~synthesis~

leap of faith

Education's goal is to prepare students to succeed in life. What skills will help kids be healthy, independent and even happy?

Most schools choose English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and "World" Languages as core skills. Missing is anything that helps students bridge concepts across subjects, or become independent thinkers and learners. Also missing is anything that looks at the whole student, their hopes and emotions (as they go through puberty), how they will live and work within our society, and how they become ...a person.

Research shows that employers are looking for broad, creative thinkers who can work in varied settings and in teams to solve complex, multi-disciplinary problems. In other words, people who know how to learn and have the confidence and wherewithal to get things done in ambiguous and unpredictable settings.

There are schools whose mission is to graduate students like this. Two that I know are Seattle Girls' School and High Tech High. They are amazing.

Both schools incorporate an integrated curriculum in which students actually become entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, activists, writers and artists. They also focus on the person before them, treating them not like a widget in a factory but a human being with feelings, fears, interests and lives outside school.

Tangentially, the US Department of Education is investing $4 Billion to fix the 1,000 poorest-performing schools in America. The primary approach is a complete reboot, including a complete staff overhaul. Cynics predict a 1% success rate, or 10 good schools, and $3.96 billion wasted. I think they'll do better, and I'm willing to bet that the successful schools will have principals who are focused on the whole student, who aren't pitting teachers against each other, and who recognize that an integrated and experiential curriculum is not only what the kids need, but how best to engage them in the magic of learning.

Leaders like this are what made Seattle Girls' and High Tech High successful, and what's needed not just in the worst of our schools, but all of our schools. These aren't easy people to find, so we need better resources to help the less-brilliant leaders.

I recently suggested an approach that leads to integrated learning by inverting the classroom, turning lectures into homework, and what was homework into teacher-facilitated classwork. This ought to be a part of the academic solution, but it doesn't address a problem most poor schools face - that the students have a tough, tough life (poverty, violence, drugs, etc.) outside school; and with that occupying their minds, can hardly be expected to care about math or grammar.

Of course a school can't fix problems at home, but is it possible for them to help children cope with these issues, and in doing that enable them focus on school? Yes. Are there examples of this in action? Also yes.

John Gilmour founded four LEAP Science and Maths Schools, in townships (where the black people were forced to live during Apartheid and continue to live now) in Cape Town and Johannesburg. I had the opportunity to visit one school last year and was amazed. Each class spends one hour/day in Life Orientation, where an Occupational Therapist helps students listen, feel, understand and express what is inside them, and learn how to interact with each other.

The result is a remarkable awakening of children who might otherwise have lived lives of crime, poverty and disaffection, but instead are successful, empowered contributors to society. Gilmour has made this work with students who are immersed in the worst circumstances, and created graduates whose brightness and brilliance easily matches that of any American private school student.

Are inverted classrooms and Life Orientation a panacea? No. Are they worth exploring? Absolutely. What holds us back? They're different and not invented by the "establishment."

There is a fear of trying anything new or "radical" even though America is only graduating 70% of its students, of which most are unprepared for college (1/3 drop out after their first year, and 1/2 never graduate). Shouldn't some of the $4 Billion from the Dept of Ed go towards proving these approaches in American schools?

The traditional approaches are failing; radical is our only choice.

the greater bad

Have you ever told a white lie? I have, many times. We tell them because it's convenient or more tactful than the truth, thinking that serves a greater good.

Saying those trousers don't make you look fat is one thing; claiming that we should invade a country because there is incontrovertible proof (a lie) that they have weapons of mass destruction is an altogether different thing.

Or is it? In both cases the truth was stretched; the consequences (they do look fat vs. thousands dead, $billions wasted) were ignored; and the liars weren't held accountable.

Where should we draw the line? When is it polite or forgivable vs. unethical? Most of us push personal limits, but rarely legal ones - the threat of being caught and the possibility of harming someone prevents me from speeding excessively. What constrains governments?

In democracies policing the government is the job of the opposition party(ies) and voters, though recent history hasn't shown either to be effective. Freedom of the Press is a constitutional safeguard, but most journalists work for news media owned by large corporations (=bias), and others (liberal MSNBC, conservative FOX) are excessively partisan. Plus let's face it, they're not motivated to find truth as much as they are to get elected or draw eyeballs.

Our governments (America, Britain, Sweden, etc.) are conspiring to undermine and attack organizations like Wikileaks, and many are rising up against the government to "fix them." Read for example John Pilger's speech at a recent Sydney Town Hall meeting, where he implores the ~2,000 people that attended to rise up and demand change. Will they succeed?

The ethos of government is integrity, it achieves sustainability through accountability, and its strength comes from transparency. The authors of the American Constitution and the Magna Carta believed this, but time hasn't been kind to our leaders.

Rather than aiming for the greater good, our governments are bent on sweeping their bad acts under the rug. Democratic governments come into power through a process of lies and exaggerations (aka elections); and from that beginning, they have no precedent on where to draw the line once in power. We citizens are so drawn to the political rhetoric that we forgive current and prior bad acts and vote the liars back into power!

Look at China's alternate fuel (vs. oil & coal) investments - they are NOT interested in climate change or reducing greenhouse gasses; they are simply uncomfortable being dependent on foreigners for something so critical as power. Their motivation is energy independence and market advantage; any climate change impact is a pleasant but uncritical byproduct.

There is no greater good, there is only what's good for the government of China, or America, or whomever.

It's naive to think that politicians will suddenly develop morality. Politicians are designed to self-aggrandize, grandstand, and win elections. Serving constituents is a pleasant but uncritical byproduct. Political ethos is tied directly to ego and a compass that points to power and reelection.

Voters are no different - we're self-centered as well. Whatever the situation, most of us will first figure out how it helps or hinders us, and then (if at all) consider societal consequences. We therefore "reward" the politicians that we believe will help us most, or more specifically, help us most right now.

Our elected officials have been conditioned (by the voters) to tell us only what we want to hear, whether that's a promise or a threat (or a lie). We apparently don't care about truth, we're just looking for a good pandering.

Shame on us - the burden of citizenship and the right to vote is enormous and not to be taken lightly. No wonder our leaders routinely aim at the greater bad... we ask them to.

tech in ed - epic failure

Education today is designed to meet the needs of 19th century Industrial Revolution employer - “We need millions of assembly line workers, who are all similarly-skilled, and able to work for a simple wage.”

But children today want more, they have broader needs and expectations from their school - not the least of which is to be treated as individuals and to be engaged based on their unique aspirations and abilities. This is not possible if the least interactive and differentiated part of learning in today’s schools is the lecture, and the most interactive part is the homework. We are not only wasting the most valuable asset in the room - the teacher - but also flaunting the idea that you can create creative, critical thinkers in a one-way, generic teaching system. Real learning is a curated experience; humans - teachers - must be involved, but in an interactive and personalized way.

Technology’s role is NOT to mechanize, but to humanize. The most humane technology interventions in history are characterized by a simple truth - the target audience naturally consumed them. The telephone, television and browser are examples of this.

Sadly, a generation of school leaders, administrators, teachers and parents are now conditioned to view technology in the blandest way; from the slate to the blackboard to the whiteboard to PowerPoint to the SmartBoard, the ONLY improvement is mechanization. Teaching and learning NEVER changed. To-date the use of technology in learning has been a waste.

Successful teaching can’t be an act of oppression, it can’t be “pushed,” it needs to be “pulled” - the student must want. Talk to any teacher and they will say that student engagement is fundamental to success. Combine the best teacher with the smartest but disengaged student, and learning will NOT occur. But if the students are engaged, and if the teacher can meet them where they each are and work with them, any student can be successful.

This is our challenge, but in a system this complex (USA: 50 million students, 3 million teachers, 15,000 school districts, $600B/year), it must be done correctly.

The answer is not rocket-science. In fact, it's right in front of our noses. Look at children at play - watch them engage and interact in mediums of their own choosing - they have already know how they see, learn, play, and enjoy. My favorite example is Pokemon. Excerpt from student teaching?:

Most Pokemon aficionados that I know mastered the game in about six months. Mastery implies a full understanding of the Pokemon vocabulary, ecosystem, evolutionary paths, strengths and weaknesses of each character and appropriate strategies with which to select the right Pokemon and win battles, etc.

Moreover, each child also learns to interact with their peers, learn tricks and techniques from each other, and of course battling to achieve supremacy in the game.

Finally, for particularly tough battles, students need to also do research online to uncover cheats that they can use to achieve status.

How often do you see average students achieve this level of skill this quickly in Algebra, Grammar or even simple Fractions, forget Organic Chemistry, Biology, or a foreign language? Animated cartoons, simple re-playable simulations, pervasive, easy-to-use, child-friendly, long-battery-life devices are the basis for Pokemon's success.

This can be translated into mainstream learning. Technology can inspire children to want to learn.

We can't ignore the role of the teacher - they are essential to connecting with students based on their specific interests, abilities, and learning needs; and to being the human connection that all Brain Science tells us is crucial to effective learning.

Technology should liberate teachers from the burden of generic lectures and enable them do what they're best at, what they came to do in the first place - engage students. But we have to do this practically, knowing that they have 30 students and 50 minutes per class.

What if we took the current education standards in a given school system and created short (< 10 mins), animated lectures of each concept(s) with a simple assignment to test comprehension? The teacher could assign these lectures to students as homework, have them "play" their homework and complete their assignments, and automatically receive "reports" on how each student did, and what they understood before class started. In class, the teacher would group the students based on their comprehension, and work directly to inspire, and bridge their learning gaps.

Of course there is much more to this approach; but in the end, it helps accomplish three things:

1. Recognizing and accommodating the way children naturally think, learn and play.
2. Empowering the teacher to directly engage students and help them learn.
3. Eliminating the child abuse of forcing young children to shoulder 20lb (10kg) backpacks filled with dated textbooks.

It can be done at a substantially lower cost - American public schools spend more than $5 billion/year on text books - this approach would cost much less, if for no other reason than most kids already have the devices (smartphones, MP3 and game players), and that all learning content should be open-source.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger. ~Confucius. Bold school districts and teachers unions need to step up and lead our children into safety.

pro child-labor

What's the return on investment of education? Why bother? Why especially in poor communities? Just because I/you/we believe education is a silver bullet doesn't mean it is. As a skeptic, I can find many examples of education shooting blanks or even causing harm.

If I'm a parent of a family living in one room in a shanty town or village, why should I bother wasting my kids on education? How is grammar going to feed us? How are fractions going to heal my sick baby? How is history going to clothe us? I need none of this; it's a waste of my children's time and life. Go away.

Today UNESCO released The Hidden Crisis: Armed Conflict and Education, which states that: "Armed conflict is robbing 28 million children of an education by exposing them to widespread rape and other sexual violence, targeted attacks on schools and other human rights abuses."

Their agenda for change includes: "tougher action against human rights violations, an overhaul of global aid priorities, strengthened rights for displaced people and more attention to the ways education failures can increase the risk of conflict."

UNESCO is asking for US$2 billion to cover current budgetary shortfalls, and changing the proportion of humanitarian aid that goes to education (currently only 2%). All worthwhile goals, aimed at giving "them" what we have. But as Einstein famously said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting a different result.

Yes - 28 million children aged 5-12 are not in school, yes this is a crime, and yes it will result in bad things (disease, starvation, rape, war...). BUT - building more schools isn't the complete answer, nor is training more teachers or distributing textbooks or laptops.

Philanthropy is the least effective way to affect change. The best way is for the community itself to change because it values that change over existing subsistence priorities. This is the crux of sustainable transformation.

To get kids into schools, the parents need to be convinced that it is the right thing to do. Not "right" based on some abstract morality, but right based on what they care about, they need, and they value. This is what matters most; what we believe is irrelevant.

Parents will compel their kids to go to school if it enables survival of the family. If you can't directly and immediately connect to that, parents will choose other subsistence (food, shelter...) needs over education - you would, I would. Moreover, the "ROI" of education happens after graduation - that's at least a decade out! If you're starving now, that kind of future is meaningless.

We in the wealthy world delude ourselves into believing "if you build schools, they will come," or "it's so obvious - why don't they understand it?"

Ironically, we're clothing our ignorance in empathy, and believing that empathy will save the wretched from their ignorance!

We must give parents something they need now in exchange for their children's attendance:

1. School as a farm. The students will learn innovative farming techniques; they will plant and harvest crops; they will be required to work the farms in exchange for being fed and bringing food home for their families.
2. School as a factory. The students will learn innovative production techniques; they will create and produce goods that we will sell; they will be required to learn factory-work, in exchange for being fed and bringing goods home for their families.
3. School as a clinic. The students will learn about health care; they will assist in providing services to the injured and sick; they will be required to clean and cook and feed patients; in exchange for being fed and bringing food and medicines home for their families.

Yep - this is putting 5-year old kids to work. CHILD LABOR - get used to the term; learn to like it.

Children are not in school because their parents value subsistence over education. "In exchange" for being fed and bringing food home every day, these children will also happen to learn literacy and numeracy + skills that can help improve their family's health and standard of living. BUT if they don't get fed and bring food home, they will not have reduced the family burden sufficiently to warrant their parents' commitment.

We suffer from the desire to assuage our own guilt and feed our intellectual egos by over-engineering things. The issue is not education, it is survival. Education is nowhere near the top of Maslow's hierarchy for a reason. It's not important enough when you and your kids live on 500 calories/day, with dysentery and AIDS.

This feels dastardly - railing against child abuse/sweatshops/etc. is ingrained in us - but we're wrong.

If UNESCO is serious about getting 28 million kids in school, they need to first employ them, and then educate them. Let's spend money on that.