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Welcome to these regular musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings by Wendy Priesnitz. Archives - September, 2005 Learning Doesn’t Have to be Hard – September
26, 2005 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. Automobile Irony - September 25, 2005 Did You Walk to Work Today? – September 22, 2005 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. Officialis Credentialitis – September 17, 2005 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. Learning in the Real World – September 17, 2005 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. Advocating For the Old and Young – September 14,
2005 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.
Building a New Model
– September 11, 2005
Learning Is Fun
– September
8, 2005
Back to School – September 6, 2005 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”.
Unnatural Disaster – September 5, 2005 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.
Growing Our Own Plants – September 1, 2005 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. Return
to current weblog copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2007 |
Topics & Passions: natural learning ~ What I'm Reading: Colors Passing
Through Us, poems by Marge Piercy (2004, Alfred A.
Knopf) ~ What
I'm Listening To: The Living Room Tour
by Carole King (Concord Music) ~
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