll use your whole life."

So, in short, I think education helps us practice the art of living well, and that when we are at our best as educators, we're engaged in this deep process of analysis, synthesis, and implementation. Your thoughts are always welcome in the comments section!

Thirst for Knowledge

One of the ways I define myself is as a seeker of truth, beauty, and wisdom. I am a life-long learner. That concept is at the heart of this blog. I realized that as someone who continues to challenge himself to learn new things, read (and re-read) great books, and to ponder the deeper questions of life, that a blog about my intellectual journey might be worth sharing. I have observed over the past year that many people (of varying ages, races, and walks of life) tend to fall into one of two categories: self-induced learners and non-self-induced learners.

This has come to light not only in my classroom (all teachers will tell you that students come in both varieties; and students who are not self-induced learners can certainly grow to become self-induced learners as adults), but in conversations with other teachers and with my wife (who deals with these different kinds of people in a business setting). A friend of mine has recently asked me to give her some instruction in Latin, because she wants to recapture a sense of what it’s like to be a student. She is an excellent example of an adult who is a self-induced learner. She isn’t getting anything out of this experience other than knowledge. She’s pursuing this purely for the self-edifying aspect of learning a new language, expanding her own knowledge and perspective. I’ve been reading about the ancient Minoan civilization, and expanding my own knowledge of Bronze Age civilizations.

There is a thirst for knowledge and an ability to investigate and “work up” a subject on one’s own that some people just seem to have instinctively. I cannot say where it comes from; but it is immensely helpful. In business, for example, people with this instinct are able to quickly pick-up on office protocol and procedure; they also learn the ins and outs of their specific company’s business more quickly than those who don’t have this instinct. In academia, this instinct is essential for authentic learning; past a certain point, real educators stop spoon-feeding you information, and start expecting you to find it on your own. If you don’t have an internal drive to learn and acquire knowledge, then this is going to be challenging.

I wish I could say that there is some sure-fire method for helping children cultivate an internal drive to learn. Certainly it seems that exposing children to many perspectives and experiences is a key pre-requisite to helping them develop an thirst for knowledge. The other thing that seems possible is that it is a kind of learned behavior; children who see this internal drive to learn in adults mimic it until it becomes part of their own personality.

Anyway, I guess the fact that you, gentle reader, are taking time to read a blog about books, reading, and life-long education, puts you in the category of “self-induced learners”. So keep up the good work!

What's Education For?

I was at a conference of educators yesterday. I had been invited to sit on a panel concerning the integration of professional learning communities in schools (primary and secondary). One of the attendees asked the panel how we dealt with the mindset of parents, who expect our schools to produce a certain “product” (i.e. to form their children into a certain mold). I often hear educators talking about students as “products”, and I find this terminology disturbing. It seems to me that there are two major mindsets in the educational world right now.

The first mindset is what I’ll call the “product” mindset. Educators in this mindset think of students as raw material that they must shape and form into a pre-ordained mold. They think of schools as factories that take in all different kinds of raw material and churn out homogeneous “products” (i.e. students) to certain specifications. This mindset comes out of the application of principles from the industrial revolution to the field of education. Many parents and current teachers went through an educational system that treated them this way, and so this is how they conceive of “school”.

The problem I see with this perspective is that every child comes to school as a unique individual; every child has different interests, natural talents, background, family, interest in school, work ethic, perspective, mindset, fears, hopes, dreams, habits, cultures, etc. Personally, I have always been a believer and a follower of the classical “liberal arts”--the skills which, once mastered, set the learner free (i.e. liberate her/him); and which help her/him be a better human being today than s/he was yesterday. I believe authentic education is more about discovering one’s self and one’s place in the kosmos (order of the universe/world) than about learning pre-determined facts.

I don’t see my students as raw material that I need to shape into some desired “product”. Rather, I see my students as individuals, and I try to be a mirror for their souls, to help them discover their true nature, their gifts, their deep selves, and their place in the world, so they can go forth and be authentic human beings who can contribute positively to a global society.

American Culture and Integrity: Challenges and Considerations

My 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Bayshore, used to say, "Character is what you do when no one is looking." To this day, if I am walking down a deserted hallway and see a piece of trash, I may start to walk past it; then I hear his voice saying, "Character is what you do when no one is looking." And I turn around, pick-up the trash, and throw it away. Thank you, Mr. Bayshore. I also remember someone else telling me that "Integrity is much easier kept than restored."

I point out these two vivid memories from my own childhood only because, if you have been following the news lately, you must surely have noticed a dramatic rise in the number of serious cases of cheating/plagiarism occurring across the country, even in the most high profile schools (e.g. Harvard, the Air Force Academy, and Stuyvesant High School). A recent NY Times article pointed out that studies are confirming that more students are cheating, and that cheating is become more pervasive by high-performing students as a way to get an advantage over other high-performing students.

While I am an educator, and I do have to deal with plagiarism, copying, and other forms of cheating occasionally, I find this article more disturbing as a citizen of the United States and a patriot. The ubiquity of dishonest behavior that lacks integrity in our country is a symptom, I think, of a much larger cultural issue. I've blogged before about corporate greed and a lack of integrity in financial systems and on the part of those who manage those financial systems, and how thoroughly un-American I believe that kind of behavior to be, but I think we're seeing an entire generation being raised with no moral compass, no sense of integrity. In the wake of all these cheating scandals at high-profile schools, some people will, no doubt, seek to lay blame for these incidents. But I think the blame game is too easy (because we are probably all to blame to some degree), and it distracts us from the real challenge: how to fix the situation.

I see what a group of greedy amoral individuals have done to the US economy (Bernie Madoff, the Enron scandal, sub-prime mortgages, derivative trading, the executive who was caught buying and smuggling into the US highly controlled cooling chemicals, etc.), and my real fear is that the up-and-coming generation of future leaders and workers are sunk in this mindset of "make more money at any cost". And that, as a country, our future looks more bleak than our past when it comes to a record of integrity and wisdom in economic and public affairs.

Howard Gardner has done extensive research on teenage and young-adult Americans, and with respect to this problem, his research offers some interesting insights. First, most teenagers and young-adults do not believe cheating/plagiarizing/copying is wrong; they understand that if they get caught, there may be negative consequences, but because most students who cheat never get caught, they consider the "reward" to be worth the risk. Second, many students believe that "everyone" is cheating, and that for them to keep up with the highest achievers, they must cheat and cheat alike; otherwise, they risk falling behind (this, by the way, is something that came up in a brilliant op-ed piece written by a former cyclist, Jonathan Vaughters, addressing the issue with doping in cycling).

The question is: how do we reframe an entire country's cultural skew so that achieving my personal goals is no longer more important than retaining my integrity? Essentially, this is the juncture we have reached as a country. Most individuals are willing to sacrifice both their personal integrity as well as the well-being of their fellow citizens for personal gain and benefit.

My one idea is that perhaps we should develop a nationwide class or curriculum on virtue/character that addresses what students should be learning and practicing in the realm of virtue/character at each grade-level. The biggest challenge I see to implementing something like this is that the best way to pass on these traits is to learn them from elders who possess them, but as fewer and fewer living people possess them, there will be fewer and fewer people having these traits passed on to them, and it becomes a decreasing cycle.

DISCLAIMER: I am not perfect, I make poor choices sometimes, and I live with the consequences. I have never cheated or plagiarized. In fact, if anything, I am acutely aware of how intellectually indebted I am to the giants who have come before me (one of the sources of inspiration for this blog), and I am often over-zealous in giving credit for ideas to others. I try to live a life of integrity, and know that I sometimes fail.

First Day of School

"Knowledge is powerful. Once you have truly learned something, no one can take that knowledge away from you; it is yours forever. Once you decide that you want to learn something, no one has the power to stand between you and that knowledge; no one can keep you from learning anything. You will learn exactly as much as you are willing to work for. The act of learning, of coming to understand something new is an empowering act, and it is at the core of our humanity. We are homo sapiens. We learn." (Me, today in class)

If you read the passage above, you've captured the gist of my opening day lecture. I believe all students need to feel a sense of empowerment. They need to understand that they have agency in the world, and that their words, actions, and even beliefs have real impact on their local community, the people around them, and even the world. I spent time today talking about how empowering an authentic educational experience can be.

The beginning of school always gets me thinking about "education", its means and ends. I was thinking today about Andrew Abbott and his "Aims of Education" speech at the University of Chicago entitled "The Zen of Education". There are many good quotes from that speech, but I particularly like when he says that education doesn't have aims, it is the aim.

I teach high school students, and it is so very difficult to break-down their pre-conceptions of education from 8 years in "the system". They have such a strong "sit, get, and spit" mentality, and to talk with them about education as being a journey of self-discovery and intellectual liberation is a tough sell. They sit quietly, smiling and nodding, all the while thinking, "Just tell me what I need to do to get the grade so I can get out of here." Getting them to break through all that and embrace the experience and process is incredibly challenging. But I have all year...persistence often wins the day.

Francis Bacon: "The Advancement of Learning"

I delved into this text a while ago, and recently picked it back up. A little history about Bacon for those who are unfamiliar would be in order. Sir Francis Bacon lived in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in England where he held many important political positions. He helped develop the scientific method and examined and experimented on many natural phenomena. He was one of the major intellectual figures of his time, and much of what he discovered has served as the foundation for modern science. Last night I ran across this passage:

"The corrupter sort of mere politiques, that have not their thoughts established by learning in the love and apprehension of duty, nor never look abroad into universality, do refer all things to themselves, and thrust themselves into the centre of the world, as if all lines should met in them and their fortunes, never caring in all tempests what becomes of the ship of state, so they may save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune; whereas men that feel the weight of duty and know the limits of self-love use to make good their places and duties, though with peril..."

I was struck by this description of the un-learned person as bringing everything back to him or herself, and how "in all tempests" this person cars only for his or her own fortune and not for the "ship of state" or the common good, trusting in his or how own fortune to save him or herself. How well this describes so many of our modern life-arrangers and persons of power today!! I was struck by the manifold examples of this attitude in recent news:

1) Joe Paterno and other PSU authorities: they were so concerned with the reputation of their football program and how much money it was making for them (i.e. their "fortune") that they were willing to let a serial child molester go unpunished and free to repeat his crimes to "save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune".

2) Politicians who are so beholden to the gun-lobby that they won't even consider a bill that would limit gun users to ammunition clips of 10 bullets or less. Given the national tragedies involving guns in the United States of America, one would think that we could all agree that there's no legal need to have an ammunition clip that holds more than 10 bullets... And yet, these politicians are more interested in "saving themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune" (i.e. the campaign donations they receive from the gun lobby), than in caring for the "ship of state", because they "thrust themselves into the centre of the world".

3) Those involved in the LIBOR scandal: need I point out the degree to which these individuals tried to "save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune" and to which they "thrust themselves into the centre of the world"?

4) Fourthly (I say, fourthly and not finally, because there is no "finally" to this list, it could go on and on...), there are those individual citizens of the United States and corporations who continually "save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune": those who use off-shore bank accounts to shield themselves from paying the full weight of their taxes (What could be more "un-American" than a bank account that is literally not in the US?); those who ship jobs overseas, shutting down whole factories in the United States, destroying communities and the lives of individual workers to "save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune" rather than make the ethical choice to make a narrower profit margin as a company, but continue to employ hard-working citizens; those who engage in dangerous financial practices that create these "bubbles" which we are suffering through (housing, banking, etc.), and those who lie, cheat, and steal from those who trusted them, like Bernie Madoff. Surely these men and women cared only for themselves and their fortunes, and never considered either the good of the country (in some cases the world) or their fellow citizens.

It is striking to imagine how things could be different if powerful decision makers in our country "felt the weight of duty" and knew "the limits of self-love". How much heart-ache could have been avoided if Joe Paterno had gone to the police instead of the president of his university? Or if politicians could pass sensible gun control laws that limit an individuals ability to commit acts of terrorism against his or her fellow citizens? Or if the financial masters of the world and the country considered what was best for the common good instead of what would line their own pockets?

It seems we have much to learn from Francis Bacon. As dismayed as I am by the rampant examples of this kind of behavior in the news (and it is striking how well Bacon's quote describes so much of what is in the news right now), I find some solace in the fact that apparently, this problem is a very old one, and that it has been plaguing humanity for some time. Virtue, it seems, has long been in short supply.

Perhaps it is time for a conversation about how authentic learning and education support the growth of virtue, and can help safeguard us as a country from this pernicious problem.

Galileo and thoughts on education...

I'm back from vacation! Here's a picture just to give you a taste of what I saw in Oregon and Washington...

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." (Galileo)

As a teacher, I often think about learning: the things which aid it and which hinder it. Motivation is always a key ingredient in the recipe of learning. If you've read any of my other posts, you'll know I think Alfie Kohn had some great insight into motivation in his book "Punished by Rewards", in which he discusses the "Three Cs": Collaboration, Content, and Choice. He believes that when these three things are maximized and made relevant to people's lives, that they are more motivated.

I liked this quote above from Galileo because it summarizes so much of what I try to teach students and parents. I can explain something, I can demonstrate something, I can develop projects based around a concept, I can suggest readings about it, I can practice a skill with students in class, but if a student isn't actively engaged in the work, then it just washes over him or her without making any lasting impression. Each person must decide what's important for himself or herself, and pursue that with vigor and passion. Unfortunately, our education system isn't setup that way right now. So this is all a difficult sell to students who have had 8-10 years of what I call "sit, get, and spit" education. It's hard to break those habits. At school, we call this "shifting from a teaching centered culture to a learning centered culture". I think that sums it up pretty well.

This isn't a philosophy blog, and I don't want to get too deep into the realm of epistemology, but the second part of Galileo's quote reveals an interesting assumption: that the knowledge and skills we seek are already within us, waiting to be discovered or "found". This is a very "eastern" philosophy of knowledge. In the post-industrial west, we tend to think of knowledge as something that is outside of us that we somehow ingest and make part of us, like food. Even our colloquial verbiage around learning and thinking reflects this: "I need to sit back and digest that thought for a moment." or "I need to let that percolate in my mind." (percolation is a method for brewing coffee) "I need to let that soak in." Rarely if ever do you hear someone say, "Ah! Yes, you've helped me discover that idea in my mind!" Consider for a moment, the vastly different implications these perceptions of where knowledge comes from can have on how we approach the process of "learning."

The astute reader will have noticed that I haven't said whether I agree or disagree with Galileo's perspective on the origin of knowledge. Perhaps I'll save that for another day...

Happy reading!