everything we do...

Information and debates rolled across my Twitter landscape Friday night. Powerful questions and divergent answers. I was so struck by the quality of the conversation, and the fact that so many educators were up late on a Friday night worrying about how to improve on what is happening in and around their schools that, well, I could only be embarrassed for the likes of Arne Duncan, Christopher Christie, David Cameron, Wendy Kopp, even Barack Obama - those who make money or score political points demeaning teachers.

As I "listened" though, I began to think (again) about asking all the questions. Why do we do do everything we do?

Christian Long, Pam Moran and I began discussing school architecture, and the idea of classroom shape and the "teaching wall." And I asked why classrooms were rectangular, "didn't that shape," I wondered, "pulled from the architecture of the Protestant Church, create certain 'facts' in the classroom?'

Christian, a brilliant school designer, who tries to challenge everything, said, "all people/clients like "rectangles".  No example in nature.  Entirely a man-made concept. Suggests 'balance'/'focus'."

Yes, there is no example in nature. Yes, to Protestant Europeans and certain East Asians, the rectangular room does indeed suggest balance and focus. But is it a universally preferred shape for learning and gathering?

I've already written about a school which chose to switch to square classrooms with no "teaching wall." They even skipped the Interactive White Boards because they seemed to "focus" the classroom in one way. In human habitation around the world the square is much more common than the rectangle, or surely was. Squares are less "hierarchical." The point of focus is less obvious. And that may have had real advantages for human relationships and human learning.

But we can go back further. Humans really tended to start with circular spaces, from Bronze Age round thatched cottages, from North American tipis and kivas, to African village houses and Irish "beehive" monasteries.

What might a circular classroom suggest that a rectangular classroom does not?

What about a square?

What might those room shapes do to student perception, student participation, pedagogical form, student and teacher behavior?

There are, of course, other "learning environment" shapes. The Catholic Cathedral is a complex idea, filled with the kinds of "distractions" so despised by a certain (and self-admittedly completely uniformed) Protestant-trained power elite. "You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter," he told the students. "And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy." - Barack Obama

But then, the Catholic Mass has always been about teaching to the many intelligences in many ways - words and image, art and scent, movement and taste, and the mysteries of what lies behind that corner or that pillar. A style of teaching specifically rejected by America's Protestants, who built simple, hierarchical, text-centered and single "teaching wall" rectangles for both worship and education.

The rectangular room embraces one notion of focus... stair straight ahead, put down everything but that book, listen to one voice, there is only one way to learn. It was conceived - in education - for that purpose. And the rectangular classroom, like the notion that, "with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction," is a control system, and part of a method of limiting human potential.

We live, in most of our schools, with a system built on a few fatal assumptions. These assumptions are largely based in Reformation view of human development and the path to heaven. Children are, in our school design, inherently evil and ignorant - and so they must be controlled, managed, focused. Humans, in our school design, are inherently sinful and slothful - so, if their vision is not tightly controlled, they will do the wrong things. There is only one true path to salvation, in our school design, and so we must carefully lay out both the steps and the procedures - or our students will slip into perdition.

And we have lived with these assumptions for so long, we have - far too often - accepted them as "natural" instead of as the 16th Century political invention that they are. Of course. These assumptions define our educational environment, from our room shapes to our age-based grades to our grade-level-expectations and tests to our schedules, our blackboards or whiteboards, to the way - perhaps - that student seats rarely face the windows.

There are those who believe that the way to change schools is to change their management system to one based on profit. There are those who believe that the way to change schools is to stop training teachers. There are those who believe that the way to change schools is to go "back to basics." But for me, the way to change schools is to alter the assumptions which underlie them.

Because there is a counter-narrative. It is not unknown, rather it runs from Rousseau to Montessori to Dewey to Postman to Kohn. It runs from the Catholic Mass to the developing world village circle to the few field left where children play and learn on their own. This narrative understands human attention in a pre-Reformation, pre-Gutenberg way - when "multitasking" was, simply, being human. This narrative understands that we are all learners, and all instructors. This narrative understands that hierarchical spaces are not necessarily the best learning structures, and understands that human learning rarely effectively occurs "on schedule." This narrative thinks less about "molding" children into useful adults, and more about embracing human potential.

About five centuries ago Protestant leaders began building churches in simple rectangles. They stopped installing storytelling stained glass. They skipped instrumental music. They dropped the use of scent as an important sensory tool. The number of people moving in the front of the church at any time shrank from many, often to one. And they began to pass out books, as the essential learning tool. Books in which you were instructed which page to turn to.

And in our classrooms we too often live with all this still. We accept all this still. America's president is sure that information which comes from something other than a book or a teacher is "a distraction." Our architects assume classrooms must be rectangular. Our school administrators worry endlessly about students being "on time" for school and our teachers worry about assignment deadlines. We continue to expect children to sit still in far too many classes. And we rank reading and writing as more important than viewing art or creating music.

So, if you want to change schools - stop playing ball in John Calvin's court. Tinkering has gotten us nowhere. Perhaps changing assumptions will bring about change.

- Ira Socol

In this month's School Library Journal

I talk about "The Unhappy Place" and the need to offer access to literacy to all students...

Libraries terrified me as a child. They were places with too many rules, with an organization system that made no sense, with intimidating counters and information stored in a form I couldn't access.

But I loved books. Despite having what would now be called a severe reading and writing disability, as well as attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, I devoured everything from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel to a picture book that explained how electricity was created at Niagara Falls. I loved atlases and encyclopedias with their images, charts, and graphs, and magazines, from Life to National Geographic. So I braved this unhappy place, and, secretly pulling books off the shelf, I would disappear into a hidden corner to sit on the floor for a look. I couldn't check out books on my own. To do that, the library required that I write my name and address on the application form, something I was unable to do.

Is your library prepared for a kid like me? Can it accommodate a child who struggles with print in every form or one with attention and behavioral issues, and help him or her become a successful, motivated consumer of literature and information?  keep reading at the SLJ site...

and while you are there, never miss Amy Bowllan's Blog. 

- Ira Socol

"I run one of the worst Middle Schools in America..."

"...and I'm famous."

Tony Orsini of Ridgewood, New Jersey's Benjamin Franklin Middle School has decided to become a celebrity. When I first wrote about Mr. Orsini I simply thought him foolish and clueless (well, I said, "crazy" but I have been - quite effectively - told I should not have phrased it that way," and friends on Twitter who live in Ridgewood and have children in the schools there tried to assure me that "Tony" was not a bad guy, just desperate and out-of-ideas.

But some things have become obvious to me in the days since: First, the comments on my previous blog from parents and students in Ridgewood have shown me that Mr. Anthony Orsini has presided over the creation of an unbelievably toxic middle school environment. Despite all the benefits of a fairly wealthy community, Orsini's school is one continuous, 24-hour-a-day bullying-fest, with angry, uninformed, poorly communicating adults modelling the worst possible behaviours for their children.

Bullying, in my view of the world, is not a "kid issue," but an adult-created environmental issue. As studies have shown, schools typically make bullying worse, and more acceptable - not the opposite. So, if there is a problem in Ridgewood, and there sure seems to be a problem, it is not with Facebook, but with Orsini and the community's other adults.

Second, this, though not a crisis like many impoverished middle schools face, is an apparent disaster - a disaster built by an uncaring and disinterested suburban community. Listen to this parent:

"I'm a parent at Orsini's middle school and I can tell you -- he's not afraid that kids know more than him or whatever else your theory was...he's afraid that some kid is going to commit suicide or another violent act. He's afraid that a kid is going to be harmed emotionally and so badly that she never really recovers. He has been called-on by parents who are beside themselves with their children being targeted and nowhere to turn, no easy way to get "authorities" involved (he's the closest they have to an authority who will take it on). And I'm certain that he's afraid for how all this is impacting his students' learning. Personally, I think those are worthy things to be afraid of and I do not blame him for reacting. His tone was guaranteed to rile some up, but for god's sake people, give the guy some help! What else would you have him do, realistically, there all alone on the front line, with another kid crying in his office and unable to attend class?"

Yes, bullying at Benjamin Franklin is so bad student suicide has become a real threat, the community's authorities (I assume this means the police) are refusing to assist (despite the case in Massachusetts), the parents are no help - leaving this principal "all alone." Charming place, this Ridgewood, New Jersey. Combine that with a school so uninteresting in pedagogy that the principal declares that no homework requires research or outside learning ("Over 90% of all homework does not require the internet, or even a computer. Do not allow them to have a computer in their room, there is no need"), and there is a recipe for disaster which should have been addressed by parents and community long ago.

Third, Tony Orsini really likes attention. At first I thought he needed Google Mail Goggles - that pause before you send option on your email account. Why else would someone send out such a foolish email? But after seeing Tony's act across every media form this weekend, it becomes fairly obvious that this is a guy bored with his job, and looking for fame (and perhaps a spot at the right-wing propaganda mill, the Heritage Foundation).

This is always disappointing. When Orsini's letter first came to light, I encouraged community members to offer him help - help in understanding the research around all these issues - pedagogy, bullying, social media, help in coming up with strategies, help developing solutions. But as you listen to Tony, he's now no longer an educator, but a talking point. And that is really bad for the kids who must show up Monday morning at a school adults have allowed to turn toxic.

So now this comes down to Superintendent Daniel Fishbein (201-670-2700, ext. 10530). Dr. Fishbein, please relieve Mr. Orsini of his position, allowing him to become a regular on Fox News, CNN, and ABC. And please bring in a team of adults seeking real solutions. They are right there in your community - and many of us from other places will help, if asked.

Ridgewood, you have a serious problem, and Ridgewood, you need a serious solution. And that solution needs to be based in talking to your kids, not the media.

- Ira Socol

at least one New Jersey principal understands. He's not on TV...

to be fully human

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010

I move through a lot of schools, and through a lot of public spaces, and everywhere I go I see people who are made to be less than fully human. The high school kids who can not read sitting in classrooms during "silent reading" time. The girl in the wheelchair set off to the side of the middle school choir because everyone else is on risers. The poor reader at the bank or hospital faced with piles of incomprehensible paperwork. The man or woman denied the ability to go out to eat because of too few or badly placed "handicapped" parking places. The child who struggles with writing who is denied the right to communicate in his classroom. The university students forced to spend large amounts of money and time to "prove themselves" "disabled."

Less than fully human, or, as they say, Children of a Lesser God.

We are all human, we are not all the same...

And I have my personal scenes:

In March of 2009 I struggled to walk with crutches through Kennedy Airport in New York when Delta Airlines refused to provide me with a wheelchair. When I fell, as fellow passengers ran toward me to help, my Delta flight crew literally stepped over me in their rush to get out of the terminal. Delta has acknowledged that all they did was wrong, but refuses to consider any solution.

the smug rich guy on the left is Delta Airline's CEO, give him a call 1-404-715-2600, ask him about this...

In October 2009 I could not attend an academic conference at Michigan State University when the campus's Kellogg Center gave away its disability parking spaces to football fans who set up tents for drinking. The university claimed that they would take steps to make this up to me, but has refused to do so.

Just last week a taco restaurant in Zeeland, Michigan - which already lacked any disability parking - refused my request for help with my food tray, after I had paid for the food. I left, $6.00 poorer and still hungry.

And, of course, back at my own university, students with disabilities are considered so foreign, so different, that in order to be treated with respect they must obtain a visa from the disability office. Yes, a visa. Carry your papers with you, my friends, lest you be considered an alien.

I could go on. There was the international education conference in Chicago where Columbia University's Teachers College (among others) slammed the door in my face. The numerous businesses which make entry impossible for those in wheelchairs, and restaurants which love funny fonts on the menu so dyslexics cannot use reading technology. There are faculty who cannot understand a student being unable to sit in their classrooms - their completely structured - non-universally-designed classrooms. There are toilets people cannot get to, signs which cannot be read, parking spots not designated, untrained employees from fast food spots to the greatest universities.

And each of these things make some of us less than fully human, in our minds, and everyone else's.

On Blogging Against Disablism Day I've been angry (Retard Theory, 2008) and I've been depressed (Suicidal Ideation, 2009), but today, perhaps I need to be committed.

 I have tried to do what I can, I suppose, but I wonder what "that" means? Have I eaten at restaurants with car parks but no "handicapped" spaces? Yes, I have, and I shouldn't. Have I spoken up at the sight of each injustice? No, and I should. Have I followed through on legal threats? Well, yes, against Delta, but generally not - it seems messy and tiring too often.

And I know the cost of constant action. I had a friend who battled everything at every moment. Every bad toilet, every bad airline experience, every narrow door, and he too often seemed miserable. He was at war with the world every minute, and that is no fun.

Sometimes, we all just need to pretend to experience the full humanness so many would deny us, and just go out and be. That is OK, right?

classic higher education accessibility

So, maybe we need to take turns. We surely need to fight more, but I suspect we need to tag team this world. You this week, me next, someone else the week after that. Maybe we need to make sure behaviors are challenged even if we can't do it. Perhaps we need to set up Wiki-Exchanges so we record it all, and let those with the energy "now" to push the battle forward.

I'm not sure. But I know that we can not continue to accept a world which demeans so many of us, while at the same time, I know we need to keep ourselves as safe and all right as possible.

And we can only do both those things if we're together - whatever the "disability" label society tags us with - if we look out for each other, cross-protest, pick up each others fights - and do it in a way that ensures that every dehumanizing action and moment is addressed - by someone.

So you call CEO Richard Anderson at Delta for me - that's 1-404-715-2600 - and I'll harass your school board, and we'll all get into this boat together and move toward being fully human.

- Ira Socol

with very special thanks to Goldfish, a friend and mentor...

Anthony Orsini, Please Shut Up

Anthony Orsini, principal of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey: Please shut up.

I'm not being rude. I'm just asking that you taste your own medicine. That you stop communicating in your preferred way. Stop talking, stop writing, stop reading, stop all those conversations you have in the school corridors, at restaurants, on the phone, at the market.

And remember, we'll be watching:

"It is time for every single member of the BF Community to take a stand! There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!" Orsini wrote in a widely circulated email to his student's parents. 

"Let them know that you will at some point every week be checking their text messages online! You have the ability to do this through your cell phone provider.

"Let them know that you will be installing Parental Control Software so you can tell every place they have visited online, and everything they have instant messaged or written to a friend. Don't install it behind their back, but install it!"

OK, easy target. This guy is pretty crazy, and pretty determined to make kids miserable and break down all trust between parents and adolescents, but he is also part of a wide misunderstanding of humanity and human communications which is really dangerous.

University of Maryland researchers were widely reported to have found human communication addictive. That's not really what the study indicated, but it is what was reported, finding its way into the most recent of the monthly New York Times article about trying to break students of the awful habit of communicating with each other, and taking in information about the world.

None of this surprising. People were horrified when teenagers began talking on the phone in the 1950s, and they flipped out when the phone moved from the front hall of the home to kids' bedrooms.

Of course they didn't like kids hanging out on the corner, or at the drive-in, or cruising down the Main Street either - often passing laws against these dangerous behaviours.

I've tried to say, many times, that we as humans are tool users, specifically communication tool users, and that texting, social media, etc., are nothing "new" or "different" conceptually. Socrates was, after all, right. Literacy would interfere with face to face human communication, it would "dehumanize" knowledge. But Socrates was wrong. Literacy did not destroy human learning. Neither will any form of communication. Yes, there may be etiquette issues, but that's a matter for negotiation (and, is usually a question of power relationships, not rudeness).

Anthony Orsini probably doesn't know enough about social media, or children, to understand any of this. Like many, he is afraid. He is terrified that the kids in his charge know more than he does, that they can do things he cannot do, that they are talking about him behind his back. He is afraid that "these kids" are not exactly like him, so maybe, his skills and capabilities don't matter much anymore. He is terrified of becoming obsolete.

I'm not here to minimize fear. It is one incredibly powerful emotion, and it often trumps reason. But I am here to say to all adults who interact with kids - if you want them to "go without" their preferred communication tools, strategies, and methods - that you better be prepared to do the same. Kids give up facebook? You give up your books, newspapers, and NPR. Kids give up texting? You give up talking.

See how it feels.

Then sit down with those kids - or text them - and discuss what communication means.

- Ira Socol

Teachers, Tenure, Transformation

A decade ago... well, more... I knew this new English teacher hired by North Muskegon (Michigan) Middle/High School. She was a wildly creative, brilliant educator, who, almost immediately, was not just teaching various grades in English classes, but was advising the school's student newspaper, the yearbook, and running the drama program.

North Muskegon has been a classic symbol to me of all that is wrong with our ways of measuring school achievement. Serving a mostly wealthy and upper-middle class white population, the tiny district has long claimed the top standardized test scores in the area, while, in the words of a friend and former school board member, "preparing students for good jobs in their daddy's companies." But that's not entirely fair. The mommies often own companies too.

Anyway, I saw it as a place offering a mediocre education to kids who, mostly, would have done fine if they never stepped into a school, and a lousy education - and brutal social environment - to those who didn't fit in to the sports-first, wealth-rules environment. Even today, under much better leadership, the district lists its sports coaches right after its board in its web directory, from kindergarten forward, you didn't want to not play football or be a cheerleader in this school if you wanted to be treated well by faculty and community.

But this new teacher was different. I was coaching boys' soccer at this school back then, and she was one of only two staff members who came to more than one game, watching different students play a sport. She supported a lot of the students who lived "in the shadows," those from the small percentage of poor families, kids with miserable home lives, kids who had withdrawn because of tragedies, and frustrated middle-schoolers who wanted "something more" than the worksheet driven curriculum. Age, status, previous academic performance made no difference in who she gave responsibility to, or who she helped.

When the principal doubted that "these kids" could handle performing Shakespeare or Aeschylus in theater, she ignored him, and directed magnificent performances with casts and crews that crossed every divide, which engaged all kinds of learners, which made great successes of kids who had never heard anything positive about themselves. From the kid with CP running the backstage operation to the "juvenile delinquent" on the follow-spot, to the football star playing one role, to the geeky kid with few friends playing the lead, well, it all worked.

Everything she did worked, and worked for all kinds of students in all kinds of situations. In a school of "good enough" she was brilliant.

And after three years, instead of receiving tenure, she was fired. The problem? She "didn't fit in with the rest of the staff."

Now, when people talk tenure and teacher hiring and firing, they think of New York City's "Rubber Room," but I think of Kathy Jo Tully, one of America's great educators. And I think of Gerry Crane who taught about 50 miles south of North Muskegon until they found out he wasn't "heterosexual enough" to be in the Byron Center schools. And I think of Susan Barker of Riverside, California.

Tenure, in my mind, and the teachers' unions which help police and enforce hiring and firing, do indeed sometimes protect bad teachers. But far more often they do exactly what they were intended to do, protect great, innovative teaching, protect difference, by ensuring that teachers, and humans, are allowed to take risks. That they are allowed to alter practices, to support students, to do more than be the robotic test prep machines so desired by Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and Bill Gates.

I have not been a great fan of most teaching in America. I think we need much better - very different - teacher training. I think we need to give all teachers far more ongoing training and support than we do now. I think we need to attract more creative, more different, people to teaching and hold on to them. I think we need to pay teachers a lot more and expect a lot from them.

But I know that teachers cannot be great if they fear being fired "at will" every time a school board election happens or a new mayor is elected.

Do you really want Mike Bloomberg deciding who gets hired and fired the way he decides who'll get other city jobs? Do you really want Michelle Rhee, who thinks poor kids have no right to arts, music, or creativity, making those decisions? How about the politicians of Utah, now all up in arms because the Alpine School District wanted to teach kids about "democracy." Oh I know - you're hoping the Texas State School Board decides who's in the classroom with your kid!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
I's on Edjukashun - Texas School Board
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

No, I wasn't raised to be neutral about this. My Ma got her first teaching job back when unions had little clout and teachers earned minimum wage with no planning time or breaks. She was one of the early people in on developing an AFT local in her district, which fought for rights, for decent pay, for educational innovation. And I'm too much the historian of education in America to not understand how power works in American schools, and how it would work without effective unions.

But even without that background, I know I'd come down on the side of tenure. I tend to trust people, and I tend to trust the people who see kids everyday - at least over politicians who run against kids and schools, and surely over those who've never spent 30 seconds trying to work with a complex group of students - you know, our experts, Bloomberg, Duncan, and Gates.

There's a simple fact at work here - when the teachers' unions operate "negatively" it is usually because they are acting like an industrial union. And they are acting like an industrial union because the work environment is, unfortunately, industrial in too many ways - and becoming more so by the minute at the hands of the very people who dislike the unions (under Duncan's regime teachers will be punished for any "defective" products which reach the end of the assembly line. See Rhode Island).

Change the environment, empower teachers, allow them to be the professionals they are, help them to get better, give them the tools they need, pay them like other professionals, and the unions will change too, as they respond to a changed work environment.

"The latest statistics put the average teacher's salary at about $46,000; some teachers earn a little more, some a little less (the average teacher's salary—not the starting salary—is $38,000 in Kansas, $36,000 in New Mexico, and $32,000 in South Dakota). Overall, that's about the same that we pay pile-driver operators ($45,980) and about $8,000 less than the average elevator repairman pulls down. Meanwhile, a San Francisco dockworker makes about $115,000, while the clerk who logs shipping records into the longshoreman's computer makes $136,000." (2004)

But don't mess with tenure. It protects our best... far more often than it protects our worst.

- Ira Socol

The Very High Cost of Nostalgia

"“The Tea Party is saying, ‘We’re tired of this, you guys caused this, and if we don’t wake up to this, the American dream we’ve talked about since the ’50s will die,’ ” said Jeff McQueen, a Tea Party organizer in Rochester, Mich., who was laid off from his job in international sales for an auto parts company. “Things we had in the ’50s were better. If a mom wanted to work, she could, if she didn’t, she didn’t have to. Tell me how many mothers work now? Now it’s a necessity.”

"Mr. McQueen is 51 — born into the 1960s, not the ’50s. But he is not alone among Tea Party supporters in his conviction that something has been taken away from him." - New York Times

Yes, the glorious United States of the 1950s. Surely it was all good back then, unless, of course, you were female, or black ("negro"), or Catholic or Jewish, or disabled, or poor. Or, if you were young.

Of course we know that American "tea partiers" (even they seem to have discovered that "teabaggers" wasn't the right term) are as weak in the history department as they are on economics knowledge, but they are hardly alone in their belief in some wondrous mythical past...

Twice this year I've been in Twitter discussions centering around comparing today's schools and/or students with those of the past. In one a Twitter pal insisted British Education Minister Ed Balls was wrong to insist that British schools are now better than they have ever been. British parents, in a survey, said that wasn't true. Maybe, maybe not, but it seems as if those parents who think that school "was better back then" would have no hope of passing today's exit exams. So - perhaps - what they think is happening, isn't quite happening.

I asked this question: If schools are not "at their best" now, when were they? 1840s? 1960s? 1980s? 1890s? 1920s? 1940s? When, exactly, was the "peak" of British education? And why was that the peak?

oh, this must be Brit education at its peak, those wonderful 1960s...

...and for America, it was the fabulous fifties...

Yesterday, a group on Twitter began to wonder about whether today's students were "lazier" than those of the past. I hear this a lot. They are lazier, more "entitled," they learn less, they expect teachers to cater to them. "In that sense I agree with Adar that we now have a generation of lazy students who expect instant results with little effort on their part," was one blog comment pointed at.

And I thought back to my father. Back in the 1960s, when people criticized those students (the very students now criticizing today's students), he would point out that "in his day" only about a third of kids even went beyond the American eighth grade (or its Brit equivalent), essentially, he noted, the same group of kids still doing "pretty well" in High Schools in the 1960s.

In 1940 75% of Americans lacked high school diplomas, and 27% of American teens in 1940 would never even enroll in a high school, much less finish. At the end of World War II about 50% of American teens were graduating from high school, though only a part of that was getting any kind of academic education. This made the US the "best educated nation in the world."

Obviously, I would argue, having looked at a lot of old textbooks, that these students were hardly facing what we'd now call a "challenging curriculum." Yes, they were working with lots of rote memorization, which must have been brutal, but even in that, there were less states, less nations, fewer atomic elements, much less math and science, a much smaller literary canon. OK, one more planet, but about a hundred billion fewer known stars. The universe of knowledge, of even necessary operational knowledge, was so much smaller that if kids today could conceive of this, they'd feel completely abused.

But that's not the point. Nostalgia, whether in the hands of a frustrated tea partier who imagines the world was perfect before he was born, or in the hands of a parent or educator who imagines that schools and students were perfect "once upon a time," is extremely dangerous.

We saw this in the American South this month when Governors Bob McDonnell (Republican-Virginia) and Haley Barbour (Republican-Mississippi) "forgot" about slavery in their fond reminisce about the Confederacy of 1861-1865.  We see it daily in schools when students using today's tools are accused of being lazy - or cheating. We see it in our assumptions that since our children don't read newspapers they are somehow less informed than previous generations.

And when we make these nostalgic assumptions we demean and we endanger, while we lose our opportunity to impact either the present or the future.

None of this is new. The American Civil War itself was a nostalgia-fest tragedy. Southern political leaders, then as now, told poorly educated audiences that a northern "black" president was going to create some kind of change which would damage the "utopia" they had always lived in (a place with 90% of people in abject poverty or - yeah - much worse). "Old times there are not forgotten" as the song says (seven states seceded before Lincoln became president, they were not reacting to any actual event).

I hear this same refrain in schools every day.

Yes, it sounds funny, and pathetic, to us when Glenn Beck and his Tea Party Troopers mourn for an era when women were not welcome at most elite universities, when old people ate cat food to divert their food budget to medicine, when black people were prevented from voting, when cars were environment-wrecking death traps without seatbelts, when doctors promoted cigarettes to kids on television, when being poor meant you lacked a refrigerator, and - most amusingly - when the government and government-approved monopolies controlled all radio, tv, and telephones.

But so should it seem ridiculous when we act as if mobile phones introduced cheating and drug use into schools.

Or that we imagine that "way back when" all of our students were perfect, and all of us - as children - respected our teachers, our mothers and fathers, the cop on the beat, the flag (or the Queen) and God. Or that we all went home everyday, ate cookies with a tall glass of milk, and finished our homework before going out to play.

Or that the computer brought us plagiarism, or that video games brought inappropriate content and violence, or that sex on television causes teenage sex.

Or, to put it in basic terms, that we can create rules about technology or behavior, bans and zero tolerances, which will somehow restore an Edenic past which never existed.

It can not, because that past never existed. Schools were not just awful in the old days, they lost the vast majority of their students before kids were sixteen. Lessons were horrifically boring and geared to a tiny percentage of children. Those with wealth and power avoided public schools then, as they do now. Kids were physically abused and grew up to be abusive adults. Teachers were underpaid and poorly trained and had little access to resources, and no time for staff collaboration. Special Ed kids were locked away or kept out of school entirely. Non-white kids were sent to separate schools which often lacked everything. Girls took "Home Ec" and were shunted off to "Business English" so they could become secretaries.

Who wouldn't want to re-create those good ol' days?

When we pretend that perfect past existed we do real harm - politically, economically, educationally. When Republicans say that America's poor are better off than the poor most everywhere, nostalgia prevents us from remembering that it was only Lyndon Johnson's "big government" Great Society which made that true. When we think of the 1950s in the US as an economic "golden age" it prevents us from remembering even that the prosperity was based on massive federal spending which fueled a huge inflation rate that discounted debt for the middle class but which crushed the poor and elderly. And when we think of school as "perfect" back then we forget that the result of that system was that most students dropped out to go work at factories.

And all of this false memory prevents us from moving forward, stops us from finding new solutions, blocks us from embracing those who need help now - including our own children.

In schools everywhere our nostalgic blinders criminalize childhood, keep essential tools away from our students, and lead us to treat our children as alien failures. It is a very cruel, very costly, self-deception.

So let's stop looking backward through rose colored glasses. And let's begin to look forward by looking at our needs now. Measuring ourselves against a false view of the past gets us nowhere.

- Ira Socol

The Liars and the Fools

"[T]he point of contention was eliminating tenure for Florida public school teachers and tying their pay and job security to how well their students were learning."

Thus said The New York Times, that "newspaper of record" on Thursday, April 15, 2010 in a story about Governor Crist's decision to veto Florida Senate Bill 6.

Was that bill really about how well "students were learning"? I don't think learning was being discussed at all, testing was. Teachers' jobs, pay, etc were not going to depend on anything the students might know or understand. These things would depend on how "well" students performed on standardized tests which have never been proven to measure learning.

86% graduation rate, 96% college acceptance rate, but Bill Gates and Barack Obama tell us it's a bad school 

This distinction matters. In the same newspaper it was reported that the Charter School created and run by Stanford University's College of Education will likely be closed because students tested poorly. The board of one of Silicon Valley's most impoverished school districts "simply looked at the scores" and decided that a K12 program with an 86% high school graduation rate (better than any other school in the district) and which sends 96% of graduating high school seniors to college, is a total failure.

The real problem, of course, lies elsewhere, with the Obama Administration which has decided that - even more than under George W. Bush - the standardized test is the only measure, and with the persistently destructive Gates Foundation - which despite zero expertise and zero proof of success  has become the big dog wagging Arne Duncan's sad tail.

"As Ravenswood board members pointed out, another charter school in the same district, Aspire, has consistently had better results on state tests. In fact, Stanford’s first charter school in 2001 was a joint venture with Aspire.

"The two cultures clashed. Aspire focused “primarily and almost exclusively on academics,” while Stanford focused on academics and students’ emotional and social lives, said Don Shalvey, who started Aspire and is now with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."

Because, as "everyone" knows, focusing on students' emotional and social lives is ridiculous, when those kids could be filling out a worksheet or copying and pasting together a report on "Africa." Why that kind of frivolous focus just leads to...

Oh yeah, an 86% graduation rate and a 96% college acceptance rate among kids with no college in their families' experiences, and English as a second language.

Stanford, how could you be so dumb? 

Testing, as The New York Times declares, is learning. Microsoft's definition of academics is all that matters. Teachers know nothing, educational researchers know nothing, all knowledge is actually in the hands of a bunch of businesspeople who, from Arne Duncan to Bill Gates to Meg Whitman, to Mike Bloomberg, who have declared themselves our saviors.

God help our children.

- Ira Socol

"Invisible Technology"?

“Technology must be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.” - Chris Lehmann

Twitter led me to a blog discussing this concept. And the quote confused me. I thought back to the opening sequence of the film 2001, A Space Odyssey, and wondered, were the tools - the technology - introduced there really supposed to be perceived by humans as oxygen is perceived? If that were true, humans would no more adapt and improve their tools than they adapt and improve their oxygen, and that seems like a very bad idea - especially a very bad idea for "education" to embrace.

Humans get taught about tools in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 (not an embed due to copyright, but a link)

I'm not picking on Chris Lehmann who I see as one of the great educators of our time - but - I have heard this “invisible technology” argument many, many times, especially since the iPad announcement (as Cory Doctorow discusses brilliantly on boingboing), and it troubles me, and baffles me.

I guess because when I argue with schools that certain technologies need not be explicitly learned "at all costs," I am typically told, by educators, how wrong I am.

So, perhaps I'm just looking for consistency of argument, or perhaps I think that we do owe our students some solid sense of how tools are constructed, how they operate, and how they are chosen.

If I walk into a school today, what I will see is this: Though we live in a time when one can very easily absorb “written” information without knowing any of the alphabetic or phonological coding embedded in text, the schools seem extremely committed to the teaching of the explicit technologies of the alphabet and phonics. Though we live in a time when simply speaking out loud can create text in many forms, schools schools seem extremely committed to the teaching of the explicit technologies of writing and keyboarding. Though we live in a time of easy to use, solar powered calculators, schools seem extremely committed to the teaching of the explicit technologies of on-paper mathematical calculation. I have even seen teachers explaining to students the proper handling of the explicit technology of books - don't tear the pages, don't leave the books out in the rain, etc.

These are all explicit technologies for utilizing certain forms of information and communication, as Chris Lehmann's student demonstrates here:

different technologies operate different ways - that is important to understand

We spend years and years of school time teaching one specific set of technologies. Reading ink-on-paper as the ancient Hebrews did, writing as scribes did thousands of years ago, keyboarding as 19th century secretaries did, cyphering just as Bob Cratchit did in Scrooge's counting house. Then, when we get to all the contemporary technologies, we suddenly want "invisibility." See an operating system or a file system? No thanks, that's too confusing. Understand why a computer or a phone does something when we tell it to? Not important, that's over our heads. Be able to change the interface, the way a computer or phone works, in order to adapt to your needs and preferences? Crazy, that's so geeky.

Let me quote Doctorow as he discusses the iPad:

"Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

"But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers)."

"The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals."

And I think Doctorow is right. I think we must offer these opportunities to understand, choose, and use tools, because that is both what makes us human and what enables progress. 

In 1880 you may not have needed to know all the details of steam locomotive technology, but it was still important for students to know the difference between a train and a trolley and renting a horse at the livery stable, and how these all operated – at least passenger interface-wise – if you needed to get somewhere. And the more you actually knew, the more choices you had in life.

important to know in 1880? maybe - but how to read a timetable, how to buy a ticket, how to behave on a train, how to be comfortable on a train - all pretty essential

"Technology" is - quite definably - not "oxygen." Technology is the art of manipulating the world. Technology is, specifically, manipulating the world for our benefit. And, as Heidegger always pointed out, the technologies we live with not only give us control, they themselves structure the way we see things - the way our world is not only perceived, but actually operates.

The gun's existence literally means that the human replaces the big cat at the top of the on-land food chain, for example, which alters not only our view of large sections of the planet but how we view night and sleep as well. The existence of the alphabet not only enables a certain form of reading, it constructs many of our organization systems. The development of numbers and numbering alters fundamental concepts of society.

So, even if I can not actually read alphabetical text, it really helps to know how it works. Even I can't subtract a 2-digit number from a 2-digit number on paper (and I typically cannot), it helps me to have an idea of how that happens. And even if you are not a computer programmer it would help if you could see the file system on the iPad, so you might grow up to be the kind of person who could design a better file system.

Thus I don't want technology to be invisible at all, especially not in schools. Right now we spend years teaching kids about the functional technologies of our past, and, whether we continue that or not, we need to teach them something about the functional technologies of their future.

Remember, "invisible" is "unknown." And "unknown" can not really be our goal in education, can it?

- Ira Socol

An Easter Monday Proclamation of Liberation

On Easter Monday, 1916, a group of Irish patriots seized Dublin's General Post Office and other key, symbolic points in the city, and proclaimed the independence of the Irish Republic.

The Easter Rising Éirí Amach na Cásca lasted seven days and ended with the British Empire murdering the greatest leaders of a generation in Ireland in a yard at Kilmainham Gaol. But those events began not just Ireland's liberation from Britain but the entire 20th Century of Liberation which would sweep across Africa and Asia for the next 60 years. Tiny Ireland became not just a symbol, but a literal exporter of revolution to the globe - the leaders of national liberation movements - from the Jews of Palestine to the Vietnamese, from Indians to Kenyans, came to learn  how to free themselves from their oppressors from Michael Collins - the Easter Rising survivor who led Ireland to victory in the Anglo-Irish War - and his lieutenants.

This is not about Irish history, though, this is about education.

On the night of Easter Sunday 2010 a few of us gathered electronically to battle with the Governor of New Jersey, Christopher Christie, an extremely wealthy ex-federal prosecutor elected as a Republican in 2009. The Governor, allowing his $60,000-per-year paid twitterer to spend the holiday with his family, was on Twitter himself, explaining why his first mission as governor is to cut teacher pay and funding for education in his state. (see the conversations, with @mritzius, with @lgesin, with me, and the Gov himself)

The Governor, not unexpectedly, comes across as a series of Fox News talking points, constantly demanding "shared sacrifice" - though the sharing extends neither to himself nor his class of taxpayers, who typically live in New Jersey to avoid the actual tax bills they'd receive in New York or Pennsylvania, and insisting that New Jersey needs a solution to its extraordinarily high property taxes while refusing to consider any actual solution to that (an increased sales tax or VAT, a rise in the top marginal rates for New Jersey's income tax). In fact, he is simply bullying the teachers, the group charged with developing New Jersey's future, because he knows that their commitment to their students makes them unlikely to strike or otherwise really resist.

When "reformers" in America today talk about education, they are, of course, not discussing students or children or learning or development - they are talking about political economics. They are interested in "efficiencies" not to make schools better, but to make government smaller. They are too often interested in Charter Schools not as innovative examples which lead to new thinking, but as a way to bust some of the last remaining American unions. They are interested in "choice" not for opportunity, but to continue the vicious racial and class divides in the United States. Yes Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, Joel Klein, Mike Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Paul Vallas, Chris Christie - I am talking about you.

On the same evening, Pam Moran, a Virginia school superintendent, posted a wonderful statement on the always fascinating Edurati Review on why we need to move our conversations about true educational re-design to the "front channel." For, in our backchannels, on Twitter and elsewhere, we spend our time discussing re-design, how to make education work for the most kids in the most places, how to move beyond a system designed to fail kids to one which moves kids forward, how to inspire and support teachers to be their best, how to bring parents in - in all the best ways. And these conversations are great and powerful, but they are hidden, as Pam says, from the "mainstream media" and the current political conversation, and that is a recipe for disaster.

Education is a colonial project - oh, not always as obviously or viciously as Teach for America or the KIPP schools - but it is a colonial project. The idea is to take our children and convert them to the uses of our society. And how our schools do that literally determines our collective future. We live in an American society right now in which everyone from the President on down denigrates teachers as somehow greedy, lazy, badly trained, irresponsible people. We send our children off to schools after the President has applauded firing their teachers, after Governors call teachers greedy. We defer maintenance in schools, we close schools, we refuse to equip schools with the technologies used everywhere else on the planet, we reduce education to filling in multiple choice bubbles on standardized tests - and then we are shocked - "shocked," as Casablanca's police chief said, that kids don't care and don't do well during their school day.

So, today, Easter Monday 2010 we need a new Proclamation of Educational Liberation.

Today we must say that we will stand up for our children and our future. We will do it aggressively and publicly. Today we must say we will challenge our "leaders" - Governor Christie, why do lawyers in New Jersey outearn teachers? Isn't teaching, isn't bringing up our children, the most important thing we as a society do? Governor Christie, shouldn't you and Bill O'Reilly pay a bit more of your income in taxes so teachers can earn a decent living, kids can go to great schools, and middle class families can afford property taxes? President Obama, can you please stop calling education a "race" - races have winners and losers, and we want all of our kids to succeed. Texas "Education" Leaders, please stop using schools for indoctrination and use them to help children grow in to critical thinkers. Mr. Duncan, please stop equating test scores with learning.

We need to raise these questions and challenges every day, to every leader, to demand that they break from their talking points and explain what they mean and why they mean it. We need to engage them on Twitter, on blogs, in letters to the newspaper, in phone calls to radio stations, in letters to reporters and editors and TV anchors demanding better conversations. We must bring this all to that "front channel."

But we have to do more than that. Padraig Pearse played to the grand stage in the Easter Rising and set the spark, but Michael Collins took to the hills and won the war, and we must do the same. Stop being circumspect. Talk to your neighbors, your friends, your families. Speak up at church or synagogue or your yoga retreat. We must change the national conversation not just from the top down but from the bottom up. We must explain our visions of education, and our passion for education, to all who we can get to listen. Because this really, really matters.

Americans have always been conflicted about education and educated people. This might be the only place in the world where we might think someone "too smart" to lead us, the only place where "I'd like to have a beer with him" trumps "how smart he/she is" in electing a president. And without the history of clergy/teachers that Europe and other continents have, Americans have always had minimal respect for teachers. Back in the mid-19th Century Henry Barnard wanted women as teachers because he could pay them less and listen to them less - and that was a bad start. The other "professions," lawyers, doctors, architects - almost entirely male around 1900 - raised their statuses and their salaries through exclusive organizations, teachers - mostly female - were left scrambling to create industrial-style unions to meet their role in industrialized education. So teachers, who have more education behind them than lawyers, work longer hours than lawyers, and are far more essential to the general society than lawyers, get less respect and much less income. And we often build schools as concrete block bunkers because it is cheap, while our restaurants are far more engagingly designed - thus we are fat and stupid.

So, if there is to be another "American Century" we must be better. We must make education desired, respected, and fundamentally understood. And if we don't do it, who will?

"We will loft education anew when we generate an ever-increasing ratio of educators who believe in a mission to create spaces of inspiration for learners and learning.  It will take more than 1 or 10 percent of us speaking the poetic and political voices of passion, joy, and drive to create those spaces in which young people and educators can thrive in these contemporary days. Our vision must become a vision of lift, influence, and power that creates a front channel for our voices, shifting us out of the backchannel.  We need our best educational technologists, our courageous leaders, our creative geniuses to create the front channel we must become. It’s our job, and our time, to increase the inspiration ratio in every community in this nation." - Pam Moran

Padraig Pearse and his compatriots were shot to death for their efforts. I'm not asking for that - just for a bit of time, a bit of discomfort, a bit of effort.

This is something we must do.

- Ira Socol