Synthesizing Education

I am a huge fan of reading Daniel Pink‘s work as well as thinkers like Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Friedman, and all of the others. I don’t dismiss their ideas, points, and theories, but I don’t use them for anything more than starting points for deeper thinking.

What concerns me is that every time one of these individuals posts something new on their blog, writes a new article, or publishes a new book, it seems as though the educational community jumps on board and proclaims it as the next great idea that we have to infuse into our schools.

Better yet, we make connections to their points and ideas until the next piece that they produce comes out. We simply “jump ship” as soon as they change their topic of interest or the new individual enters the limelight.

They aren’t educators, and I know a lot of people would be upset if someone with no educational experience was hired as their school’s principal or superintendent.

Let me be clear: I enjoy reading their work, and I think it aids all of us in thinking about new ways to redesign schools and improve instruction. Heck, I’ve written about some ways that we could bring in some of their ideas (Why Education Needs To Create Delayed Openings), and I include their works on my recommended reading list for 2010.

What I wonder is if we had to walk into school every day and see these individuals as our administrator, would we view their ideas differently?

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This post was originally on my Posterous site a while back, but more and more I find myself thinking along these lines. I figure I would share these thoughts with you if you hadn’t seen them.

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There is a difference between a student who is “on task” and a student who is “engaged” in learning. The student that is on task is not necessarily doing the activity because he or she wants to, and the student who is engaged isn’t necessarily doing something that a teacher would deem as being on task.

Ideally, every teacher should strive to develop a culture where students are “engaged” with learning that also happens to be “on task”.

Problem is, you and I both know that this will not (or can not) happen 100% of the time. At some point, every student needs to be just “on task” so that he or she can continue to build knowledge and an understanding of different concepts. To assume that every student will be engaged 100% of the time is ridiculous simply because we are all individuals and have different interests in different things. The student who isn’t fond of biology won’t be engaged with discussing pedigrees. We can work diligently to try and get that student interested in the topic, but we also need to be understanding of individual differences and tastes.

There is also some value to a student learning to be on task without being engaged. It teaches them to “focus their spotlight” and concentrate on topics or ideas when they aren’t necessarily appealing and may even teach them to find ways to make connections that others don’t see.

If I had a student that was never engaged in learning then I would be concerned, but the reality is that no human being will be 100% engaged in everything they ever do. That’s part of what makes us different, and we should be celebrating that.

Couple that with the fact that you have 20 other students in the class, and you could drive yourself crazy always searching for “engagement” in everything.

Thanks to Sheryl NussbaumBeach for getting me thinking about this topic.

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I am not usually one for passing on memes but I happen to like this one. Thank you Carl Anderson for passing this recognition on to Synthesizing Education.

For those I am awarding below, here are a few  suggested guidelines if you would also like to pass this meme on:

1. Copy and Display the picture of the award given to you.

2. Link back to the blog that nominated you.

3. Nominate 5 different blogs..

4. Inform the people you have nominated so they can pas on the love.

So, here are my nominations:

1. For The Love of Learning by @joe_bower

2. Adventures in Teaching & Learning by @mrkeenan

3. Classroots.org by @chadsansing

4. Hysteriography by @williamhogeland

5. Education Stormfront by @crudbasher

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These are some very granular ideas that came to me this morning over my cup of coffee. I apologize for the vagueness, but I just needed to get this off my chest. Don’t lie. You know these kind of people.

Too many teachers go about their business in school as though they can’t think as an individual or make individualized decisions as to how best complete their work. They wait for the e-mail from an administrator to tell them that they have to do “x”. This is a major problem, but it isn’t the only problem with how some teachers go about making their daily decisions.

Some teachers utilize their compliance to allow them to escape “getting in trouble” for NOT doing what they are supposed to. Think about the message that this sends about the person who is preparing kids to be successful as independent thinkers. It usually comes in this kind of statement: “If I don’t get an e-mail about it then I won’t do it…”

It’s also true that you can utilize this type of maneuver to utilize practices that benefit your kids, but I’m more concerned with the teachers that use this as a way to prevent having to do work that will ultimately benefit his/her kids.

They’re the ones that fire me up.

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Here’s my vote. What’s yours?

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I’m interested in starting a series I would like to call “Tough Questions” that focuses on prickly issues that most people shun or don’t want to deal with. If you have an idea for a question, please let me know. I’m just trying this out, but it seems like it could be good fun for all of us. Hope you enjoy.

If you have not seen the article yet from this week’s New York Times Magazine by David Leonhardt (Students of the Great Recession) then you are really missing out. In plain terms, he lays out what the educational benefits of The Great Depression were as well as some of the parallels with our current economic state.

In 1930, only 30 percent of teenagers graduated from high school. By 1940, after a decade in which there often was nothing better to do than stay in school, the number had jumped to 50 percent. The Depression didn’t just make Americans tougher. It made them smarter.

Now we are all hoping that the same strides can be seen with today’s youth entering college.

The good news is that this dynamic seems to be playing out once again. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the share of new high-school graduates enrolled in college rose to 70.1 percent last fall. That was up from 67.2 percent in 2007 and a new record.

The problem is that students aren’t graduating at record rates.

Less than a third of all students who enroll in community colleges with the intention of getting a two-year degree — a degree leading to jobs in nursing, auto repair, preschool education — ever do so at any college, statistics suggest. The United States still leads the world in getting students to start college, notes Lawrence Katz, co-author of a recent history of education.

So what’s the problem here?

…we no longer lead in what really matters: educational attainment.

Now, my question for you is how can this possibly be happening? How can we be graduating more students from high schools than ever before, getting them into college, and not be churning out high academic achievers? The article, at one point, suggests that many colleges believe…

College administrators and researchers admit they do not yet know exactly what works. The most important factor appears to be student preparation, which is mostly beyond a college’s control. But intensive remedial programs seem to make a difference. So does financial aid linked to academic performance.

So the question is, assuming that they are correct: why are the intensive remedial programs not being offered in our high schools? What is it that makes colleges so demanding of their students that are not being met in secondary education?

Perhaps it’s the overemphasis on relevance, engagement, and student interest? We focus on these different ideas as though they are the savior of all of education, but the bottom line is that they may be creating a generation of students who are incapable of graduating college.

Is it really worth it for us to emphasize these traits if students then go on and are not able to complete two year degrees at local community colleges?

Does the local university professor care if the student has gone through four years of schooling without ever taking notes from a lecture?

Does the same professor care if the student doesn’t “enjoy” writing research papers?

Does a professor have a duty to define terms if the students in the class don’t know what they mean?

If a student doesn’t feel a personal connection to the class content, whose responsibility is that?

Personally, I think all three of these concepts are important, but we also have to consider the implications of emphasizing these ideas over what colleges and universities are requiring from their students.

I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying that we, as educators, have a duty and obligation to consider this problem and think about potential solutions to solve it.

The policy makers, administrators and even voters whose decisions shape today’s colleges have come to see a job half-done as an acceptable outcome. Until that changes, it is hard to see how the country will have another great education surge.

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Blogs I Have Written For:

Relax on The Collaboration- Cooperative Catalyst
Blogs I Have Commented On:

Thoughts on Grouping Students- Reflections on Teaching & Learning

How Important is Teacher Tenure in K-12- So Now What?

When Will We Stop Banning Everything?- A Geeky Momma’s Blog

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So I am perusing through my Google Reader, and I come across this blog post from Tal Pinchevsky titled, “How The Ivy League Might Reshape Education”. He makes some interesting points about the newest numbers available on how Ivy League schools are seeing rising enrollments in programs like Teach For America (TFA) and the advent of groups like Knowledge is Power. The post is a decent read though nothing that should be labeled as a “Big Think” simply because it doesn’t address any of the issues that may be arising from this new trend. So I figured I would discuss a couple of them by posing some questions.

Why are we patting these people on the back for performing a civic duty that the “best and brightest” should have been performing throughout the course of history? Are they not giving back to the system that has made them so successful?

If the goal of education is, in part, to prepare students to be active citizens and be empathic towards others then shouldn’t they have be clamoring at the opportunity to work as educators and improve the lives of America’s youth?

Here’s the one that interests me the most: if one of the biggest roadblocks to true educational reform is that those who were successful attempt to perpetuate a broken, elitist system then should we be worried that those individuals are now becoming more prevalent in the classroom?

See the main point I am trying to make isn’t that we should keep Ivy League students out of the classroom or that we should be watching them like a hawk. I’m glad that they are making a conscious decision to improve the lives of others. Even still, I fear that this type of development will also be viewed as “silver bullet” education reform and we won’t be addressing the true rationale for how to improve student learning: improving the capacity and quality of the instruction and the teacher at the front of the room.

If that means Ivy League personnel then that’s fantastic, but the problem is that it doesn’t. It means innovative, charismatic, empathic, knowledgeable, flexible citizens.

Who gives a damn where they come from?

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Think back to the most recent cell phone you purchased and how long you spent reading the directions that came with it. Don’t you remember how you scrutinized every word to ensure that you understood all the intricacies of the cellphone?

Also, think back to the most recent car you bought. Remember how you went cover to cover through the owner’s manual before you even left the dealer? How, even though you have driven cars before and this one is different, you wanted to make sure that the instructions for operating the vehicle were the same?

Of course you don’t remember either of these situations because they never happened. NOT reading the directions is as much a part of human nature as anything else, and you aren’t changing it. Especially when you rant and rave then scold and belittle kids then ask them the obvious question, “did you read the directions?”

So stop ranting and raving. You don’t read them either.

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