Through these rare and precious firsthand narratives, school leaders can help us to follow in their footsteps and add to the incredibly diverse landscape of learning environments.  We can also heed their warnings and learn invaluable lessons from some of the efforts that somehow went awry.  And beyond the practical, these written pieces provide us with an opportunity to glimpse into the soul and spirit of impassioned, self-actualized, visionary change agents, from whom we may draw inspiration.  For anyone aspiring to launch a new educational initiative, it is definitely worth the time to learn from our daring colleagues.

We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams…

I am working on a project, which has led me to try to assemble a list of some of these inspirational and honest reflections from some of the world’s most passionate and dedicated educators on the joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies of starting and leading a learning alternative. I am hoping to tap into your collective wealth of knowledge to assist in my efforts.

I was so enthralled by David’s recent post here inviting everyone to share a few words about a favorite woman educator/philosopher in an effort to amass a powerful assemblage of underrepresented female voices through a process of crowdsourcing.  I am shamelessly following his lead and again, asking for your help.

Do you know of a school starter or leader, Principal, Director, Head who writes or talks about the experience of this leadership role and process?  Please add his/her name to the following list, as well as a reference to what he/she has written or produced, books, articles, videos, etc.

Here are a few of the better-known works to get us started.  I’d love to be reminded of what classics I’ve left out and also hear about some lesser-known folks whose works deserve our collective attention:

A.S. Neill Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childrearing; Summerhill School: A new View of Childhood; Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!

Daniel Greenberg, Free at Last: The Sudbury Valley School (and others)

Chris Mercogliano, Making It Up as We Go Along: The Story of the Albany Free School (and others)

George Dennison, The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School

Deborah Meier, The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem

Louise Boyd Cadwell, Bringing Reggio Emelia Home: An innovative Approach to Early Childhood

Caroline Pratt, I learn from Children: An Adventure in Progressive Education

Rebeca Wild, Raising Curious, Creative, Confident Kids: The Pestalozzi Experiment in Child-Based Education

This article is reprinted with the permission of KidSpirit Online, an award-winning magazine and social networking site created by and for youth to dialogue about life’s big questions. For more information visit KidSpiritOnline.  

As a society we think of success in terms of trophies and ribbons, high test grades, and acceptances to remarkable universities. It is also narrowly defined — do well in school, go on to a great university, graduate, matriculate into graduate school, graduate, get a great job, and somehow everything will fall into place. It’s not that simple anymore.   

It has come to a point where people find it dangerous to stray from the path. We treat the word ‘fail’ as a four-letter word. Okay, well, fail does have four letters. But you know what? It’s not an obscene word. It’s another step in the iteration process. If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.

We must uphold the remark made by John Dewey, America’s original philosopher of education: “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” What if school weren’t school anymore? What if school became an arena to blend communities and the world? What if school created the citizen ideal? That’s what we must work to.

Here’s a radical thought: Let’s make ‘F’ the new ‘A.’ Failure early, fail often. For instance, Thomas Edison performed 9,000 experiments before coming up with a successful version of the light bulb. From cardboard and duct tape to ABS polycarbonate, 15 years and 5,127 prototypes later, Sir James Dyson created his successful bagless vacuum cleaner. Compare entrepreneurship to the J-curve of returns: the failures come early and often and the successes take time.

Schools, on the other hand, paint failure in a terrible light. The poster ‘Failure is Not An Option’ is plastered on walls of brick and mortar classrooms far and wide. Kids crack under the pressure to be perfect all the time. Get that ‘A’ in science class or else you won’t be successful in life. It is simply ludicrous.

We are creating grade-obsessed students to “do school” — memorize enough information to perform well on a test, regurgitate, and then forget.

I see too many kids sucked into this race to nowhere. Gerald Celente, editor of the Trends Journal, said it best in the documentary the College Conspiracy: “You have to have a certain kind of brain to understand the dead language that they write in textbooks. But they brainwash you from a little kid up so that you’ll buy into the system. You get good grades and you study hard and you become a member of the system. No freedom. You don’t know how to think, because they told you how to think their way.” We shelter kids from the real world. After post-secondary education, we say ‘Go survive on your own!’ Most kids drown.

Straddled with bundles of debt, some 85 percent of graduates move home to live with their parents.

Some people don’t see that they have options beyond what society tells them to do. That’s one of the biggest headaches in this world. Compliance is the shortcut to success.

In the classic scene from the famous movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin, a newly minted BA, receives some unsolicited career advice from a family friend at a graduation party around the family pool. “I want to say one word to you. Just one word…. Are you listening?” the family friend asks. Benjamin nods yes. “Plastics.”

If we had to boil down to just one word the career and success advice we give our own young people, that word might be “education.”

Or in another twist: “Do well in school. Don’t break any rules. And all will be well.”

This advice, however, seems to have become antiquated.

The problem is that a majority of the millennials are too conformist when living in such a chaotic time where almost every facet of our society is being disrupted by innovation.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argues in his manifesto The World is Flat, the “flat world” has allowed more people to plug and play, compete, connect, and share knowledge and work more cheaply and powerfully than anything we have ever seen in the history of the world. The long term health of our country depends on innovation — to imagine and reinvent products, services, and industries. That’s the drug America runs on.

Our education system is in need of a radical jailbreak — questioning every assumption on which our schools are based. Jettison the old dogma and let’s stop comparing the future only with the past. We are at the perfect moment to begin reinventing our institutions. Now is the time to scrap the nostalgia of industrialism from the SAT to grades to standardized testing. We are robbing our kids of the future.

The bottom line is that in school, students are trained to dream small dreams. Dreamers in school are dangerous. Dreamers can be impatient and unwilling to fit in. Dreamers are the round pegs in the square holes — the rebels, the misfits, the troublemakers.

They look at the status quo and say: “I will not stand for this. Let’s do something about it.” Instead of following all the little rules, be something that author Seth Godin calls a “sleepwalker.” Every once in a while, Godin says, someone stands up and says “Not me.”

So what should we do? First we must redefine the way we do schooling. We can’t penalize failure. Without trial and error, there is no innovation. Without innovation, there is no future.

Second, parents, especially immigrant parents, must understand that the route to success is messy, tough, and ugly. Traditional “helicopter parents” indulge their children’s every whim, while hovering and protecting them from adversity. For innovation-minded parents, intrinsic motivation — passion — is the driving force.

Third, let’s bring back the dreamers. Recollect the 1960s and ’70s, people imagined a world of flying cars and robot maids? What happened? Not only did those things not come to fruition, but we have stop asking “What if?” We have to rediscover that spark.

And finally, schools have the weight of instilling what Tony Wagner, Harvard’s first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, calls the 3 P’s: play, passion, and purpose. These are the driving forces of education that Wagner explores in his most recent book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, outlining what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators.

Teach kids early on to live by these words: Risk, Survive, Repeat! Smart risks, of course. Go big or go home. The greater the impact you want to see in the world, the farther you have to travel from the shore.

Take author Michael Ellsberg for example. He’s interviewed an extensive number of millionaires and billionaires without college degrees and designed a guide to developing practical skills in the world without the typical motivational fluff. Ellsberg argues in his book The Education of Millionaires, “Changes in one part of the system impact the entire system. Prepare for many more interruptions, shocks, surprises, global reorganizations, ‘black swans,’ and totally unforeseen developments on this scale (both positive and negative). The ‘left field’ out of which random and unpredictable events can come has just gone global.” Be prepared to adapt, invent, and reinvent yourself each and every day. Be immersed in the chaos.

You were born a genius without limitation. Live your truth, don’t die an imitation. If you aren’t disrupting a system, an industry, or an institution, you are not taking full advantage of the moment. Ideas are worthless if you don’t make them happen.

Every journey begins with a problem. It starts with a feeling of frustration, the dull ache of not being able to find the answer. I want kids leaving school with their heads hurting on how to shake up the world.

Ignore the numbers on your report card. What matters most are the people you’ve met, the lives you’ve touched, and the seeds you’ve sowed.

Keep changing! Keep doing! Keep dreaming! When you stop learning, you stop living!

I think I understand the intent of these kinds of statements. I believe it is a reaction that arises because some teachers and kids are focusing on the skills required to use the tool rather than on the ‘subject-matter’ at hand. Many times we see kids spending much time on learning technical aspects of software rather than on gaining the deeper understandings and knowledge construction related to the intended content.

However, it is dangerous, in my opinion, to say that it is not about the tools. It is more about the tools than many of us might regularly think.

I appreciate that Dean Shareski, @shareski , has written about this issue as well.

Sometimes, one feels very alone having these thoughts – and it is a risk putting them out there whenever the predominant culture – especially, forgive me, Twitter culture is cascading and retweeting these one-line ‘wisdoms’ such as the one that starts this post. (In fact, it is bizarre that Dean used almost the same language as I did in his post. “I understand…” and “It is dangerous”. I started this post without any previous conversation with Dean about this issue.)

There are two main points to be made here.

Media with which to think

Firstly, Gavriel Salomon suggested that computers can be ‘cognitive partners’ – that they can be leveraged like ‘power tools for the mind’ in the same way that traditional power tools extend our physical capabilities.

The modification of this stance which fascinates me is not just the quantitative amplification of the ‘tool’, but the ‘qualitative’.

Computers are not mere tools but are media with which to think.

For many years I have suggested that computers are not mere tools but are media with which to think. They can provide mental models that are transferable within, and across, domains. In, Deep Understanding – the Issue of Transfer, I outline some practical suggestions of this. Again, Gavriel Salomon’s work on the ‘effects with’ versus the ‘effects of’ technology influenced me greatly.

‘Effects with’ are the changes that take place while one is engaged in intellectual partnership with peers or with a computer tool, as, for example, is the case with the changed quality of problem solving that takes place when individuals work together in a team. On the other hand, ‘effects of’ are those more lasting changes that take place as a consequence of the intellectual partnership, as when computer-enhanced collaboration teaches students to ask more exact and explicit questions even when not using that system.

See also Scaffolding for Deep Understanding.

Tools shape behaviours, cognition & societal structures

Secondly, tools shape behaviours. Tools shape cognition. Tools shape societal structures in both intended, and unintended, ways.

This is evidenced in many domains of life and is showing up in a lot of the literature in recent years – in fact, for centuries.

In The Drip Effects of Technology I described what Gavriel Salomon said regarding the first- and second-order effects of technologies – “it is quite likely that in the long run education will be affected by the unintended, drip-like effects of computing, particularly the Internet and computer mediated communication“. (Montreal, June 28, 2000)

Anthony Aguirre, in The Enemy of Insight, suggests that “information input from the Internet is simply too fast, leaving little mental space or time to process that information, fit it into existing schema, and think through the implications”. (From Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? Edited by John Brockman)

Max Tegmark says in The Cat is out of the Bag, “Important issues fade from focus fast, and while many of humanity’s challenges get more complicated, society’s ability to pay attention to complex arguments dwindles. Sound bites and attack ads work well when the world has attention deficit disorder.” (From Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? Edited by John Brockman)

In Blue dye plus water? Or blue water?, I briefly recounted Derrick de Kerckhove’s analysis of what happens to society when new media are invented. (I repeat here.) In The Skin of Culture he says, “The addition of a drop of blue dye to a glass of water results not in blue dye plus water, but in blue water: a new reality.” De Kerckhove indicates that McLuhan (his mentor) and others pointed out that “the inculcation of the habit of literacy results not in a pre-literate world plus readers, but in a literate world: a new world in which everything is seen through the eyes of literacy”.

When will we see that we have successfully integrated Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) into the lives of students? It seems to me that this will be achieved when we see them not simply using ICT as ‘tools’, but rather when we see students thinking differently as a result of their ubiquitous presence and facility. The invention of words, and subsequently the printing press, resulted in a new literacy because people now had words with which to think and to communicate. ‘Blue water’ with respect to ICT means that people must sufficiently appropriate these technologies in order that they become ‘media with which to think and to communicate’.

‘Gutenberg Parenthesis’ is history, but history repeats itself

So although we are outside of the “Gutenberg Parenthesis”, we are perhaps into another era where there are many parallels. Technologies are not simply tools.

(cross posted from The Construction Zone)

Until the 1970′s most books about education were written by men. When Vivian Gussin Paley, an early educator at the Lab School, wrote her first book, White Teacher, her work as an author/scholar was dismissed and chastised. Her fellow teachers and academics didn’t believe that it was the teacher’s place to study the lives of children she taught.

Action research is now taught in teachers colleges, but we still often forget to celebrate the work of women educators, for example, quotes by John Dewey show up daily on social media, but Helen Parkhurst, his contemporary and a pioneer in Progressive Education who created “the Dalton Plan”, is often forgotten.

We have some of the best voices in education at the Cooperative Catalyst and I thought it would be great to celebrate some of the women educators that inspire us, and celebrate some of the texts we look to and shape our own teaching, thinking and writing.  I would like your help in creating a primer of women education philosophers and educators and/or wiki for students and new teachers.

I think we should be able to crowd source at least  100 (we passed 50 on May 28th 2012) Women educators and/or philosophers.   Also I would love to put together a paragraph or two or blog post on each of them, along with annotations of some of their best work. Please help me by submitting or blogging your contribution or/and email me at coopcatalyst@gmail.com

Here is my list so far

• Maria Montessori
• Helen Parkhurst.
• Deborah  Meier
• Vivian Gussin Paley
• Jill Ostrow
• Maxine Greene
• Eleanor Ruth Duckworth
• Adora Svitak
• Lisa Delpit
• Linda Darling-Hammond
• Ellen Key
• Sue Palmer
• Caroline Pratt (founder of City and Country School)
• Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings
• bell hooks
• Diane Levin 
• Kirsten Olson
• Nel Noddings
• Zoe Weil
• Mary Wollstonecraft 
• Sophia Blanche Lyon Fahs
• Sylvia Ashton-Warner
• Sydney Gurewitz Clemens
• Rebeca Wild
• Joan Almon
• Vea Vecchi
• Olivia Gude
• Diane Ravitch
• Gayle Moller and Marilyn Katzenmeyer
• Jean Anyon
• Annetee Lareau
• Mary Pipher
• Margaret Wheatley
• Michelle Fine
• Lisa Michelle Nielsen
• Rachael Kessler
• Maricela Oliva
• Catherine Marshall
• Jane Roland-Martin
• Susan Ohanians
• Carol Gilligan
• Susan Issacs
• Margaret and Rachel McMillan
• Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot
• Mary Leue
• Alice Miller
• Riane Eisler
• Barbara Brodhagen
• Nancy Sizer
• Monika Hardy
• Elise Boulding
• Lucy Sprague Mitchell
• Betty Jones
• Carol Dweck
• Margaret Donaldson (Picture N/A)
• Chris Athey (Picture N/A)
• Maya Angelou
• Edith Abbott
• Linda Levstik
• Nancy Atwell
• Lucy Calkins
• Susan Fleming 
• Paula White

If you want to write about any of them feel free to and I will collect all the writing in one place.

Someone asked me recently how I am able to respond to all student blogs, leave feedback for each child on the Google Docs and analyze which standards students are mastering. It sounds impressive on paper, but here’s a little secret: I’ve made cuts. Huge cuts. Massive cutbacks in what I do as a teacher.

I don’t prep for lectures anymore. Instead, I think about how I will make lessons meaningful for students. I don’t input grades into the computer. Instead, I meet with students and we fill out our assessment grid together. I don’t have stacks of papers when students are working on in-depth projects. I don’t feel the need to do so much differentiated instruction when students are customizing their learning according to identity, interests and level of mastery.

I’m still on this journey of making cuts, but here are a few things I have managed to cut from my own classroom:

• Administrative jobs: If it’s important enough to do, groups of students can manage it
• Grading: We’re doing ongoing assessment using feedback instead
• Homework: I don’t have to mess with it when I don’t think it’s helpful for children
• Discipline: I deal with discipline through class rituals and personal conversations, along with engaging lessons where students are less likely to act out in boredom
• Making copies: I spend a lot less time in front of the copy machine, because students are more often creators than consumers. We’re also more like to go the tech-route than the paper-route.

We have in the absence of competence and assiduousness only now began to realize that we have created a national crisis that never before existed and in the process of creating such crisis failed to draft any emergent response or prepare for any repercussions that may follow. However, the issue is that we have waited far too long to even think about preparing such plan for drafting because we are already feeling the effects of the disaster we have created. We stood by idly for too long in favor of allocating thousands of millions of dollars at a problem and then pushing it on the bottom of our agendas in the reckless and erroneous hope that this problem was like all the other problems before them that were caused in part by deregulation and incompetence and that since they were similar in nature they would play out accordingly.

However, with alarms bells sounded and broken, first responders placed in intentionally disorganized matters, and resources being directed to redirection in favor political and monetary favors we have chosen to ignore the issues that lay ahead for tomorrow and the days that will proceed. We have chosen to remain silent to the call for action and in turn blame everyone but those truly responsible because it goes against political self interests and misplaced loyalties. It seems that we have become so dishearteningly cold to the mission, to the goal, to the pursuit, to the hope of educating that we have opted to become disloyal to those who have always been loyal to the premise of a promised equitable and equal education. It seems that in our pursuit for erroneous personal opulence, in our pursuit of de-gratifying self gratification, and in our pursuit to further our displaced ideologies that we, as a nation, as a people in whole, failed to ask the questions that mattered. It seems that in our misplaced pursuit we have failed to ask the question that if we don’t educate those who aspire and inspire and who dream today, tomorrow, or in the days that will follow who will educate those who will aspire and who dream tomorrow, the day after, and the day after.

In late summer or early fall (I really can’t remember), I had the honor and privilege of being asked to be part of the national planning team for the 2013 edition of the “Free Minds, Free People” conference, a semiannual event organized by the Education for Liberation Network and other allies. I jumped at the chance, for a lot of reasons. When Salt Lake City became the host city, I must admit I had my doubts. While their application and some of the early conference calls indicated more diversity and activism was there than I first thought, I was still ambivalent. As the planning process moved forward, and because I was too busy to think too deeply about the conference unless it was time for a conference call of some kind, my doubts subsided further, but I was very much looking forward to seeing the city for myself during the planning retreat, which finally took place this past weekend.

Many of my preconceived notions about SLC were wrong. Here is what I found out:

1. The city is not as white as I thought. I mean, I knew it was a city and that the rest of Utah would be whiter, but I was still surprised by the level of diversity. While there is a huge Chican@/Latin@ community, a trip to the SLC Living Traditions festival (and discussions with the local planning team) revealed evidence of pockets of Tongans, Filipinos, Sudanese, Turks, Greeks, and other ethnic groups.

2. There is more complexity to the LDS/Mormon community than I thought. There are way more Mormons of color than I ever imagined. Also, some Mormons are (relatively) “hip” about politics and activism. I never thought any LDS folks would be in our planning group or social circles, but there were. I felt humbled and aware of my prejudices. Additionally, there is a growing group of ex-Mormon dissidents who have left the church, many of whom are now totally atheist.

Mestizo Coffeehouse — the hub

3. Activism in the SLC area is growing, and there are some wonderful groups there. Many great strides have been made already, young people are getting involved int his activism with enthusiasm, and ties between these activists and their community schools are mostly strong from what I gathered. The Mestizo Arts and Activism Collective, the Brown Berets, the FACE movement, and Venceremos represent some of the organizing and activity taking place, especially within west SLC’s Latin@ community. Th

e local activists are ready to expand their efforts. These committed comrades are also dealing with the loss of a dear friend and mentor in March. I have full confidence they and FMFP will serve his memory well. Issues such as immigration/treatment of persons without documentation, structural racism, police harassment, LGBT rights, and emancipatory education are present in SLC, and FMFP seems to be coming at a very good point in time.

the revolution will not be on chart paper, but it helps

The work of the planning retreat was done mainly on Saturday. It was so great to be rolling up my sleeves with wonderful educators and activists committed to social justice and education’s power as a tool for liberation. Local SLC activists — new ones and veterans — deepened our knowledge of the city’s past and present. Reflective dialogue took place around the goals and desired outcomes for FMFP 2013. Important conversations took place around LDS/Mormon positionality, the local teams assets and needs, and how FMFP could serve the local groups best. We revisited the goals and outcomes and began to articulate how conference content can meet these goals/outcomes while incorporating youth leaders and the needs of SLC’s local team. After reviewing the responsibilities of each conference committee, we each chose the one that best fit our needs and talents, and began to form a vision for that committee’s work before, during, and after FMFP.

Social justice nerd that I am, Saturday’s work would have been stimulating and fun enough to make the trip worth it. But workaholic that I am, I was grateful for the off-hours socializing and camaraderie. The word “bonding” is thrown around perhaps too much, but I truly feel more bonded to, feel connected to FMFP, the national team, the local team, specific individuals, and what I saw of SLC. We had conversations about good, relevant, important topics and shared humorous moments as well. When you spend so much time around fellow travelers in a condensed period like a weekend, you get to know folks on a level that would have taken much longer had we met in some other ways.

A veteran activist, Ruben (Universidad Sin Fronteras), hearing me talk about how small I can make my world during the academic year — no social life, perfectionism, cutting out the things that de-stress me like yoga and exercise because I have too much to do that does stress me — remarked, “The movement keeps you healthy.” Joe, a NYC education activist (Brohterhood/SisterSol, Total Equity Now) said on Saturday that it’s like the group and our work get us on a high. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t need to get off my ass and do more physical activity and get outdoors more, but their point is a good one. Being around educators and activists so committed to social justice and who are such good people is stimulating and exciting, and it helps refresh your mind and spirit. During a tough stretch of a tough school year, this trip could not have come at a better time.

Other than reuniting with my dogs, I was actually upset to be home and wished I could have stayed longer. The retreat was a wonderful experience. Seeing “the real SLC” was a revelation. The people I met are great. I felt uplifted, sustained, at least partially rejuvenated, and I want to ride this feeling out for the remainder of the school year.

So let me give you some advice as we enter the last stretch of the school year when our fuses can be shorter, the students can be mentally checked out, the cumulative stress and effort can wear us down, and the urge to be negative and cynical can become greater:

Balance. Be kind to yourself. Keep perspective and priorities. Get out of the house/apartment more — to socialize or to get into the outdoors. Surround yourself with great people doing great social justice work. The revolution needs you well — and it needs love, or it’s no revolution.

Oh — and you better be there for “Free Minds, Free People” 2013.

I think we made the “education thing” up by constructing much nonsense about the written word being the supreme method of sharing ideas and information.

I think we have forgotten that sharing experiences and doing things together are matters that (1) allow us to learn and (2) make us human.

I began asking a question of Paramedic and EMT students (HS grads/GED) to kick-start discussions about medical-legal issues. I ask them to write down the first word that comes to mind when asked “What Are You?” I ask that question three more times, and request they again write their answer down.

The answers generally deal with biological sex, sex/gender/family roles and issues, race/ethnicity, nationality and intellectual capabilities. We discuss how the answers frame their current worldviews and how their worldviews will affect their future work as EMTs and Paramedics. We then consider how their worldviews skew interactions such as leads to miscommunications and misunderstandings, and discuss how their worldviews implicate the exercise of power in ways that lead to legal problems (the curriculum, after all,  requires a set number of hours be devoted to medical legal matters).

I propose that the following questions constitute the true ‘common core’ of education, and that students and teachers be asked and required to answer them every day: 

     What are you?

     What are you doing?

     Why are you doing it?

     What if your answers to the foregoing questions are faulty?

 I suspect the answers would be messy.

 I suspect standardized metrics could not be applied to them – given the personal nature of the answers and the myriad interpretations possible, who would “we” be to measure them?

Perhaps I was “miseducated” and am entirely wrong – I did, after all, learn to count Little Indians, one-through-ten…

Homework. It’s hard to find one student who hasn’t complained about it, and almost impossible to find one who’s never done it. Lately, many students I’ve talked with about education have been talking about homework, more than just your average complaint. A lot of this deeper conversation about homework was fueled by the release of the documentary A Race to Nowhere last year.

This documentary, A Race to Nowhere, follows a few students and their journey through high school, alongside interviews with concerned teachers and parents. The documentary centers around student, teacher and parent thoughts on homework and how it’s turned school into a race to virtually nowhere filled with stress and struggles. When I saw the movie, I had gone with the preconceived notion that the ideas were revolutionary. Now, as much as I often loathe doing my homework, I don’t believe it’s as big a deal as some people make it out to be. I still find time to hang out with my friends and do the stuff I want to, even with a pretty rigorous course load and subsequent homework.

I don’t think that homework should necessarily be totally abolished. The core idea of homework is that it’s used to polish concepts and reinforce lessons outside of the classroom. It is what it has become — a way for teachers to teach less and cover more material — that is not useful. I don’t think that all of the fuss is positive; personally, I think lots of students just don’t want to do it. If used properly, the idea of working at home on a study topic can be very helpful.

Ben Carson, an incredible neurosurgeon, had a rough childhood. In an effort to mobilize him and his brothers, Carson’s mother assigned them book reports. This homework led to study habits that propelled him forward in school and college. Carson is a prime example of how, when used properly, homework is a great tool for reinforcement. That’s not to say that I enjoy it, but I see the value. Lots of key concepts come from and are explained through homework, especially in math and science — much more than from lectures. Lectures present the fundamentals, and homework presents the concepts through examples.

Homework, if treated properly to further knowledge and reinforce concepts, can be a good thing. Not overloading the homework to crowd material but assigning it in small doses helps the students learn!

Who we choose to educate, how we educate, and why we educate represent critical questions facing this country and the world. The increased filtering and narrowing of curricula may result in learners who take tests well, but who are ill-equipped to think on their feet as the solution finders we need for the rest of this century. To work on problems from global warming to nations in dispute, the world needs the next generation of diverse thinkers, inventors, designers, and bridge builders. It does not need adults who are good at four choices – one answer work.

To date, America has generated more solution-finders in engineering, health and medicine, technology, environmental sciences, applied sciences, and space exploration than any other country in the world. We’ve grown a space where exceptional talent can emerge and become part of a pool of creators, inventors, designers, engineers, builders, producers, and makers.  We need to create learning spaces where educators can work as close to the classroom as possible to scale work that promotes choice, creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thought. How kids gain access to learning opportunities designed to do this kind of work is far less dependent upon identified, one-size-fits-all standards than kindling a passion to take kids beyond the learning horizons that limit their potential and the possibilities of their dreams.

As Yong Zhao of the University of Oregon, author of Catching Up or Leading the Way, commented in a keynote I heard just this past week, the great American public education experiment resulted in a system that’s been built overtime through mass localization – an “accidental” system of formal and informal learning options that allowed kids to become confident, curious, imaginative, collaborative, and creative. He believes that the ever-expanding national standardization of curricula and testing has led to a new education culture in which we have eliminated courses and activities that once led to a “think on our feet” citizenry of shade tree mechanics, garage inventors, and Bell Lab innovators. Instead, we are moving rapidly towards a China-centric education plan of specification, dullness, and a drive to narrow achievement options. If we stay on this path, we likely will lose the most important race we may ever run;  a race to sustain the entrepreneurial spirit of America’s citizens.

PISAMath Scores and Entrepreneurial Capability:

Yong Zhao presentation slide to Va Supts May 8 2012

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For the record, Zhao’s not talking about every kid growing up to create her own business. He’s talking about every learner working and playing in learning spaces designed to systemically support them to develop confidence, curiosity, and imagination along with a healthy dose of collaboration competency.  Of course, we know this doesn’t occur in isolation of knowledge building, but he questions who owns the process of determining what knowledge is important to the child in Hawaii versus Tennessee? Who should make that decision? The Federal government? Test prep and administration companies? Private sector virtual and charter companies? States? Or local communities?   Zhao believes that a return to mass localization puts the onus of responsibility right where it belongs – in a community’s hands.

The current spin of political, media, and special interest groups on what’s wrong  with America’s public schools distracts us from making cogent decisions about America’s education direction. Unfortunately, people who have the capability and knowledge to engage together in framing direction often are redirected away from this conversation by forces that have much to gain from the financial or political side of education and little to lose in the near term. Far-sightedness has never been a strong suit of those who carry the ball for directing U.S. public education decisions. The federal government’s increased efforts to reform public education via No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Innovation Grants, and Common Core have been akin to the committee that set out to build a horse and ended up building a camel.

However, perhaps there’s a light at the end of the tunnel beginning to shine. From parents like Mary Ann Reilly who wants more for her own child to students who made public the “pineapple” test madness, we are seeing a unification of support to turn the current runaway train of a testing machine around.  Principals in New York, superintendents in Virginia and school boards in Texas are aligning with a rank and file push back against the extent to which standardized testing has taken over the nation’s schools. While reversal of the current state won’t happen over night, there is a growing sense of hope that change will come. Every day there’s new evidence that attention is being paid, the recent action of the Palm Beach School Board, for example.

I’m not hearing anyone say that assessment isn’t a part of what competent educators do well. I’m not hearing educators promote a laissez-faire approach to curricula and instruction. I’m not hearing anyone say we should ignore well-developed research coming from the field of neuroscience and pedagogy.

I am hearing more and more parents, young people, and educators say enough is enough with the mass standardization of the processes of education.

If we’re building widgets, standardization is a good thing. If we’re building the next generation of solution finders, it’s not.

Maker Space kid