- Posted by admin in Education, Uncategorized |
- December 31st, 2008 |
Education Secretary Arne Duncan is traveling around speaking and listening to ideas from the public. Wisely, he is also engaging with the public online. Here’s a snippet from his Ed.gov announcement:
I will be going to 15 other places across the country to continue this conversation.
There is one more place I will be going to listen and learn. Here.
In the coming weeks, I will ask questions here. Topics will include raising standards, strengthening teacher quality, using data to improve learning, and turning around low-performing schools.
But I will be reading what you say. So will others here at the U.S. Department of Education.
Today, I want to start with a simple set of questions:
Many states in America are independently considering adopting internationally-benchmarked, college and career-ready standards. Is raising standards a good idea? How should we go about it?
I’m real glad to hear that he is going online, though sad that the democratic engagement piece is missing several key online tools that have become the norm, including on Obama’s transition website, tools such as the ranking of comments and commenting on comments, which would greatly encourage a conversation rather than a straight posting of disconnected thoughts.
Nonetheless, I suggest people go to the site and add their comment. As Duncan wrote, he and members of the U.S. Department of Education will be reading these comments, and I’m taking them at their word. (I surely hope that Obama and his inner circle will be reading them as well, or informed about them from Duncan, so that Obama stays current on the voices of the people on education issues).
Here’s my comment, already posted:
Yes, we should raise standards. But I would differ from your statement about the kinds of standards we should identify and to which we should hold schools accountable. We live in a democratic society grounded in the values of participatory decision-making, individual freedom, personal and community responsibility, and social justice. Therefore, let’s hold schools accountable to practicing those values and nurturing them in young people. Specifically, we might assess the extent to which schools:
- support the voices of students, teachers, parents, and community members in educational decision-making
- provide opportunities for young people to have degrees of control over their own learning
- nurture in students the skills of creativity, curiosity, intellectual development (which is distinct from memorizing academic facts), compassion, cooperation, and self-direction they need to be contributing members of society.
Let us not simply look at young people as adults-in-training to uniformly train into the future workforce. Young people are individuals with unique interests and rights, and the goal of education goes broader than career and workforce. It involves the growth and empowerment of young people to lead successful, happy lives and to be leaders and stewards of the values and rights that form the basis our democratic society.
Ultimately, the over-riding standard for schools in a democracy ought to be that schools are a beacon of democratic values and practice. How can we possibly hope for the strengthening of a more vibrant democratic society without creating spaces for young people to live and learn in democratic environments?
What do you have to say? Join the conversation. Here’s the link again.
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- Posted by admin in 36 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
Friday afternoon ended what was a nearly 2-day student demonstration at New York University in Manhattan, coming just two months after a similar student action at The New School. The students involved kept the updates coming on their TakeBackNYU website and on Twitter, attracting both supportive and critical comments from other students and the public near and far. The TakeBackNYU site gives the history and background to the group, and offers a look into their demands for NYU, including budget transparency, research into socially responsible investing, the right of student workers and TAs to unionize, and financial support for Palestinian students. The New York Times covered the event, though focusing largely on the eventual suspension of the students involved in the action.
A few thoughts come to mind:
- Student voice in society - Students are indeed left out of much decision-making and higher-level discussions in educational institutions, both in higher education as well as high schools and K-12 education overall. This goes along with an overall lack of youth involvement throughout society, which analysts such as Adam Fletcher and organizations like FreeChild and the National Youth Rights Association have discussed in great depth. Therefore, my eyes are quickly drawn to instances where young people and/or adult allies are reacting to this repression of youth by taking action to ensure that young people’s voices are not ignored.
- Satyagraha - I’m reminded of the words of a good friend and educator colleague, who says it may be that only a “revolutionary, nation-wide, non-violent, satyagraha-style, youth-led movement” can move our country into a place to rethink our educational practices, how we treat people in a democratic society, and how we respect this world that we live in. Young people do comprise a huge section of our society, and while adult allies cannot ignore their own role in societal change or romanticize the impact of youth-led movements, young people may be able to draw attention to issues in ways that adults who have worked for years on these same issues cannot.
- Web 2.0 tools and advocacy - The NYU and The New School student actions have impressed upon me the value of Web 2.0 tools in organizing and advocacy campaigns, both to broadcast to the public in real time the progression of events as well as to enable immediate public comment and dialogue about the situation. Browsing through the TakeBackNYU blog posts and comments and twitter “tweets” (which you can search on Twitter with a term like “takebackNYU”), you can see how the students themselves used these tools to inform and mobilize supporters, including asking people to write letters and contact NYU officials. Critics also used these forums to question or denounce the students’ actions, a good sign that the students leading the action practice what they preach in their own demands by welcoming criticism.
- Means and ends - While at first the NYU students declared a commitment to non-violence and no destruction of property, they later revised the property clause in order to gain access to a balcony in the building they were occupying. I don’t know enough about the situation to comment or judge. But it does bring up the crucial conversation about what tactics and means are justified to achieve one’s goals. How people act in their efforts to bring attention to an issue may have an even greater impact on the result as the content of the message.
- Responding to student action - As mentioned above, NYU’s response to the students’ action was to suspend the students involved and evict them from their dorms. Meanwhile, representing a very different reaction, the final agreement at The New School included a clause that granted amnesty for all participants involved and serious consideration of and agreement to many of the students’ concerns. My hope is that the NYU situation is so new that we will hear about forthcoming genuine discussion of the students’ issues as well as the broad concern about student voice in general. But the immediate administrative response is not very inspiring. Once again, I cannot judge whether or not the students were justified in all of their actions. However, a quick dismissal of the students without a process to consider the situation and the history leading up to the recent actions seems unfortunate at best and trampeling on the rights of the students at worst. Most of all, it would be a shame if NYU ignored the sensible concerns the students raise and continue to deny young people a voice in the educational institution to which they and their families give tens of thousands of dollars to every year.
- Posted by admin in 32 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
A few news and notes related to Democratic Education:
- Parker Palmer, the wise teacher and author of many books on education and living including The Courage to Teach and Let Your Life Speak, was on Bill Moyers Journal this past Friday, February 20. The conversation is one not to miss, touching on the tension between what is and what might be, the potential for social change movements, and what we can teach to bring about what might be. You can watch a view of the conversation and read a transcript here on the Bill Moyers’ website. (Thanks to David Leo-Nyquist for alerting me and others to this interview).
- The Gotham Schools blog, a prolific blog largely about education in New York City, reported on a research study that showed that rating a school with a D or F (all schools in NYC are now given such a mark, based largely on test scores) was correlated with fewer projects and essays after the rating was assigned and a greater emphasis on direct instruction. The scary thing, as Gotham Schools reports, is that the authors of the study support this change.
- On the Change.org Education Blog, Clay Burrell has written a great deal about Bill Gates’ recent appearance at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) gathering. Check out the video of Gates’ talk, as well as Clay’s insightful commentary. His most recent response also discusses how Nicholas Kristof has joined the Gates bandwagon, both talking about the necessity of “good teachers” and asserting that we can improve schools mainly through better teaching. Clay echoes some of my own thoughts, questioning this notion of “good” in teaching and whether test score results ought to be the determinant of a good teacher (and therefore what is “good” in learning).
- Finally, the New York City Student Union is holding a Student Government panel this Thursday, February 26 at 5pm at the UFT building (50 Broadway between Exchange and Morris in downtown Manhattan), to “develop connections between existing student governments and collaboratively create a basis of what a successful student government is and how it is run in different institutions.” This is a great student organization, come and check it out. Read more here.
- Posted by admin in 28 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was on CNN Newsroom with Rick Sanchez shortly after 3pm today, answering questions from the public. Kudos to Rick Sanchez and CNN for soliciting questions and using technology to gather them, including Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. I keep getting excited about the ways in which these participatory web tools can be used and are being used for public input and collaboration, open government, and more effective advocacy efforts.
So at around 2:30 today I got a tweet (that’s the name for the 160-max character entry on Twitter) saying that the public could suggest questions for Duncan by tweeting “@ricksanchezcnn” followed by a question. In no time I went to Twitter.com, logged in, and saw that many people had already sent in their suggestions. So I started tweeting and added two questions of my own, namely:
- What were your most powerful learning experiences in school or otherwise? What do your answers say about what schools need?
- How and when will DoE listen to the voices of young people, the real experts, in its work to improve schools and learning?
(For those of you counting, when you add @ricksanchezcnn, I had no more than a couple characters left to spare in each of those!)
True to his word, Rick started asking Duncan questions from the public (including one question from a college student) when the Secretary came on the show. Here’s a brief summary:
Q1: Some schools are going to 4 day weeks, what do you think?
Duncan: I actually want to go the other way, to increase school time, not decrease it.
Q2: What about the arts and music being eliminated from schools?
Duncan: This relates to the first question, in that we need more time to do the basics of math, reading, and writing, but we also need art, music, physical education, etc. So we need more time to do all this, because “we need to give kids time to develop their skills and interests.”
Q3: (from a college student) Can we please get rid of NCLB?
Duncan: NCLB has done some things good but it also can do many things better. It highlights the achievement gap and aggregates data, but it has been underfunded and not implemented well. With the new stimulus plan Obama helped push through, over 100 billion dollars of additional funding is coming to education, which is great.
That was it. Pretty short, mostly sound bites. But I really appreciated the public forum that CNN chose for gathering questions, tapping into the changing expectations of the public to be involved in public policy conversations.
And the one quote from Duncan that I wrote in bold up there was a pretty good and empowering one, and I think I got it word for word. Let’s remember that quote and hold Duncan and Obama to account for giving young people “time to develop their skills and interests.”
- Posted by admin in 24 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
With the growing trend in school districts around the country to reward students and teachers based largely on test scores, it was with great excitement that I saw the following headline on the front-page of today’s New York Times’ Science section: “Rewards for Students Under a Microscope.” This is especially good to see considering that the NY Times Editorial Page has consistently supported such rewards as good educational practice.
The article, by reporter Lisa Guernsey, opens with a great summary of the critique of rewards for students:
For decades, psychologists have warned against giving children prizes or money for their performance in school. “Extrinsic” rewards, they say — a stuffed animal for a 4-year-old who learns her alphabet, cash for a good report card in middle or high school — can undermine the joy of learning for its own sake and can even lead to cheating.
Guernsey then goes on to mention and quote some of the leading educators and psychologists who have long been publicizing the negative effects of rewards on students’ intrinsic motivation and enjoyment for learning, including education writer Alfie Kohn and University of Rochester psychology researchers Ed Deci and Richard Ryan. Here’s an excerpt from the Times article:
Research suggests that rewards may work in the short term but have damaging effects in the long term.
One of the first such studies was published in 1971 by Edward L. Deci, a psychologist at the University of Rochester, who reported that once the incentives stopped coming, students showed less interest in the task at hand than those who received no reward.
This kind of psychological research was popularized by the writer Alfie Kohn, whose 1993 book “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise and Other Bribes” is still often cited by educators and parents. Mr. Kohn says he sees “social amnesia” in the renewed interest in incentive programs.
“If we’re using gimmicks like rewards to try to improve achievement without regard to how they affect kids’ desire to learn,” he said, “we kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”
I particularly was interested in this study by Stanford psychologist Mark Lepper:
Why does motivation seem to fall away? Some researchers theorize that even at an early age, children can sense that someone is trying to control their behavior. Their reaction is to resist. “One of the central questions is to consider how children think about this,” said Mark R. Lepper, a psychologist at Stanford whose 1973 study of 50 preschool-age children came to a conclusion similar to Dr. Deci’s. “Are they saying, ‘Oh, I see, they are just bribing me’?”
If there is one thing that my work with young people in both conventional and freedom-based environments has shown me, it is that young people can very easily tell when adults have an ulterior motive for what they say or suggest to students. And over time, this leads to young people becoming more and more wary of teachers and adults to the point that they find it hard to trust adults and even avoid their gaze, for fear that adults will tell them to do something else or make a critical judgment.
Yet as Guernsey states, it is clear whose influence now reigns in education circles:
. . . many economists and businesspeople disagree [with the critiques of performance rewards], and their views often prevail in the educational marketplace.
The article presents this perspective, including quoting Roland Fryer, Harvard economist who served from 2007-2008 as Chief Equality Officer with the NYC Department of Education, during which time he promoted and designed student and teacher incentive programs. (By the way, not to dismiss the contributions of economists, but should an economist be the sole person leading school improvement efforts? At the least an experienced K-12 educator ought to be part of the leadership, no?). Fryer makes the following point,
“We have to get beyond our biases,” said Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard University who is designing and testing several reward programs. “Fortunately, the scientific method allows us to get to most of those biases and let the data do the talking.”
But what data? And what other data might we be ignoring?
This is the essential point for me: that the issue here is not whether rewards increase test scores. As Kohn, Deci, Ryan, and Lepper all point out, any short term gains (and one could question whether an increase in a dubiously-worthy multiple-choice test is actually a “gain” in anything meaningful) pale in comparison to the very real and long-term damage inflicted on many young people who are subjected to rewards systems: namely, that rewards systems very often are associated with diminished student interest and motivation for the activity or topic that was paired with a reward. And there is a great deal of data to back this up (just Google “Ed Deci” or “Alfie Kohn” to find a ton).
So, sure, some students may increase their test scores when offered a reward for doing so, and certainly more students will take tests that have rewards tied to them, especially students from lower-income families, something Deci points out in his insightful comment, “‘There are suggestions of students making in the thousands of dollars,’ he said. ‘The stress of that, for kids from homes with no money, I frankly think it’s unconscionable.’”
But at what long-term cost to young people? Less interest and intrinsic motivation in the activity, increased stress and competition, even lower quality work, as Lepper’s study indicates.
This, then, is what happens when there is a dominant economic and business influence in education: increased student output through whatever means are necessary, without much regard to the fact that young people are human beings with personalities, emotions, and rights that ought not be dismissed or abused in the name of increased performance.
Yet now with the massive economic crisis stemming from the deplorable business practices of late, we should be ever-more critical and wary of economic- and business-driven reforms throughout society, most especially in the social sectors such as education. I’ll end with a provocative comment from “a.r., Los Angeles” on the NY Times website from a reader of the article:
Isn’t the recent financial debacle proof enough that a) money as a motivator can lead to very bad things and b) economics does not provide a perfect model for human behavior? And why are poor kids our de facto guinea pigs in this social science experiment?
Indeed, why?
- Posted by admin in 20 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
I’m feeling inspired lately. This is partly due to the coming spring, with the growing warmth, the early flower shoots coming up, and the birds starting to migrate back north for the summer. (Birding is another big interest of mine. I’ll have to weave together birding and democratic education sometime - an interesting challenge!) So spring is always an exciting time of year for me.
Yesterday that inspiration grew after seeing educator and prolific education writer Herb Kohl speak at Bank Street College in Manhattan (not to be confused with the current Wisconsin Senator of the same name). I have several of Kohl’s books on my shelf, collected during my education book buying craze a bunch of years back when I began learning about non-conventional approaches to schooling and learning. Yet his books were some of those I only skimmed and had not sat down and read. Until now, that is.
Kohl gave a deeply personal and deeply moving talk, blending stories of his own schooling and teaching experiences with a powerful moral outrage at the current direction of educational practice and policy. I jotted down this line, which I found particularly stirring:
“NCLB is nothing more than the manifestation of a moral deficiency in our attitude towards children.”
But how can we talk to Obama and others about how misguided we might think their policies are, one audience member asked?
Kohl responded by saying first that we cannot avoid the word accountability, that in fact that word and concept are completely fine and positive. The question is not whether or not to hold schools and teachers and students accountable, but rather how and for what?
Kohl also emphasized that we have a moral imperative to expose those who are denying young people the opportunity to grow fully as a human being and supporting approaches that shrink children’s souls and minds. We have the moral responsibility, he said, to point this out to Obama and other policy-makers.
I greatly appreciated that moral perspective, which often gets lost in the nitty-gritty details of talk about testing, standards, curriculum, grades, merit-pay, and other education battle-grounds. Kohl’s point is that we ought not lose sight of the moral argument, that we are talking about “the lives of children” (the title of my favorite book about education, perhaps my favorite book of any type, by George Dennison), and that the educational approaches we practice will have a profound effect on the minds and emotions and spirits of young people.
Herb Kohl’s poetic stories, passion, and humility resonate with me, and give me great enthusiasm and inspiration to continue “to speak the truth to power with love,” as Cornell West has said and my friend and colleague Scott Nine has reminded me.
So while Herb Kohl’s books have been gathering dust on my shelf for several years, they are now down on my coffee table, their pages are open, and I am ready to sit down and get to know Mr. Kohl a bit better.
- Posted by admin in 16 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
Two education opinion pieces in the New York Times the past two days have got me thinking about who we seek to engage with in conversation about education. For those passionate about and working for educational change, the short answer might be “anyone and everyone,” right? Well, recently I’ve been wondering if that would be the best use of our time.
To demonstrate what I mean, I’ll briefly describe the two education pieces. The first, by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in yesterday’s paper, discussed Washington DC Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee’s approach to educational reform, focusing on identifying good and bad teachers, and rewarding or getting rid of them based on their results (aka test scores). The second, appearing in today’s paper by education writer E.D. Hirsch, Jr., proposes more content-specific curriculum and standards so that students will have the knowledge background to score better on tests.
While both pieces unfortunately take an uncritical look at the practice of assessing students and teachers based on test scores, the two writers come from very different starting points. Hirsch’s argument begins with a fundamental stance on the importance of content standards for all children. Looking into his many books confirms this, with titles such as What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know, What Your First Grader Needs to Know, and Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. And here is an excerpt from Hirsch’s op-ed:
These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards.
Meanwhile, Kristof’s starting point is that education in the U.S. reflects a deep injustice and “national shame,” and that education itself can be a powerful force for societal change, as he writes in yesterday’s piece:
Education reform could be the most potent antipoverty program in the country, and Ms. Rhee represents the vanguard in this struggle to try new tools to revive American schools.
Just as Hirsch’s starting point with content-standards is clear from his previous writing, Kristof’s social justice, human rights-based starting point is also apparent from his previous columns about the fighting and devastation in Sudan, and the sex trafficking of women around the world, among other topics.
Which leads me to the point that, given that there is an urgent need to work for educational change according to human rights and democratic values and that our personal time and energy is limited, we ought to consider how open people are to questioning their assumptions about education and re-thinking their positions. Perhaps Hirsch, whose core educational stance seems to be the importance of specific pieces of knowledge, may be less likely to think about democratic education than Kristof, who already bases his reporting on the very same values that are at the core of democratic education - namely, participatory decision-making, individual freedom, personal responsibility, and social justice.
The implication being that when there is a choice of who to engage with and reach out to, it may be wise to target those who appear more open and who appear to share one’s values, rather than getting stuck speaking with those who seem to be strongly lined up against those values. This does not mean some people should be completely dismissed, and for sure there will be times when we guess wrongly about where people stand.
Yet, we can get bogged down if we focus on those who are strongly set against our views and are most vocal about it (because, let’s face it, people with the most polarizing of views are often the most emphatic). We may even get burned-out and never realize that while we’ve been putting our energy into the several dozens of outspoken critics we’ve missed out on the several hundreds or several thousands of sometimes quieter potential allies. And I do know that indeed there are many more people who are closer than farther to the views of this blog: that education ought to reflect and practice the democratic values and human rights that our nation and our world hold dear.
So, (as hard as it is to not respond passionately to E.d. Hirsch, Jr. every time he writes something new) let’s not expend all our energy on those who, at least for now, are set in their beliefs in a standardized educational model. Instead, let’s target, identify, and reach out to those people who already know that every sector of our society must reflect and practice the values of a democracy if we are to build a more just, sustainable, productive, and peaceful world. Perhaps they already work for justice in a different sector, such as housing or immigrant rights or world hunger. Perhaps they always tell you about new happenings in the fields of sustainable energy or equal rights for same-sex couples. And perhaps they’d be open to transferring those same motivations for justice and personalization to the education and youth realm.
It is these individuals who can help lay the groundwork for a grassroots, people-powered movement to hold school leaders and policy-makers accountable for an education system and practice guided by our democratic values.
ps - as I posted this, I found a word cloud of Hirsch’s op-ed on Wordle, and decided to do one for Kristof’s, as well as my own post about them both. Thought you might find them intriguing (thanks Gretchen for the Wordle link). You can find these and make your own at www.Wordle.net:
Hirsch Wordle
Kristof Wordle
Today’s DE Blog post (also shown below)
- Posted by admin in 12 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
I know where I’ll NOT be: at any of the following incredible conferences, all of which are booked for around June 25-30, 2009 or thereabouts. I’ll be (excitedly, I might add) celebrating the wedding of my sister-in-law in California. So I implore anyone who can to check out these conferences and head to one. Or head to 2, or even 3! Although I am an avid workshop-bee (buzzing from one workshop to the next when I go to conferences) it may indeed be somewhat difficult to buzz from one state or city to the next. Still, here they are, do look them up and consider going:
1. Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) annual conference in Albany, NY, June 25-28. Continues to be one of the best places to meet up with non-conventional educators from around the country and even the world. Keynotes from excellent speakers (Patch Adams and Deborah Meier are among the crew this year), workshops you can buzz to and from, and late night conversations with anyone and everyone. And young people are welcome and part of the organizing efforts. Also, don’t miss the North American Democratic Education Conference (NADEC) happening at the same site directly before the AERO conference, an experience specifically for those practicing democratic education.
2. Free People, Free Minds: Education Liberation’s conference June 25-28 in Austin, TX. I’ve been hearing about this exciting conference for a bunch of months now, and now that their website is up and running, I’m even more intrigued (and hope to go to their next conference). They merge the pedagogical approach of progressive, student-centered learning with a strong social justice bent and focus specifically on low-income youth and youth of color , something those of us working in non-conventional education need to consider if we are to gain traction and serve all young people. I look forward to hearing how this conference goes.
3. Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) in New York, NY, June 29-30. I attended this amazing conference last year, and it brought me fully into the world I was just starting to learn about on my own: technology, politics, advocacy, social networking, blogging, internet neutrality, and more. They bring the top thinkers and doers in this field, including Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, Jeff Jarvis (I’m reading his new book, What Would Google Do?), Beth Noveck (now in the Obama administration working on technology policy), Joe Rospars of the 2008 Obama campaign, and many others. If you want to learn more about these timely and powerful topics, meet the thousand most “connected” people out there, or if you are involved with social movements or politics, this conference is a mind-blower.
If you are thinking of attending any of these conference, have any thoughts about them, or do attend them, I look forward to hearing from you. Also, know of other conferences and events coming up that others should know about? (I keep feeling that there is yet another conference that same week in June, but can’t seem to remember it. Anyone?)
- Posted by admin in 8 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
I recently had the privilege of going to a screening of “My Suicide,” an excellent new film doing the festival circuit and winning awards and much praise. The film won Best Picture in the Generation 14Plus category at the Berlin Film Festival, got great reviews at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and swept the awards at the NYC Gen Art Film Festival this month (where I saw the film) including the Grand Jury Award, Audience Favorite, and the Stargazer Award for lead actor Gabriel Sunday.
What struck me most was the raw, authentic youth voice permeating every aspect of the film: the excellent acting, the writing, the music, the animation sections, and most especially the incredibly relevant way in which the film presents the title issue and the stress, pressures, and influences facing young people today. This should come as no surprise: the team that created “My Suicide” along with Director David Lee Miller was composed largely of young people working with Regenerate Films, a non-profit whose mission is to amplify the voices of young people and produce media “By Youth - For Youth.”
The film (and the trailer, so I’m not giving much away here) begins with Archie, the main character played by Sunday, declaring that for his class project he will kill himself on camera. He then goes on to produce a visual representation of his life, filming himself, fellow students, his parents, and others. To build the tension and bring us into Archie’s world, the pace of the film is rapid and we are often looking at Archie and others through the lens of his own camera. In this way the audience gets a real close and unedited look at Archie’s life, and through that we begin to realize the extent to which media, school, parents, friends, and other pressures influence the lives of young people.
So often issues concerning young people are presented and very often dealt with by adults, without much or any involvement of young people themselves. While adults may be very well-meaning, the lack of youth voices in discussions and problem-solving about issues related to young people has several deep problems. To begin with, such lack of involvement denies young people of their right (asserted in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) to be involved in issues that concern them. They become alienated from adults and youth-serving organizations if they are denied a seat at the table. Indeed it is patronizing to think that young people can not or ought not be involved in issues concerning them. And practically, the ideas and solutions presented without youth involvement often lack relevance to what young people are actually going through. Young people are the experts on what it means to be young, and discussions involving them will lead to richer, more authentic, and more targeted solutions to improving the lives of youth.
(Much more on all this from my gurus on youth voice - Adam Fletcher, and the folks at Youth on Board, among other excellent groups).
Shortly before I saw “My Suicide” I had seen a screening for a film still in the early stages that was also about student stress and suicide. While the film had some good things going for it, I wasn’t at all taken in and gripped by the topic in the way I was with “My Suicide.” Partly I believe this is because the other film was the project of a (albeit very caring and passionate) parent creating a film about young people, and it came off with an adult perspective that I felt was removed from what young people actually go through. It was striking to then see “My Suicide” and realize how different the two films were while dealing with similar issues.
The importance of youth involvement and the pervasive lack of it in society is something I’ve thought about in terms of education, research, public policy, and societal improvement, and I’m glad to think about it now in terms of films and media. Kudos to everyone associated with “My Suicide,” here’s hoping it gets out there big-time.
If you’d like to see “My Suicide,” perhaps you live near one of the festivals they’ll be screening at in the near future:
April 24: Newport Beach Film Festival (southern CA)
May 1-6: San Francisco International Film Festival
May-June: Seattle International Film Festival
- Posted by admin in 4 |
- December 31st, 1969 |
Amidst all the hot topics in education - high-stakes testing, mayoral control, school choice, and more - one essential issue that seems to get lost in the shuffle (including, to my shame, in this blog) is the arena of educational architecture and design. Yet for me, every now and then, my latent interest in architecture flares up or I discover a new article or website devoted to school architecture, and I am once again reminded that we ignore the topic of physical space and school design to the great detriment of young people.
A few weeks ago, Prakash Nair of the innovative architecture and design company Fielding Nair International, wrote an article for Education Week (PDF link here) on just this topic. I’ve encountered Nair’s name, as well as his partner Randall Fielding, numerous times over the years, and I am deeply impressed with their ideas and designs. They are not only incredible architects, but also insightful education planners and thinkers who create their educational designs in such a way that will support self-directed personalized learning, democratic community participation, and sustainable principles. Nair’s recent article in Ed Week gave recommendations regarding the stimulus money for educational facilities. Wrote Nair:
“If we simply repair broken structures, we will ignore the real problems with American education while giving renewed life to a model of teaching and learning that has been obsolete since the end of the industrial era.
“Let’s start with the fundamental building block of almost every single school in this country: the classroom. Who seriously believes that locking 25 students in a small room with one adult for several hours each day is the best way for them to be “educated”? In the 21st century, education is about project-based learning, connections with peers around the world, service learning, independent research, design and creativity, and, more than anything else, critical thinking and challenges to old assumptions.”
Sound familiar, democratic and progressive educators? Aside from the design bent, these words could have been spoken by anyone from John Dewey to Deborah Meier, from Maria Montessori to Matt Hern and Yaacov Hecht (although admittedly, a couple of those folks would have said “20th” instead of “21st” Century!). Clearly, the democratic education world has allies in the architectural world.
And what does a setting designed to support democratic education look like? What design elements can better enable students to take ownership over their own learning and foster a strong democratic community that upholds the participation and voice of everyone in the learning process? Here are a few key aspects from Fielding and Nair’s articles and designs:
- small schools to insure that every student is known and supported at a personal level
- multifaceted learning studios and common areas for collaborative and hands on activities
- small nooks and study spaces for individualized projects and small group work
- indoor and outdoor spaces to support all kinds of physical activities, including a connection to nature and the environment
- aesthetics that support learning, including indoor and outdoor windows, plentiful daylight, comfortable seating, and deliberately-designed lighting and acoustics
- facilities that support music, theater, and visual arts
Take a listen to an interview with Randall Fielding on Phorecast, in which Fielding explores these theories and how they impact the practical design of school and educational settings. During the interview Fielding mentions the High School for Recording Arts (HSRA) in St. Paul, Minnesota - a school designed by Fielding and Nair’s firm which I had the privilege to visit last year with renowned Minnesota educator and HSRA board member, Wayne Jennings (who Fielding also mentions in the interview).
You can view designs and information about HSRA, as well as Fielding Nair’s other designs, on the Fielding Nair International website. They also wrote a book on this topic, published in 2005: The Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools.
Luckily, theirs is not the only innovative educational architecture firm out there. I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Interdistrict Downtown School (IDDS) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a school designed with many of the same principles: open windows to the outside and between educational spaces, small and large areas for a variety of collaborative and independent work, and spaces that support physical activity and the arts. IDDS was designed by The Cunningham Group, which also seems to have a solid theoretical stance that supports innovation and personalization in learning.
Another resource to check out, DesignShare is an organization dedicated to supporting many of these same principles in educational design. Their great website includes links to innovative school designs, articles about architecture and schools, and updated news and events related to educational design.
Last but not least, one of the most vibrant schools I have seen also has a great school design: Hadera Democratic School in Hadera, Israel. The Hadera school features a circle of buildings, each with a different focus such as the photography lab or the library or the gym or the self-directed learning lab, all of which form a ring around a large open space in the center for outdoor games, a playground, and more.
Know of other schools that have great designs? Any other resources out there for folks to look into and think about? Please do share. And let’s make sure we keep the element of school design and physical setting front and center in the work for democratic educational change.