Education Coup

A Long Overdue Post

2009-10-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

I had hoped to keep a journal of sorts of my experiences as a teacher at a Charlotte Mason school. However, my experiences at that school have thus far prevented me from beginning that journal. To say that I am busy has been an understatement. This has been hard work, but the reason it has been so hard is because I am only now being exposed to so much of the rich curriculum. I had never read Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which is a fantastically rich book, filled with humor, adventure, and wonderful ideas.

Days fly by. There is no "down time." Everything that is done is worthwhile, so much so that there sometimes seems like there aren't enough minutes in a day. Fellow teachers will know what I'm talking about when I say that the "transitionary periods" can normally eat up all kinds of time in a classroom. Those periods barely exist at this school. They can't. We need every minute of every day. So, while in my previous teaching jobs, the process of getting out textbooks could take 5-7 minutes between students who don't pay attention, the slowness of movement, stopping the chatting between classmates across desks, and answering the same question 9 or 10 times, our transitions cannot take that long. We don't do "busywork", another staple of most teaching experiences. No worksheets. No videos. No "research" projects where kids sit at computers and "sort of" look up information about topics. Every minute is valuable, and is treated that way.

More later.

Antagonism

2009-03-11T20:13:00.000-07:00

We trouble ourselves about the uses of the young person to society. As for his own use, what he should be in and for himself, why, what matter? Because, say we, if we fit him to earn his living we fit him also to be of service to the world and what better can we do for him personally? We forget that it is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live, -- whether it be spoken in the way of some truth of religion, poem, picture, scientific discovery, or literary expression; by these things men live and in all such is the life of the spirit. The spiritual life requires the food of ideas for its daily bread. -- Charlotte Mason

For years as a classroom teacher, I could not understand why there seemed to be so much antagonism, suspicion, and undeserved animosity in a classroom. When students walk in on day one, without the teacher ever speaking a word, you can feel the anxiety and tension. "I am not going to like this... I am not going to like you." With many teachers, the feeling is mutual. "You are all here to make my job hard. I'll teach you to try to derail my career." There is suspicion. Trust left town so long ago that it no longer carries any citizenship in Educationland. I could not understand why this was. "What have I ever done to you? For that matter, what has Abraham Lincoln ever done to you?"

I have found a few answers, which I intend to talk about in the next couple of posts. The first relates to the quote above.

Ask most any student, teacher, parent, administrator, public official, etc., what the purpose of education is, they will give you a chain of thoughts that culminates in a singular, uninspired answer: "We need to prepare them for the workforce." Before they've even walked in the door of their preschool class, we've reduced them to a monetary unit. They ARE their bank account. We are so fixated on what they are going to do (read, "How they're going to make money") that we've forgotten to address who they are.

Students have recognized this, and they've been quietly rebelling against it for the past half-century.

Who are they? They are spiritual beings. Read into that what you want, but what I mean is that there is an intangible element to their being. This is undeniable. Their brain (a material element) gives rise to a mind (an immaterial element). There is no dissecting a thought. This element must be nurtured every bit as much as their physical body must be nurtured. In focusing so much on the one, we have starved the other.

They are spiritual beings with a desire to know and to be known. They are unique beings (though many might debate this), who are deserving of certain treatment. They are deserving of the freedom that only comes from an inspired mind!

Plutarch once said that the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be set ablaze. Most minds are capable of inspiration, and once inspired, they inevitably seek freedom. What we seek to give them is a career. What we have told them is that freedom is not important. In fact, it's dangerous, and that they'd better settle for the safety of a cubicle, a boss, and a paycheck.

I am not saying that a job or a career is evil (I have one myself). What I am saying is that I firmly believe that we do a disservice to our students when we focus solely on their livelihood and not on the development of their personhood through the transmission of, and inspiration by, great ideas. Who wouldn't rebel against such treatment? We are not surprised at all, in fact we cheer, when we read stories of people who demand to be treated as human beings after being treated as less than human. Why are we surprised when they come into class and just want to get it over with? Why are we surprised when they can't wait to get out? Why are we surprised that almost half of students that drop out say they do so because their classes were pointless and irrelevant, even though they know they are throwing their economic future away?

Would we stand to be treated like this? Why are we surpised when they don't?

Money Is Not the Issue, Part 2

2009-02-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

It is starting to cause me physical pain to see people bickering about education funding. It has come up again because President Obama wants a lot of the money in the stimulus package dedicated to public schools.

Spend more money. Spend all the money you want. Public schools, charter schools, vouchers... spend spend spend. Forget the fact that we, as a nation, already spend more per pupil than every other country in the world on education save one (I think it's Norway) and dump dollars into the system. It won't help. The other side will continue to howl that parents don't value education enough, but that ignores the fact that there are plenty of things within the system that we do control and can change to make it work better.

Our school system is set on a destructive foundation that dehumanizes all involved, and until it changes, all the money in the world won't help. Until students are treated as something more than products turned out on an assembly line, they will continue to fail. Until we treat their minds as something more than receptacles for facts that the teachers insert, they will fail. Until teachers are no longer burdened with the responsibility of forcing or coercing students to learn, turning them into entertainers, babysitters, or tyrants, they will continue to fail. Throw all the money you want at the problem, but our educational house is built on sand. Until we restore healthy and proper relationships to a central place in our system, students will continue to learn to hate learning, equating it with the dehumanizing practices of the current system. Teachers will continue to burn out and turn over. We will continue to lag behind the rest of the world in test scores, as if that were what this were about. Until the governing philosophy is changed, we will fail entire generations of children.

More Signs of a Screwed Up System

2009-02-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

I sat in a meeting the other day. We were deciding to allow a student to be on a home-based program for health reasons. I know that the area coordinator from the TPS Education Service Center, if she noticed me at all, might have thought I was angry. If I were, it wasn't at her personally.

They decided that the student could "keep up" by completing a computer-based curriculum that, I am sure, is filled with a lot of context-free facts (if it's anything like the computer-based curriculum that we use here). Multiple-choice fun! It's great for training someone to play "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." It's not so great if you want someone to get an education. But it serves as a suitable hoop for our students to jump through, so our school district is content with it.

Then came the kicker for me. If the student has questions or problems understanding what they are "learning," they are to contact strangers at the ECS, not our teachers here, who the student already knows.

This student needs to be at home. They need to get better. But our conventions and our laws say the student has to be in school. Obviously, we have such a low view of learning that we don't think anyone is capable of doing it unless they are either in a school or being overseen by a school. But the real insanity of this is that the two primary ingredients for learning to take place, those being good ideas and healthy relationships, are not just absent, but REMOVED from the process! "Here, kid... go sit in front of a computer and play a multiple choice version of Trivial Pursuit. If you have problems, ask this total stranger who probably cares less about this subject than you do, and see what you can learn from them."

You should have seen the way I was ignored when I voiced my single objection during the meeting: This is far from how this should be. The road we are on has brought people to do things that simply don't make sense anymore.

"Teaching Children to Think"

2009-01-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body; there are no organs for the assimilation of the one more than of the other.
--Charlotte Mason

It has become so standard that we don't think about its veracity or its significance on the way we teach. We talk about "teaching children to think"... and we mean that we want them to be creative in their thought processes, to be problem solvers, and to be able to break an idea down into its component parts. To aid them in acquiring this skill, we set up programs and curricula designed to show them how this is done, engage them in "thought exercises," allow them to brainstorm creatively, then we find ways of grading this process (because, without this, we might be accused of not teaching anything).

What it assumes is that children do not already know how to think. We assume this because of what we see in the classroom, which is that students seemingly do everything they can to avoid thinking (of course, what this means is that they avoid thinking about the things we want them to think about, or that they avoid thinking in the way we want them to think). There is, admittedly, an air of apathy and general boredom, which is not to be confused with laziness. So, naturally, we adopt the idea that it is due to a deficiency within the student that must be added, and that it must be added by a method in the classroom.

Of course, there is no actual evidence to back this up. In fact, simple observation tells us something quite different, and that is that children are critical and creative thinkers from the time they are born. They discern everything about the life around them from how to fit puzzle pieces together to the motivations of an adult who is talking to them. It is the natural function of the mind to analyze in very creative ways, and saying that we must teach children to think is much like saying we must teach bird to fly. A bird is only in need of such instruction if it is in a remedial sense. If its wings are clipped, it may never develop the ability in the first place. It is beginning to be undeniable that, while there may be exceptional spots and pockets of teachers who do otherwise, our system of education is, on the whole, more in the business of clipping wings than in allowing students to take flight.

Mason was quoted as saying that the only place where it seemed that ideas were excluded was in the school system (and, though she wrote a century ago in Britain, she recognized the fledgling system of education that would take hold both there and in this country). Instead, we feed them disassociated facts, looking for "correct answers" rather than honest thought or understanding. Simply look at the current focus on the role of standardized tests. Our system is founded on the notion that the child is a sack whose mind must be filled with nuggets of knowledge. The reality, which we miss every day despite the evidence that is right in front of us, is that students are not sacks, but people, whose minds must be inspired by great ideas. Facts simply aren't inspiring. Ideas will never stop inspiring. Until we get this, we will continue to scratch our heads over a rising drop-out rate as minds become more and more disillusioned and dissatisfied with a system that treats them as little more than machines.

I was a fool to ever believe that I can teach children how to think. Our students' apparent resistance and apathy are their form of protest against this mistreatment. Stop clipping their wings, and then attempting to teach them to fly "in theory."

2008-12-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

"I've been a soldier and a slave. I've seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I've held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no brave last words, only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning 'Why?' I don't think they were wondering why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams... this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all... to see life as it is and not as it should be." -- Miguel de Cervantes, Man of La Mancha

Education is an Atmosphere

2008-12-03T20:59:00.001-08:00

With due respect for the personality of the child as a person, with all the potentiality and dignity of a full person, it is not only destructive but immoral to use fear or love (or its withholding) as a motivator, or to play upon any one natural desire of the child. With that in mind, we are left with three tools: "the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas."

This post specifically deals with the first.

It is not an environment that these want, a set of artificial relations carefully constructed, but an atmosphere which nobody has been at pains to constitute. It is there, about the child, his natural element, precisely as the atmosphere of the earth is about us.

Children learn from their surroundings. They learn from the affection of their parents, not just for the child but for each other. They learn from the rough-and-tumble play of their brothers and sisters. They learn from their pets and their garden. They learn from their friends. They don't need these to be padded, sweetened, watered-down, or half-digested for them.

We certainly may use atmosphere as an instrument of education, but there are prohibitions, for ourselves rather than for children. Perhaps the chief of these is, that no artificial element be introduced, no sprinkling of rose water, softening with cushions. Children must face life as it is; if their parents are anxious and perturbed, children feel it in the air.

This is not a condemnation to parents who feel anxiety. It's an admonition not to feel like everything has to be kept from the children, because, in reality, you're keeping less from them than you realize.

And what of school?

School, perhaps, offers fewer opportunities for vitiating the atmosphere than does home life. But teaching may be so watered down and sweetened, teachers may be so suave and condescending, as to bring about a condition of intellectual feebleness and moral softness which it is not easy for a child to overcome.

And if there is anything that can be readily perceived in most of today's schools, it's intellectual feebleness and moral softness. It is an epidemic, and exists in public and private schools alike. What most people have pegged as apathy or a disconnectedness with reality is, in reality, these two previously mentioned conditions. Whether our inability to acknowledge them as such is due to ignorance or convenience (or our own possession of these traits) is yet to be decided.

So what is the answer?

The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every school; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.

How is information treated at your school? On a "need to know" basis? Do we feel the need to filter reality for our students, out of fear that they might come to a conclusion we don't like? We may want to consider the idea that, in doing so, not only are we showing an immense amount of disrespect for the child's personality, but we may be intellectually and morally hobbling them without realizing it.

Ouch!

2008-11-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

"If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?"

John Taylor Gatto @ http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm

Other Blogs I've Read

2008-11-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

I've been checking out other education blogs lately. One of them is called Eduwonk. One of its recent guest bloggers was none other than the current Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings. I was not surprised by her article. I heard her speak in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives last year, and came away with one thing very clear: She believes very much in the current "assembly line" system of education, and that No Child Left Behind will eventually live up to its name.

Yet, I couldn't help thinking that we've taken something that, at its core, is really very simple (though not, by any means, easy), and made it very complicated. So complicated that, now, we are turning to state of the art technology to save us or, as other bloggers are starting to suggest (like here and here), that we simply give in and simply pay cash directly to children to sit down and listen to us.

Every child is born wanting to know. And every child is born with a sense of amazement at the world around them. The real question that we have to ask ourselves is, "Why are sixteen year olds not more amazed by the world around them than six year olds, and is it something we're doing to them that is killing that wild-eyed-wonder?"

Tools of Teaching, Part 1

2008-11-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

Method must follow philosophy, otherwise what you are trying to do resembles an unskilled game of darts... taking some aim, but still throwing somewhat wildly at the board.

When we start with the idea that children are persons, born with all the potentiality of adults, due the dignity of adults, and who must be afforded certain freedoms, this gives us only certain tools to work with when we teach, and excludes others that would infringe upon the child's dignity and potentiality.

Mason hits on those tools that are proper to use, which I'll discuss in a later post. It is interesting, though, how she saw such similar problems almost a century ago that we still see in the 21st century classroom. Why? Because we still haven't learned the lesson of what results from using the improper tools to teach.

Perhaps in no part of our educational service do we make more serious blunders than in our use of those desires which act as do the appetites for the body's service. Every child wants to be approved, even baby in his new red shoes; to be first in what is going on; to get what is going; to be admired; to lead and manage the rest; to have the companionship of children and grown people; and last, but not least, every child wants to know. There they are, those desires, ready to act on occasion and our business is to make due use of this natural provision for the work of education. We do make use of the desires, not wisely, but too well. We run our schools upon emulation, the desire of every child to be first; and not the ablest, but the most pushing, comes to the front. We quicken emulation by the common desire to get and to have, that is, by the impulse of avarice. So we offer prizes, exhibitions, scholarships, every incentive that can be proposed. We cause him to work for our approbation, we play upon his vanity, and the boy does more than he can.

So what's the harm in this? The children respond positively enough, right? To paraphrase, we know what happens when an athlete works one set of muscles to the exclusion of others. What happens when a child has their ambition played upon in an undue manner? But she goes on:

But there is a worse evil. We all want knowledge just as much as we want bread. We know it is possible to cure the latter appetite by giving more stimulating food; and the worst of using other spurs to learning is that a natural love of knowledge which should carry us through eager school-days, and give a spice of adventure to the duller days of mature life, is effectually choked; and boys and girls "Cram to pass but not to know; they do pass but they do not know." The divine curiosity which should have been an equipment for life hardly survives early schooldays.

Why is it that we wonder that students want grades instead of understanding? Or have we accepted this as so commonplace that we have stopped even asking this question? What percentage of students does the above excerpt describe? "They cram to pass, but not to know. They do pass but they do not know." 90%? 95%? They do not work for knowledge in school because they have been taught that the simple desire for knowledge will not yield anything without getting the grade, pushing ahead, grabbing status.

So if we do not reward good performance, put high achievers on pedestals, and encourage competitive achievement, what are we left with? Will students really learn without dangling carrots or threatening sticks?

To be continued...

Traditions, Ceremony, Symbols, yadda yadda yadda

2008-11-03T19:37:00.000-08:00

There's a good post on the Edspresso Blog about how it seems that we simply don't pay attention to propriety and decorum anymore, and the sacredness of some of our principles are paying the price. The implication is one that I agree with. It's not that people just don't care, period. They don't care because they don't know. Our educational system is partly to blame for this. We've done a lousy job of educating our students in the facts because we fail to give them something to care about.

I love this quote by Charlotte Mason.

"The question is not—how much does the youth know when he has finished his education—but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?" (School Education, pp. 170-171)

Meanwhile, the Tulsa World is slapping TPS on the back for a rather hollow victory: their schools have had a dramatic upturn in their test scores. It's disheartening, but not surprising. We all too often confuse process with product. We think that, simply because a student is able to jump through the hoops set before them by the educational system, that they must be educated. Unfortunately, we don't have the tools to be able to give us a much more accurate picture of where we stand with regard to educational success. Until we have standardized tests that can measure general student apathy on the one hand or, on the other, enthusiasm for truly understanding content, we will continue to graduate students who have no need for knowledge save what it adds to their paycheck.

Late Night Inspiration

2008-10-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

I'm having a little trouble coming down off of the Halloween candy rush, so why not make an update?

What is it that kills the thirst for knowledge. In her book A Philosophy of Education, Ms. Mason points to a couple of culprits.

"I can touch here on no more than two potent means of creating incuria in a class. One is the talky-talky of the teacher. We all know how we are bored by the person in private life who explains and expounds. What reason have we to suppose that children are not equally bored? They try to tell us that they are by wandering eyes, inanimate features, fidgetting hands and feet, by every means at their disposal; and the kindly souls among us think that they want to play or to be out of doors. But they have no use for play except at proper intervals. What they want is knowledge conveyed in a literary form and the talk of the facile teacher leaves them cold. (Emphasis Added)

Another soothing potion is little suspected of producing mental lethargy. We pride ourselves upon going over and over the same ground 'until the children know it'; the monotony is deadly. A child writes, - 'Before we had these (books) we had to read the same old lot again and again.' Is it not true? In the home schoolroom books used by the grandmother are fit for the grandchildren, books used in boys' schools may be picked up at second-hand stalls with the obliterated names of half-a-dozen successive owners.

They cannot go over the same ground repeatedly without deadening, even paralysing results, for progress, continual progress is the law of intellectual life."

Rather than run the risk of proving Mason right, I shall refrain from exposition and allow the text to speak to you.

The Money Argument

2008-10-29T20:26:00.000-07:00

It seems that the state of Oklahoma is bickering with itself again about education funding. Yes, when it comes to what is spent regionally, we spend much less. We pay our teachers less than 47 other states.

However, a fool thinks to himself that he needs more money to repair cracks in his walls, patch his roof, and repaint his rooms when his house is on a foundation of sand. Money will not help this man unless he is first willing to raze his house and put it on a solid foundation.

Money will not restore the curiosity of our middle and high school aged children. Money will not replace their apathy with caring. And, at this point, money will not feed their minds.

A child is a person. They deserve a system that treats them as such.

Children do not need to be manipulated or "added to." They need to be strengthened and inspired. It doesn't require huge administrative buildings or cutting edge technology to do that.

The only food for the mind is an idea. Ideas do not cost me a red cent, and the books that contain the greatest ideas humankind has recorded are not expensive.

Until we realize this, we will continue throwing money down a hole that has put our nation's educational system behind many poorer countries, despite the fact that we spend more than any other nation in the world on education, save two.

For the Teachers

2008-10-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

"In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily. The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding." -- Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

Do we as teachers know any differently? How many teachers DON'T know what it feels like to have to push, pull, bite and claw to get a student to take their studies seriously? How many teachers have the love of teaching pummelled out of them by nothing more than the relentless, day-in-and-day-out message that is sent both verbally and non-verbally from the students that nothing on earth could be less interesting or important than what the teacher is attempting to impart to them? Could we have made a bigger mistake in this country's attempt to educate our youth than to lay the entire burden of education at the feet of the teachers, instead of the place where the burden actually exists: solidly on the student? Such a mentality was more understandable in an age when books were rare and college-educated teachers were even more sparse, although it was arguably still misguided. Today, there is absolutely no excuse for it. But anyone who would blame the students for their abysmal lack of initiative in claiming their intellectual birthright is missing two thirds of the picture. For that, you must look to the parents, who are usually far more concerned about grades than understanding (if they are concerned at all, that is), and to a school system that insists on intellectually starving students while figuratively beating them into a very literal behavioral submission.

What do we want?

2008-09-14T18:57:00.000-07:00

"But the people themselves begin to understand and to clamor for an education which shall qualify their children for life rather than for earning a living. As a matter of fact, it is the man who has read and thought on many subjects who is, with the necessary training, the most capable whether in handling tools, drawing plans, or keeping books. The more of a person we succeed in making a child, the better will he both fulfill his own life and serve society." -- Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

Sometimes I wonder, "Is this really what we want?" Do we really want an education that will allow our children to fulfill their potential as people. Or are we content to have them be well equipped to earn a paycheck?

We hear a lot about education reform, especially at this time in our four-year cycle. But every time I hear it spoken of, it is still in the context of getting kids ready to have a job, or worse, to prepare them to compete with kids from other nations. The funny thing is that if we would stop being so fixated on preparing them for a career and actually prepare them to be good people, then we'd essentially take care of both! But in our attempt to pursue what is secondary rather than what is primary, we end up obtaining neither.

Moral Instruction

2008-07-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

In Christian schools, they call it moral instruction. In public schools, it's called "Character education." Either way, it seems that the prevailing notion is that our schools aren't simply there to instruct in "core subjects" anymore, but to instruct our students on how to be good people. It's amazing to me how narrow, paltry, and ineffective this education is, though. In the public schools, it amounts to putting banners up preaching the virtues of "Responsibility" or "Punctuality," with perhaps some amount of addressing the subject in a homeroom class or as a subject of a theme in English class. In Christian schools, the moral instruction focuses on politics and sexual behavior, and is usually so laden with guilt and condemnation that either turns the students against the moral tradition they are being taught, or makes the student so proud of their moral behavior that they become arrogant judges of everyone else's moral fitness.

What's funny is that these two sides would look at Charlotte Mason's approach and say she does nothing, simply because she demands no programmatic, direct moral teaching. Instead, she believes that the development of the intellect will most effectively bring about moral development. As Mason states in her book, Ourselves, "Direct moral teaching cannot supply the place of wide and intelligent culture." The reason for this is that it removes morality from any understanding of why it exists, which must come from an understanding of people and human nature. That only comes from a foundational knowledge of what people are like, and while a child can certainly gain this from first-hand experience, why limit them to what they experience only by chance when there is a vast store of accumulated knowledge about people that we have built up from our past. As Essex Chalmondley puts it, "They must gain the insight into human behavior and human nature which can come through much reading in literature, history, biography, Scripture."

Current moral instruction is also so direct that it often feels like an instructional jackhammer to the student. The end result is often that morality becomes something that is parroted, and mimicked morality is prone to blow with the prevailing wind. Morality that is arrived at on one's own is much more desireable, but people don't know what this means. They think it means you never instruct, and simply allow the child to develop on their own. They forget that, in the old saying about the horse, leading the horse to water is an act of humanity. Beating him until he complies is tyranny.

The answer to this is two-fold: 1) we put before the student a healthy dose of truth, beauty, and virtue in the form of those great ideas put down in writing by authors of great literature, history, and religion. We allow their mind to feed on these great ideas. And 2) we set good examples for them, and behave in the way we would want them to behave. We can spoon feed all the "correct" opinions to our students, especially with regards to religion and politics, and have them echo all the thoughts that bring peace to our hearts. But if we do so while living duplicitous, spineless, conniving, malicious lives, our students will end up twice the sons of hell that we are.

We are too apt to offer ready-made opinions to young people to pass on what we think, or what we believe we think; and this answers its purpose if we consider only the ease and convenience of acting on habitual lines of thought.

An opinion worth having must be the outcome of our thought and knowledge of the subject, it must be our own opinion, and not caught up as a parrot catches up its phrases.

But let us see to it that they (our children) have not only opinions in the one scale but principles to counter-balance these in the other.... No one is without principles, those settled rules of action by which a person chooses to guide his life. Those guiding lights, our principles of conduct, each of us must accumulate, like his opinions, for himself; that is, we must each choose which we will have, but we are infinitely helped or hindered by the examples and by the motives which are set before us....

--Charlotte Mason

Education is a Life, part 2

2008-06-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation, and as such, I have put aside what I was reading and have picked up a fantastic bit of fiction, which I don't normally do. I have been reading T.H. White's The Once and Future King. As I was reading about Merlyn teaching the young Arthur, or the Wart as he is referred to in the first part of the book, I came upon this nugget.

Merlyn is about to give the Wart his first real lesson. The boy is dreading the work of "lessons, and he off-handedly states that he wishes he were fish as they pass the moat. Merlyn asks him what kind of fish. When the boy responds that he'd prefer to be a perch, Merlyn turns him into one.

"'Oh, Merlyn,' he cried, 'please come too.'

'For this once,' said a large and solemn tench beside his ear. 'I will come. But in future, you will have to go by yourself. Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.'"

Do with that as you will.

Immeasurable Need

2008-05-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend and fellow teacher today. We were noting the process of inanition, or lack of intellectual life or vigor, that it seems that most of our young seem to be experiencing. This can be seen by the abysmal lack of curiostiy, the absence of understanding, and almost complete lack of connection between a student and the content they study. I see the latter all the time as a history teacher. The lives of the past that we study are only so many words on a page, rather than actual people's lives.

As a new teacher, I took note that it seemed that the light of intellectual life went out in the eyes of many students between the 6th and 8th grades. My friend, who teaches sixth grade, noted that it seemed that it is happening earlier. We both noted that the process must start much sooner. Minds do not starve to death overnight.

We also both noted that things do not show much chance of improvement. Our current course has us only spending time on that which can be quantified and measured, which means we are becoming more and more fixated on what information our kids can regurgitate to us.

This is only part of the gradual slide toward an eventual disconnect between our stated goals and how we achieve them. We say we want to educate, but this is problematic when one realizes that true education only comes when the mind is fed, and that the only food for the mind is ideas. But how does one quantify the inspiration a child receives when they digest a great idea?

We run into another problem when we understand that education is the science of relations. A teacher must be capable of modelling respect for the student. The ability to relate to a student is, perhaps, more important than knowledge of the subject matter. A good teacher is able to relate to the student as a person, not as a product. Yet how is this ability to relate, or its benefits, measured?

Yet the obsession with standardized tests, "accountability," and measurability all start at a younger and younger age. Kindergarten is now what first grade was when I was a child. Yet our children are still starving. And they will continue to starve as long as we keep them on a daily diet of information, which is to the mind what sawdust is for the stomach.

Then we will wring our hands and write books called Why Johnny Can't Think.

We must start our children on a liberal dose and variety of good ideas as soon as possible.

The Science of Relations

2008-05-15T18:24:00.001-07:00

In our assembly-line mentality about education, the centrality of relationships is lost. We underestimate (in fact, we hardly acknowledge) the necessity of right relationship in education anymore. In the next few posts, I'm going to be discussing three core issues around the role of relationships in education: the relationships between 1) student and teacher, 2) student and student, and 3) student and content.

It pains me to see how "discipline" (if that's what it can be called) is handled in our school system. It is a rule-based system that attempts to delineate exactly which behaviors are "inappropriate" and what punishment those behaviors will warrant. Lost by the wayside is the goal of what we ultimately want to see in our children, which is not the ability to follow rules, but the ability to have empathy for those around them and, perhaps, to think of others before they think of themselves.

This rule-based discipline will never be able to teach these things, because it fails to address that right behavior is based not on a cosmic set of rules, or even a societally-agreed-upon set of rules, but it is based on whether it strengthens or weakens relationships.

When Christ is asked about the greatest commandment, what does he respond with? Relationship. Why is this so hard for us to understand?

A student belligerently disregards the instructions of the teacher. The teacher sends him to the principal. The principal then applies the appropriate discipline, given by the code of conduct, to the student. The student takes what's coming to him and returns to the class, filled with bitterness and anger at the teacher who exerted their authority. If he argues, we usually hurt the situation even more by, of all things, appealing to the child's self-interest! "You will need to learn how to follow instructions when you're in college." "You'll need to know how to submit to authority when you have a boss in a real job." This situation is replayed countless times a week in schools all over the place. Yet the thing that is not addressed in the child is that which is most vital! The child has broken relationship with the teacher. If there is not trust and good faith between a teacher and student, the whole environment is poisoned, impacting all of the students' ability to learn, the teacher's ability to teach, and the emotional health of all involved. Until that relationship has been righted through sincere contrition and an expression of good will, then the student will not learn like they should, the teacher will care less, and the student certainly doesn't learn that their relationships with other people are by far the most important thing they can possess; far more valuable than a diploma, or a career, or money.

This is from Charlotte Mason's biography by Essex Cholmondley, written from the perspective of one of Mason's students:

"Once, and once only in my student days, was she confronted with one of those examples of youth's foolish rebellion which were commonplaces of school life in those days - her method of dealing with the situation gave me a marvellous insight into what she meant by discipline - nothing was 'done to' the offenders - we were all simply left to talk over the situation and find a solution; the offenders having time 'to come to themselves' bitterly repented, and found, I think greatly to their surprise, that public opinion had been entirely against them."

Education is a Life

2008-05-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

"We absolutely must disabuse our minds of the theory that the functions of education are, in the main, gymnastic. In the early years of the child's life it makes, perhaps, little apparent difference whether his parents start with the notion that to educate is to fill a receptacle, inscribe a tablet, mould plastic matter or nourish a life; but in the end we shall find that only those ideas which have fed his life are taken into the being of the child; all else is thrown away, or worse, is an impediment and an injury to the vital processes."

-Charlotte Mason, "The Draft Proof"

Informational Meeting

2008-05-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

An informational meeting about Ambleside schools will be held on Monday, May 19th, at Brookside library, located at 1207 E. 45th Place, just off of Peoria, at 6:30 pm. I will be there to talk about my trip to Fredericksburg's Ambleside school and the basic philosophy of a Charlotte Mason school, as well as to answer any questions anyone may have regarding these schools. This meeting should only last for about an hour and a half. Anyone interested in coming should contact me by messaging me on Facebook, or you can email me at dimestorephilosopher@gmail.com.

Knowledge for its own sake: Part 2

2008-05-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

"It seems to me that education which appeals to the desire for wealth (marks, prizes, scholarships or the like), or to the desire of excelling (as in the taking of places, etc.), or to any other of the natural desires, except that for knowledge, destroys the balance of character, and, what is even more fatal, destroys by inanition that desire for and delight in knowledge which is meant for our joy and enrichment through the whole of life."

--Charlotte Mason, "Books and Things"

From the book Home and School Education

Healthy Feet, Starving Minds

2008-04-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

The Tulsa World reports today that all 300 students at Eugene Field Elementary got a free pair of athletic shoes, courtesy of Wal-Mart and other donors.

I don't want to minimize the generosity of these people, nor the importance of quality footwear. I do hope, though, that the tragedy is not lost on anyone that, while a gesture of this nature is nice, people seem stumped as to how to prevent the almost inevitable intellectual inanition these bright, young children will experience as they grow in an educational system hell bent on depriving them of the only thing a human mind can feed on: good ideas.

"The human [brain] is like a millstone, turning ever round and round,

If it have nothing else to grind, it must itself be ground."

Knowledge for its own sake

2008-04-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

"We are hardly aware how children lap up lessons of life like a thirsty dog at a water trough, because they know without being told that their chief business is to learn how to think and how to live; comment and explanation are usually distracting. By the way, I think there is one point about which we elders must be careful; it is easy to make children intolerable little prigs by giving a personal bearing to their work. It is bad enough to overhear a mother say: 'All the mothers care about in a school is that they shall be well looked after; it's the fathers who want some sort of education for the boys so that they can go into business; but I've told these boys that if they want a motor-car they'll have to work!' We see the materialism of such a view and are properly shocked; but a child is in a far worse case who suspects that to read Alcibiades, King Alfred, Sir Galahad, should be to his advantage. The first thing that this school is designed to teach is a love of knowledge for its own sake, and this I think the children get; they learn that last accomplishment of noble minds, to delight in books for themselves; but any hint that a poem or a personage is administered to a child by way of a pill or a poultice, to do him good, is fatal to the slow, still operation of knowledge upon his personality."

From "The Parents' Union School" 1912

Why I am taken with Charlotte Mason: Part 1

2008-04-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, my wife began doing research for the task of homeschooling our children. Her research brought her to the works of a woman named Charlotte Mason, a British educator and philosopher at the turn of the 20th Century. She seemed to like Mason's approach from the start, but the more she read, the more she was struck by how similar her ideas were to some things I had been saying, even commenting at one point that, "It seems like everything this woman wrote has come out of your mouth at some point."

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending an internship hosted by Ambleside International at one of their schools in Fredericksburg, TX. What I saw was amazing, and I hope write about many aspects of that here in the coming weeks. But one has to start somewhere, so I will choose a place and start.

Can you imagine a school where students try their hardest because they enjoy what they are doing? Now strike from your mind that they are being entertained via technology or circus antics, and keep trying to imagine it.

Can you imagine a place where students work in peace, confident in the respect they have for each other? Or where the animosity that so notoriously exists between teacher and student is foreign?

Can you imagine a school that has no need for either carrots nor sticks as incentives? The reward is the knowledge gained and the relationships developed. Can you imagine a school without grades?

I can. I'll write more about it later.

Time Says Education Needs to Enter the 21st Century

2006-12-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

Time Magazine has a cover article this week about "big public conversation the nation is not having about education." The one that says that more rigorous test scores and a "back to basics" mentality isn't going to cut it anymore because the skills our current system was designed to teach are becoming obsolete.

Here are some of the highlights of the article. Any added emphasis is mine.

Jobs in the new economy--the ones that won't get outsourced or automated--"put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos," says Marc Tucker, an author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Traditionally that's been an American strength, but schools have become less daring in the back-to-basics climate of NCLB. Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that's where most new breakthroughs are made. It's interdisciplinary combinations--design and technology, mathematics and art--"that produce YouTube and Google," says Thomas Friedman, the best-selling author of The World Is Flat.

And this:

In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what's coming at them and distinguish between what's reliable and what isn't. "It's important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it," says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.

Last year, in response to demand from colleges, the Educational Testing Service unveiled a new, computer-based exam designed to measure information-and-communication-technology literacy. A pilot study of the test with 6,200 high school seniors and college freshmen found that only half could correctly judge the objectivity of a website. "Kids tend to go to Google and cut and paste a research report together," says Terry Egan, who led the team that developed the new test. "We kind of assumed this generation was so comfortable with technology that they know how to use it for research and deeper thinking," says Egan. "But if they're not taught these skills, they don't necessarily pick them up."

There are also some great stories of how schools around the country are experimenting more and more, attempting to dream up new ways of educating children instead of continuing to simply school them, remodeling the system instead of tightening the bolts on a dilapidated machine.

Check out the article and leave a comment.

Quote of the Week

2006-12-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

If you want to build a boat, do not drum up people to collect wood
or assign them tasks or work, but rather teach them to long
for the endless immensity of the sea.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Grades

2006-11-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Interesting article by Alfie Kohn about grades. Rarely do we ask the question WHY we are giving them in the first place. If the answer seems obvious, is that an indicator that something might be getting overlooked?

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/grading.htm

Step 1: Philosophy

2006-11-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

In writing a philosophy of education on which to base a school, I thought the best place to start would be to write down those values that I thought would be most beneficial for a school to promote. On a day when I was either feeling particularly inspired or angry at my current school, I came up with about 13 things that I would like to see promoted in an educational setting. After eliminating less important ones and consolidating those that fit into broader ones, I narrowed it down to three. Submitted to you for comment and criticism, here are what I have come up with.

1. Education should emphasize teaching the tools of learning over the communication of knowledge.

Our content should be outstanding. We should be hiring people who have not only an exceptional knowledge of their subject matter but also a contagious enthusiasm for it. That being said, content should not be the primary emphasis of the school. That position belongs to the teaching of the skills needed for learning. As Dorothy Sayers says in her essay entitled The Lost Tools of Learning: “For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.” Content, long holding the central position in education, should be treated as grist for the mill of critical, creative, and analytical thought. When appropriate, students should be encouraged to learn and think independently of the teacher.

To this end, we as a school should also make a commitment to what works, not what has always been done. As we encourage students to experiment, take risks, and investigate life, we should demonstrate a similar approach as we teach them.

For too long, process has been confused with product in the educational system. It simply is not the case that if a person goes through twelve years of our current system, that they can be considered an educated person. They are merely a “schooled” person. “Schooling” is not what we are after. We wish to pursue methods that treat learning as a life-skill, not something that only occurs in the walls of an institution.

With this in mind, grades should be treated as the things they were meant to be: a tool for the assessment of mastery, not as a goal or an end in themselves. This single flaw in the current educational system has been one of the biggest causes for its inefficiency and ineffectiveness in educating today’s youth. It has drained inspiration from the learning process. It has pitted teachers against pupils, parents against teachers, and parents against their children. It encourages students toward mediocrity, and it does very little to ultimately prepare students to be functioning, thoughtful contributors to humankind. Its current use, therefore, should not be emulated.

While it will be necessary for students to, at times, be divided by age, a sense of unity and cohesion among the student body will be fostered through: 1) times of general learning (where all students of a certain developmental level are taught together) and 2) Encouraging older students to play a role in the education of younger students. Within reason and when necessary, students in individual classes will be divided not by a particular age, but by subject and skill level.

2. Education should be worthwhile and relevant to a student.

How many times have the words “When am I ever going to use THIS?” been uttered by a student? All too often in our educational system, students simply don’t see what they are doing as meaningful. This results in lack-luster performance, unethical behavior (usually exhibited in the form of cheating or plagiarism), and an increase in anxiety and feelings of meaninglessness.

One of the biggest causes of this is the method we use to educate. First, while it is true that most students can say that their education was grounded in the realities of this life, they are taught about those realities in circumstances that couldn’t be more removed from it. While lectures might be necessary at times, and books are certainly important, to make them the sole means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next is absurd. Even the current trend toward “open discussion” falls short when compared to the effectiveness of actually learning by experiencing life. For this reason, students will be encouraged to learn in the most direct method possible. If studying botany, students will learn by observing plants. If astronomy, they will observe stars. Field study will be pursued.

Second, the process of dividing subjects up into neatly separated classes removes all content from any meaningful context. While specialization of labor may make sense in a factory, it does not benefit students to see history as being completely unrelated to literature and math. Integration between these subjects will be encouraged as much as possible, with all content being centered on a history curriculum.

Third, one of the biggest areas of neglect in our school system is practical skills. While most students are expected to be able to analyze Shakespeare when they graduate (at least they are on paper), they are not expected to be able to balance a checkbook or change the oil in a car. As much as possible, we will encourage the teaching of practical skills. For some, this will mean incorporating into their program a trade school education. For others, it will mean pursuing internships with “hands on” experience in one of their fields of interest. These three points under this value can be summed up in three words: Experiential, Integrated, and Practical.

3. Education should encourage students toward a sense of identity and purpose, not just toward academic accomplishment.

Knowledge, pursued for its own sake, puffs a person up, making them arrogant and giving them a sense of superiority. We are not training people solely for the purpose of making sure they have a job in the future, although we recognize the need for skills that allow a person to make a living and will promote their adoption by students. We are not training people to gain status in the eyes of those around them. We hope to facilitate students into an understanding of who they are as individuals, how they fit into the world around them, and what their responsibility to it is. We believe this to be the culmination of the previous two values.

For this reason, we hope to educate the entire person. Issues of theology and philosophy will be central to learning content, especially in the upper levels.

According to the NYT...

2006-11-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

...there is definitely something wrong with America's young people. Agreeing on what it is might be more difficult.

Here is the article.

The Lost Tools of Learning

2006-11-10T18:17:00.000-08:00

Dorothy Sayers presented this essay entitled "The Lost Tools of Learning" at Oxford in 1947. Her descriptions of the deficiencies in the product of our educational system is amazing. What's scary is that people still don't seem to see it. What she describes here, though, at the beginning of her essay is what I see every day.

The End of Education

2006-11-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

As I've said before, I believe institutional education to be in serious jeopardy in America. Part of this I believe is process... HOW we approach education is destroying it, because our approach is so antithetical to what the goals of education should be. But herein lies the other problem. What is the goal, or end, of education?

The Greeks believed that education had a moral element to it. Part of this stemmed from the Ancient Greek preoccupation with reason. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle propounds the idea that a virtue, in essence, is a characteristic that allows a certain object or entity to better perform its function or purpose. Aristotle also believed that reason was a characteristic unique to humans, and, in fact, was the primary distinguishing characteristic between humans and animals. It makes sense, then, that education would be of utmost importance. Education helps us be more reasonable, and, thus, to be better people, at the same time enhancing whatever other virtuous traits we have.

Whatever you believe about the Greek fixation with reason, I find their purpose for education to be far more noble than what our current society sees as being the goal for education.

I've had this conversation in my classes before. I know Jimmy has, as well. They go something like this:

Me: "So, if you guys hate this so much, then why are you here?"

At this point, there is usually a long, engaged discussion about personal choices. They see themselves as being FORCED to be in school. I try to point out to them that no one FORCES them to be in school. They simply see it as being more desireable than the alternatives. If they left, and were under a certain age, they could get in trouble with the authorities. Those that are old enough to avoid this would get in trouble with their folks. But this doesn't take away from the fact that, every day, students DO choose to drop out and do something else, and that, for whatever reason, the students I'm talking with have chosen NOT to do this. Those that understand this eventually move on to the following portion of the discussion.

Student: "We're here because we need to get an education."
Me: "But why?"
Student: "Because we need to get good grades so we can get into a good college."
Me: "Why does it matter that you get into a good college."
Student: "Because I want to eventually have a good job." (Mind you that, every response that is given is made with the tone of "Duh, you idiot... everyone knows this. Why are you asking me such obvious questions?")
Me: "Why do you need a good job?"
Student: "So we can make enough money to be comfortable."

I have this conversation about once a year. Frankly, I'm being nice by putting the word "comfortable" there at the end, because, in actuality, few students use that word. Most of them say what many think but are mature enough to not allow to escape their lips. They say they need that money to be happy. A few understand what they've just said as the words leave their mouths.

This is what we've trained students to believe is the goal of education: The Almighty Dollar. Parents reinforce this idea a lot. I remember my own telling me how many more thousands of dollars a year every "A" translates into once you're finally in the job market (And, given what I'm making now, you'd never know that I had higher than an A+ average in high school, a 3.98 gpa in my undergrad work, and graduated with a 4.0 when I got my master's degree. I COULD have sailed through with a "C" average).

But, as with most things, it isn't just parents. It's our whole system. It's no secret that schools hold up as a sign of prestige how much scholarship money has been offered to students who are graduating from their institution. So not only can studying hard translate to bigger bucks when you get out of college, SAVING money is the best known reason for maintaining grades in high school.

But it runs even deeper than this. Remember how I said in my previous post how many school districts are cutting funds to their social studies programs, or relying on the most disinterested of faculty members to teach those classes? At the same time, math and science programs enjoy across the board increases in their funding, along with a greater emphasis paid to it by everyone from high school counselors to producers of "educational television"? It's because conventional wisdom is telling us (through all the talking heads and pundits that the job market is screaming for more engineers and computer programmers and the like, and we'd better provide them, or gloomy things await us in the future. So what do we do? Like lemmings, we give this "job market" exactly what its experts say it is demanding.

Aristotle would be spinning.

I do not believe that the proper purpose of educating kids is to prepare them for the "job market". You educate kids because it is the perfect time to instill in them a sense of identity, guide them toward wisdom, and teach them that life should be embraced experientially and intellectually (to be honest, I'd settle for having them do the former, and I know plenty of people who, while they don't bury themselves in books, revel in taking life in. Unfortunately, most of the kids I work with do neither).

I've only read one of Neil Postman's books. But another book of his I plan on reading is called The End of Education. In it, he claims that the mythological stories, the ones that most societies have used to pass down a sense of identity and a moral foundation to its kids, is sorely lacking in our educational system. We misrepresent what we give them as being "pure, unadulterated facts" and encourage them NOT to think about it in the methods we use. I couldn't agree more. The only thing that we have given them to chase is a life of comfort. In my mind, it's no wonder that our kids don't see any purpose behind our educational system, and that only those who are truly internally motivated or those who have developed a healthy respect for "following the rules" really seem to be driven in our nation's schools. It's also no wonder that schools in just about every other developed country in the world kick our tail.

Maybe I'm too much of an idealist, but I firmly believe that if you give a kid a good understanding of how the world works, and how he or she fits into it, as well as the skills to be able to find, process, and use information, that by the time they're eighteen, they will be capable of mastering anything that a college or employer will throw at them, and have a healthier self-image and sense of proportion to boot.