Overcoming attitudinal, organizational, and knowledge barriers. #edcampmn

Earlier this month I had the great pleasure of hosting #edcampmn Minnesota at Hamline University. I felt the day went very well. People were engaged and eager to participate. In fact, we had a total of 41 session proposals for people to vote on. Unfortunately, we only had room for fourteen of them. Also, unfortunately, my hosting duties kept me from attending all the sessions I wanted to go to.

One session I wish I had been able to attend at but couldn't was, "Overcoming attitudinal, organizational, and knowledge barriers." Unfortunately it is also one session that doesn't have any notes. I hear this topic come up a lot when I attend conferences, read blogs, read my Twitter stream, listen to educational podcasts, etc. but something always seems missing. It seems there is great momentum to change education and these barriers are easily defined. In fact, it seems like when this topic comes up, 95% of what gets discussed involves identifying the barriers. But, what is less clear is what they are barriers to. I am really curious how people in my PLN and readers of this blog define this. What do you see as the end goal? When we talk about barriers to change, what are they barriers to?

Wooden Nickels (part 2)

<--Continued from part 1

So, if the zone of proximal development for a large organization is much smaller than that of an individual, then instead of this graphic representing an individual's zone of proximal development:
for an organization, if we make this kind of over simplification, it might look more like this:


But, not all directions an organization focuses it's attention on are equal and as an organization takes steps in one direction that zone of proximal development shifts and gets weighted more heavily on one side or the other. Therefore, over time this graph may look more like this:


and then perhaps like this:

So, as the ideas and values of an organization shift, those who do not shift in the same direction as the organization pose a problem.


and eventually the organization looks more like this:


So, those whose skills, ideas and understanding are outside the grasp of the organization, those who know things that cause others too much cognitive dissonance end up being outsiders. Beyond that, those whose growth goes in the opposite direction of the majority end up seeming like they have "lost it" or become "out of touch." Therefore, if the left side of this graph represents "the cult of efficiency" along with all of it's trappings (standardization, best practices, strict categorization of content, adherence to schedules, top-down control, etc). and the right side represents progressive education (democratic schools, open learning, learner-generated objectives, responsive teaching, etc.) then in a condition where this graph represents the conditions then progressive ideas are not likely to take hold. Those who go out and come back with knowledge or truths from the other side of graph are likely to be like the released prisoner in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Once they bring that knowledge back to their organization those in the organization will see them as blind and say it is best not to allow anyone up lest they come back without their sight.

Enter policy.

Policy is written largely to guide the direction of growth and/or change for schools. And, with very few exceptions, this policy is written to appease the majority. If the majority see those who have gone to the surface of the cave as having come back without their eyesight then there will be a huge push to draft policy which pushes the majority in the other direction. And, the majority is likely to desire the group take the path of least resistance. Larry Cuban has been writing about this idea for some time. He uses the metaphor of a typhoon to describe "reform" and policy but says that when you get to where the policy gets carried out, in the classroom, change happens very slowly. I think this validates my theory of group zone of proximal development but when you combine the idea of the path of least resistance with this group zone of proximal development policy can and does play a part. If I am a teacher and I have the option to pursue A or B and A is more supported by my organization then I am more likely to pursue A, meaning that B rarely gets considered. Over time this will move that ball further and further in one direction, causing a school system or organization to become unbalanced.

This poses a moral dilemma for those with knowledge and understanding from the right side of this graph who work with organizations on the left side of this graph. If there is a profound and important truth, perhaps one that conflicts with commonly held organizational beliefs (for example, something which would show a widely accepted teaching practice to be a detriment to learning) then there is a moral imperative to relay this information. But, to relay it often means suffering the plight of Plato's prisoner. To speak truth means to be ostracized from one's group and to lead with incremental change means being comfortable with things that are obviously wrong. What ends up happening, then, being morally obligated to tell the others what the shadows on the wall of the cave really are means the only ones who will listen are those on the fringes anyway. So, many different small fringe organizations crop up which move that circle to different sides of the circle and eventually a wedge is driven so far between people of different groups that there is no longer a common language. We become islands, tribes. Rather than make change, we end up with wooden nickels.

Small Change (Part 1)

I am currently about half way through John Holt's (1982) revised edition of How Children Learn and have been reflecting on why he seemed to have given up on traditional education and focused on homeschool families later in his career. Evidently he grew frustrated with trying to get through to schools and educators regarding issues like questions vs quizzes, drawing upon a student's interests, trust, etc. and decided that he would focus his efforts with a group that was willing to listen. He became a champion of the unschooling movement (a movement whose name I now think is misleading as it seems most unschoolers are really just creating Montessori learning environments for their children at home) and with the exception of a now growing number of progressive educators has not left a substantial mark on "the system."

I began to think about this as well as some contemporary voices in education who seem to be up against the same wall (people like Alfie Kohn, Joe Bower, and Doug Thomas just to name a few). Kohn has largely focused his energies on alternative schools and parenting issues much in the same way Holt did, Thomas has focused his energies the past twenty years mostly on creating small teacher-run charter schools, and Bower seems to run up against massive resistance every time he writes about tests, grades, or anything else that challenges conventional wisdom. Why is it that whenever someone tries to push the envelope in public education their efforts always seem to land within a more narrow focus and rarely have the broad systemic effect they deserve? I think there are possibly five major forces at play here: Cognitive Dissonance, Zone of Proximal Development, Connectivism, Curricular Efficiency, and Disruptive Innovation.

George Seimens & Stephen Downes, in their theory of Connectivism, re-envision the learner not so much as an individual learner but rather a group or organization as the learner. Essentially, the theory of Connectivism describes the learning of a group and not of the individual. Once we start applying some of the other more established and accepted learning theories to this new idea of group as learner instead of individual some of this selective effectiveness of progressive ideas in education start to make sense.


Lev Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development tells us that of what is possible to do and understand: 1. a small portion a person has mastered; 2. a small portion beyond that is within the learner's reach with help (zone of proximal development); and 3. a much more vast area is beyond the reach of the learner until they have mastered more of their zone of proximal development (see illustration above). But this applied to a group or organization of people probably looks more like this:

Now if we strip this down to common areas that fall either within group shared knowledge or zone of proximal development you are left with:

So, you can see that there is very little that falls within a group's zone of proximal development that someone in the group doesn't already have mastered. In fact, in this example that area of growth can be illustrated like this:

And, of course this is a broad generalization. Some groups will have a larger area of shared knowledge than others and for each topic this illustration would look different for each organization. The larger the organization, the smaller the area of shared zone of proximal development, the smaller the organization the greater the area of the shared zone of proximal development. There is in organizations a very thin area in which sustained innovation and change can really occur. Anything which pushes us too far outside of that zone will quickly cause mass cognitive dissonance. And as L. Festinger, who first introduced the concept of cognitive dissonance, tells us, when we are pushed to the point of cognitive dissonance, the dissonant beliefs tend to be the stronger force.

According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

Two factors affect the strength of the dissonance: the number of dissonant beliefs, and the importance attached to each belief. There are three ways to eliminate dissonance: (1) reduce the importance of the dissonant beliefs, (2) add more consonant beliefs that outweigh the dissonant beliefs, or (3) change the dissonant beliefs so that they are no longer inconsistent.

Dissonance occurs most often in situations where an individual must choose between two incompatible beliefs or actions. The greatest dissonance is created when the two alternatives are equally attractive. Furthermore, attitude change is more likely in the direction of less incentive since this results in lower dissonance. In this respect, dissonance theory is contradictory to most behavioral theories which would predict greater attitude change with increased incentive (i.e., reinforcement).
[from http://tip.psychology.org/festinge.html]

Once a belief like "we need grades" or "school must be comprised of classes" is in conflict with a new idea (a technology) the old belief, no matter how unfounded it is, usually wins. Therefore, if you want to make change quickly it is easier to do with a small organization than a large one. This is probably one reason why charter schools have proliferated in recent years, and one reason why we see such a growing trend in homeschooling, online education, and unschooling.

This brings me to the idea of curricular efficiency. I was first introduced to this idea by Bernie Dodge when I was working on my master's capstone on Virtual World WebQuests. The topic came up that while virtual worlds potentially possess great potential as a learning tool, they pose a problem of curricular efficiency. In other words, the leap from what one knows to what one needs to know to be able to make use of the tool was too high to fall within that zone of proximal development for most educators. And, when you apply that concept to a group of educators that zone is even more narrow.

If we see schooling as a technology deployed for the purpose of educating people, and ideas are the innovations within that technology, only those ideas which fall within the group zone of proximal development will affect any movement on the plane of sustaining innovation. Anything that pushes that envelope too far can only stand ground as a disruptive innovation, and as we know from Clayton Christensen's theory of Disruptive Innovation, usually a mainstream organization will not see any value or advantage in adopting or accepting a disruptive innovation. But, as time goes on, and those disruptive technologies get better and better through their own incremental changes they eventually "eat the parent." In other words, ideas that cause systemic cognitive dissonance eventually, though applied outside the system, will take over. Which is why so many progressive educators and others working on the cutting edge of innovation in education seem to end up focusing their attention on smaller groups, many on the fringes, and rarely in the mainstream. It is also the source of great frustration and anxiety. It is also why, "Change we can believe in," seems to many like no change at all.

Go on to Part 2 ---->

An Invitation Letter to Parents

If there is one force today that I believe can break our cycles of status quo hereditary practices in education and bring us to someplace better a key to it lies in our ability to communicate and share ideas in real-time between educators and education stakeholders. The networks of individuals using tools like Twitter, Blogs, Wikis, YouTube and other social video, Skype, and countless other online communication tools that have come to be commonly known as Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) carry with them a method to let good ideas spread and take seed in even the most draconian of learning environments. Teachers who have plugged themselves into these networks and become actively involved in their own learning have felt this power for transformation. This is truly a grass-roots mobilization machine. However, for school systems to change it requires more than just enlightened educators, it requires enlightened students and parents who will support the change.

Time and again we see true reform efforts fail because the new model doesn't look enough like the common conception of school in the public eye. No matter how rooted in sound theory and philosophy the school will fail if reform efforts do not bring parents and community members with us. So, what we end up with are perestroika efforts at reform like we saw today in President Obama's speech on Education Reform. Changes that are not real change. More testing of students or more rigorous testing of students is not real change. A focus on teaching and instruction is not real change. The spread of a back to basics drill and kill model of schooling like Mastery Charter or KIPP is not real change. The spread of a "put the rich privileged (mostly white) Ivy League graduate who was successful in school in front of the classroom for students to emulate" model that is Teach For America is not real change. These are bureaucratic changes that in the end will only further to strengthen the definitions and delineations between groups of the emerging American Caste System complete with high school dropouts at the bottom "untouchable" level. Schools like Mastery, KIPP, and TFA, by the way, don't have to count their dropouts among their students and therefore can claim higher levels of success since by nature they self-select students. We all know there is a better solution, a real change that is possible. We have examples of it in schools like Minnesota New Country School and the Science and Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

Watch live streaming video from theuptake at livestream.com

Educators, perhaps Obama and Duncan are right to beat up on us. This situation may be our own doing. By focusing so much on ourselves and our students we have neglected to invite a very important stakeholder into the fold, parents & community members. So, what follows is what I propose every Teacher Tweeter, EduPlurker, and Edublogger come this school year send home with their students, an invitation letter to parents (altered to include your information) to join in the discussion:

Dear Parent or Guardian,

I am excited to begin a new school year learning with your son or daughter. I say learning with because I have found to be a teacher today requires one to also be a learner both in and outside the classroom. It is undeniable that the world your child is growing up in is in many ways different than the world you or I grew up in. Much of these changes mean necessary changes in school. For one, we did not have the Internet and fingertip access to the wealth of human information when we went to school. Having such a device in my classroom has meant my role there has been altered. It has removed the necessity for me to always have the right answers for the students and has created a greater need for me to help them develop strategies for finding the right answers on their own.

Things in school are different now than they even were when I went to college. Nothing in my teacher training addressed some of these issues we face in education today. Therefore, I have found a community of other people interested in helping each other find their role in this new world through tools like Twitter, blogs, and YouTube. This community consists of not only teachers but also school administrators, education researchers, graduate students, and other parents. In this space I make my learning about education transparent and you are welcome to follow me in my exploration of new technologies and new ways of thinking. I also invite you to join the conversation. The real education reform happens because of what happens in the classroom and for your son or daughter's classroom what happens will be greatly influenced by the shared dialog happening in this digital space.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter, read my blog, or watch my YouTube videos and join the global conversation influencing your child's education. There are a few things you should know first. This digital space is my learning environment and as such community building activities both serious and lighthearted occur. We have fun in this space and we are serious. The fun elements hold us together and maintain our community and the serious elements help us to progress our learning. Both are necessary for learning both online and in the classroom.

I am @anderscj on Twitter and my blog is http://carlanderson.blogspot.com. Please join me in trying to make your child's education great.

Sincerely,
Carl Anderson

Allegory of the Classroom

What follows is a lightly edited version of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Only the parts in italics have been changed:

[Socrates] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings in a school, which has a teacher who transmits information to them in the form of formalized curriculum; here they have been from their childhood, and are seated in desks which face the front of the classroom and are not often allowed to move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the desks from turning round their heads. A carefully selected set of information lies behind the curriculum the teacher is allowed to transmit, and between the knowledge and the students there is pedagogy; and you will see, if you look, a wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, on which the teacher presents the information.
[Glaucon] I see.
[Socrates] And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
[Glaucon] You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange students.
[Socrates] Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the classroom?
[Glaucon] True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
[Socrates] And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?
[Glaucon] Yes, he said.
[Socrates] And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
[Glaucon] Very true.
[Socrates] And suppose further that the classroom had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
[Glaucon] No question, he replied.
[Socrates] To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
[Glaucon] That is certain.
[Socrates] And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the students are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and allowed to examine the source of the school's curriculum, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?
[Glaucon] Far truer.
[Socrates] And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?
[Glaucon] True, he now.
[Socrates] And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly liberated from the cognitive confines of curriculum and pedagogy, and held fast until he 's forced into understanding the nature of the art of learning, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.
[Glaucon] Not all in a moment, he said.
[Socrates] He will require to grow accustomed to this new way of knowing. And first he will learn best by being taught, next through the writings and research of others, and then through self-guided inquiry; then he will gaze upon world through a lens of his former self; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?
[Glaucon] Certainly.
[Socrates] Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
[Glaucon] Certainly.
[Socrates] He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?
[Glaucon] Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
[Socrates] And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the classroom and his fellow-students, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?
[Glaucon] Certainly, he would.
[Socrates] And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,

Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,

and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?
[Glaucon] Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
[Socrates] Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?
[Glaucon] To be sure, he said.
[Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the students who had never moved out of the classroom, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
[Glaucon] No question, he said.
[Socrates] This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.
[Glaucon] I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
[Socrates] Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
[Glaucon] Yes, very natural.
[Socrates] And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?
[Glaucon] Anything but surprising, he replied.
[Socrates] Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the cave.
[Glaucon] That, he said, is a very just distinction.
[Socrates] But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes.
[Glaucon] They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
[Socrates] Whereas,

1

our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.
[Glaucon] Very true.
[Socrates] And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth?
[Glaucon] Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed.
[Socrates] And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be implanted later by habit and exercise, the of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other hand, hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue --how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness.
[Glaucon] Very true, he said.
[Socrates] But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below --if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now.
[Glaucon] Very likely.
[Socrates] Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely. or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.
[Glaucon] Very true, he replied.
[Socrates] Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.
[Glaucon] What do you mean?
[Socrates] I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the students in the classroom, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.
[Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?
[Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.
[Glaucon] True, he said, I had forgotten.
[Socrates] Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the school, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the classroom, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.
[Glaucon] Quite true, he replied.
[Socrates] And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heavenly light?
[Glaucon] Impossible, he answered; for they are just men, and the commands which we impose upon them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not after the fashion of our present rulers of State.
[Socrates] Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after the' own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State.
[Glaucon] Most true, he replied.
[Socrates] And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other?
[Glaucon] Indeed, I do not, he said.
[Socrates] And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight.
[Glaucon] No question.
[Socrates] Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians? Surely they will be the men who are wisest about affairs of State, and by whom the State is best administered, and who at the same time have other honors and another and a better life than that of politics?
[Glaucon] They are the men, and I will choose them, he replied.
[Socrates] And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light, -- as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods?
[Glaucon] By all means, he replied.
[Socrates] The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the turning round of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night to the true day of being, that is, the ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy?
[Glaucon] Quite so.

Rep. Mark Foley's reaction to Papert, Kay, Dede, & Shaw

Yes, this is the same Mark Foley who resigned in 2006 following a scandal where he allegedly sent sexually explicit instant messages to teenage male Congressional pages. But, don't let that detract you from his words here at the 1995 Congressional Hearing on Technology in Education:

Kay & Papert throw Rep. Lynn Woolsey under the bus #edchat

If ever there was an example of what the phrase, "square peg in a round hole," illustrates it is this clip from the 1995 Congressional Hearing on technology in education:



Interesting how Kay an Papert play off each other here to on one hand advocate not providing 1:1 in our traditional schools citing how information access in school libraries has not increased literacy rates while at the same time advocating for 1:1 environments.

Also, the teacher training comments by Woolsey display real cognitive dissonance on her part. "Are you expecting teachers to leave their classrooms, go home, and learn on their own?" What! Teachers can learn on their own? Incredible.

Seymour Papert on what schools of the future might look like #edchat

Another great clip from the 1995 House Committee Hearing on Technology in Education. In this clip Seymour Papert describes what he thinks schools might look like in the future. He describes mixed age one-room schoolhouse type settings where students work with their teacher(s) to complete constructive projects. One interesting quote from this clip, addressing David Shaw's criticism of this vision, Papert says:

"I did preface my remarks, I think there is an education establishment with its head wedged in a culture that grew up over a century of which there was the most lethargic progress of education in all fields of human activity."

Chris Dede on School Change #edtech #edchat

Here is another clip from the 1995 House Committee Hearing on Technology in Education. In this clip Chris Dede adds fuel to the fire Seymour Papert started by indicating systemic barriers to school change, specifically school change in response to technological innovations, including parent & community concept of school, and the general belief that learning happens in a top-down approach with teachers delivering content to students in classrooms while ignoring the fact that most people learn best by doing. Enjoy!

Stager, Papert, & the War Path

I would like to juxtapose a two videos today that I think do a great job of describing the issue of change in school and the relationship technology has with that change. I recommend pressing play on this YouTube video as soon as Gary Stager takes the mic on the Vimeo clip:

Gary Stager Excerpts from NECC '09 Keynote Debate from Gary Stager on Vimeo.

Next, lets examine this excerpt of Seymour Papert's testamony from the October 12, 1995 House Committee Economic and Educational Opportunities Hearing on Technology in Education. Papert masterfully describes the uphill battle we have ahead.


Amazing he was saying these things 15 years ago and still little has changed.

Maybe the problem is we call it School

@mcleod @willrich45 @djakes

Last year I was involved in a huge school reform project. The idea was to start a new charter school that was sponsored by our local ISD. We were going to call the school Wasioja Valley School. Wasioja Valley School would be a blended online-F2F school where a classroom or two would be leased in ours and neighboring district high schools. The school would exist as a school spread across many schools. The classrooms would be real places but the school itself would be virtual comprised of digitally connected classrooms. The education our charter school would offer would be project-based and learner-centered following the Edvisions model. I wrote the charter grant, assembled a team of educators from our neighboring school districts, I spoke at countless school board meetings, I got district superintendents and school board members involved. I also got people from outside our district involved who had experience starting charter schools and who had experience with they type of pedagogy this school was to employ. Everything seemed like it was falling into place. It was very exciting.

Then, when the time finally came for our school board to officially vote to sponsor this charter school our board chair offered it up for a vote and no one seconded the motion. There it was, no further action could be taken. The only statement regarding it from another board member was something along the lines of, "I am nervous about what this might do for our school."

To pour salt on the wound, a year later I find out that the district has to make $156k in one time budget cuts because of a funding shift by the state government. If they had approved the charter school it would have brought $650k into the three district consortium through federal and state grants (that would have been $216k per district) which would have more than covered this deficit. To help the district cover this temporary budget problem I have now taken an 18 month leave of absence to work for another school (I probably would have had to do this anyway).

So, what was the problem? Wasioja Valley School seemed to be the kind of reform our schools need. It would have addressed the unique needs of learners not served well by our traditional model of education while helping to support the system already in place that does work well for a great many students.

Three things I came across this week seem to answer this for me. First, there is this story shared on a post by Will Richardson (and I am sorry for reprinting the whole thing, don't usually make a habit of it but felt justified in this case):

Recently a school administrator shared a story that reminded me why I need to spend more time talking to more people outside of the echo chamber.

She said that a group of parents had requested a meeting to discuss the methods of a particular teacher and his use of technology. It seemed this teacher had decided to forgo the textbook and have students write their own on a wiki, that he published a great deal of his students’ work online, that he taught them and encouraged them to use Skype to interview people who they had researched and identified as valuable voices in their learning, and that he shared all of his lectures and classwork online for anyone, not just the students in his class, could access them and use them under a Creative Commons license.

When the administrator got the phone call from the parent who wanted to set up the meeting, she asked for some sense of what the problem was. The reply?

“Our students don’t need to be a part of a classroom experiment with all this technology stuff. They need to have a real teacher with real textbooks and real tests.”

Sigh.

Then, there is this video by a former UNL student who beautifully explains the problems Wasioja Valley School was trying to address:



Finally, I think my answer might be in this TEDxTalk by Scott McLeod:



In that video he mentions that everyone has a preconceived notion of what school is and that we need to educate the public about what school needs to become. Perhaps the problem was we called our reform effort Wasioja Valley School. Had we called it something else I wonder if we would have had a better chance. Perhaps Wasioja Valley Academy would have been a better choice. We did have discussions about it and in the end the problem largely had to do with the fact that this model of education did not fit well with the conceptions people had of what school was supposed to be.

So, now the new question I am struggling with is, "Is it OK to let schools fail?" Is it ok to let our schools become dangerously irrelevant? Perhaps all our collective school reform efforts are in vain. Perhaps we are barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps the common concept of what school is is so ingrained into the public conscious that changing it is near impossible. It takes a long time to redefine a term, do the changes in the world our reform efforts are trying to address require a redefinition faster than it can happen? Perhaps our energy is better spent constructing the next thing, the thing we replace our irrelevant schools with. Perhaps the answer is not school at all but something else entirely. What should we call it? What does it look like? In different speech Dr. McLeod gave to the NEA this winter he said that in our efforts to transform schools into 21st century learning environments that there can be no sacred cows. Perhaps we need to consider "school" in that list. But then, we get into the same argument regarding the word "school" as David Jakes does here with the word "teacher."

Throw Me Under The Bus

@jonbecker @bengrey @shareski @willrich45 @mcleod @crafty184

Thursday evening, in an Elluminate session hosted by Will Richardson (that I with I had been able to attend but only later viewed the archive), Jon Becker discussed a blog post he wrote earlier this year calling into question the truth behind the claims many people in the edublogosphere (or edutwittosphere) have been making about the need for school change. If you did not attend the session or listen to the recorded archive I highly recommend it. Its OK, I'll wait....

Jon frames his discussion very well on his blog post, which is largely repeated in the first few minutes of Will's interview/discussion with him:

Those with whom I network for learning purposes through Twitter, blogs, Nings, etc. are largely members of an amorphous educational technology community. That community is fond of throwing around terms like “change” and “reform” connected to schools or education and most often the “change” or “reform” is largely related to advances in technology. The gist of the argument is that technology has changed the world we live in but not schools so schools need to catch up (or something to that effect). Schools are becoming “dangerously irrelevant,” right Scott?

I have to admit that I have spent the better part of the past four years arguing for school change and have used many of the arguments he "throws under the bus." Working in an alternative school and seeing a disproportionate number of really bright students who were there because they were bored was "proof" for me that something about school had to change (now I am under the bus with Ben Grey).

Working as an art teacher for nine years and having to find a new job every couple years because my program was cut due to declining enrollment caused by school choice (Online Schools, Charter Schools, Post Secondary Enrollment Options, etc.) which was evidence (note, I did not use the word "Proof" here) for me that there is truth in the Disrupting Class argument (though, Disrupting Class is not really an argument for school change but rather an explanation for what is happening in our k-12 schools). The Disrupting Class argument does address the type of student Jon mentions in his post, the one who school works well for, because every time a program is cut opportunities for those and all students are lost. [See my previous posts: Budget Cuts, Disruptive Innovation, and a Solution for Public Schools, Animated Explanation of Disruptive Innovation in Education, or The Case for Charters, Part 4: Disruptive Innovation: Why Traditional Ed Is Ill-Suited For Change]

Now, this discussion, as do many discussions about school reform or school change, led to the question, "What are schools for?" When asked this question, in my mind, Dr. Becker was less than articulate and rather indecisive. He, in a round-a-bout way says he thinks the purpose for schooling is to prepare students for participation in a "deliberate democracy." But, as those in the chat box were quick to bring up, we are now talking about schooling in a global world and not all students live in democratic societies.

Essentially, Dr. Becker poises himself and Dr. McLeod on classic polar opposites in a debate that has been around for as long as our nation has existed. Since the conception of public schooling in the U.S. (and for much of the world) we have had this Jeffersonian-Hamiltonian conflict in our collective answer to the "What are schools are for?" question. Thomas Jefferson believed that schools should prepare students to be informed citizens who could function in a democracy and Alexander Hamilton believed schools should prepare citizens to be productive workers. So, in the evolution of our schools they have always been burdened by this debate.

Another reason I have heard a lot, especially from teachers and echoed in a recent post by Will Richardson, is schools need to teach students how to learn or that they need to develop students into "life-long learners." This argument/philosophy I find extremely shallow and largely flawed. It seems to me that life forms, or at least sentient life forms, are life-long learners as a matter of their nature. We are all learning beings, it is part of being alive. Schools don't teach students how to learn. Students come to school in kindergarten (or even preschool) having spent 4-6 years learning and they would continue to learn with or without school. We also are curious by nature. If anything, schools teach students to temper their curiosity by inadvertently punishing them for it. It is often said that it is an academic virtue to be inquisitive and to think critically and that schools should try to cultivate this ability in students and I wholeheartedly agree with that claim but, in my experience it seems like whenever a teacher does a good job of this the institution of schooling throws them "under the bus."

So, what is the purpose of school? If you are involved in school reform or school change at any level, be it as a reformer or a critic, you have to first have a clear articulate answer to this question. I believe schools exist to prepare all students for the world they will live in. This is a simple but loaded answer to this question and is broad enough to include both Jefferson and Hamilton. But, I am curious how you answer this question. What is the purpose of school? Having a clear and concise answer to this question ought to be a prerequisite to engaging in debate or discussion on matters of school change. For that Jon, I am pulling you under the bus with me. For now its a good place to be. Lots of good company down here.