Learning

I read Amanda Cockshutt’s letter to our local newspaper last week, and now Sara Bennett at Stop Homework has posted it in its entirety. The pressure that Amanda, and others, have put on school authorities has had some effect on one school:

In the winter, Amanda persuaded the principal of her children’s elementary school to have two separate one-week trial periods without homework. When it was over, the school did not abolish homework, but it did institute some homework policy changes, including no homework the nights of major events and two weeks per year where there would be no homework other than reading.

We’re still seeing too much homework, for all the wrong reasons, at the higher grades though. Once again, I have to reiterate that homework is not an effective method to promote learning, or even get better test performance, and it robs students of their personal time.

In Definitions & Differences, Anil Mammen describes various roles in the teaching and learning process. I found these rather thought-provoking and decided to examine them against each other, from teaching to learning-centric.

In creating the Table below, I wasn’t sure if half-way between these polarities (are they really opposites?) is a Happy Middle Ground that one should strive for, or just a No-Man’s Land that satisfies no one.

Click on the table to view a larger version.

If anyone wants to use the document, I can send it to you in a variety of formats or let you edit the original Google Document.

Tom Haskins adds to the many comments on Will Richardson’s post about technology being the devil, and then shows the real rules that students learn from an industrial-age “teach-to-the-test” approach:

It’s as-if the teacher is saying:

1. This is a bogus challenge that’s designed to diminish your curiosity and creativity. Please don’t think about the pseudo-value of this challenge to you. Don’t approach the useless exercise or flawed course design as the actual problem to solve. Don’t see through this scam or find solutions among yourselves that I’ll be clueless to comprehend.
2. I‘m pretending the web does not exist. I’m assuming you do not have successes every day where you easily find what you’re looking for online. I expect you to experience information as a scarce resource that’s difficult to find and disconnected from other sources. You are required to play along with me.
   
3. This is a stupid game to play that deserves your contempt. I’m cheating you out of an authentic learning experience so please return the favor and cheat your way out of this stupid game.
4. I’m a pathetic game designer. I have no idea how to add a narrative dimension to the challenges. I can only be blatantly obvious and boring. It’s left to you to show me how to be devious, ingenious and clever in hopes I might learn what you know.

There is no shortage of information in our networked world. We don’t need to teach “stuff” because our children live in a world of information abundance. A teaching and content-centric approach is outdated and useless. Education today needs a learning and process-centric approach. As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

The rules of the game need to change.

I’ve been watching the New Brunswick bilingual education system for a decade now. It’s presided by a Minister who heads two separate departments, based on language. Within the English sector many schools offer early, middle and late French immersion. There is also a movement in our district to offer a hybrid between early and middle immersion. Few seem happy with the system and there are constant attempts to tinker with it.

My own observations, as a parent and a consultant to the Department, are that design and implementation don’t seem to mesh very well. The idea of French immersion is to start with a lot of spoken and written French in the early years and then taper off in high school. The concept is fine, but the implemention requires teachers with excellent French language skills, as the students only have one person to emulate. Our experience shows major discrepancies in French ability amongst teachers, to the extent that in some cases we have had to correct the teacher’s assignments.

At the NextNB public forum [what ever happened to those recommendations from 2004?] I remember a French language professor stating that he preferred students who had not been in French immersion in high school, as they had fewer bad habits. He said that non-immersion students passed the immersion graduates by the middle of the first year of university.

I have often wondered if we are developing bi-illiterate graduates in our public school system; fluent in neither English nor French. I was reminded of this in reading Alec Bruce’s article, Trudeaumania. Alec says that Justin Trudeau slayed a few sacred cows on his recent visit to New Brunswick, including this attribution:

“New Brunswick’s bifurcated public school system produces functionally illiterate Francophones and Anglophones more efficiently than it graduates culturally tolerant, linguistically engaged citizens.”

Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a movement to make the radical changes that we need in our education system. It seems that this conversation is becoming more public.

… in spite of news to the contrary, I still believe that it’s good to have a serious discussion about our education system.

Received this invitation by e-mail and was asked to pass it on:

The attached invitation is in regards to an upcoming seminar with Fraser Mustard and the Hon. Margaret Norrie McCain at Brunton Auditorium, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB on May 15, 2007 from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

Fraser Mustard will be presenting an overview of the recently released Early Years Study 2: Putting Science into Action.  There will be a question and answer session with Fraser Mustard and Margaret McCain following the presentation. (He is also receiving an honorary degree at the MtA convocation)

Early Years Study 2 reports on how the children in our country are doing and what can be done to apply the lessons of the study.  The evidence is clear.  The needs are clear.  We can take action now that will make a difference.  If we act as a community, we can improve the outcomes for all children and their families.

Read more about him, and his work as a champion for communities supporting Early Childhood Development.

If you are able to attend  please RSVP to the Council for Early Child Development, tel: 416-849-1332 or email cecd_general@councilecd.ca

I’ve been asked to conduct an in-service workshop for our local high school. The original request was for blogs, wikis and everything else Web 2.0 but I’ve managed to limit it to just blogs for starters. Participation is voluntary, so I’m assuming a motivated group of teachers.

I know that I could spend a day or two on the subject, but my challenge will be to motivate and hopefully instruct a bit within the one hour available. I’m asking for help from anyone who has done this before.

I’m considering starting with a short video to get attention. Something like The Machine is Us/ing Us, but I’d like any other recommendations. This could be followed by a discussion of the concerns that teachers may have about using blogs for their classes. Finally, I’ll show how to create a blog and set it up for class use. My first impulse is to use Eduspaces, even though it is more complicated to set up than WordPress.com or Blogger. The social networking aspects of Eduspaces resemble Facebook and the students might prefer this, even if the teachers may need more help with it.

I’ll also create a short list of web resources as a take-away. This list would include Will Richardson, Teachers Teaching Teachers, and Start Blogging. Any other excellent resources for beginners out there?

Dave Pollard shows how dysfunctional relationships in a “crooked broker society” create systems that are not fit for meaningful human life.

In each industry, an Exploiter oppresses a Desperate Supplier. This unbalanced relationship is reinforced by a Procurer who in turn gouges an Addicted Buyer. Dave’s graphic shows several examples:

So what about public education?

Are teachers the desperate suppliers, exploited by the school system which has a virtual monopoly on education jobs?

Are publishers, testing companies and universities the procurers who gouge the addicted parents, looking for any advantage in a shrinking middle class?

To show how vested interests control public education and stifle reform, Roger Shank describes the roles of these groups, in Rich Folks Misunderstand Educational Reform:

1. Teachers – Teachers would have to teach differently and no one really wants to change what they do on a day to day basis. True, teachers’ lives have been made so miserable by previous politicians’ attempts at reform that they are more open to change than ever, but still, they really don’t want to have to go to school to learn new methodologies.

2. Publishers – Big corporations have a real stake in education staying the way it has been. They don’t want to throw out all their textbooks and start over. They would spend a lot of money making sure this doesn’t happen.

3. Testing companies – Politicians have helped create an enormous industry that prepares and grades tests. They won’t give up their business without a fight. No real reform will take place if teachers are still teaching to the test and if we continue to teach stuff that is easy to test rather than giving kids open ended issues to think about and real workplace skills.

4. Universities – Any real school reform means changing how universities conduct admissions and convincing them to teach in college the subjects they have foisted upon the high schools (like algebra). This will never happen since it would also mean that colleges would need to interview students instead of relying upon grades and test scores for admission.

5. Parents – Parents tend to think school is a competition and they reinforce all the testing and grading in the hopes that their kid will win. In addition they believe that whatever they learned in school is what should be taught despite the fact that they have since forgotten all that they learned in school.

I think that local control of public education could fragment this system and weaken the position of the middlemen so that the Exploiters and Procurers would lose their centralized power and influence. “Small pieces, loosely joined” may be the right strategy for educational reform.