Democracy

Dear Department of Education Press Secretaries

Feb 24

Justin and Sandra,

First of all, let me applaud you and your efforts to engage and inform through the use of Twitter. There are many government entities who are not willing to do so.

Let me also encourage you to actually engage and not just inform. You will certainly find a host of passionate, candid individuals in this space, as you’ve no doubt already encountered. They may well offer you more than you bargained for when you created your account. Understand these are people who believe passionately in students, their possibilities, their potential, their ability, and their education. And many of them are frustrated with the present state of education. As frustrated as you likely are based on your recent tweets. You’ve now provided them an outlet to unload their frustration.

I hope you will stay around. I hope you will respond to the questions, the challenges, and even some of the pointed criticisms. We don’t get enough of that from our government officials. You have an opportunity to help remedy that. I hope you actualize this opportunity.

I would also offer this one last piece of unsolicited advice. Be careful of your words. I know that is your profession, and that is why you work where you do, but I still offer the advice all the same. When you make statements like, “we need to stop lying to students” you step upon very uneven and potentially damaging ground. Because the statement immediately begets the question, “who are the we that are doing the lying?” Are you insinuating that you are lying to students? Are teachers lying to students? Are administrators lying to students? Are parents lying to students? Are we all lying to students? That’s a tough way to begin a constructive dialog. Especially given the history of honesty from our politicians. So please, weigh your words and expect them to elicit a very real, genuine reaction from the community. If you want that reaction to be constructive, I’d encourage you to frame the questions and statements in a more measured manner.

I honestly appreciate your presence here. I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

Ben

You can find the official twitter page for the Department of Education Press Secretaries at http://twitter.com/EDPressSec

Thanks to Star Dust for the use of the Flickr image.

What is Curriculum?

Jan 17

I have been in education for ten years, and I haven’t thought enough about that question. I’m now in the second week of the course, “Curriculum Theory” in my JHU-ISTE program, and we’ve started wrestling with some tough questions about curriculum.

The first being the title for this post. What is curriculum?

It seems the answer can’t be cleaved from many political influences in most cases. That’s fascinating- that so many will battle so hard over the very definition of something I find could be rather to entirely simple. The more I delve into the topic, the more I find myself forced to simplicity. In my opinion, curriculum is…

All the stuff our students learn.

That’s it. Simple.

Where it gets exponentially complicated starts with the very first step away from the definition. Who gets to pick the stuff the students learn? Much more difficult and political.

Some say that the curriculum we choose is broken down into three parts; the written, the taught, and the tested. Sure that’s part of it, but curriculum is much more than that. It’s ALL the stuff our students learn. That means both the intended and unintended. When we start picking exactly what the stuff is that the students will learn, we begin formulating a construct that students will engage when learning. Obviously, there will be written curriculum that is to be taught and then tested, but there is much more to it than that. Because it’s the bigger construct of the scope of the curriculum that will likely have the greatest impact on a student.

What I mean is, if we set up a curriculum that focuses on finite, rote recitation of facts as a major outcome, we will intend to have students complete our institution’s educational scope and sequence with a specific knowledge base we’ve predetermined. However, what we most likely will not intend for students to learn is how to game our system. This is happening quite often in educational institutions who most value specific, information-based learning outcomes as students figure out how to work the system, or “Do School” as Denise Clark Pope suggests, and their final proficiency may say much more about how they learned to exploit than how they learned to learn what was intended.

Things continue to grow more complicated when we take another step back and look at some of the umbrella questions surrounding curriculum and its inception.

For example, the question was posed in our class last week, “Whose values should be reflected in the content and processes of curriculum?” That question, frankly, is kicking my tail. I’ve thought on it quite a bit, and I still don’t have a good answer for it. I’d like to say mine, but mine probably isn’t yours, so why do I get to decide it’s mine and not yours? I might say the learners, but what if collectively, they decide they don’t much value education in general? Where does that leave us? I could take the cheap way out and say society, but who in the world can say exactly what the values of society are? Like I said, it’s kicking my tail.

Another step back.

Look bigger than just the curriculum. Look at schooling in general. What exactly is the purpose of school? I’ve written about this before, and I still believe in what I wrote in that post. It is all about learning. That is the purpose. However, if learning is the goal, what is the conduit? That, I would have to say, is democracy.

This gets us nowhere easier than previous topics. As Deborah Meier has stated before, democracy is an incredibly difficult process to understand. There are fewer more important revolutions in the history of mankind than the information revolution. That knowledge and learning and information moved from the privileged few to the masses means more for the progress of citizenry than perhaps any other reform. However, learning in a democracy means dealing with difficult issues. The tyranny of the majority. The repression of the minority opinion. The absolute need for empathy. These are not always addressed in the democratic learning institutions where our students are learning.

If we teach in a democratic institution, then what exactly should be taught? What subjects should students learn? Yet another question to which I don’t have the answer. I’d like to say students should learn what is of interest to them, but that if rife with complication. I know if I had been given the opportunity to pick that which I would learn when I was in middle school, none of the subjects would have had any academic value. I can assure you this, though, they would have been interesting.

Should we continue on with the just in case model; giving students a bit of everything just in case they might need it some day? Should we move to the just in time model that delivers knowledge and learning right in the time when it is needed? Do either really offer a true solution?

I can absolutely see the need for students to learn how to communicate dynamically, and it is likely there is a certain level of mathematics and science that is needed to succeed in our world, but other than that, what should we teach? Citizenship, vocational skill, world languages, finance? What about specific classes in project management, collaboration (the real kind, not just cooperative learning), critical thinking, etc.?

Obviously the more I write, the less I seem to know.

One last point before I bring this rambling, stumbling wreck of a post to a close.

What about me? What do I do that makes a difference in the lives of learners today? That, is a very valid question. I’m the Instructional Technology Coordinator for a K-12 district in Illinois. I have held this position for two years now. I’d like to say that in that time, I’ve managed to facilitate great change in the way students interface with learning through technology. For a host of reasons, I simply can’t say that with truth. I face the same challenges many of my colleagues face in this profession. I try to jump many of the same hurdles. I’ve found there are reasons why I never went out for track in school.

I do believe we can engage our students in new and emerging ways. I also believe there’s much we can be doing to better some of the old ways. I will not stop fighting for what I believe is best for our students. And that is, simply, learning. I try to ground the work I do in that bedrock. Many days I fail. That doesn’t mean I will give up the trying. As long as I’m in this position, and as long as I’m affiliated with the work of educating students, I will continue to fight for their learning.

Obviously, this is some kind of fragmented post. But these are the things I’m wrestling with. If you have any thoughts on one, a few, or all of the topics raised, I would greatly appreciate your sage wisdom. Or even more questions. Those seem to be what I can handle best at present.

Thanks to kevindooley for the use of the image.

A Polarized People

Aug 12

canyon

I was eating breakfast with my dad last weekend, just sitting enjoying the beautiful Sunday morning meandering through the topics of our lives, when half way through my plate of banana nut pancakes the conversation turned to politics. My father, never one to hold back an opinion, began to passionately engage the conversation. He worked hard to prove his point, and when the “it’s a matter of fact”s came out, I knew all was lost for our peaceful breakfast. But I noticed, more than I ever have in the past, that his matters of fact were, in fact, matters of assumption. I raised the point with him. He didn’t care much for the point. And I realized there, in that moment, how bad things have really become. Because we’ve pushed our assumptions of others to the point of assigning them the value of fact. I fear that while that has likely always been present in human logic, it is becoming more prevalent. And I realize…

We are a polarized people.

Let’s try an experiment. See how bad it is. Read both of the following observations.

The Obama Administration recently set up an email account the public can use to report misinformation they hear about the present health care reform initiative. The White House blog explains that a great deal of erroneous information is being disseminated through “chain emails or casual conversation”. The blog maintains that the White House can’t keep track of all this misinformation, so they would like for us to help and report anything we hear that “seems fishy” to the email account they have set up. Because of the current laws with electronic communications and the requirement that all such records be held permanently, the White House will ultimately have a list of people who have reportedly disagreed with their policy.

The Bush Administration set up a list of suspected individuals who could potentially commit acts of terror against America. The list was collected through various means, including phone taps and individuals who were reportedly observed engaging in suspicious activity. Many of the individuals on the list were prohibited from flying within the United States. The Bush Administration ultimately collected a list of people who they then monitored based on suspicion. The ACLU maintains the list has grown to include over 1,000,000 names.

Consider your reaction to both stories at this moment. I’m nearly certain you are currently forming an argument in your mind defending one of the two scenarios and finding fault with the other. There’s a good chance you might even be working on your rationale to post below in the comments. You might have even found yourself, at some point through your reading, uttering a “come on” in your mind or even aloud.

And that’s my point. Think about it. You are forming a position very likely based on the administration you believe in and support. You might even find yourself irked at me for bringing up the scenario, or even in your estimation, misrepresenting one of the two sides.

The scenarios aren’t the point. The point is how much we assume when we read them. It seems we’ve become a polarized, perpetually skeptical people. We believe in “our side” and view the other side with an air of uncertainty to the degree that we assume the worst of their intentions. And we convince ourselves we’re right to do so.

I had the incredible pleasure of hearing Deborah Meier speak a month ago, and one of her most poignant points was that we’re failing to teach empathy in our pursuit of democracy. I believe she’s absolutely correct. We’re forgetting that there are multiple sides to a story. We’re losing our perspective. And it isn’t just happening in politics.

I see this mindset increasing from a trickle to a torrent in education. Each interest group grows increasingly more skeptical of the others. Teachers assume administrators are determined to fleece them at every opportunity. Administrators assume teachers want to preserve only that which is in a teacher’s best interest. Parents assume teachers want to take the easy route. Teachers assume parents don’t respect teachers as professionals. Technology administrators assume teachers won’t do what it takes to properly use available technology. Teachers assume network administrators only want to lock down a network to make their job easier. It goes on and on.

It’s quite sad, really.

Where is the empathy? Where is the perspective? Where is the consideration in our own position for those who maintain another?

I earnestly believe we have the capacity to change. Quite honestly, I earnestly believe we have to. We can’t continue to allow this state we’re in to perpetuate to the point of eventuality that it has started.

We have to start seeing both sides of the coin. And I would hope we would feel compelled to allow this lesson to be learned by our students. Because if we don’t, the polarization might well turn into sure schism. It’s dangerously close here where we now stand.

We have the means to be better. I hope we’ll exercise those means.