The System Effect

The interesting thing to me about Ayn Rand - well, it's not her writing, her books are as fourth rate literarily as they are philosophically - is that she is perhaps the last Leninist quoted by any "mainstream" American political figure.

portrait of a young Leninist:
a 1925 Ayn Rand bookcover

Now Ayn Rand is, of course, no Marxist. Marxism being a rather "Catholic" utopian vision of the perfectability of all humanity (my translation). But Ayn Rand is a pure Leninist - "The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party." (Lenin, V.I. (1905) Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action, from Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 442-443. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/may/20c.htm  ). Leninism includes ideals of global revolution - which Ayn Rand also insists on - as well as a belief that one is not permitted to disrupt the "inevitable march of history" - and that basic framing, "the ends justify the means," which is the point of Ayn Rand's novels.

Just as, no matter how he might object to the label, Nathan Harden, author of that new right-wing porn best seller Sex and God at Yale (which I suspect all male Romney campaign staffers are reading on their private jets at night while their wives are at home banging the pool boys), is a "classic Yalie," as smug and superior and intolerant of the world as any sexually-active Ivy Leaguer in New Haven, Connecticut has ever been. In this - and not at all intellectually - does Harden reflect one of his claimed heroes, William F. Buckley, Jr.

"The hidden curriculum is the curriculum," my friend and mentor Lynn Fendler is fond of saying, and Rand, Harden, Buckley are all deep proof of this concept. Ayn Rand is a proud product of Petrograd State University in the early 1920s, one of the students there who most purely absorbed the Leninist theories flowing around here, no matter her reaction to whatever academic content was in play. She writes like those other boring Soviet polemicists of her time, she argues as they do, she is as one-sided as they are. 

She cannot really help it. The affect of the educational system which "created" her has had its expected effect. Compare Rand, for a moment, to John Reed, the oft-forgotten early developer of "New Journalism." Reed was the child of wealth, but in the America of his time, a kind of "wild west wealth." He was a "poor student" who, upon admission to Harvard in 1906, failed to become part of the club and football culture, and instead ran with a kind of "Cambridge underground" of swimmers, Lampoon writers, theatre majors, and socialists. "All this made no ostensible difference in the look of Harvard society, and probably the club-men and the athletes, who represented us to the world, never even heard of it. But it made me, and many others, realize that there was something going on in the dull outside world more thrilling than college activities, and turned our attention to the writings of men like H.G. Wells and Graham Wallas, wrenching us away from the Oscar Wildian dilettantism which had possessed undergraduate litterateurs for generations," he later wrote. (Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 33.)

Sergei Eisenstein (and Company), Oktyabr. - or - Ten Days that Shook the World, film 1927

Reed was a Marxist. A dedicated Marxist.  But Reed could never quite get to Leninism, no matter how hard he tried, and he tries very hard to convince both the reader and himself in his masterwork, Ten Days that Shook the World.

Reed tried very hard to be a Leninist, but remained more poet than committed revolutionary (Beatty, Warren. Reds, 1981)

John Reed remained the system outsider he was from the moment he entered school. The weird kid. The poet, the comedian, the one who never saw his name on an honor roll, and with the comply or defy choice schools offer their students, he defied, every bit as much as Rand, Buckley, and Harden complied. All, however, might be considered victims of their educations.

Rand and Buckley, Mitt Romney, and even - to an extent - Barack Obama, never acquired the empathy needed by real leaders who could understand and work for others. Reed, like Scott Fitzgerald who followed him from west of the Appalachians into struggles with the Ivy League, could never turn his skill as one of the greatest writers of his generation into a way to communicate successfully with, or negotiate successfully with, "power" - and so suffered all of his life.

"[My brother is] a really, really smart guy, and where I was always great at memorizing facts and applying rules, he was always able to look more deeply into subject matter and understand it in a different way.  But schools wanted people like me and not people like my brother, who has dyslexia, ADHD and other learning difficulties, and who was called by one horrible teacher "stupid" in front of an entire class filled with his peers.  And who still believes that teacher." - Rachel Ash on Google+

The System Effect

Teachers need to be better, sometimes much better, at what they do. I understand this, I have said this. But when the Carnegie Corporation of New York says, "that quality teachers have a greater influence on pupil achievement than any other school-based factor," they are so completely wrong it is embarrassing to hear them say it. Because the Carnegie Corporation - largely responsible for at least the secondary education system we struggle with today - never bothered to include as a variable the system of school itself.

The Carnegie Corporation - education research which hurts American children for more than 100 years (?)

School is an environment - a built environment, a social environment, an authoritarian environment, a temporal environment - and like all living things, humans respond to all the clues and components in their environment.

I might focus on teacher education (for example), because it does not matter how 'progressively' we speak at the Michigan State University College of Education, as long as our undergraduate teachers-to-be go through prescribed class hours in a prescribed and divided curriculum while sitting in chairs in classrooms and getting graded - traditionally - on both their work and their attendance, we are reinforcing the system we claim to be overturning. "Let's all sit down for the lecture on differentiation," as we say.

Nor, no matter how brilliant our conversations in PhD seminars, will we not create change-agent leaders unless we stop making the doctorate a program of prescribed hoop jumpings. Successful hoop jumpers are far too likely to become hoop setting leaders. Students taught "the old way" tend to reproduce that - or to flee the profession. Comply or Defy. (Pink, Daniel)

None of this is said to let individual educators off-the-hook - I believe in the moral responsibility of all of us to subvert the system in any way that we can - but I also know that real change requires system change. The "Prussian Model" plus the factory system of treating human children as industrial parts - championed by the Carnegie Foundation at the turn of the last century - are the dominant influences on every child entering an institution of American education today. The biggest influence? Of course it is home socio-economics. But the reason that remains the biggest influence is that every systemic part of our education system was designed from the start, and remains designed to, exacerbate those home differences and reward wealthy parents, instead of creating equitable opportunity.

Yes, everything. Age-based grades. Grade-level content. Grade-level "standards." "Common Core" curricula. Classroom shape. The early focus on symbolic languages. Classroom chairs. Standardized testing. The school clock and calendar. Homework. Many "behavior standards." The division of secondary content. The way we pay, or don't pay, attention to students. Our view of attention... All of it is designed to control who wins and who loses in a way which will protect, not reduce, the class divide in the United States (and in England, and elsewhere).

And if we want to change that, it is a political question. And if, as I believe, education is the most important thing a society does, then this is the political question.

So we need to ask the questions, every day, and of every leader. Really? as Yong Zhao recently asked, will the Common Core increase equity? What, exactly, is the point of "value added" assessment - other than to emphasize the "defective" nature of many incoming students? When we say "high standards," whose "standards" are these? When we insist on grade-level curriculum, or grade level content, who are we rewarding, and who are we hurting? When we insist on multiple years of algebra - or anything in particular - for secondary graduation, who are we turning into losers? When we create arbitrary behavioral standards - from insisting that children sit in horrible chairs to banning mobile phones - who gets the win?

The system affect is very difficult to escape from, as Ayn Rand and John Reed indicate. And the the system effect will stay with our children for their lifetimes. Change seems almost impossible.. but if we are responsible adults, change must occur as rapidly as possible.

- Ira Socol

Changing Gears 2012: ending required sameness

(2) rejecting the flipped classroom     (3) re-thinking rigor     (4) its not about 1:1      (5) start to dream again    (6) learning to be a society (again)     (7) re-thinking what "literature" means       (8) maths are creative, maths are not arithmetic    (9) changing rooms     (10) undoing academic time     (11) social networks beyond Zuckerbergism     (12) knowing less about students, seeing more     (13) why we fight

"in this...I could always just play..."

Humans are born different from one another. Anyone who has ever seen more than one new-born human should know this, though clearly, many do not. It is the magic of genetics, the constant search for new mixes that will push any species forward. You have to cheat nature to make multiple replicas, the "breeding" of animals, the genetic engineering of plants, and we know that when a "monoculture" is created, flexibility and adaptability fall off the scale.

When I was in third grade, so, eight-years-old, I could remember and work with all sorts of information, and I discovered that, when shown blueprints of a building, I could see it clearly in three dimensions in my head. I could read music, and play a decent horn. I could swim much better than most, though I'd never learn to skate like my father, nor grow as tall as him. And I really could not read at all, or make things recognizable as letters.

No one I knew, no one in the huge (160+) third grade at Trinity Elementary School, had the same exact skillset that I had. There were kids who were incredible readers, phenomenal baseball hitters, incredible musicians, who were faster than anyone on the playground, or who could turn a lump of clay up in the art room into beautiful things while most of us struggled to make ash trays as Christmas gifts for our parents.

This is important for the human future. There are a million plus different things which need to get done by the human race, and no one human can possibly do all those things well, so we - social animals that we are no matter what American Republicans claim - have vast differentiation as a species because no human ever really thrives, or even survives, alone. (The "survivalist" armed with all sorts of weapons which are the work of hundreds of thousands of others simply proves the point, as does the "bootstrap businessperson" who relies on an economic system and on an infrastructure which are the work of millions and millions of others.)

But there is a place where human diversity is considered something quite negative... that's in the traditional school, in the traditional classroom. In those places we assume that all humans are essentially the same, that they develop at the exact same pace, that they have the same skills - and should have the same skills. This is not just an assumption, it is the law in the United States and many other nations. It drives almost all educational policy coming from Washington, Westminster, Canberra, Ottawa. It is even "built in" in most spaces, where matching desks line up in matching rooms and matching schedules move children through matching days.

And it is time for us, as we head toward the middle of the 21st Century, to stop all this. It is time to dispense with age-based grades and grade-level-"expectations," time to rid ourselves of assignments where everyone works on the same thing much less in the same way, time to rid ourselves of time schedules which limit learning, time to move beyond "Universal Design" to learning studios where differentiated humans learning to live and work together.

when students make choices, contagious creativity explodes

We all understand how this works if we've ever been allowed into "natural" human learning and living situations. I've sat at summer barbecues and been the "lifeguard" because I could get to a struggling kid in the water faster than anyone else there. But someone else has the patience to keep the pig roasting. I am better at framing the walls than at hanging - or especially finishing - drywall. I'll help you learn how re-think your classroom, you help me learn to keep track of money. These are the trade offs upon which human society is built, upon which human survival is built, upon which the rise of humans to the top of the food chain are built. Why begin differently, we develop differently, we learn things at different rates, we help each other learn, and we take on differing tasks in life.

Even Frank Lloyd Wright, who knew he was better than everyone, knew that
no one could draw up his designs as well as Marion Mahony [Griffin] could.

Does this suggest that we need no "common time"? Of course not. In the realm of humanness we need caves (for privacy and introspection), campfires (for collaboration), and watering holes (for communion). The gathering to eat and socialize is critical - and should never be rushed into the 15 or 20 minutes we often give schoolchildren for this activity. Funny, we constantly bemoan the loss of the Cleaver-style family dinner at home, but we have turned the act of eating together into school into a terrorizing rush.

Communion - the act of eating together while sharing - is the essential act
of human society

We need to eat together, sing together, play together, share constantly. The "Learning Studio" is a place where all this will happen continuously, and sort-of naturally. Where those ahead in one thing help those they can help, while getting help in things where others are ahead. Where we learn to use the tools we need to manipulate the world to our benefit. Where we learn to work well alone and together. Where we learn to be safe ourselves and how to make safe environments for others. Where we develop skills at our own rates.

This is so different from the standard graded classroom where at the very best, one-third of kids will almost always be bored, and one-third always be left behind. Or the classroom where kids compete for grades, or stickers, or approval, based on the way the teacher wants the kids to learn.

I'm not suggesting anything new. From the start educators knew that age-based grades, "required sameness" was a really bad idea, but then, as now, their understanding was over-ridden by the corporate desire (then Carnegie, now Gates, et al) put all children through an industrial stamping process. Michigan's Superintendent of Public Education wrote the following in 1901, you may want to read it, and then vow to change gears in 2012.

"Another question is that of grading and promoting pupils. Close grading assumes that every pupil can do nearly the same school work in the same time. We think we understand the normal five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old, and know how much reading, numbers, language, science, etc., he ought to compass. Having arranged the course of study accordingly, we attempt to fit every pupil into it. But every teacher finds that pupils do not easily fit into these grades, and then begins a struggle distasteful to pupil and nerve-destroying, sometimes conscience-destroying, to teachers. The questions of aptitude, intellectual development, character-building, are made subservient to "making the grade." Then follows the inevitable cramming process, and the resulting destruction of originality, personality, and self-reliance—a devastation that never ought to be truthfully charged against any institution, much less an educational one.

   "On the other hand, there are those pupils who by nature or because of environment have a grasp and comprehension that is far beyond that of the normal child. Such find the work too easy. They make no great efforts, and are thus defrauded of the best results of study. The easygoing work makes them easy-going pupils. They become indolent; they are put to sleep. In this manner many a brilliant intellect has been lost to the world. If it is an injury to the dull child to stretch him to the grade, it seems a crime to the brilliant one to cramp him into it.

  "Thus there arises the mooted question as to what class of children should be made the basis of rigid grading. It would be well for us often to address ourselves to the question as to what makes the apparent difference in the mental powers of children, and as to whether there is much difference. If we do this we shall find some puzzling paradoxes; for instance, we shall find that many "dull.. pupils are mentally strong, and in their sports are often leaders; and that in those sports that demand quick thought and originality their minds often work with rapidity, accuracy, and great ingenuity. If we carry the investigation into the activities of life, we shall find many successful business men with minds vigorous and active, who confess with sadness that they "never could learn books." And sad it is; but in my opinion it would not be true, except that some one "blundered.."

   "We are led to conclude that the so called difference in the mental power of the mass of pupils is usually apparent only. The average child is an average child. What seems dulness in some is usually ignorance of methods of study, while the so called "bright child" has simply adaptability. He, by intuition or practice, has learned how to attack a subject. His lesson, therefore, is easily mastered. He really makes much less mental effort than the sluggish pupil. What teacher cannot call to mind many "dull students" who later became excellent scholars? The explanation is not that by a miracle a better brain was supplied, but that the pupil accomplished the miracle of learning how to study. Indeed the one necessity in accomplishing the work of a course of study is really to teach pupils how to study."

- Ira Socol
next... Rejecting the Flipped Classroom in 2012