Category: Philosophy

If we concede (as I’ve pointed out here before) that English classes in High Schools are not really about teaching the language of English, but rather about helping students understand the nature of both logical thought as well as the linear nature of communication, the the logical conclusion is that the literature we use in these classes is nothing more than fodder for our thought and communication experiments and practice. As such, it seems that we should not limit ourselves to the standard cannon of literature. The books that occupy places in that cannon are there as a result of their long term relevance to our culture. They have become, so to speak, cultural touchstones that provide a common experience across communities and generations. I’m not interested in discounting the power of those cultural touchstones, but I am interested in evaluation if the range of what we use for literature in our High School classrooms best prepares our students for their adult lives.

While I’m sure you can make a cogent argument about the relevancy of any book we use, I offer that while books were once the only instrument available for the transmission of ideas, they no longer enjoy such a monopoly. Widespread accessible means such as video, graphic, and photographic represents egalitarian means of communication in ways never before possible. It has become incumbent on us, as educators, to ensure that our students are completely literate as they graduate and enter the world.

The classical definition of “literate” is inadequate. The mere ability to both read and write, while extremely important, no longer comprise the only skills needed to be relevant. Media literacy has become a new standard, and one that educators have been woefully slow to embrace. Students must become familiar with video, graphic design, and music. They must understand managing a digital footprint and crafting a brand of themselves. They must know how to compartmentalize and privatize their information. They must understand how to communicate via both long form and short form digital means. Email etiquette. Skype conventions. Instagram behavior. While we’d like to think that our students already know these things, or that they’ll learn them organically, the reality is that they are being left woefully behind to fend for themselves. And not only is there no guidance for them, but they are making mistakes that persist well into their adult lives.

As I’ve said many, many times before: Schools need to be sharks. We die when we stop moving. We must reconsider our view on the integration of new forms of media if we want education to remain relevant.

 

I’m getting frustrated with some of the terms that educators throw around.

Expert.

Mastered.

Annual Yearly Progress.

I’m sure there are lots others, but it’s early, and listing all the terms that bother me isn’t the point of the post.

Why do we not understand that there is a practical limit to the advances students can make? That we cannot expect a 14 year old student to be able to improve without end. That next year’s 14 year olds cannot always be an improvement on the year before?

There are clear, measured, factual limits to the abilities of 14 year old students. Their brains are still developing. Their hormones are still awash at levels that seem obscene. They are 14. This isn’t a complaint about the age group- this is a complaint against the people who think that this year’s 14 year olds can always be higher-performing than last year’s. It just can’t happen. There’s an end-stop to that.

It’s the same as a business thinking that it can maintain 10% yearly growth indefinitely. You can’t. At some point, you saturate the market. You have no lands left to conquer. You approach the absolute limit of performance. This is also, by the way, one of my major criticism of Ray Kurzweil’s theory of exponential growth is computing power. That’s another post, though.

It’s not a sustainable model. Everything has a limit.

We judge schools and student based on the progress they make, with no regard to the limits of their capabilities. What happens with a student approaches the limits of their development? When they approach the limits of the device you’re measuring with? From the outside, it appears the student or school is failing to make progress, but the reality may be that there’s simply nowhere left to improve to.

I’m not saying we’ve reached this point, mind you. There are clearly improvements that can be made to the educational model we employ. But to continue on without even recognizing that these limits do exist sets us (and our students) up for failure.

 

We all know about the abundance of information no more than a mouse click away. And the revolution that brought that change has solved many of the problems with answering simple factual queries.
For mining more deeply into the mountain of facts, we have given ourselves over to the massive power of big data and search. First with yahoo, then with alta vista, and now with google. The powerful algorithms these companies employ has allowed us to find out needles in a haystack as often and as quickly as we’d like. But they are imperfect machines. Thrilled as I am about the vast power of google to find even the most distant and dark corner of the Internet, it is fundamentally missing the ability to use human cognition. As I’ve written about before, humans are both gifted and cursed with powerful pattern recognition abilities. It makes us prone to Apophenia, but it allows us to see and recognize connections between what might appear at first to be disparate and disconnected data.
It is because of this ability that I look to other humans when it comes to the deep and profound searching. Yes, when I need to know the population of Norway I get to google. But when I need to see the connection and meaning behind the prevalence of ADD as it relates to geographic location in the US and hr implications to the educational system, google isn’t going to help. Sir Ken Richards is.
I subscribe to a large number of people online- their blogs, tumblrs, twitter feeds and RSS. I follow them on Pinterest, Instagram, and Flickr. I curate this list often, and I focus on people who seem to represent nodal points. I don’t let this list get too big. I try to follow a one-in-one-out policy, but I’m not overly rigid in this. These people are not the re-tweeters or re-posters. This list is based on the finding of new and interesting ideas and connections. The people are the beginning of the line for new ideas. They find the new, interpret the new, and share the new. They function as my personal, crafted deep connection specific google.
I’m not sharing this list. I’m not sorry I’m not sharing this list. The act of making and curating your own list is vital to the list being important and relevant for you. My list, frankly, won’t do you much good. You’ll have to put in the hard work to both build and maintain your list. It’s a lot of work- and it will continue to be a lot of work. But the rich, detailed, and human wealth of information should make it worth your time.

I get asked on a regular basis what I’m reading and where I “find” things. On the internet, you know.

This is by no means a complete guide to every thing I check on a regular basis. Just a few things you might want to look at too. I should mention that none of these, practically speaking, are education specific. I try to avoid reading education blogs- the signal to noise is just too high for me. I count on good aggregation for help with that. More on that later.

So here goes:

BoingBoing is a group-run blog that deals with an intersection of cyberpunk/nerd/social justice. The company that runs it is called Happy Mutant. That should clue you in. Lots of posts here, lots of good topics, and I routinely find things here related to education. For me, anyway.

Patrick Rhone is a full-time freelance writer. He’s the king (as far as I’m concerned) of minimalism leading to productivity, and I’ve been following most (if not all) of his blogs closely for a few years now. Not an education based thing at all, but if like me you seem to have too many pots on the stove and not enough burners, Patrick often has ideas or techniques that can help. Strangely, an invaluable source of excellent iOS apps.

CoolTools is a subset of Kevin Kelly’s webpage. He doesn’t write for it per-se, but that it’s his creation and that he continues to be affiliated with it should give you a clue. An endless source of tool advice for those projects that (gasp!) aren’t digital.

Open Culture focuses on open sources of information. Sometimes that means courses, sometimes it’s videos released into the public domain, sometimes it’s other weirdness. Any way you cut it, it’s an endless flow of amazing resources that can (often) be adapted to the classroom.

I’m not going to give you everything I look at- a man should have some secrets. Also, I don’t have the time or energy to list all of the several hundred webpages I subscribe to. No, really. Several hundred and climbing almost daily.

Also: I’ve turned on comments again with a captcha plugin to ward off the spam. I just spent far too long deleting (and I’m not joking) 5000 spam comments from the last couple of days I left it open. We’ll see how it works this time.

There’s a great article in the Atlantic about Dave Eggers and his writing program at 826 Valencia. Totally worth a read- and then think about starting something similar yourself.

 

I don’t really end up feeling alive and vivid if I’m not learning something new.

It’s almost as if the act of me learning generates (though at a somewhat lower level…) the same sort of endorphin rush I used to get from some of the action sports I did.

There’s got to be a way to create that sensation in students.

 

I’m curious as to what parameters architects use when designing schools.

What, exactly, are they trying to accomplish with the spaces that they design? Is housing 1000 students in classroom space enough, or os there further thought about how the traffic should flow from one part of the building to another? To how the cafe sits in the building? To what a modern High School library actually gets used for?

I’d just like to see a list, if you’ve got one.

This is really just a quick question:

If you don’t care, why are you doing something in the first place?