Tuesday
03Nov2009
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 11:30PM Education is about developing human beings, and human development is not mechanical or linear. It is organic and dynamic. — Sir Ken Robinson, How Schools Stifle Creativity, writing on CNN about reaction to his famous TED talk and his new book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Special thank you to Deirdre, who wants to know: How do we start the revolution?
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Reader Comments (24)
I am an engineer from India and I feel the other way. I feel that the change must start in India. In India there must be improvement in the of institutions providing quality education and children must have choices in terms of the career.
In India, owing to culture and the population certain jobs are revered and hence there is tremendous amount of pressure on the kids to perform. The competition is cut throat. On a day an average 15 year old spends 8 hrs in school, 4 hours in private coaching, at least two hours commuting between all these places, four hours in catching up on the school work and the extra coaching. Weekends are even more brutal. At the end of this the child might loose his/her spot on a top institution by .5 marks or .25 marks. Its a very sad model to follow.
I've been ruminating on this all morning, and for me, it's about letting go of the expectations formed by school (for me) and letting the learning happen in its own way and its own time. It's exciting for me to watch the connections happen and the lightbulbs go on. I see it happening in so many unexpected places and ways. My job right now, is to provide the open spaces, both in our schedule and in our minds, for that exploration to happen, and to make available the tools that they need and want. It's frustrating sometimes, when things don't go according to my preconceived notion of how they should. But they always happen, and often in better ways than I could have predicted.
I need to remember that I shouldn't organize and schedule and mandate the ways that their educations will flow and evolve. I can be there as a guide and a partner and a resource, remembering that they will get to where *they* need and want to be so long as I support them in their endeavors.
Whew!
stacey, you know i love it when you babble.
re: what you wrote on your blog…
you said, …“Like religious leaders, alternative educators can become charismatic leaders to their particular vision of education but that can create a situation where some parents end up taking a step back from the process and allowing the educators to take over.” i completely agree. i feel like i was an evangelist when i was running my school. but i knew that if i let go of it, no one would pick it up. it only lasted as long as i was willing to breathe life into it. for real change, you have to have consensus in a large group — a group large enough to form a community.
but here’s another question. i don’t think it’s enough to connect with other families that feel the same way you do. that isn’t enough. you still have to reach other parents, others families, the community at large and convince them that change is needed. otherwise, your community dies as your children grow up. similar to my situation with my school, you meet your own children’s needs, perhaps, but there is no lasting change. it is a pebble dropped into a pond.
a revolution, i think, would require people at every level who were passionate about changing what education looks like in our country — from parents to teachers to administrators to politicians to our society at large.
sarah, i am into week two and not completely well yet! ugh!
i like everything you say, and we were talking here about those open spaces (or white space ;^) this morning — basically how parents have to make that a priority in order to *really* offer their children the chance to explore their own interests and live and work creatively. and to give them that time and space, they have to say no to other things — an over-scheduled life does not lend itself to this kind of growth. and parents have a hard time giving anything up, letting any opportunity for their child slide, whether it’s music, art, sports, social life, field trips, co-ops, clubs, and on and on. i think they would rather try to shove everything in that they can and feel they did all they could than clear out a big empty space and let things happen organically. the confidence just isn’t there.
I agree about bringing the ideas to the larger community but that I think comes after the beginning conversation. In my head I could outline the whole revolution but I was only dealing with the very first stage. I think to be able to reach the larger community you need to have some consensus on what you are saying to them.
I am exchanging emails with a mom whose child is such a perfectionist when it comes to writing - he wants his letters to look exactly like printed ones - that he doesn't want to write at all. I told her I am walking the same tightrope with Amie. Sometimes she wants to draw something so realistically, she will get very upset when of course (she's four) the result doesn't look exactly like the thing or photograph she is drawing from. Drawing is her anchor: it is what she loves to do, is praised for most often, what makes her happy again when she is upset or sad... Help! What to do?
re: consensus on what you/we are saying — oy — yes.
i have some stuff i should send you about what they were doing in australia — the goals they set, etc. — and then they went out to do it in only a select number of test schools … and friends of my from au said they’d never even heard of it. and i think it petered out and wasn’t approved for wider distribution. i think the list of educational goals would delight you, as it did me.
kat, that is the tradition! :D
perfectionism … sigh. i’m familiar.
i wrote about it a little here:
http://www.whiteoakschool.com/camp-creek-blog/2007/10/30/the-perfectionist.html
and here:
http://www.whiteoakschool.com/camp-creek-blog/2008/2/26/its-not-all-about-the-art.html
(there’s a link there to some discussion we had in comments about this same issue.)
i don’t think there’s a magic cure for perfectionism. my older son is still a perfectionist. he still has ridiculous standards for his own work. i think it’s simply a personality trait or intellectual tendency that needs work — something to acknowledge, discuss, and try to curb as much as possible.
i have a quote somewhere around here by a writer that says what stops most people from becoming writers is that early stage when the work they produce doesn’t come anywhere close to the work they admire — basically, you have to be able to get through that stage and realize that you are going to improve slowly but surely in order to really become a writer. you can’t just skip to being what you know is excellent.
that is true of everything in life, and i think it’s one of those life lessons we need to impart to our children. it’s okay to recognize that their work isn’t where they envision it could be. (i don’t think it helps to argue, “no! your thing is GREAT!” when the child is adamant that it isn’t what s/he expects/wants/demands.) and the only way we get better is by working on it. it’s easy to share lessons from our own lives, since truly this is the only way we learned how to do anything well ourselves.
for the child who won’t write, i would point out (nicely) that he won’t ever be able to write the way he wants to write if he doesn’t practice. that he has that ability but it needs to be developed — just like a basketball player can’t play like michael jordan until he puts in his hours on the court.
for amie, we’ve had some success (with my son and with children at school) exposing them to a wide variety of artists’ works and talking about how they draw things differently — birds, flowers, people, etc.
but that probably won’t shake her conviction that her own drawing simply doesn’t look the way she wants it to — for that, i think you have to return to the conversation about practice, and developing, and the more you draw the better you draw, and that’s true for every single person no matter how old they are.
I was part of a wonderful school (first as a student teacher and then as a teacher) that had been started by parents. You actually describe the problem we had the school was started and conceived by a group of energetic parents but as their children graduated (or in many cases decided to school themselves) the school lost it's drive. This I think has to do with the other thing you mentioned, how the parents need to go to the larger community with their ideas, if they had done that the next generation of students who were just families who chose the school, rather than being very involved. Sadly, by the last year I worked there the school had basically turned into a school for at risk students (it was a charter school and without strong family support the district started to "use" the school as it wanted.
I do find it so what reassuring that the original concept behind charter schools is to fill an educational need that the parents see that the school are not meeting in hope of having the traditional schools incorporating some of the concepts being used if they are successful. Unfortunately successful varies by who is looking at it.
Cheers- Bethe @balmeras
i agree re: arne duncan — i was really disappointed at his appointment and i don’t see anything different happening in education in the near to medium future. frustrating.
I have perfectionist, too, and one thing that I've found that helps him is to see the writing and drawings of the children he knows... he has a great respect for comics, lyrics, and other stuff that's handwritten by his buddies, and I think seeing their imperfections has made it easier for him to realize that it is okay to make mistakes.
interesting that comparing his work with others helps your perfectionist; i have known pefectionist children who become über-frustrated by comparing themselves with others. if you are with a wide enough range of children, it should give a more realistic view of what other children your age are producing, though. perfectionists tend to compare themselves against what they see in their mind’s eye — that ideal outcome they are always after.
being part of a community that values work (creating works of art, writing, drawing, building, solving problems) and that enthusiastically shares their work is a very valuable thing — for kids and adults. whether that community is a school or a homeschool group or a family.
No suggestions or ideas. Just feeling the perfectionist pain.
My husband had a great insight about this process--when Maggie is frustrated, she will often yell at us and there can be a lot of strum and drang as she metaphorically bangs her head against the wall. I haven't tended to have much patience with this, but Steve suggested that I try and just let it go. Let her rant and carry on as she needs to as she moves through her frustration. And he was so right--if I can just ride the wave with her, she can get past it more quickly. Rather than demand "mature" behavior (i.e. not fussing at your mother who's just trying to help you), I sit with her, absorb some of those big feelings, and help her move forward when she's ready.
I guess we're both learning patience!!
"frightened to be wrong by adulthood"
"educated out of creativity"
these are some points i jotted down after listening to his talk, very inspiring.
thanks for sharing.
Nancy
You're right - it is unusual that my perfectionist takes solace in the 'imperfect' work of his friends. I think it works for him because (as you brought up in your response to my comment) it puts him in a community of makers, rather than one of viewers. There is no way that his work is going to look like something he's seen in a museum, but he stands a fair chance of measuring up within our community. Does that make any sense?
It makes me value our community all the more!
If we want to involve the community, the learning that happens behind the walls of a school needs to be visible. The teachers' and childrens' thought processes need to be presented to the community in order to start really dialoguing and discussing our values as a community and our beliefs about childhood.
This is done very well by the educators in Reggio Emilia through documentation, which they admit is one of the most central themes in their philosophy.
I was there a few weeks ago, and have written on my blog about documentation as a means to involve the community:
http://bigvoices.wordpress.com
-Lauren
whether it’s one person or a small group who start and run a school, when they leave, it tends to fall apart. i find this to be generally true, and somewhere around here i have a quote from john holt expressing the same thing. he said that is why he recommended that people homeschool. ;^)
thank you, nancy ;^) xoxo
karen, that does make sense, and i meant to reply to barbara also something about how i feel our family has that kind of community — we are interested in doing a lot of different things, we are always exploring new interests and trying new things, and we talk about the whole process together. i think that makes for a community that values learning and slowly mastering new skills.