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Archives
- September, 2005
Learning Doesn’t Have to be Hard – September
26, 2005
At the café I visit each morning at the end of my
routine walk, I overheard a conversation between two dads. Their
expensive business attire, laptops and leather briefcases indicated that
they were probably on their way to high-powered jobs. This morning, they
were discussing their children’s school experiences. One child is,
according to dad, not working hard enough to reach her potential. This
child is apparently “coasting” and dad is upset because she didn’t
get a high enough mark on the first test of the school year. The other
dad’s problem was the same, but expressed in a slightly different
manner. He blamed the school, rather than the child, stating that the
curriculum isn’t challenging enough for his son, whose high marks must
mean the bar should be raised back to where it used to be when he was a
student.
It reminded me of what my mother told me over and
over when I was a kid: “It’s not worthwhile unless you work for
it!” This is the 21st century, and while there is
satisfaction in some kinds of hard work, that old cliché is no longer
true (if it ever was!). But it is perpetuated in our view of education, which says that
learning is hard, challenging, unpleasant work. But watch a young child
grow and develop and you will realize that when the time for it is
right, learning comes effortlessly. On the other hand, when we’re not
interested or engaged in – or ready for – a specific piece of
information or skill, when we are presented with a bunch of
out-of-context facts to memorize, then even paying attention (let alone
learning!) becomes unpleasant and difficult.
As I pointed out in my book Challenging Assumptions in Education, hand-in-hand
with the notion that learning is hard, goes the idea that it must be
measured…or that, in fact, it can be measured. In fact, not only do
high test results not measure the amount of learning that has taken
place, they can often signal a lack of real learning. What they likely mean
is that a great deal of time has been spent force-feeding facts into
brains so they can easily be regurgitated and perfecting the skills
associated with successful test taking.
Unfortunately, governments and taxpayers alike
value quantifiable achievement. Apparently, so do success-driven,
achievement-oriented fathers. And the easiest way to quantify the
achievement of schools, teachers and students is by measuring the
retention of a narrow, but organizable, range of information. But this
definition of academic success is a very sad boondoggle, in place to
protect and perpetuate the industry of schooling, rather than to help
children learn. And teachers are as
much victims as children.
As
Alfie Kohn says in his book What Does it Mean to be Well Educated?
(Beacon Press, 2004), “If kids are going to be forced to learn facts
without context, and skills without meaning, it’s certainly handy to
have a ideology that values difficulty for its own sake.” And if our
economy depends on the production and consumption of ever more cars,
televisions and logo-plastered t-shirts, it’s handy to encourage the
unquestioning mantra of hard work. After all, those well-meaning dads in the café
just want their kids to come out the other end of the schooling sausage maker with jobs that will allow them to buy cars, televisions, leather
briefcases and stylish business attire.
Posted: 2005/09/26
12:16 PM
Automobile Irony - September 25, 2005
Thanks to the reader (Nic in New York State) who pointed out the irony involved with the massive
traffic jams created by tens of thousands of people fleeing Hurricane
Rita at the end of last week. “They were driving their cars to escape
from a weather event probably made worse by the fact that too many of us
drive cars!”
Posted: 2005/09/25
9:35 PM
Did You Walk to Work Today? – September 22, 2005
This is International
Car Free Day, an annual event celebrated by 100 million people on
every continent and supported by the European Union, the United Nations,
federal governments and the leaders of 1500 cities around the world. Car
Free Day street events and forums highlight the many problems caused by
our dependence on the private automobile, including air pollution,
global warming, stress and safety issues. It emphasizes the rights of
pedestrians and cyclists, the need for more and better public transit
and helps people rediscover their local community, outside the confines
of their vehicle.
Never
before has there been a better time to reduce automobile usage than now,
with the undeniable contribution of global warming to the devastation
wrought by Hurricane Katrina, and the incredible threat of Rita, yet
another Category 5 storm bearing down on the Gulf states. Yet, according to the
apparently greed-warped minds at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based conservative think
tank, lack of access to a car can be deadly…as the experience in New
Orleans during Katrina allegedly demonstrated. Totally ignoring the
contribution of cars to the severity of the hurricane, Sam Kazman, head
of CEI’s Automobility Project, said in a news release that just
reached my in-box: “It was a lack of access to cars that led tens of
thousands of people to remain in the city. Many people may well choose a
car-free lifestyle, but the notion that government should impose it in
the name of sustainability is crazy. As Hurricane Katrina showed, it can
be disastrous as well.” This opinion is also held by economist Matthew
Kahn who wrote ins so-called
“Green Economics” blog: “More of New Orleans’ urban poor would have survived the disaster if they had had car
access.” Yeah, so what?
This
light-headed thinking ignores the root of the problem, yet it does lead to some serious questions: Why was a
huge fleet of school buses left sitting idle when it could have been
used to evacuate New Orleans’ carless residents? Why has the government actively participated in
destroying wetlands that could have absorbed the storm surge more
effectively than the dykes? Why was the dyke infrastructure not
well-maintained? What about the contribution of racism and classism to
the disaster? What will it take for the majority of people to become so
alarmed about the harm we are wreaking on the planet that they begin to
change their lifestyles? So many unanswered questions to ponder during your walk today.
Posted: 2005/09/22
11:55 AM
Officialis Credentialitis – September 17, 2005
Pardon me if I’m seeming overly grumpy these days. But could someone
please explain to me why an accountant or an engineer is more able to
witness a signature on a government document than, say, an architect?
Why a teacher or a postmaster is more qualified for that task than a
plumber or a magazine editor?
Let me explain. The other day, my mother (who had a
mild stroke earlier this summer and is temporarily in the hospital
awaiting a room in a nursing home) received a form this past week.
It’s from the “program integrity” department of the federal
government and is confirming her residency – and it appears, whether
or not she is still alive – as a way of ensuring she continues to be
entitled to her government pensions. I’m pleased that such
fraud-prevention mechanisms are in place and I have helped her fill it
out and sign it. However, the form includes a long list of people who
are able to witness her signature. And that piqued both my curiosity and
my trusty sense of injustice. It also offended my common sense. Nurses
and other hospital personnel are on the list, so that’s no problem in
my mother’s case. But I have to wonder about this list’s judgment of
people, seemingly by their credentials. Now, my husband is a professor,
not to mention an academic chair, which apparently makes him qualified
to witness my mother’s signature (unless, of course, the fact that he
is also a plumber trumps the teacher credentials!). However, from the
perspective of fraud prevention, wouldn’t it be a conflict of interest
if he witnessed my mother’s signature? Relationship to the pensioner
isn’t mentioned as a qualifier. Shouldn’t the qualifications have
more to do with that, with the absence of a criminal record, with the
possession of functioning vision, and other such relevant issues? With
all due respect to my honest and loving friends and relatives who are
funeral directors, chiropractors, teachers, nurses, physical therapists,
lawyers, accountants, clergy, politicians and their staff, and other
government officials (um, some of whom supposedly put this list
together), which are all occupations on the approved list, there are
just as many dishonest people in those lines of work as in those not on
the list. I don’t personally know any judges, ambassadors, First
Nations Band chiefs, rabbis or police officers. But I do know that some
of them have been proven to be corrupt. So, do I feel that the interests
of elderly people – my mother notwithstanding – are protected by the
list? No. I feel that the bureaucrats suffer from a misguided case of
Officialis Credentialitis.
Education is a good thing. And I believe that
we should all pursue the careers of our choice. But I fail to see that
one chosen career path make a person more honest than another, or more
qualified than another to certify that they saw someone sign a form.
Posted: 2005/09/17
8:05 PM
Learning in the Real World – September 17, 2005
I never cease to be amazed by the dumb policies created by bureaucrats
and politicians who oversee public education (and I use that last word
with reservations). In Nova Scotia
last week, a new draft policy was announced that would prohibit students
from missing any more than three school days a year on trips or
activities unrelated to the standardized curriculum. Longer trips would
be possible, according to the policy, if they were scheduled to coincide
with March break, long weekends or summer holidays. The policy left many
students, teachers, parents and coaches confused and concerned about
having to cancel school trips or rehearsals, or skip school athletic
events. It was said in the press that department of education officials
claimed they weren’t trying to “jeopardize extracurricular
activities”. Instead, they were looking for a balance between
instruction time and activity time. Standardized tests have indicated
that some students are “struggling” with the curriculum, so more
time is needed “for them to learn”. Teachers were heard to be
explaining that out-of-class activities are often an important part of
school, especially for those in fine arts programs and for athletes. A
few days later, the policy was “clarified” and now student athletes,
musicians and actors will be exempt from the policy. Apparently, those
who participate in such endangered extracurricular activities are often
above-average academically.
So in their severely limited wisdom, these folks have taken a stupid
policy and made it worse. Why are people who are supposed to be experts
in the education field so focused on classroom instruction as the best
– and in this case – the only way to learn? Keeping kids in the
classroom won’t guarantee that they will learn. All the instruction in
the world won’t guarantee that they will learn if they are not engaged
with the topic they are supposed to be learning – whether or not they
get good marks on standardized tests. Those kids who are not getting
good marks under the gorge-and-regurgitate-the-curriculum classroom
instruction model may be the very best candidates for real-life
learning! Just ask John Taylor Gatto, who won a bunch of teaching awards
because he helped his poor, inner-city, under-achieving, almost-dropouts
to set and pursue their own learning agendas...largely outside the
school walls.
I wait impatiently for public education to catch up with the real
world of the 21st century.
Posted: 2005/09/17
2:45 PM
Advocating For the Old and Young – September 14,
2005
My mother’s name is finally on the waiting lists for three
progressively-run nursing homes, after a summer of struggling with
bureaucracy. One person at one agency actually asked me if there was
some rush…when I was inquiring why the forms had been sitting on her
boss’s desk for three weeks! “Um, yes,” I sputtered, “she’s
96-years-old, homeless and with little time to live. She is in the
hospital and wanting to get back into some semblance of normal living,
or at least what passes for that after having had a stroke! Isn’t
there always a rush to find
housing for people who suddenly have been told they are no longer able
to live on their own??” I knew I would have to be patient once my
mother’s name was put on the waiting lists, but angry that some
cloistered bureaucrat saw her as a piece of paper rather than as a
person.
As my mother slowly reverts to a child-like state,
she needs me (as her only living relative) to make decisions with and
for her, and to advocate for her as those decisions are being carried
out. I see that role as quite similar to the advocacy I undertook when
my daughters were children…helping them navigate their way through
their early years in a society impatient with children. We tend to
infantalize people at both ends of the age spectrum, deciding for them
what they are capable of accomplishing and how to accomplish it…and,
more often than not, institutionalizing them because it’s easier that
way.
Posted: 2005/09/14
10:17 AM
Building a New Model
– September 11, 2005
This weekend, I
have been sorting through old files, as part of the never-ending
challenge of
trying to fit two people and a business into a too-small space.
(We have lived here over three years now and are still trying!) Among
the things I found was a wise quote from Buckminster Fuller, for which
I, unfortunately don’t
have a more complete reference. The eccentric futurist who invented,
among many things, the geodesic dome, encapsulated his philosophy life
in this way: “You
never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
And so Bucky (who, by the way, was a self-taught man who never
graduated from college) did – always sustainably and sometimes very
successfully, but often far ahead of his time. If he had come up with
a solution to how to educate ourselves, I bet it would have looked
like the new model that I and many others have been building for three
decades now: home- and community-based self-directed learning!
Posted: 2005/09/11
4:30 PM
Learning Is Fun
– September
8, 2005
As
school resumes for another year, I'm struck by the sense of
seriousness that surrounds the trek back to the classroom. Last week,
the media was full of tips for getting kids to bed early so they can apply
themselves to their school work, and articles bidding farewell to the
carefree days of summer. Learning, they say, is work and enough of
summer, let’s get back to work. An education is, by
this measure, a way to socialize people into a work ethic, to train
children so they grow up to be effective cogs in the economic machine.
How refreshing, then, to read Jan Fortune-Wood’s column in the
September/October issue of Life Learning, where she asserts that
“Whenever fun is being had, then the best possible learning is
going on.“ She goes on to explain:
“By fun, I don't simply
mean dressing up conventional educational activities to make them
palatable. What I mean is that absolutely any activity that a child
finds fun – from gazing at the ceiling to watching The Simpsons – is
an essential and efficient learning activity.“
Posted: 2005/09/08
9:19 PM
Back to School – September 6, 2005
I’ve heard from four people over the past few days wondering why I
haven’t written in this space about the resumption of the school year.
They’ve been keeping an eye out, they tell me, for some words of
wisdom about returning to school. Well, here is something for them.
I’m sorry that all I can manage is one word of wisdom: “Don’t”.
Actually, I would like to say that back-to-school
doesn’t have any impact on my life. However, I have to admit it
actually looms quite large. I woke up this morning – where I live,
it’s both the day after Labour Day and the first day of school –
mourning the end of summer and having trouble dragging myself out of
bed. The schedule of school is so ingrained in those of us who went
there, that even after decades the first day of school brings on the
chill of autumn, even when the temperatures are no less summery than
they were a week before. It so influences the schedule of society that
the streets were early-Sunday quiet this morning as I went for my walk
in the tourist area near where I live. As much as I prefer tourist areas
without the tourists, I stopped and marked a moment of sadness for all
those children who marched reluctantly back to the halls of forced
“education”.
Posted: 2005/09/06
4:53 PM
Unnatural Disaster – September 5, 2005
Like most people, I’ve been watching events around the U.S.
Gulf Coast unfold with horror. There is so much wrong with this picture,
which provides, to my mind, overwhelming evidence of poor political,
social and economic decisions – not just in the United States
but around the world.
A number of commentators (although not many in
the mainstream media, who mostly seem content to share the results of
the epidemic of photo ops that has broken out) have been making the
connection between our alteration of the natural world – and
increasing fossil fuel consumption – and the destruction wrought by
Hurricane Katrina. According to many scientists, the early results of
global warming may have exacerbated the destructive power of Katrina.
Unfortunately, watching the U.S. administration’s casual handling of the human and physical damage does
not reassure me that it understands that the world’s richest and most
powerful country needs to respect natural systems. If the escalating
human cost doesn’t convince the powers-that-be (and I do not intend to
even get started on a rant about the cavalier treatment of New Orleans’
poor and black
residents), perhaps the economic
toll will. Worldwatch
President Christopher Flavin has pointed out that indiscriminate
economic development and ecologically destructive policies have left
many communities more vulnerable to disasters than they realize.
“This,“ he says “together with rapid population growth in
vulnerable areas, has contributed to worldwide economic losses from
weather-related catastrophes totaling $567 billion over the last 10
years, exceeding the combined losses from 1950 through 1989. Losses in
2004 exceeded $100 billion for the second time ever, and a new record
will almost certainly be set this year once Katrina’s damages are
totaled.”
But it is hard to be optimistic. As author Ross
Gelbspan wrote in the New York Times last week, “Unfortunately, very
few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina [Global Warming] because the
coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the
public in doubt about the issue.” And, he points out, the reason is
simple. “To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut
its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the
survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.”
Maybe that’s why the mainstream media is so quiet on that score: they
rake in a lot of money from advertisers in that industry.
At any rate, something has to stop the
short-term thinking that has allowed the government to divert funding
from infrastructure repair and disaster preparedness to help finance the
Iraq War. The Americans aren’t alone in this; failure to protect
ecosystems contributed to the massive loss of life when the tsunamis
swept across the Indian Ocean last year and when Hurricane Mitch killed
10,000 people in Central America in 1998. When will we learn? And when will we begin to invest
meaningfully in alternative energy options that would both address the
climate change issue and leave us less reliant on fossil fuels? If not
now, when? Write your local politicians and ask that question. And keep writing.
Posted: 2005/09/05
9:50 PM
Growing Our Own Plants – September 1, 2005
This has been a busy week in a busy summer for me.
Today is the advertising and editorial deadline day for both Natural
Life and Life Learning magazines. The magazines are expanding in size
and market penetration, and the business is thus getting larger and more
complicated. Growth is good of course, but it is also challenging. It
also makes it trickier to maintain balance between work and personal
life, two things that have always been somewhat intertwined in my life
anyway. Most of my free time this summer has been occupied by the stroke
my mother had in the spring, and finding her suitable accommodation. Now
that I have her name on three waiting lists for nursing homes, the wait
has begun. Among many lessons I’ve learned from this experience has
been patience! Thanks to the many readers
who have communicated with me as a result of what I wrote earlier in this blog, and the article in the September/October issue of Natural Life
about finding progressive end-of-life housing solutions.
One of those readers also sent me a remarkable
quotation by John W. Gardner, former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education
and Welfare and founder of Common Cause, a nonprofit advocacy
organization founded in 1970 as a vehicle for citizens to make their
voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders
accountable to the public interest. Gardner said: “Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often
we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them
to grow their own plants.” As the public education system gears back
up for another year of giving children cut flowers, we would all –
life learners, public and private school supporters, and others – do
well to ponder Gardner’s words.
Posted: 2005/09/01
10:59 AM
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