Category: Society

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What If We Valued Questions More Than Answers?

This morning, during my almost daily visit to the local dog park, I was chatting with a homeless guy and his friend, a previously by-choice-homeless guy, who is a house painter, poet, and actor. We usually get into to some fairly deep philosophical discussions as our dogs play or ignore one another. And, today was no different. When I walked into the dog park, I was greeted with, “Hi, Jeff. How are you doing? I need some answers.” My immediate response was that I had no answers, but tons of questions. Well, that was the beginning of a discussion about questions and answers. Our discussion prompted a day of pondering the ideas of questions and answers….

What would our world be like if we valued questions more than answers?

In many circles, people say that questions are important. They are the basis of the social and natural sciences. However, we only value questions in terms of finding the answers. We want answers… one “right” answer for each question. We want a neatly packaged world with answers to all of our questions. Having questions with no answers can be frightening. What happens when we die? Why do we die? Why are we born? What is life? How did everything begin? How can we feel happy? How can we avoid getting sick? These are some of the more pressing questions, but the list of questions is endless. The sciences, philosophy, and most religions have tried to address many of these questions. Those questions that cannot be answered by science are avoided or dismissed and relegated to philosophers, poets, or religions. But, in all cases, we want to construct answers that present a solidified, predictable, and comfortable view of our lives and our worlds. Unfortunately, “things” beyond simple physical systems (interactions of billiard balls without the element of human psychology, planetary motions, etc.) are not solid, predictable, or particularly comfortable.

Valuing questions within a sense of continuous inquisitiveness and uncertainty is more consistent with the nature of our living world. So, what would it be like if all of us valued such a view, where questions and uncertainty were central to the way we lived and interacted?

Would we become less controlled by our basic fears of uncertainty and death?
Would we thrive on curiosity?
Would we become more open to varying experiences, cultures, and individuals?
Would we appreciate diversity and difference?
Would we appreciate the uncertainty and spontaneity of the biological and social worlds in which we live?
Would we be more respectful of our fellow living organisms?
Would we develop our intellectual and emotional abilities unfettered by our desires to solidify what can’t be solidified?
Would our lives be energized by uncertainty and all of the possibilities that such uncertainty provides?
Would our lives become works of art and poetry?
Would science become a way of understanding the uncertainty and lack of predictability of multiple interacting systems?

What are some questions that can continue to stimulate our continued intrigue with our lives, our relationships, our worlds?

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Meditation, Suffering, Aggression, and Taking Social-Environmental Action

I don’t want to diminish the critical importance of meditation experiences, insights, and realizations. From a Buddhist point of view (but any tradition with a contemplative practice), meditation is absolutely necessary, if we are to have any hope of taking any kind of compassionate or skillful action. However, I worry that we all can get caught up in our own (meditative and other) experiences and that we only practice compassion on the cushion. I’m quite guilty of that myself.

For the first time in the history of humanity, we face, at least during the lifetimes of our children and most certainly our grandchildren, massive global environmental, social, and population collapse. When hundreds of millions of people are dying monthly and suffering is beyond comprehension, I feel like I need to be reminded continuously of the immensity of suffering now, so that maybe I can take actions that may contribute to the survival of humanity in the future.

I started and help run a small meditation group here, but in my mind this is not enough. I have to help with the larger issues in whatever ways I can, at multiple levels of scale. If I don’t get my hands dirty helping in as many as possible small ways to create possibilities for human survival (including my own kids), I don’t really see the point in just staying in my small comfortably uncomfortable world. How can I die (hopefully sometime in the relatively distant future) knowing I haven’t tried to help with the big problems? What’s the point of practicing the Dharma, when no one will be alive to practice in the future?

Maybe I’m wrong, but constantly taking in the aggression and suffering of others helps keep me “honest.” There seems to be no shortage of aggression and suffering in what was once a friendly, laid-back college/tourist town (Flagstaff, AZ) in the mountains, not to mention the exponential increases globally. Part of this very basic level of suffering is being perpetuated by things we can change in fundamental ways. As Trungpa Rinpoche, suggested, one can’t practice the Dharma (or try to live with any joyfulness) if one is starving or struggling for survival. And, it’s at this level of fundamental survival that is going to increase and spread. We’re already peak everything (food, fertile soil, water, oil, you-name-it). How can I ignore this? And, how can I help? Maybe I’ve been inspired by the early years of Greenpeace. One book accompanied all of their early missions…Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. And, all of their missions had protection cords and blessing from His Holiness the Karmapa. They pursued actions, but constantly tried to keep ego in check.

Now in my old age, I feel like I’ve blown many opportunities to help. Now, I’m trying to do what I can. But, it’s a tight-rope, where balance can be lost. It’s a path riddled, as Gregory Bateson would have said, with double binds (of seemingly no-win situations, Catch-22’s, etc.). But, I see no alternative to just jumping in. I’m too old to wait.

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The Arts (in School?)

Even though I’m a science educator, I feel like the arts are at the core of our humanity and are critical components of schooling. But, the arts need to be “taught” well, not with more “standards” of knowledge about the arts (teaching the arts as a set of content standards is being done, by the way!), but as ways of exploring and representing children’s experiences of the world. How often do we hear children say, “I can’t draw,” “I can’t sing”? Everyone can draw and sing. But, I’m damaged goods in this regard. Personally, I feel incomplete and like damaged goods, because of a couple of bad experiences (especially in music, where the took me out of the elementary school chorus “because I couldn’t sing” and took away my melody flute “because I couldn’t play,” I am still working with those scars). I’ve tried to remedy the situation as a adult, but the lack of confidence and self-consciousness have been huge obstacles.

I dont’ know which is worse… Damaging children with poor teaching of the arts or not teaching the arts at all. However, I just keep coming back to the idea that without the arts, we’re just less than human.

I do try to draw and use photography as an art form, but music in another story. I wonder how many children share such experiences? I certainly hear children say they can’t draw, can’t play music, or can’t sing. But, the same holds true for many subjects that are kept in schools — many children say they can’t understand science, they can’t write, they don’t like to read, and so forth. It’s all pretty sad.

The reduction or elimination of the arts from schools is really an awful state of affairs. And, there’s an incredible amount of evidence that shows how the arts have impacted children in positive ways, including increased motivation and learning in other subjects. In many ways, the arts help all of us see the world in more authentic and meaningful ways. The arts provide both the artist and the receiver of the arts with deeply emotional connections to our worlds and to our own humanity.

The same sort of disconnect that is being propagated with the arts in schools is characteristic of the way the Common Core is suggesting we teach everything. Reading is about “getting” some arbitrary content. Reading (in which the Common Core has a greatly reduced emphasis on fiction, which is where the real learning and thinking lies) is not about opening up worlds of imagination, questioning social patterns, or re-developing the way one sees and connects with the world. Studying science is not about inquiry and learning about the nature of science (how science works), but about “learning” some set of concepts, but also NOT learning about other sets of concepts that might threaten the corporate status quo.

But, then again… who benefits from children’s lack of passion for the arts, for reading, for science, and so forth? “We” say we want children to be able to read, but do we want them to enjoy reading, to be voracious readers, or to read because of impassioned curiosity? Remember, people who are knowledgeable and who can think deeply can’t be manipulated as easily. So, again, who benefits? Have you ever tried to “reason” with a corporate representative about an ethical business practice? They can read the script, but they don’t understand a word of the argument. And, that’s just the way the corporations want it. They want employees who can read the script, but who are otherwise clueless. And, heaven forbid, they certainly don’t want employees at the public interface who can actually think out of the box, who see the world in different and creative ways, or who can be empathetic.

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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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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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Greenpeace… Book Review

Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World by Rex Weyler (2004, Rodale Press, 612 pp)

I just finished reading Rex Weyler’s Greenpeace…, which I purchased shortly after meeting Rex at a conference in July. His talk, which is posted on YouTube and on the Ecomind site, haunted me. Although I knew much of what he talked about, the actual confrontation with his data rattled my tendency for complacency.

Greenpeace Cover
His book, Greenpeace…, has had a similar effect and provides a thorough background to his more recent thinking and actions.

In the book, he delves into the political background starting in the late 1930’s, and also addresses the beginning of environmental/ecological awareness in the 1950. The whole book reads like an historical novel with captivating dialogue, intrigue, and humor. He brings to light some of the insidious patterns of power, control, and greed that have steadily led to the increased destruction of our local and global environments, including the increased extinction of many species of life.

Greenpeace started with protests of extensive nuclear tests. Their first trip on Greenpeace I, a contracted boat with its captain, John Cormack, headed to Amchitka Island in the Aleutians, where the United States was testing nuclear bombs deep under the surface of the Earth. Of course, the tests occurred along a very active tectonic plate boundary and literally exploded the heads off of wildlife on and around the island. Although they didn’t manage to stop the test they were focused on, their fundamental strategy of using the media to put pressure on governments and corporations was successful eventually, but only after many attempts and a ramming and beatings by the French navy. But, they maintained their core values of not doing harm to anyone and of not damaging property.

As they moved on to trying to stop the slaughtering of whales, they encountered the same resistance, but managed to put incredible pressure on countries to stop whaling. Interspersed with the open ocean adventures, are stories of Dr. Paul Spong’s and other scientists’ investigations of whales and their extensive intelligence and sensitivity. When Spong first started investigating whales he was dangling his feet in the water in the Vancouver Aquarium’s Orca tank. When the Orca swam up and brushed his foot with her teeth, Spong reacted reflexively by pulling his legs out of the water. After a number of times doing this, he forced himself not to react. When the Orca saw that he didn’t react, she swam out into middle of the tank and started making lots of sounds. It was at this point that Dr. Spong realized he had just been trained by the Orca and the roles had been reversed.

Rex Weyler also introduces a great deal of fundamental ecological concepts, to which we all should pay very close attention. The nature of the carbon cycle, energy, and toxicity, as well as all of the complex interactions among life forms (including humans) and the environment should be fundamental to the way we view our life and actions on Earth.

As Greenpeace expanded to protecting seals from being skinned alive, while decimating their populations (as with the whales), to dealing many other environmental and socio-political issues, the internal politics of Greenpeace became another potentially damaging dimension to their very future. However, the wisdom of a few key players helped Greenpeace to thrive as an international organization.

What I find troubling now is that it is very difficult to use the media to bring issues to light. We do have the capability to use the Internet for disseminating information, but the broad impact of the media is no longer a possibility. While the major TV networks and newspapers covered the actions of Greenpeace in the 1970’s, these same networks and newspapers are now owned by the corporations that are behind many of the current, destructive practices. From the ignorance, irresponsible, and dangerous practices of FOX news to the poor journalism of most of NPR, we’re placed in a fog of ignorance.

For those of us who lived during the beginning decade of Greenpeace in the 1970’s, the book introduces many familiar key figures on both sides of the issues. Some of the key players included then president Nixon and Jerry Brown (past and present governor of California), as well as Allen Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Chögyam Trungpa, and the 16th Karmapa, who provided support and wisdom. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and the I Ching also served as guides for their actions.

Reading Greenpeace…. was a joy (even when the stories were at their most disturbing). I found it hard to put down, even though each chapter is broken down into one to three page sections making it easy to read in small bits. I highly recommend this book as both an engaging read and an important source of information about our past and current situations. For me, the book has been a call to action, as well. We shouldn’t sit back, while the destruction of our global environment threatens the survival of the human species.

More by Rex Weyler:

http://rexweyler.com/
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/

Greenpeace at:

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/ with links to Greenpeace International