Category: Schooling

Discussions of issues of schooling.

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Standards, Political Rhetoric, and Underestimating Children

Embedded in the discourse of the Common Core and pretty much all of the political and corporate discussion of education is a negative view of children (teachers, too, but that’s a separate discussion). In fact, our entire institution of schooling is based on the deficits of being a child. Such a view is fundamentally poisonous. We don’t trust children. We underestimate their abilities and capabilities. We set up schools as prison factories to control every part of a child’s life. We have “manage” children as if they are a herd of cattle. We talk about building responsibility in children, as if such an idea is completely foreign to a child.

We have a tendency propagated by the politicians, corporations, media, and the institution of schooling to grossly under-estimate students in all respects. Such views are a carry-over from behaviorism and related early theories (although certainly not from John Dewey or George Herbert Mead), where children were viewed as “primitive” and as “empty vessels.” Children are very capable… way more than we think. Here’s an excerpt of observations from a teacher’s classroom in an east coast metropolitan public school. It takes place in March, in a grade 4 classroom. Although this is a specific day in one classroom, the teacher did the same thing in grades 1 through 3. This was her first year at grade 4.

EXAMPLE 9.2: OBSERVATIONS OF A DAY IN A CLASSROOM COMMUNITY

The following observations took place during a one-day visit to a public school classroom in a major urban area. The classroom (depicted in Example 9.4) consisted of 25 grade 4 students of mixed ethnic backgrounds, including a range of abilities in speaking English. This visit took place in mid-April, well into the school year, and after six or seven months of work on establishing the classroom community.

The day started with children wandering into the classroom during the 15 to 20 minutes before school started. As the children settled into the room, they talked with each other, examined some of their ongoing experiments with plant growth, played with blocks, or played with one of the two birds in a cage near the teacher’s desk in the corner. Some students engaged in short conversations with the teacher, whom they addressed her by her first name (we will call her Jane). (The teacher said that in her first teaching position, the principal told her that the children would not respect her if they called her by her first name. She replied, “I’ll keep that in mind. And if that happens, I’ll change.” She never has.) Everyone was very relaxed as the beginning of the school day approached.

With only a quiet indication by the teacher (I was not aware of any overt signal), the students gathered in the small carpeted area set aside for group gatherings. The teacher had been absent the day before. She had arranged for a substitute so that she could make her appointment with a doctor; however, the substitute was canceled due to an administrative mistake.
Jane started, “I hear you didn’t have a substitute yesterday?”
The children in near unison asked, “Yeah, where were you?”
After explaining, Jane asked, “So, what did you do?”
One girl said, “I took the attendance, then took it to the office. When I got back, we all decided that we’d continue reading [a book they were reading]. So, we all took turns reading and then we discussed it.”
Jane, half laughing, said, “Well, what do you need me for? The office was impressed that you really didn’t need a teacher.”

Following this interaction, another girl took the attendance with their bird mascot sitting on her shoulder. When she was ready to take the attendance to the office, she started to return the bird to the cage, but Jane said, “Why don’t you take him with you. Everyone likes to see him.”

Then, almost seamlessly, the first instructional activity of the day began. Jane briefly explained that she was going to pass around a sealed plastic sandwich bag with very moldy bread inside. As the bag was passed around, each child made one observation. Throughout the entire activity, the only sound besides the one child talking was the screeching of a bird from across the room. All of the children were listening intently to what each child had to say:

“It’s green.”

“It feels like clay.”

“Looks like moss.”

“Some of it feels hard.”

“Some of it looks like fried pistachio nuts.”

After this session, the children went off to work in groups on several of their plant study activities and experiments. They started examining a number of plastic baggies of different kinds of mold, which they had grown by placing fruit, bread, sandwiches, and so forth, in different locations around the room. As they finished this activity, they took measurements of their plant growth experiments and sketched and made observations of various kinds of stems.

Throughout this time, I wandered around the room talking to and observing the children. I noticed after one circuit of the room that a group I had spoken with was no longer the same. The group members had changed. Then I began to notice that all of the groups changed from time to time, as children got up and joined different groups. I also noticed that all of the talk taking place among the students was about the work in which they were engaged. They shared observations, argued about results, and negotiated explanations. As some children finished with all of their plant activities, they began other activities. A group of boys started playing on the computer. A group of girls took out a box of geo-blocks and began making different kinds of patterns. Another group of boys constructed buildings out of blocks. When all of the students were finished with the plant activities, they gathered on the carpet and shared the results from their plant experiments and activities.

The schedule for the day was written on the chalkboard:

8:20 Plants
9:20 Social Studies
9:45 Gym
10:30 Science Talk
11:00 Quiet Time
11:30–12:15 Lunch
12:30 Math
1:15 Cleanup
1:30 Meeting

However, social studies never happened. I overheard one child say to others at the table as 9:30 approached, “Aren’t we supposed to be doing social studies?” Another boy said very quietly, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll do it another time.”
After gym, the students and Jane gathered together on the carpet. Everyone sat on the floor in a big circle with a small tape recorder in the center of the circle. Jane began by saying, “Well, we haven’t done this for a while, so we’ll see how it goes (referring to doing science talks). We’ve been studying plants for a while and I thought it might be a good time to try to answer this question: How did plants begin?” Almost all of the children started talking at the same time. But as soon as one child established that he or she had the “floor”, everyone else immediately stopped and listened intently. Only occasionally did Jane speak, and usually to ask a clarifying question. Throughout the science talk session, she took notes and listened carefully to every point made by the students. The content of the science talk turned very quickly to the issue of how plants moved onto the land. One boy brought up the notion of increasing complexity (“algae doesn’t have that many parts”). Before long, a disagreement emerged about the dispersion and origin of plants on different continents. As different students stated their point and supporting rationale, everyone else listened very carefully. Finally, one girl reminded the others that all of the continents were “smushed together” a long time ago. From start to finish, all of the children were very supportive and encouraging of one another. Those who did not talk as much were supported with cheers and comments by the others, showing their interest in what the quieter individuals had to say. At one point, Jane added that one quiet girl’s comments were “very important and could have fit in after earlier comments.” She continued by explaining this girl’s comments could have led to a new theme to be followed.

Two of the ESL (English as a second language) students were almost always sitting together. One could speak and understand virtually no English, while the other was capable of functioning in English. Apparently, from the beginning of the year, these two boys paired up on their own, one acting as the translator for the other. Through the entire science talk, the two boys sat next to each other, whispering translations and comments.

At the end of the day, the children conducted a classroom meeting. One child acted as the moderator, while others brought up points or added to others’ comments. One child brought up a concern that after quiet time “it gets too noisy. And, some of us still want to read.” Other children suggested ways of accommodating the needs of those who wanted to play and those who wanted to read. Another child brought up an issue: “[A girl in another class] is always picked last when we play kick ball at recess. And now she’s crying a lot. And I don’t think it’s fair.” Both boys and girls added comments about how it feels to be picked last and generated some options for picking teams so that the same person would not always be picked last.

This day in the classroom was characterized by the teacher’s and students’ genuineness. Although energetic, the environment had a quality of being very laid back. Smiles and laughs were frequent on the faces of the teacher and children. Jane cared deeply about her students. She treated them each as respected citizens of the community — each with something important to offer. Her dealings with the children were marked by gentleness, as she prodded, guided, and supported the children. At one point, a group of children was making fun of someone, and with an almost lighthearted but obviously serious approach, Jane said very gently, “Thank you, I don’t need imitators over here.”

Her gentleness and caring seemed to be adopted by the children. The children treated everyone with respect. They cared how others felt and celebrated in each other’s successes. Jane admits that the year did not start off this way. It was only in the last month or so that the children had settled into a stable and functional community.

From: Bloom, J. W. (2008). Creating a classroom community of young scientists (Chapter 6). New York: Routledge. Purchase from: Publisher or Amazon.

Such an example from a classroom is not all that unusual. Yes, “Jane” was an exceptional teacher, but there are many exceptional teachers. But, she worked hard at creating such communities that valued children’s inherent abilities and humanity. I’ve seen many classrooms where the same sort of atmosphere and community had been established.

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D.C. Bets Big on Common Core

D.C. Bets Big on Common Core.

I’ve called this the “Common Core of Ignorance” elsewhere on my blog. Diversity and variation are essential to the welfare of any system — ecological, social, and, yes, educational. Without variation systems crumble. We’re narrowing down and solidifying a set of knowledge that is flawed in both content and view. In fact, one of the hallmarks of human knowing is that all knowledge is tentative. Knowledge changes. Without emphasizing the diversity of knowledge, of teachers, of children, of learning, of teaching, and so forth, we’re creating a system that is destined to fail. And, this failure could be our whole society.

We’re strangling teachers and children. It’s time to wake up and appreciate the inherent intelligence of our children.

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Learning, Testing, and the Messes We’ve Created

Gregory Bateson used to write metalogs that explored the “muddles” we create for ourselves. These metalogs were written as conversations between father and daughter. They examined the nature of a variety of issues involved in the way we understand the world. The first of his metalogs in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, in fact, focused on how things get in a muddle. We always seem to get ourselves in muddles at all levels of scale. We get in personal muddles, then muddles within our closest relationships, all the way up to the grand muddles of global ecological disasters and the degradation of international relations.

However, in this blog entry, I want to explore briefly the muddles we’ve created around learning, testing, and education. For the better part of a century we have talked about learning as if it were some discrete, measurable “thing.” We use tests to measure a person’s intelligence or learning. We see learning as the result of a specific series of steps taken by a teacher or adult to transmit some content to be learned. These ideas are part of what has created our current muddle about education.

During the 17th Century, Rene Descartes turned the world upside-down. In a time, when myths and superstitions reigned as the frameworks for making sense of the world in the west, Descartes, followed shortly thereafter by Isaac Newton, changed the way people saw and made sense of the world. Descartes and Newton introduced the explanatory metaphor of the mechanical clock or machines, in general. They maintained that everything could be understood as a machine. Nature was just a biological machine. Furthermore, we could understand the wholes (the things in our world) by understanding all of their parts. In addition to seeing things as machines with discrete parts, we also came to a point where we assumed that there was one true way of understanding everything. The whole package gave certainty and comfort to the masses. Intriguingly, this scientific revolution permeated all aspects of life with its basic assumptions about reality. Even people who were not informed about science, began to see and work with the world from the sets of assumptions that comprised this mechanistic, reductionist, and positivist worldview. One of these assumptions involves linearity (or lineality). Everything has a simple linear cause and effect. Another global assumption referred to duality or the separation of mind and body (also referred to as Cartesian dualism). The mental world had no connection to the physical world. They were separate phenomena. This dualism also built on the Christian separation of humans and nature. Human beings were seen as separate from the natural world. And, because we could understand the natural world as a mechanical system, we had even more control over how we used the resources of land and water. We could control everything.

The Cartesian (Descartes’) view of the world was a huge transition for western and other cultures over the next 300 years or so. In some ways, it was viewed as an enlightenment. However, over time, this worldview has brought us to the brink of self-destruction on many fronts. Our disregard for the natural world is straining our ability to survive as our population continues to grow and our resources continue to shrink. Our hopes that technology will fix our situation are met with even greater demands on resources. Our whole world seems transfixed by hope and wishful thinking.

Our views of teaching, learning, and education are embedded in such Cartesian assumptions and wishful thinking. We see the whole of education as a linear process. Even the debunked “Tabula Rasa” assumption, where students enter the classroom as blank slates and where teachers transmit knowledge to students, dominates much of the way in which we view education. On the other hand, we know that even the youngest children enter classrooms with a great deal of knowledge. Yet, we continue to assume they enter as blank slates and that we can use step-by-step approaches to “teach” them some discrete knowledge. The approaches to teaching, as passed down from teacher to student, are based on assumptions of mechanism (everything works like a machine), reductionism (where parts are all that are necessary to understand the whole), positivism (where there’s one right answer), and dualism (where the mental world of “learning” is completely separate from emotions, from the body, and from the social world and the environment). We continue to operate as if these assumptions are really descriptive of the way learning occurs.

Although certain rote memory operations may manifest in these linear, fragmented, and disconnected ways, the whole of learning is quite different. Learning is hard-wired into our biological nature. Learning occurs with or without schools. In fact, much of learning (unfortunately) occurs outside of school, where children are playing or getting into trouble. We can’t help but learn. The problem is how do we guide that learning in ways that are going to be useful for a child’s growth, development, and present and future well-being (the specific purposes or goals of schooling is another issue).

Learning is complex. We as a species have always learned so that we can survive and thrive. In fact, all animals learn in order to survive. Bateson even went so far as to suggest that genetic adaptation was a form of learning. However, no matter what level of scale (from the molecular to the social) we examine, learning focuses on our ability to survive and thrive in different contexts. Such learning is not really about retaining discrete bits of disconnected information. Rather, at the very core, learning is about creating multiple frameworks of connected information that serve to explain and help us make sense of our world. Learning provides us with the cognitive and emotional tools to pose and solve problems, to find ways to understand diverse and different physical and social phenomena, to imagine and create, to build and repair, to be empathetic and compassionate, to be reflective, to be responsible and respectful, and to be a participant in whatever communities one is a part. Learning occurs not just in the head, but also occurs in the heart, the body, socially, and in relation to our worlds. Learning is not a static and linear phenomenon. It morphs and changes. Learning involves the meanings we create, which also includes ideas, emotions, values, aesthetics, beliefs, metaphors, imagery, models, humor, and so forth. Learning is not just about “text.” Learning also is about how to be. (Such a view of learning is certainly a major problem for those who maintain that on-line courses are valuable!)

Yet, we continue to view learning as a simple rote memory and computational phenomena. Think about your own experiences. What do you really understand in depth? Can someone really know the extent of your understandings of this area? What areas of your life, of your very being are permeated by these understandings? How do you express your understandings? Can you ever express all of your understandings of this area? These questions are difficult. And, testing doesn’t begin to address possible answers.

Learning can’t be “measured,” because it has no substance. We can measure the dimensions of objects. We can measure density. We can measure sound and light frequencies. We can count numbers of things. We can measure the quantity of water in a container. But, we can’t measure things without substance. We can’t measure emotions. We can’t measure happiness. We can’t measure anger. We can’t measure a relationship between two people. And, we can’t measure learning. However, we can describe emotions, happiness, anger, relationships between two people, and learning. In describing learning and understandings, we can look at some of the ideas or concepts involved. We can examine the nature of the relationships that someone understands. We can look at how complicated the interconnections are between ideas. We can describe the tendencies for how one uses these understandings in dealing with various problems and situations. We can describe the tendencies one has for thinking in depth about these understandings. We can see where some misconceptions come into play and where more accurate understanding are involved. However, we can never understand the complete nature of someone’s learning and understandings. We can just pick up on certain aspects and tendencies. However, these aspects and tendencies are quite apparent to the informed teacher or observer. A teacher knows when a child understands something. A teacher knows when a student is passionate and creative. A teacher knows when a child is having difficulties and where she or he is making silly mistakes.

In the following discussion, I’ll use a metaphor of an iceberg to represent learning and understandings. Within the context of assessment, tests may show little indentations on the above water surface of an iceberg, but they really don’ tell us much more than whether they get answers right or wrong. Many very bright students, second guess test questions, see too many possible correct answers, or see errors in all of the possible test answers. Describing student learning through a wide variety of approaches (e.g., observations, interviews, all sorts of written and visual representation tasks, etc.) allow us to see much more of what lies beneath the extruding surface of the iceberg and some of what extends below the water. However, we can never see the entire iceberg.

So, we are currently in a massive muddle. We want to think that there is a simple solution to the mistaken belief that we are not educating our students very well. Between the irresponsibility of politicians and the media and the greed of publishers and testing companies, we have politicized and corporatized education to the point of a total muddle. We continue to think that test scores mean something significant. We think that we can control teachers and make teaching a linear and predictable process. We think that we can dissect out the parts in ways that will create viable wholes. We continue to think that there is one right answer and one right way to get to that answer. But, none of these ideas hold any viability.

Teachers are incredibly better than they were 100 years ago. I’m not so sure there’s any difference in the quality of teachers between 1960 and now. In discussions with principals, teacher educators, and experienced, expert teachers, the shared feeling is that the vast majority of teachers are competent or better. There are very few duds, but they do exist, as duds exist in all professions. And, there are quite a few teachers who are truly exceptional. At present, teachers certainly know much more about how children learn and think, know more about various techniques and approaches to teaching, and know more about the social and political contexts of their profession than they did 50 years ago. However, Teach For America and similar watered-down approaches to professional development of teachers are diminishing the depth and extent of this knowledge. The Common Core proponents and the entire testing industry are reducing teaching and learning to completely muddled, disconnected, and fragmented pieces of mostly irrelevant and meaningless information. The situation is further muddled by people, who have no background of study, experience, and research in education, making decisions about education. Our secretaries of education have no background in the field. School board members are dominated by people who have no background. Many state superintendents of education have no background. And, of course, as with the old Peter Principle, a number of people who were failed teachers have worked their way up the ranks into positions of leadership.

As in Finland, we could just trust teachers and save money by not testing, At the same time, we could make schools engaging, exciting, and creative places for children to grow, create, and blossom.

Resources and References:

If you’re interested, the following is a short list of some interesting readings that elaborate on some of the ideas discussed in this blog entry. Some are from my own research and others are from the work of some of the major scholars in education and related fields.

Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bateson, M. C. (1995). Peripheral visions. New York: Harper Paperbacks.

Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Block, A. A. (1997). I’m Only Bleeding. New York: Peter Lang.

Bloom, J. W. (1990). Contexts of meaning: Young children’s understanding of biological phe-nom¬ena. International Journal of Science Education, 12(5), 549-561.

Bloom, J. W. (1992). Contexts of meaning and conceptual integration: How children understand and learn. In R. A. Duschl and R. Hamilton (Eds.), Philosophy of science, cognitive science in educational theory and practice (pp. 177-194). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Bloom, J. W. (1992). The development of scientific knowledge in elementary school children: A context of meaning perspective. Science Education, 76(4), 399-413.

Bloom, J. W. (1995). Assessing and extending the scope of children’s contexts of meaning: Context maps as a methodological perspective. International Journal of Science Education, 17(2), 167-187.

Bloom, J. W. (2001). Discourse, cognition, and chaotic systems: An examination of students’ argument about density. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 10(4), 447-492.

Bloom, J. W. (2004). Patterns that connect: Rethinking our approach to learning, teaching, and curriculum. Curriculum and Teaching, 19(1), 5-26.

Bloom, J. W. (2005). The application of chaos, complexity, and emergent (meta)patterns to research in teacher education. Proceedings of the 2004 Complexity Science and Educational Research Conference (pp. 155-191), Sep 30–Oct 3 • Chaffey’s Locks, Canada (http://www.complexityandeducation.ca).

Bloom, J. W. (2006). Creating a classroom community of young scientists (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Bloom, J. W. (2011). Investigating relationships: Thoughts on the pitfalls and directions. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 8(1), 38—43. (Available at: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/complicity/issue/archive)

Bloom, J. W. (2011). The really useful elementary science book. New York: Routledge.

Bloom, J. W. (2012). Ecology of mind: A Batesonian systems thinking approach to curriculum enactment. Curriculum and Teaching, 27(1), 81—100.

Bloom, J. W. (2012). The nature and dynamics of relationships in learning and teaching. In D. J. Loveless & B. Griffith (eds.), The interdependence of teaching and learning. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

Bloom, J. W. (accepted). An ecology of mind: Teaching—learning recursive systems. Kybenetes.

Bloom, J. W., & Volk, T. (2007). The use of metapatterns for research into complex systems of teaching, learning, and schooling. Part II: Applications. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 4(1), 45—68 (Available at: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/complicity/issue/archive).

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Bruner, Jerome. (1987). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Harvard University Press.

Bruner, Jerome. (1992). Acts of Meaning: Four Lectures on Mind and Culture. Harvard University Press.

Bruner, JS, & Haste, H. (1987). Making sense: The child’s construction of the world. New York: Methuen & Co.

Cazden, C. B. (1988). Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Dewey, J. (1997). Experience and education. New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster.

Doll, W. E. (2002). Curriculum visions. New York : Peter Lang.

Doll, W. E. J., Fleener, M. J., Trueit, D., & St Julien, J. (Eds.). (2005). Chaos, complexity, curriculum, and culture. New York: Peter Lang.

Donaldson, M. (1992). Human minds. New York: Allen Lane/Penguin.

Donaldson, M. C. (1978). Children’s Minds. Harper Perennial,

Donella H. Meadows. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Duckworth, E. (1987). The “Having of Wonderful Ideas” and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning. Teachers College Press.

Duckworth, E. R. (2001). Tell Me More: Listening to Learners Explain. New York: Teachers College Press.

Duckworth, E., Easley, J. A., Hawkins, D., & Henriques, A. (1990). Science Education: A Minds-on Approach for the Elementary Years.. New York: Routledge.

Edwards, D., & Mercer, N. (1987). Common Knowledge: The Development of Understanding in the Classroom. New York: Routledge.

Edwards, P. D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive Psychology. Sage Publications Ltd.

Egan, K. (1986). Teaching as Story Telling. London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario Press.

Egan, K. (1990). Romantic Understanding: The Development of Rationality and Imagination, Ages 8-15. New York: Routledge.

Eisner, E. W. (1998). The Kind of Schools We Need. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Fleener, M. J. (2002). Curriculum Dynamics. New York: Peter Lang.

Gallas, K. (1994). The languages of learning. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gallas, K. (1995). Talking Their Way into Science. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gallas, K. (1997). Sometimes I Can Be Anything: Power, Gender, and Identity in a Primary Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Garvey, C. (1984). Children’s Talk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gatto, J. (1991). Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers.

Hawkins, D. (2002). The informed vision. New York: Algora Publishing.

Illeris, K. (2009). Contemporary theories of learning: learning theorists … in their own words. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Jarvis, P. S. (2007). Human Learning: An Holistic Approach. New York: Routledge.

Johnson, M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

Jones, M., & Jones, B. (2003). The unintended consequences of high-stakes testing. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Kirshner, D., & Whitson, J. A. (1997). Situated cognition. New York: Routledge.

Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lave, Jean, & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press

Marton, F., Booth, S., & Booth, S. A. (1997). Learning and awareness. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Marton, F., & Tsui, A. (2004). Classroom discourse and the space of learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Maturana, H. R., & G, F. J. V. (1998). The tree of knowledge. Boston: Shambhala.

Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rogoff, B., Turkanis, C. G., & Bartlett, L. (2001). Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community. New York: Oxford University Press.

Singer, D. G., & Singer, J. L. (1992). The house of make-believe: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Singer, Dorothy G., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (Eds.). (2006). Play = Learning. New York: Oxford University Press.

Swope, K. (2000). Failing our kids: Why the testing craze won’t fix our schools. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools Ltd.

Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Volk, T., & Bloom, J. W. (2007). The use of metapatterns for research into complex systems of teaching, learning, and schooling. Part I: Metapatterns in nature and culture. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 4(1), 25—43 (Available at: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/complicity/issue/archive).

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Psychological Violence Against Children – A Commentary on a Huffington Post Article

What If Everybody Understood Child Development by Rae Pica (Huffington Post).

But, we don’t want children to learn, to think, to be creative, to be motivated, to know how to participate in society, or to be decent human beings. Such things don’t benefit the rich and powerful, whose children will be provided the best learning experiences despite the dreadful things public schools are encouraged or forced to do.

When I was a teacher, the principal demanded silence in the cafeteria. She said she’d give a prize to the most quiet class. During our first lunch, my 5th/6th grade kids asked if they had to be quiet. I asked if they wanted the prize. They said, “no.” So, we talked. That was over 30 years ago. It’s just getting worse.

All of the child-strangling things you mention, which also include The Common Core Standards and high-stakes testing, are acts of psychological violence. As a society, we just ignore and ask for more.

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More on the Common Core: Who Benefits?

Who is going to benefit from the Common Core Standards?

Children are not going to benefit. In fact, they are likely to suffer from the effects of severe psychological violence. Children’s inherent creativity, curiosity, love of learning, and complex and complicated ways of thinking are going to suffer the most. Children are not going to experience what it is like to learn something in depth. They are not going to learn about issues and topics that will be critically important to them as adults. They are not going to develop emotionally and socially, because teachers will not be able to take the time to help them develop in these areas.

Teachers and the profession of teaching are not going to benefit. Competent to excellent teachers (note: the vast majority of our teachers probably fall within this range of expertise) are going to leave in droves. Those good teachers who remain are going to face the effects of psychological violence, as well. Their creativity about how to teach in ways that engage and stimulate children and their insightfulness about how to best help children grow and learn are going to be suppressed by the pressures inflicted by the Common Core Standards and by increased high-stakes testing.

Schools are not going to benefit. They will continue on a downward spiral as they trip over their own feet… caught between good intensions and mindless political forces.

Communities are not going to benefit. Students will continue to hate going to school. They will not be engaged. They will not feel connected to learning, to one another, to schools, or to their communities. In some neighborhoods, such disconnections may manifest in a variety of anti-social actions. Children’s desire to learn and find the limits of what is possible, which can serve as positive attribute within school classrooms, may manifest as criminal and other anti-social behaviors in local communities.

Society will not benefit. As with communities, many children will be disconnected from society as a whole. They will not have learned how to participate thoughtfully in a democratic society. Many others who may have been encouraged to follow their passions in the arts will find no support in schools. The heart of our culture and society will crumble. Even children who are interested in math and the sciences will be “turned off” by teaching approaches that are meaningless and irrelevant.

Corporations, much to their surprise, will not benefit. They may think they will benefit by highly controlled and dumbed down approaches to schooling, but they will only get employees who are unable to think creatively and critically and who lack any sense of inspiration.

Power-hungry politicians and business people may benefit. They will have a population that will be easy to control. The power-elite will continue to sell our citizens a bill of goods and take advantage of them. Even now, those in power have already been able to brainwash a significant proportion of society, including school leaders, teachers, researchers, and well-meaning state and local politicians. The power-elite, which in the case of the Common Core involves David Coleman, repeat the same misinformed ideas over and over again to the point where people actually begin to think these statements are true. Such approaches are brainwashing. And, as a society, we seemed to have fallen for these very dangerous ideas.

We’ve been duped. And, we’re bending over asking for more.

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More on the Common Core: Who Decides?

At the moment, Arizona is pursuing legislation that will require all faculty members in colleges of education to receive training in the Common Core Standards and that will require the Common Core to be included in their teacher education courses. Such a move is frightening at so many levels, I barely know where to start. This move is just another indication that Academic Freedom (i.e., a subset of freedom of speech that has been a foundation for intellectual inquiry among teachers and students) is disappearing. Next, we’ll be burning books and firing teachers for teaching critically important ideas and ways of thinking that are not in the Common Core. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Or, have the limitations of school curriculum already omitted knowledge that is not a part of the agenda running this country?

We seem to be putting the Common Core on a pedestal with no memory as to how this set of standards is yet another educational fad. In a few more years, we’ll come up with another one, and another after that. But, this fad is seriously flawed to the point of actually being dangerous. On top of the inherent dangers of the Common Core Standards themselves (which will be discussed further here and in future blog entries), politicians are compounding the dangers by mandating their use at multiple levels of education. These very same politicians have failed at schooling. In Arizona, only about 16% of the legislators have a college degree. Nationwide the average is 25%. (SEE this New York Times article for further details: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/education/13legis.html?_r=0. Yet, these politicians continue to make decisions about education as if they are the experts. Of course, the rampant misconception across the country is the notion that we are all experts in schooling, since all but a few of us have attended school, and therefore we all know about teaching and learning. However, what legislators and the general public don’t know includes: the psychology of learning, motivation, and thinking; the dynamics and theoretical foundations of teaching and schooling; the theoretical foundations and analysis of curriculum; creating classroom communities where children are active producers of knowledge, rather than passive consumers of disconnected knowledge; the social foundations of teaching, learning, and schooling; and the wide array of teaching approaches and techniques for various subject matter areas. We have highly educated teachers who have learned the foundational knowledge and skills in these areas and who continue to learn from their own practices and the literature about teaching and learning. But, unlike places like Finland (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html), we don’t trust our teachers and we don’t allow them to make decisions about what children need to learn. We’ve tied their hands behind their backs. The Common Core and the onslaught of prescribed curriculums that are sure to follow are more knots.

Among most of us who actually study and critically analyze education, teaching, learning, and curriculum, there are basic questions that we always ask. In this and later blog entries, I will introduce and ponder some of these basic questions. The first question follows:

Who decides what knowledge is worth learning?

In the case of the Common Core, one person is responsible: David Coleman, a multi-millionaire from the corporate sector. He has single-handedly, with the financial help of GE Foundation’s $18,000,000 and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s $4,100,000, taken over the reigns of American education. The Common Core Standards are not the result of educators coming together to write what they consider to be important knowledge. The Common Core is the result of one man’s effort, with the help of 27 complicit individuals, mostly from the political and business sectors. The National Governors Association also was heavily involved. This organization created the Common Core and has pushed for states to adopt the standards without ever having seen them ( http://arizonafreedomalliance.ning.com/group/action-alerts-changed-frequently/forum/topics/common-core-update-action-130227-2000?xg_source=msg_mes_network).

In addition to taking over American K—12 education, Coleman has taken over the presidency of the College Board. He plans on re-aligning the SAT’s to reflect the Common Core. The whole of American education is now under the control of one person. Almost all of the state governors have bought into the Common Core. Teacher educators and college and university presidents have sold out. And, now conformity to the Common Core is being legislated.

Many of the top educational researchers have been co-opted into this massive brainwashing machine as a review committee. I’m greatly saddened to see some of the some of the researchers I’ve admired on the list of the brainwashed and co-opted. What a disappointment. Education is now officially a corporate entity.

There is no room for creativity, critical thinking, environmental literacy, social justice, and education for and about democracy. Teachers and children are about to be reduced to automatons. No thinking allowed. Just learn how to take 20 times more high-stakes tests!

For further information, look at some of these links:

Diane Ravitch’s article:
“Guinea Pigs for Common Core Standards”:

Diane Ravitch’s blog:
“David Coleman will Change the SAT to Align with Common Core”

Substance News:
“Common Hard Core? … David Coleman, architect of the ‘Common Core’ and now President of the College Board, just loves dropping tough-guy F-bombs on staid audiences”

Susan Ohanian’s commentary:
“Common Core State [sic] Standards”

Joseph Lucedo’s comment to Susan Ohanian’s blog:
Common Core instead of NCLB!

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More Shootings and We Still Haven’t Learned

Yet another school shooting today, and this time young children, as well as adults.

Of course, we still think everyone should have guns, even though the 2nd Amendment was not intended to allow guns in everyone’s homes, but rather for state organized militia. We should remember that those were very different times.

But, the issue of gun control is somewhat secondary to what has been a recurring pattern in our schools. Fundamentally, our whole notion of dealing with children in and out of schools is really heartless, much in the same way Boehner and his colleagues want to treat our elder citizens. Kids and the elderly are just numbers and pawns in a game of money and politics.

If we really want to help children, we don’t need to “raise standards,” use more high stakes tests, implement “zero tolerance” (just another form of heartlessness), or set up a “Common Core” curriculum. None of these efforts really have anything to do with the welfare of children. If we really cared about our children, we would help teachers formulate approaches to develop relationships. Children need to learn how to appreciate one another, to value differences, to develop empathy, and negotiate solutions to particular problems. When I was in the classroom, the personal and social problems that arose always trumped whatever agenda I had for the day or the week. We’d drop everything and work on ways to communicate and appreciate one another. It’s all about developing deeply meaningful and empathic communities in schools. When kids feel appreciated, they don’t act out with violence. But, of course, adults don’t do a very good job of modeling relationships and community. Look at our congress and the way they treat each other and the way they propagate fear and hatred of other cultures.

What the people who develop educational policy don’t realize is that when children begin to feel good about themselves and each other, they learn more than we could ever imagine. But, maybe that’s the issue. Maybe the policy-makers don’t want our children to feel good about themselves and don’t want them to learn more than some meaningless content.

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The “Common Core” of Ignorance

For decades, but actually for centuries, educational scholars have been pushing for ways of teaching that engage children and contribute to their growth and development as thoughtful participants in society. However, corporate and political forces always seem to win out in the battles between thoughtful and thoughtless schooling.

Thoughtless schooling has been empowered from the positivist and mechanist thrusts developed and propagated by Descartes and Newton. Although positivism and mechanism may have removed a veil of ignorance and introduced revolutionary ways of thinking and of relating to the world, they have had their negative effects over the last few centuries. In a way, these Cartesian ways of thinking have led to the development of their own veil of ignorance. (By “ignorance” I mean “being in a state of ignoring” rather than a sense of stupidity. In fact, ignorance may be quite smart, as we actively avoid seeing “something,” that is usually something we don’t want to see or take into account. Ignorance usually involves being stuck in a set of assumptions.)

Just as the pre-Cartesian peoples of the West were guided by superstitions and myths of various kinds, we post-Cartesianists have our own set of superstitions and myths that guide our thinking, actions, and decision-making. We think that everything can be reduced to a number and that numbers are truth. We think that all people are equal (or the same…), rather than as different. From this view we think that all children can conform to the same ways of learning and thinking. We believe that there is a linear and sequential pattern of cause and effect and that thinking and learning should occur in linear and sequential ways. We also continue to see learning as something static. We think of learning as the acquisition of a body of unchanging knowledge.

At the same time, researchers and scholars have been suggesting very different approaches to understanding the world and to thinking and learning. Such alternatives are closely aligned to more recent understandings of the complexity sciences, as well as the psychology of social constructivism and distributed learning. From such perspectives, learning is not viewed as linear and sequential or as static. Instead, learning is viewed as recursive (looping around in complex interconnections) and ever-changing. Learning is seen as a social process, where ideas are shared, negotiated, and argued. Even though each individual may put his or her own “spin” on particular ideas, the ideas have been a product of the social dynamic.

Now, we have returned to yet another veil of ignorance under the guise of the Common Core standards. All students are supposed to learn the same material from a list of concepts. Science learning in the early grades, where children’s curiosity is at its peak, is relegated to reading about science rather than exploring, testing, and playing with “stuff” and ideas. We’re yet again returning to a system of schooling that kills children – kills their inquisitiveness—curiosity, playfulness, creativity, and deeper intelligence. They are pounded into a state of ignorance by an adult world steeped in ignorance. The designers of the Common Core, bless their hearts, are so deeply embedded in our cultural state of ignorance, they actually think they are doing some good for the children.

Children desperately need to experience deep, meaningful, and relevant learning. But, all of schooling is based on shallow, meaningless, irrelevant, and fragmented “learning,” all of which seems to be reduced to “memorization.” It really doesn’t much matter what children learn as long as they can learn something in great depth. Once they experience learning of this sort, where they not only learn a set of interconnected concepts, but learn how to evaluate that knowledge and how that knowledge works and relates to a variety of contexts (e.g., how the concept of energy relates to ecological, social, political, and economic contexts). This level of learning is what Gregory Bateson referred to as Learning III (Bateson, 1972/2000). Learning at this level of complexity is what children need to experience and practice. In fact, this type of learning is what is going to be necessary for our children’s survival in a very uncertain future.

In addition, the idea that children need to continue to learn a broad spectrum of ideas is silly. We have such easy access to information that it makes more sense to have children experience real in-depth learning, so they know what this kind of learning “feels like” and then learn how to find and evaluate knowledge claims in relevant contexts.

We’ve also lost all sense of children as being “producers” of knowledge rather than just “consumers” of knowledge (Marshall, 1992). They need to be engaged in constructing and evaluating their own knowledge claims. They do this informally in their everyday lives, but we fail to take advantage of this pattern of learning to help them hone these skills.

At present, we are facing the dire ecological consequences of our previous states of Cartesian ignorance. We are not only in a state of “peak” oil, but also in a state of peak everything… water, soil, and resources of all kinds. Our children are going to be confronted with collapse on many fronts, yet we continue to teach them material that is irrelevant to their futures. We continue to emphasize approaches and knowledge that don’t provide them with the knowledge and skills to survive or thrive in the future.

For whatever reasons, but probably those that come from the pressures of corporate greed and its consequent ideas of economic growth, global competition, mass conformity, and keeping the populace in a state of shared ignorance, we continue to push a variation of the a same approach to education that has gotten nowhere. The approaches that seem to have always taken over are deeply embedded in what Bateson would call Level 0 or proto—learning, otherwise known as rote learning. As long as we try to quantify learning, which is not quantifiable (there is no “quantity” of learning), along with high stakes tests and corporatized curriculum, our children will not learn at the levels of which they are so capable.

So, what are we to do?

NOTE:

For those of you interested in a more in-depth analysis of the problems with the Common Core, download the following paper: Common Core State Standards: An Example of Data-less Decision Making by Christopher H. Tienken (2011), in the Journal of Scholarship and Practice

References

Bateson, G. (1972/2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Marshall, H. H. (1992). Seeing, redefining, and supporting student learning. In H. H. Marshall (Ed.), Redefining student learning: Roots of educational change (pp. 1—32). Ablex

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The Common Core Standards – Keeping Our Kids Dumb

It may be a knee-jerk reaction on my part, but I’m suspicious of political efforts in education. Fundamentally, I don’t think the real intent and motivation is to help children. The quote from the Standards web site brings up a number of questions and thoughts.

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

From: http://www.corestandards.org/

  • Why do we want all students to learn the same things?
  • Do children who are homeless need to learn the same things as others?
  • Do children living in big cities need to learn the same things as others?
  • How can the same content be relevant and meaningful to all students?
  • Why is content (information) the most important thing to learn?
  • Shouldn’t we be teaching children how to find and evaluate information, rather than having them learn this content?
  • Shouldn’t we be valuing children’s diverse styles, interests, individual personalities, contexts, etc?
  • Why is certain knowledge (and there’s a lot) not addressed in the core standards?
  • Who decides (I couldn’t find the list of people involved in developing the standards, but the “voices of support” are politicians and business people with one exception) what content to include?
  • What is their agenda?
  • Who is going to benefit from demanding one set of standards for all children?
  • What are their philosophical orientations?
  • What is the depth and extent of their experience and knowledge of child development, child psychology, learning and cognition, teaching, curriculum theory, cultural epistemology, and so forth?
  • How can anyone think that they know what is “good” for all children (seems like an error of hubris to me)?
  • While stating a desire to help children succeed in “college and careers,”
    • how do they know what each child needs to succeed (whatever that means)?
    • why is education about “success”; what does “success” mean?
    • why is education about careers and what careers are valued? Is waste disposal (garbage collector) a valued career
    • why should all children go to college?
  • What would happen if all kids were “successful” at the school game? What would this look like? Who would benefit?

The key to understanding this effort is found in the last sentence. The entire political motivation is about money, about economic competitiveness, or about economic domination. The whole approach is based in a global corporate agenda. I couldn’t find any reference to social justice, ecology, or the environment. These ideas are not of concern to the corporate agenda. In fact, they are a threat to this agenda.

The approach is mechanistic (as if children were little non-human robots) and positivistic. We’re in the middle of a revolution as the worldviews of positivism and mechanism, having created life-threatening and culturally disconnecting problems, are being challenged by more holistic and complex worldviews. We’re witnessing the kicking and screaming of positivists and mechanists as their materialistic and narrow views of power and control are being undermined. It’s the middle of a revolution. Our consumerism is eating back on itself. Within the context of economic growth, consumerism, and materialism, we’re destroying families, cultures, and the environment upon which we depend for our very survival.