Educational Insights

“If we have in view a fixed end to which the child is to be adapted, the things in the child which relate to that end are the only things which we are capable of seeing.” ~John Dewey 1897

Its not about standardization, testing or measurements of learning, but rather the facilitation of experience that guides processes towards knowledge {individualized knowledge}…..education. Web 2.0 and progressive pedagogy are merely tools. The integration of tools define us as educators…. the seamless manipulation of tools that guides the learning process……teaching.  I define learning in this context as the reinforcement of experience to guide life..

“education is not a preparation for life but is life itself”.
~John Dewey 1901

How can life be evaluated without bias….nothing is the same… how can standardization provide validation for anything?

John Dewey believed that human beings are natural organisms who, in relation with their environment, have evolved and developed intelligence. Intelligence is not innately given; it is developed out of habit of inquiry, reflection, and problem solving or adapting to an environment; it is the result of attempting to overcome problematic, threatening, and unstable characteristics of experience. Human beings, in the face of precarious situations, work out conceptual frameworks and instruments or tools in order to make these situations more stable and reliable. Intelligence is the human instrument for adapting to, altering, and refining one’s transaction with the environment. Intelligence is for life and the enhancement of life; it is directed to improving the quality of experience. John Dewey believed this at the turn of the 20th century. I strongly believe that modern education must address the need for a pedagogical paradigm shift in the classroom. Students will find methods to satisfy their intellectual curiosity and this can either be appropriate or inappropriate, that is the essence of intellectual development in human beings.Build it and they will come”..putting a fence around experiential/ relevant learning models or acting as if they don’t exist will not stop students from creating individual learning experiences. The question we must ask ourselves is do we want them to play in the streets with no supervision or on the grass fields with umpires? The problem before us is not access but rather the training and development of administrators and educators. When educators and administrators begin to value process rather than product and knowledge rather than numbers then and only then can we begin to facilitate the learning experiences that encourage intellectual development. So I ask again… what is progressive?

I have never understood the reason for so much homework?? Being a student myself I hate being assigned homework for the sake of doing something outside of class. Why do teachers feel the urge to push so much homework on their students? The common responses are usually “its reinforcement”, “they need to memorize….”, or ” they need to learn to organize.” How much homework does one have in the “real” world? When most adults leave work they are free to experience and guide their learning in any way they see fit. Kids on the other hand are forced to sit in desks for 6 hours, fed information, rarely giving back what they know or want to learn, and then they are forced to sit in their rooms for 3 hours a night to complete assignments that reinforce the information forced upon earlier in the day. As a result kids are not learning but rather they are being trained. Learning requires exploration and unfortunately homework takes that away from so many of our students.

When I was a kid I learned how to think and process information by exploring the creek behind my house, those experiences taught me how to use my brain for myself. Did I learn the biological facts about creek ecology then? Of course not, but it was those experiences that planted the seed that my formal education would later water into knowledge. Would I have enjoyed science as much with out those experiences?? Probably not, sitting in a biology classroom reading those horrible science texts never did much to motivate me to want to learn more about the world, but finding a crawfish under a rock sure did. Modern education has so many tools to facilitate self-directed learning and thinking inside {Web 2.0} and outside {experiential learning} the classroom that I am perplexed by those teachers who insist on having students teach themselves to dislike science, math, history, English, etc..by doing handouts or working out of text/workbook? Education is slowly eroding away a student’s ability to “think” and enjoy learning for themselves. This has been going on for so long that even parents have come to equate academic success and learning with hours of homework in the bedroom that only lessens a students’ ability to think and problem solve.

Education is slowly lessening a student’s desire to learn more, its all about the “carrot” or grade, its not about acquiring knowledge. I also believe this is the reason modern students more than ever are exploring and fulfilling their desire to learn more about their world through experimentation with aspects of society that is frowned upon by the adult world and these other things usually are not in their best interest. So “why do we give so much homework?”

OK, its early May and the kids are spent. I feel as though my creativity is running low and they don’t want or care to do another project, debate or more internet research, much less listen to me lecture all class. It is during this point in the year I begin to ask myself “did my class really matter, did I do my job this year, was my instruction authentic?”.. I want my lessons to be relevant and meaningful.. after all that is what learning is all about, but did I actually achieve this or fall into the trap of going through the motions of “do this, hand in that”? I am tired, the kids are tired, summer is coming…. we all need it!

A student’s right to free speech has been hot topic of discussion between schools and the legal community.

Students do not, the Court tells us in Tinker vs. Des Moines, “shed their constitutional rights when they enter the schoolhouse door.” But it is also the case that school administrators have a far greater ability to restrict the speech of their students than the government has to restrict the speech of the general public.

Bethel and Hazelwood, on the other hand, were victories for school administrators over the First Amendment claims of students. In Bethel, the Court upheld the right of Washington state high school administrators to discipline a student for delivering a campaign speech at a school assembly that was loaded with sexual innuendo. In Hazelwood, the Court relied heavily on Bethel to uphold the right of school administrators to censor materials in a student-edited school paper that concerned sensitive subjects such as student pregnancy, or that could be considered an invasion of privacy.

Interesting method of limiting a student’s freedom of speech

An Administrator’s resource

The attached video is an overview of a case involving a student’s free speech rights. This case is currently being argued before the United States Supreme Court and their decision will have a lasting impact on a student’s freedom of expression in our public schools.

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Modern education is currently in a paradigm shift ….“series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions, and in those revolutions one conceptual world view is replaced by another”… as a result today’s educators must we rethink why and how we teach.

Questions to ponder:
“Why am teaching this?”
“Why do I want them to learn this?”
“Is this really important?”
“Am I teaching to the test or for knowledge acquisition?”
“Are they really learning?”

Educational Web 2.0 has allowed me to reach my students through an entirely different medium. In a nutshell it has allowed me to give them a “voice” or a say in their education, something I am learning they desperately crave. Below is a very popular video explaining in a creative way the Web 2.0 phase of education and how it will eventually change the landscape of human communication and learning.

Feel free to post a comment agreeing.. disagreeing.. ranting ..advocating…
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I hope this posting will generate conversations on the topic of materialism and “does choice equate freedom?”. I personally believe that capitalism and the drive to acquire “stuff’ not only deteriorates the fabric of the American community but drives most towards unrealistic goals of self efficacy. For this reason our schools, children and families are being torn apart with everyone blaming everyone else. The root cause for most people’s dissatisfaction with life is the need for more, more, more, more…. in this quest the priorities of nurturing the human spirit are inadvertently left behind. I believe we are living through a major paradigm shift in what is “really important”.

I have included a lecture by Barry Schwartz, a sociology professor at Swarthmore College and the author of The Paradox of choice , and his discussion of “freedom” and what this really means to the people of modern industrial cultures.

When is enough a enough?