Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Something no doubt is happening; but it may not be education (Livingstone, 1943)

It seldom ceases to amaze me how often I come across arguments against some of the most damaging features in our education system today, but that were made many decades ago. This would include one of the works by British scholar Sir Richard Livingstone (1880-1960) written and published in the throes of World War II. In two small books, The Future in Education (1941) and Education for a World Adrift (1943), Livingstone took exception to a lack of education and tried to challenge his countrymen to look ahead towards a better system of learning.

In the latter publication, he challenged the growing use of what he calls “examinations” as a driving force that in effect was steering education in the wrong direction. These so-called examinations would be similar to our narrow state-mandated “achievement” tests. The excerpts that follow were his key concerns addressed in a chapter appropriately titled, “Two Dragons in the Road” (italics indicate direct quotations):

“The examination system is both an opiate and a poison. It is an opiate because it lulls us into believing that all is well when most is ill.”

On the surface, the public gets an impression from test scores and graduation rates that “something is clearly happening; the school is doing its job.”

“Something no doubt is happening; but it may not be education; it may be the administration of a poison which paralyses or at least slows down the natural activities of the healthy mind. The healthy human being, finding himself a creature of unknown capacities in an unknown world, wants to learn what the world is like, and what he should be and do in it. To help him in answering these questions is the one and only purpose of education.”

“But that is not the prime aim of the ordinary pupil…for whom the examination becomes much more important than seeing ‘visions of greatness,’ and ‘getting through’ excuses all shortcomings and disguises all omissions.”

He speaks here and throughout about the “external examinations” or those required by the state, not the assessments conducted by the school or teacher as “tests of progress, which are useful and necessary.”

“Examinations are harmless when the examinee is indifferent to their result, but as soon as they matter, they begin to distort his attitude to education and conceal its purpose. The more depends on them, the worse their effect.”

He claims that the child who is behind or may have a learning disability “suffers most, since preparing for the ordeal occupies more of its time and mind.” But also, for even the student who is achieving at a higher level, “examinations become an obsession.”

“It is not only the pupil but -- and this is far more serious -- the teacher, who finds his energies and attention drawn from education to examination needs. No doubt there are schools and teachers which resist the insidious pressure, teach their subject for its interest and for nothing else and burn no incense on the examination altar. But the pressure is hard. Most people judge a school by its examination results. Its reputation, however well-established, is affected by them; and a school with a name to make or competitors to face has an overpowering temptation to commend itself to the world,” by striving towards the highest test results and graduation rates.

“The teacher is tempted to show his competence by securing a big list of awards, the headmaster is tempted to demand them in the interest of the school.”

“Any evils that might follow from the disappearance of examinations are nothing to the harm they do. They are in fact a refined form of the old and now universally condemned system of ‘payment by results:’ … tak(ing) the form of prestige to the school and to the pupil.”

The examination system and its system of awards and punishments “restrict(s) the field of education by causing schools to concentrate on ‘profitable’ subjects….They procure ‘far to frequently mechanical results….Subjects can have meaning only as they are treated as aspects of active and living experience….It is as impossible to examine in the most vital parts of education as to anatomize life on a dissecting table, and therefore the pressure of examinations continually pushes them into the background or out of sight. Further, it tends to restrict education to the subjects of the examination in question…”

“Unfortunately there is a risk of the importance of examinations increasing….And if so, education becomes a savage competitive system. It ceases to be education and (simply) becomes a road to a career.”

Thursday, March 9, 2017

How Market Forces and Non-Professional Reformers are Destroying Public Education

Today, politicians in thrall to neoliberal ideology seek to subordinate the democratic mission of public education to a theory of market-driven economic development and social organization.  Policy deliberations are now dominated by of econometric modeling and production function research.  This modeling and research is often used, inappropriately, to make decisions about the value of education reforms.  The mathematical models used by researchers are made to “work” only by assuming away much of the real world in which people live and students learn. The phantasmagorical belief in neutral “scientific” expertise as the primary basis for policymaking has, therefore, profoundly antihuman as well as antidemocratic implications — a topic Sheila Dow takes up in “People Have Had Enough of Experts.”[5] 
The major education reforms of the past 35 years — education vouchers, charter schools, tuition tax credits, and education savings accounts — all seek to remove public schools from the control of elected bodies; to subject them to the “laws” of the “market”; and to put them at the service of the economic elite. The world being called into existence is based on the belief that anyone, but not everyone, can succeed—a world of winners and losers, each of whom has earned his or her fate.

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

What are you reading that might help you REALLY transform education?

My suggested reading list for those in the process of or desiring to transform your schools through redesign to provide learning targeted towards our children's needs and futures. This is not fully comprehensive but represent some of the most interesting and challenging books I've read in the past several years. You likely have some to share as well and I welcome adding them to the comments.

These are not in any special order other than the way they sit on my shelf at home:

Rose, Todd. The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness. Harper One. NY, NY 2015

Grant, Adam. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. Viking. NY, NY 2016

Perkins, David N. Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World. Jossey-Bass. San Francisco 2014

McCullough, David. The Wright Brothers. Simon & Schuster. NY, NY 2015

McAfee, Andrew and Brynjolfsson, Erik. The Second Machine Age. W.W. Norton & Co. NY, NY 2014

Robinson, Ken, Ph.D. Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education. Viking. NY, NY 2015

Gray, Peter. Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. Basic Books. NY, NY 2013

Kelly, Kevin. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape Our Future. Viking. NY, NY 2016

Lehmann, Chris and Chase, Zac. Building School 2.0: How to Create the Schools We Need. Jossey-Bass. San Francisco 2015

Wagner, Tony and Dintersmith, Ted. Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Kids for the Innovation Era. Scribner. NY, NY 2015 (also go to www.mltsfilm.org)

Abeles, Vicki. Beyond Measure: Rescuing an overscheduled, overtested, underestimated generation. Simon & Schuster. NY, NY 2015

Lahey, Jessica. The Gift of Failure: How the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed. HarperCollins. NY, NY 2015

Christakis, Erika. The Importance of Being Little: What preschools really need from grownups. Viking. NY, NY 2015

Zhao, Yong. World Class Learners: Educating creative and entrepreneurial students. Corwin. Thousand Oaks, CA 2012

Goyal, Nikhil. Schools on Trial: How freedom and creativity can fix our educational malpractice. Doubleday. NY, NY 2016

Ross, Alec. The Industries of the Future. Simon & Schuster. NY, NY 2016

Richardson, Will. Freedom to Learn. Solution Tree. 2015