Tag: children

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Children’s Learning for the 21st Century: It May Not Be What You Think

In various contexts in which education is discussed or promoted, invariably there is going to be a new initiative that sounds something like “21st Century Schools” or “21st Century Skills” and so forth. But, in reality, not much has changed over the past century and not much is likely to change in the near future. Probably for the first time in human history we are facing a clear possibility for extinction. At the very least, we will be facing uncertain and extremely difficult times over the next few decades. At this point, we are not talking about in 50 or 100 years. We are talking about the next 10 to 20 years.

However, the difficulty with the above statements is that we really don’t have any sense of impending doom. We get up and go about our daily routines in much the same way we’ve done for many years. Nothing seems all that different, despite what we may hear or read. Even though we may know that the future looks grim, our everyday experiences communicate a very different message about the future. We’re being screwed with by our very own experiences. And, this situation of contradictory information is dangerous. It’s a bit like driving down a highway in cruise control and not believing the signs warning that the bridge over the ravine has collapsed. “How could these signs be true? It’s a beautiful day and a beautiful highway!”

So, back to what children should be learning. We’re on this highway, but the systems involved in education, including the education system itself, the political system, the economic system, and the social system, are not particularly known for being able to adapt or change quickly. In fact, these systems are resistant to change. All of these systems are deeply intertwined and interdependent that any attempt to change in one will require massive changes in all of the others. And, with the present situation in the U.S. and many other countries, the political and economic systems are working diligently to undermine any attempts to address the monumental issues we are facing. Such tendencies and actions are serving to hasten the collapse of everything we take for granted.

So, we can’t rely on our institutions of education or whatever to address what our children need. They are still out for the quick profits and for keeping the populace dumbed down. And, if you’ve been reading any recent articles about the wealthy surviving the future, you’ve seen that the wealthy don’t care about the rest of us. They are already preparing to survive without us.

Of course, there are exceptions, but they are just that… exceptions. There may be the odd school bucking the system or the occasional teacher risking her or his job to really address children’s needs. But, the fundamental status for “the rest of us” is that we’ll be the first to die off, unless we do something about it.

Children’s relevant learning will have to happen somewhere in between the institutions and despite the conglomerate of systems. It’s up to us. But, what is worth learning? And, who decides what is worth learning? These have been two of the major critical questions asked among curriculum theorists. But, now they have to be asked by us and by our children. As much as we may hope that our children will grow up and get a good job and have a nice family, this may be a pipe dream. But, if you’ve ever played poker, you don’t want to throw away your ace in the hole. Maybe there is an outside chance of that kind of future happening… for a while. But, we need to play all our cards.

If all or most of the infrastructures (electrical grid, health, transportation, etc.) collapse, what will our children need to know? If everyone is scrambling for survival, what will our children need to know about working with diverse people? What else will we need to know? How will the way we think have to change?

…

The near future is likely to be a completely different ballgame. We have no experiences that will prepare us for what could happen. The ways in which we think, which may have been quite useful for us so far, will no longer work. This will not be “business as usual.”

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The Dissolution of the Institution of Education

I’ve been a critic of the institution of education in the U.S. for quite some time. Little did I know that in my lifetime I would see this institution be threatened with elimination. At this moment, I’m trying to contend with this radical change in status. Yes, we’ve had many problems, many of which were rooted in the politics of education. National standards and high stakes testing have been problematic. The ways in which teachers are treated, including low salaries, their systematic deprofessionalization, and their portrayal in the media and by politicians. But, now that we are faced with the destruction of the U.S. Department of Education and the massive defunding of public education, I wouldn’t mind going back to the way things were. An institution with all of its problems is better than no institution at all.

Without an institution of education, without a federal department of education, our children face a grim future. Those who will suffer the most are the poor and middle class. The wealthy can send their children to private schools. The rest of us, even with vouchers or other support, will not be able to access these schools. Just like public charter schools and public magnet schools, the vast majority of which cater to the wealthier families by making the process for applying and being accepted difficult and time-consuming to navigate. The parents in poor families spend their time trying to make enough money to survive and have little time for anything else.

Even going to private schools can be problematic. Many teachers have no academic preparation for teaching. Some private schools barely manage to act like baby-sitters. And, those private schools with some sort of brainwashing agenda can fail to provide the kind of education that is necessary for survival, let alone for thriving, in a world that is changing in ways that cannot be anticipated.

Children will be deprived of a basic education. For many children, schools provide them with the only healthful food they eat in a day. For many, school provides a rare safe zone, where they don’t have to worry about physical or psychological violence. And, as problematic as our education system has been, it did provide for these basic needs.

If some sort of free school arises from the ashes, they will be corporate run. The publishers and testing companies may step in to fill the gap. Then, they can control the very system that can rake in billions of dollars in profits. And, at the same time, these corporate entities can control what children learn, how they learn it, and what values children develop. As corporatized as we may have thought schools were, this will pale in comparison to the corporate schools that may arise. It will be brainwashing at its best. And, teachers will be forced into submission to the teacher-proofed corporate curriculum. Education for democracy will not even be a thought. Child-centered education may become a catchy phrase, but will have lost its essential meaning. Children will not be anywhere near to “center” of focus. They will be pawns to be manipulated for profit and for control.

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Alternatives to Consumerism in Life and Schooling

Over the past few days, I was thinking about this week’s blog entry as a re-analysis of some old research data from a teaching unit. I was looking through old transcripts of students working on a ship building project and how their thinking naturally involved multiple perspectives and seamless multiple interacting systems. I think I’ll get back to that later in this entry, but as “things” go, this morning, Nora Bateson posted something on Facebook about how we should stop buying things and simplify… Here it is:

Today I found this quote in a Wendell Berry story. It has been a week of head banging with the wall of non-communication between the humans and the corporations– frustrating to the bone. I thought of revolutions, evolutions, uprisings and social media viruses. I have been feeling tiny and silenced– and noticing acutely how tightly we are coupled into the corporate web. At this moment, we have not got the infrastructure to live without it. It thrives on our wanting… luxuriates in our insatiable need for having… so: this.

1 – Be happy with what you’ve got. Don’t be always looking for something better.
2 – Don’t buy anything you don’t need.
3 – Don’t buy what you ought to save. Don’t buy what you ought to make.
4 – Unless you absolutely have got to do it, don’t buy anything new.
5 – If somebody tries to sell you something to “save labor,” look out. If you can work, then work.
6 – If other people want to buy a lot of new stuff and fill up the country with junk, use the junk.
7 – Some good things are cheap, even free. Use them first.
8 – Keep watch for what nobody wants. Sort through the leavings.
9 – You might know, or find out, what it is to need help. So help people.

FROM: Nora Bateson, on Facebook, September 21, 2015

This entry started me thinking about how my Dad, who was a young married man and first-time father during the Great Depression, used to save everything many years later after I was born. Our basement was filled with all kinds of things. If something broke, he’d fix it. If he couldn’t fix it, he’d save the parts that were useful and toss the rest. He’d save old nails and screws. Although he was barely literate, he was a genius in all things electrical, mechanical, and structural.

Fortunately, a little bit of his “saving everything” and an even smaller bit of his genius rubbed off on me. I save the screws and nails from things that fall apart. I build much of my own furniture and repair things myself. I often try to do what he called “jury-rigging” things… just making up solutions to problems by using parts in ways for which they were not designed.

These types of actions are not “chores” or “impoverished” approaches, as we’re led to believe by the corporate world of buy-more-new-things-all-the-time-or-you-are-not-a-worthy-person messages. In fact, there is something that feels very wealthy about making and fixing your own things. When I make or fix something, I feel empowered. I feel enriched. I feel like I am a more complete and capable human being. And, as I was mentioning to a neighbor yesterday, I have even stopped calling repairmen. More often than not, they charge a fortune and screw up the job anyway. So, I told my neighborhood, “I can do screw it up myself for a whole lot less money.” But, as it turns out, it may take me a little longer, but I usually end up doing a better job than the so-called experts, who also seem to be out to scam people, but that’s another story altogether.

So, back to the children and their ship-building project. I had just given the kids some letters from fictions people asking for bids on ships to take tourists around to natural history sites. Each group had to act as a company to come up with these ship designs over the next couple of months. But, on this first day, they could explore some prototypes and test out their designs. These are mixed groups of grade 5, 6, 7 girls and boys. Here are a few excerpts. The lines are coded as Group# = Group Number, g# = girl number, b# = boy number.

Group 1
g1 Oh, you have to fill it out and then bring it back. You gotta … Wait a minute. Okay. A cylinder won’t work actually … cause even if it does … like it can’t tip, right? But even if it does, if people are sitting on one end and it tips, it all falls to the other end …
b1 Unless …
g1 … and they won’t get there safely.
b1 … unless you had like another cylinder inside the first a cylinder that like at the center (???) … so like there’s another cylinder that moves …
MUCH LATER ON…
b1 We should make up a name for it, like … (???) … like you know how they have names for sailboats and that …
g1 Mm hm.
b1 … (???) … … How about “The sub appeal?”
g1 The what?
b1 “The sub appeal.”

Group 2
b4 No, that’s too ordinary. We want something that people want to come to.
[Pause. Seem to be listening to group three and their discussion of ferries, ferris wheels and so forth.]
b4 Yeah, put a ferris wheel on it. Put a (???) on it and a swimming pool. Actually a swimming pool would be a good idea. Yeah, swimming pool would …
b5 No, no. If we had a swimming pool, we’d have like a really deep, deep hole? … (???) swim in it underneath and it would go …
b4 Yeah … yeah.
b5 So you could just jump into it, and it would be, it wouldn’t be on the ship, because then there would be bars and gambling machines and stuff. [Slight laugh.] No, no gambling ’cause that’s illegal.
b4 No, no, that’s good to … no, it’s not illegal.
b5 Yeah, it is.
b4 No, it … Yeah, that’d be cool.
b5 That would be good though …
b4 A pool, pool hall.
b5 Yeah, a pool table and stuff. Like a bar, a really nice bar and a fancy restaurant. … [Responding to someone at another table.] Yeah, we are.
LATER IN THE CONVERSATION
b5 No, and you can look out them, like underwater, from underwater.
b4 Yeah.
b5 It’s like a little underwater thing down there … and you can look down …
b4 No, it’s like, has like a glass bottom.
b5 Not … no, that’s not good. [Semi-giggle.] This really heavy guy comes along and steps on it. Kshaaa! [Vocal sound effect for heavy guy falling through glass bottom.]

In both of these groups, I’ve selected excerpts that show how children move from the technical-scientific (which is what is generally expected of children) to other “important” issues, like names, bars, and gambling machines. Children do not separate out the “disciplines” of science, mathematics, etc. All of the disciplines (or subject matter areas) arise in their thinking and conversations in blended ways and naturally become part of their thinking. But, this type of thinking is borderless systems thinking. Although we can easily dismiss these tangents as trivial, these tangents are where the important potentialities lie. This is where the creativity is. These tangents are where insights and problem solving arise. This type of thinking is the same sort of thing as keeping odd assortments of screws, nails, and pieces of metal. This is the type of thinking that helps children feel like complete and capable human beings. This is where they feel empowered and enriched.

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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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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.

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Creativity and Kids

A while ago, I posted a short entry on creativity and children. The essence of this entry was that the politics of schooling with an emphasis on achievement and test scores is problematic. In fact, the current efforts in schools are actually acts of psychological violence against our children (and teachers, too!). Testing, accountability, standardized curriculum, oaths of allegiance to a corporate curriculum (yes, this is actually happening in a democracy!!!), scripted curriculums that teachers have to follow (why not hire a homeless person instead of a teacher?), classroom management as the way to “control” kids, and just so much more are all ways of killing the spirits and creativity of our children.

Sir Ken Robinson does a wonderful job of showing just how important creativity is for the education of our children. Watch his TED.com presentation – “How Schools Kill Creativity”: