Changing Gears 2012: start to dream again

(1) ending required sameness     (2) rejecting the flipped classroom     (3) re-thinking rigor     (4) its not about 1:1      (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

Sometimes, we need to fantasize about what school is, and what we want it to be

Dream, my friend Adam made clear to me this week, is the wrong word. What we need to do is to begin to fantasize. Dreaming is a sleeping thing, and though many of us (most of us?) have slept through various parts of our education, I'm hoping for something a bit more "conscious."

I want you, us, to fantasize about school. Fantasy is not just conscious, it is dangerous, passionate, engaging, embodied, and incredibly powerful.

And all of this is the opposite of the quantitative, evidence-based, best practices crap which has led us, these past fifteen years, into the worst period of educational policies the English-speaking world has known - and, yes - it has known some pretty terrible educational policies. The problem with "the science" (as most horrifically constructed in the most destructive book of the 21st Century, Scientific Research in Education) is that it locks us into the systems and questions of the past. "Evidence-based" means it already exists. So does "best practices." "Quantitative" means it has been compared to something already existing, though rarely has there been any actual analysis of that which has existed. And "quantitative" also assumes - in the most absurd kind of faith - that we are capable of averaging humans. You understand, Diane Ravitch + Michelle Rhee + Me/3 = the average person talking about education.

In the world of human affairs we rarely do things because of science anyway, rather, we create sciences to justify ourselves. “...consider : is its science, sir, that motivates us when we transport English rule of law to India or Ireland? When good British churchmen leave hearth and home for missionary hardship in Africa, is it science that bears them away? Sir it is not. It is Christian duty. It is the obligation to bring our light and benefices to benighted man. That motivates us, even as it motivates Treves toward Merrick, sir, to bring salvation where none is. Gordon was a Christian, sir, and died at Khartoum for it. Not for science, sir.” (Pomerance 1978 p. 21)  So let us admit to faith and art and move forward toward the schools we want, not the schools Bill Gates and Walmart want.

Fantasize. Yes, step five of Changing Gears in 2012 is to imagine, imagine freely, imagine wildly, imagine sensually... to think of what seems completely out of reach, of what seems impossible, of what seems unachievable. 

"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why'?
I dream things that never were and say 'Why Not"?" 

So start to think beyond everything you know. Start looking at all the ways, all the places, people learn. And let your fantasies run wild. The school below gave this some serious thought...

But what if we went even further...

Adam and I have started to develop this theory, that the way to end the colonialism, the social reproduction, which dominates our schools and limits the future of our societies, is to allow our students to fantasize. They are already rejecting what they are inheriting, Occupy Wall Street indicates that, as do surveys on gay marriage law and - even in the US - socialism. So, we can continue the indoctrination method (which America's right hates but deeply embraces, and America's left enjoys but opposes), trying to browbeat our youth into becoming like us, or we can love and trust our children and give them the tools to imagine something better than what we have to offer.

I'll suggest that the former path is not likely to work. If those under 25 now reject our societal dreams - and these are kids who've grown up mostly in "good times," imagine their younger siblings, who've seen their own opportunities stripped away from them by adults more concerned with filling three car garages and being terrified that two guys in love might get married. And if the former isn't going to work, why not embrace the latter?

Lord of the Flies, what if these boys could have thought
beyond the societal models they had been given?

The latter, after all, the idea of allowing our students to imagine, to fantasize about, and eventually to build something less tethered to the persistent mistakes of the past, is a powerful way for ourselves to re-imagine education - to see education as a solution to a broken society rather than as a way to prepare children to become types of adults we are.

To quote a Virginia sixth grader, "People keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and we have to stop." 

When that sixth grader said that, I asked him what he, what "they," needed to do to begin developing a better world? Really, I should have asked that of myself and of my colleagues, "What do I, we, need to do in order to let that child, his classmates and his generation, stop, and try something new?"

What must we do to stop "tinkering" around the edges of a fundamentally flawed system, and imagine an educational "structure" that is radically transformed?

Movement with prior plan of direction:
Walk Out Walk On

Instead of setting the bar, NCLB-like, based on what exists now, might we not set the bar where we want it to be?

Would it look like the phenomenally successful Parkway Program of Philadelphia's 1960s-1970s, or like my "3I Program" - also amazingly successful of the New Rochelle of the 1970s-1980s? "The whole scene oozed with activity and life and while there was no apparent order to it all, a sense of purpose seemed evident... I asked [the head teacher] if he would identify the kinds of things that were going on about us. His response - quick and unqualified - was to the effect that he had no idea what the activities consisted of, that it was furthermore not his business to know, and that the participants had defined the content, value, and details of their pursuits and were probably doing whatever it was they felt it important to do." - Greenberg and Roush. Philadelphia  Or like Summerhill? Or like any other model?

No.

No, we do not know what it might look like, because that will be constantly evolving, if we are doing our job and empowering our kids. A middle school principal wrote to me today, "Our furniture is arrive this Tuesday and although we planned out were it would go, Sarah and I are realizing that because the media center is a transformational learning space that the plan of where the furniture will go will change again, thus it’s transformational…" We do not know, it will change, things are not fixed, plans are not fixed. 

Listen, I do not want the future which replicates this present. More importantly, our children do not deserve a future which replicates this present. And the only way to avoid that replication is to free our children to conceive of something different.

Please. Fantasize, and help your students do the same. Give them the chance to seek a newer world.


- Ira Socol
next:  learning to be a society (again)

Changing Gears 2012: its not about 1:1

(1) ending required sameness     (2) rejecting the flipped classroom     (3) re-thinking rigor     (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

When 1:1 keeps school looking like school has 'always' looked. (Vermont)

One-to-One is not a new concept. In the early 1840s William Alcott pressed for adoption of 1:1 slates for students in Common Schools, even the poor, rural farm kids who attended summer school. (There is vast mis-information regarding the root of our American school calendar, but we'll leave that for another time...) Alcott thought 1:1 slates far more important than 1:1 books, which was an idea which came to most public schools much later. But 1:1 books were thought to have great advantages as well.In 1883 Britain adjusted its educational code so that it, "stipulated that schools should have ‘sets’ of readers – a ‘set’ denoting that there should be enough so that each child could have access to the text." (Yeandle) Though Noah Webster introduced the first widely used textbook into America during the early decades of the republic ("The Blue-Backed Speller"), adoption of 1:1 textbooks was very slow. Until World War II it was common - certainly in urban schools - for there to be one textbook per desk, with desks shared by two students. Teachers often arranged seating to match-up reading speeds (related by many former New York City Public School students). Even in 2004 Oakes and Saunders were troubled that in California, "shortages and poor quality of textbooks and instructional materials often exist," shortages, meaning that students could not take textbooks home, and sometimes had to share textbooks in class.

Complete books under student control were seen as especially valuable "universal design" tools, "Previous to January 1, 1898, the students received their textbooks in the form of paper covered pamphlets, averaging about 50 pages each, and these were sent only one at a time to each student as he progressed with his studies. The result was that if a student failed to complete his course, he had on hand not more than two instruction papers in advance of the last one he had studied. This tended to create a dissatisfaction, and, to overcome it, we reprinted the entire text of the course, and sent to every student, at the time of his enrollment, a set of what we term bound volumes. These volumes contained everything that the student would receive in connection with his course of instruction, and if he failed to complete the course he had his bound volumes at any rate, and could continue studying by himself if he so desired."

Game-changing? not necessarily... (Hawaii)

There were problems, of course. Tyack (1974) talks about huge textbook graft scandals between 1890 and 1910 as schools tried to acquire masses of these volumes (p. 95). Another issue was funding this new technology rather than teachers. Textbooks assumed "primacy" in the classroom, Tyack (1974, p. 47) and many others note, because the teachers being hired, usually minimally educated women, lacked the knowledge to teach subjects themselves.

Or...this kind of looks like turning an iPad into a worksheet... (Scotland)

So, 1:1 is basically designed around two things which are, interestingly, contradictory. First, they allow "everyone," all students, to do the same thing at the same time. But second, they also allow control to flow from the room instructor to others - either a remote "teacher" such as a textbook author or publisher, from McGuffey to Pearson, or to the students themselves.

On this anniversary of one of the great 1:1 efforts of all
time, The King James Bible, we pause to consider
the purposes...

To really understand, let's move back one step further, to the real origins of 1:1. The book in every hand comes from Calvinism and Lutheranism. The use of 1:1 in the Reformation was for the very same contradictory reasons above. The distribution of printed Bibles, and then, in the Anglican Communion, the Book of Common Prayer, allowed "control" of the message to shift from a local priesthood - stories shared orally as in the Catholic Church - to a "remote teacher," be he John Calvin, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, or whomever created the translation.


However the flip side, again, was a new level of individual control in time and space. Though the Reformation introduced the idea of "fixed text"1 for the first time (previously every copy of a book had been individually created, and so was different from all previous versions in both fact and in understanding), people who now owned a Bible, or simply had access to the book themselves if they were quiet about it in the back of the church, might - on their own, flip between pages. Our schools, created in both the United States and the British Empire along the model of the dominant church experience, replicated this system. Unlike Catholic Cathedrals focus in the room is singular. Unlike the Catholic Mass, everyone holds a book. Yet, at the same time, it is expected that all in the room are on the same page.

Both of these missions, the "remote control" and the personal control, offer opportunities and create problems. So the question is, step four in Changing Gears 2012 - as we approach "the next 1:1" - how do we do something different?

"It is true we should not allow the pupils to have slates in their hands the whole time. Though it should be our aim to give them constant employment, yet their employment should be varied. Even the slate, if it were at their command continually, would become tiresome." (Alcott, 1841, p. 11) Basic fact, 170 years ago and today, one tool is tiresome, whatever it is. So is one chair, one kind of desk, one kind of light, one kind of book, one noise level. Kids need choice, variety, challenge, and that is what is too often in short supply in classrooms.

No matter how engaging that slate was - and Alcott was a strong believer that kids needed significant free play time with the device if they were going to use it well - no matter how engaging that tablet from your favorite "cool" manufacturer is, one type of device in a 1:1 environment, in any environment, is a huge mistake.

Alternatives to 1:1: Wall newspapers, read by communities.

We have proof of this. Our 1:1 with textbooks clearly has failed. Our 1:1 with the dreaded Middle School Organizer is a nightmare. Our 1:1 with all-the-same classroom furniture, lights, noise has left teachers spending the bulk of their time on discipline.

If 1:1, that is, all-the-same 1:1, has failed "us," or, at the very least has limited the population which can succeed (in that very Calvinist notion of a limited number of places in heaven), then, where do we look for other ideas? And what are the consequences of moving away from "one to one"?

One step is to move backwards conceptually as we move forward technologically. I am not one who really sees "the Gutenberg era" as a real bit of progress, but as an aberration in human communication and tool use created by technological progress.2 Before Gutenberg text was highly flexible, highly personalized, and usually created for a particular community. Tools were, in that pre-industrial era, much the same.

Not 1:1: Brooklyn streetcorner class in English

That system, which we may indeed see if we enter a large urban Catholic Cathedral in most parts of the world, functions in a different way. Everyone is not seated. Everyone is not using the same tools. Multiple representations - and interpretations - of "the stories" are everywhere, in stained glass windows, in sculptures, in candles, in incense, in music. People come to Mass at one time, or they come at another, or they choose to pray by themselves, or in small groups, or they just come to think.

We can also see it wherever people gather "naturally." In city squares, in front of schools, on the lawns of university campuses. I always begin thinking about great learning spaces with my vision of The Long Meadow in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. On a warm day there, in Frederick Law Olmstead's greatest creation, you will see people learning in every way with every conceivable device. Many read print books, many work on their phones, many learn kinesthetically - on one walk I watched three Jamaican guys teaching two Orthodox Jewish guys how to play Cricket. Truly, we can see it anywhere adults gather to work, devices are different, are used differently, people choose different chairs, they work together or alone.

How do we then, in a school, offer "remote teaching" but not insist on it, offer individual control but make collaboration the more normal "norm," allow for choice, for preferences, for differences?

Watch this video again, choice of tools, choice to collaborate, choice of where
and how to work, and choice of time for completion as well.

My argument is for a mix of "BYOD" and the "Tool Crib" within a context of open scheduling, open spaces, and hybrid opportunities within the school itself. With "BYOD" [Bring Your Own Device] meaning we use open networks and allow kids to bring their own tools if they have them, "Tool Crib" meaning we have a range of devices, different types, brands, sizes, for kids to choose to support their learning, "Open Scheduling" meaning we no longer insist that kids stop learning because a bell rings, "Open Spaces" meaning we don't trap kids in places they cannot be comfortable, and "Hybrid Opportunities" means that while on-line learning is great, it is our job as educators and as adults to actually see our students, to hear them, to watch their body language, to be able to intervene - in other words, on-line learning should not mean leaving children "home alone."

Learning via choice and comfort. A high school library on a Friday morning.

If I want to write on the floor of the corridor and you want to write on an iPad and Jimmy over there wants to dictate into the TabletPC, that's all cool... learning intelligent, effective tool use is task number one for humans. If Jenny wants to listen to the teacher explain this equation and I want to use my phone to go on-line and find something else, that's cool... knowing how one learns best is probably task number two for humans. If Kristin wants to sit in the classroom in a chair, and Willy wants to sit in the classroom on the floor, and I want to participate but via Skype from the corner down the hall because I don't want to be around people today, that's cool as well... its the 21st Century, we live and work everywhere.

In the end, I'm asking you to resist to lure of 1:1, which all too often in practice looks exactly like school has "always" looked - a whole bunch of kids, facing one way, doing the same things at the same time. Outfit tool cribs for your students, a whole range of devices which all offer different capabilities, different affordances, and cater to differing preferences and capabilities. Offer tool cribs from the start, so kids learn the power of choice, and encourage kids to choose to work alone or together.

If I hadn't offered kids real choices I would not have heard middle schoolers dismiss iPads as "granny phones," I wouldn't have learned how great Dragon Light on the iPad - iTouch - iPhone is, I wouldn't have learned all you can do editing video on an Android Phone, I wouldn't have seen kids love tablets for sharing and hate them if they had to carry them. But more importantly, the kids would not have learned, not for themselves, and not from each other.

- Ira Socol
next: start to dream again

1. The "fixed text" applies to concepts of interpretation and Calvinist notions of "free will." The Calvinist notion of humans as "so depraved" as to lack even the ability to choose "grace," suggests that authorial intent is in control, as far from "reader response theory" as possible. We can see the impact of this half a  millennium later. Catholic Bibles are traditionally footnoted with references which offer paths to other places of knowledge. This is almost never true of Protestant Bibles.
2. Thanks to Bill Sterrett for including this video (from the 2010 CESI Conference) in his new book, Insights into Action: Successful School Leaders Share What Works. (bit of self promotion)

Changing Gears 2012: re-thinking rigor

(1) ending required sameness     (2) rejecting the flipped classroom     (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

"Rigor"
Etymology: From Old French, from Latin rigor (“stiffness, rigidness, rigor, cold, harshness”) < rigere (“to be rigid”).
Pronunciation: Rhymes: -ɪɡə(r) - Homophones: rigger, rigour
Noun: rigor (countable and uncountable; plural rigors)
1. (US) Alternative spelling of rigour. 

2. (slang) an abbreviated form of rigor mortis.
"It's time to hold ourselves and all of our students to a new and higher standard of rigor, defined according to 21st-century criteria. It's time for our profession to advocate for accountability systems that will enable us to teach and test the skills that matter most. Our students' futures are at stake," Tony Wagner wrote in 2008 in a piece where he noted that, "Across the United States, I see schools that are succeeding at making adequate yearly progress but failing our students. Increasingly, there is only one curriculum: test prep. Of the hundreds of classes that I've observed in recent years, fewer than 1 in 20 were engaged in instruction designed to teach students to think instead of merely drilling for the test.   To teach and test the skills that our students need, we must first redefine excellent instruction. It is not a checklist of teacher behaviors and a model lesson that covers content standards. It is working with colleagues to ensure that all students master the skills they need to succeed as lifelong learners, workers, and citizens. I have yet to talk to a recent graduate, college teacher, community leader, or business leader who said that not knowing enough academic content was a problem. In my interviews, everyone stressed the importance of critical thinking, communication skills, and collaboration."

School Is [already] Hell, as they say.

"Rigor" - stiffness, rigidness, harshness, inflexibility. Well, certainly we could entertain adolescents on the "values" of this in our schools, but after the snickering dies down, we're really back at rigor mortis, and we need to wonder why anyone thinks this is what education needs.

"There’s a lot of talk in education circles today about rigor," Debbie Shults writes, "Educators all over America are frantically waving copies of Thomas Friedman’s, The World is Flat, as they attempt to awaken their colleagues to the impending doom our nation faces if we do not deliver a rigorous and relevant education to every American child. Politicians talk about the need to return rigor to the classroom. Parents demand rigorous programs for their children. School administrators performing classroom walk-throughs look for signs of it, and teachers are resolutely attempting to prove their lessons are full of the stuff. But what is rigor?"

The Washington State School Boards asks similar questions: "It’s easier to start with what rigor is not, at least when we’re talking about learning. My dictionary uses words like “severity, rigidity, hardship” which, in education, might look like endless repetition, or long hours of filling out worksheets. Rigorous learning is not a measure of the quantity of material covered or the number of times it’s covered. Rigor isn’t increased graduation requirements, either, although they may be needed to prepare more students to enter college. Adding more courses, important as that may be, won’t necessarily increase rigorous learning in our classrooms."

Well, Shults points us to a definition from Teaching What Matters Most: Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievementby Richard W. Strong, Harvey F. Silver and Matthew J. Perini. According to Strong, Silver, and Perini, “Rigor is the goal of helping students develop the capacity to understand content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging.”

Washington State asserts that rigor is, "Active, either through conversation or hands-on or minds-on activity. There’s questioning and discovery going on. Deep rather than broad; project-based. The learners are digging into a topic or project. Engaging. Either on his or her own or with the help of a teacher, each learner has made a real connection with the material to be learned. In every case, there’s a sense that the learning was “hard but satisfying.”'

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, New York University and University of Virginia professors respectively, on the other hand, seem to know exactly what rigor is, "Part of the reason for a decline in critical thinking skills could be a decrease in academic rigor," Arum told NPR, "35 percent of students reported studying five hours per week or less, and 50 percent said they didn't have a single course that required 20 pages of writing in their previous semester."

Which may be all fine, I think "education" is about "helping students develop the capacity to understand content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging," along with a bunch of other things, and I can't argue with "active," "deep," and "engaging" either, but I'm confused about why we want to preserve the word "rigor" while abandoning all of its historic definition.

On the other hand if "education" is simply a measure of time spent and pieces of paper used, then perhaps "rigor" is the word, and I am simply against "education." I have been accused of this for many years, so you shouldn't just discount that possibility.

The "definition of rigor" battle reaches high comedy when Columbia University's Justin Snider (after work funded by - who else - The Bill and Melinda Gates Anti-Education Foundation) wrote a long piece on Valerie Straus's Washington Post blog on "rigor" in which he fails to define anything. He does refer us to PowerPoint slides and articles full of gems like, "In the U.S., it is socially acceptable to do poorly in math and science," "If you think of the brain as a learning machine, the more you push it to learn, the more powerful it becomes," and my favorite, "In winter 2008, four Alabama college students designed an independent study course that involved eating barbecue in as many states as possible and writing about their meals. Asked by a reporter to respond to faculty skepticism about such student-designed courses, an accreditation agency official defended them as rigorous because students sign a contract to complete a learning plan."

Here's a thought, if you are spending all of your time worrying about a term no one can define, its time to get a different hobby.Thus, step three in Changing Gears 2012 is to stop using the term rigor, and to start to actually define what you want from education for your students.

The well intentioned Phil Kovacs wants to use the word "vigor" -

   "In an interview with Learning Matters, Phillip Kovacs (columnist for EdNews.org) suggests we replace rigor with vigor. Consider the defintions for vigor: active strength or force. healthy, physical or mental energy or power; vitality. energetic activity; energy; intensity: the economic recovery has give the country a new vigor. force of healthy growth in any living matter or organism, as a plan. Consider some of vigor’s synonyms: drive. strength. force. flourish. vitality. Doesn’t vigor sound like a far more engaging and purposeful learning environment?"

But I am tired of buzzwords, and I don't want to pick a replacement for "rigor" from my rhyming dictionary. What I want instead is an understanding of what educational opportunity means.

Educational opportunity certainly comes from expecting the most from every student, though I disagree with President Obama, who, being the highly competitive guy politicians usually are, said, "It is time to expect more from our students... It is time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world. It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career.” What I want is for every American child, every British child, Canadian child, Irish child, Australian child, Indian child, Afghani child, Palestinian child, French child, Lapp child (et al), to be able to work with everybody on the planet, to lead anyone on the planet, to learn from anyone on the planet. I want them all to know how to effectively access and evaluate the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it. I want them to know about all of their possibilities, about everything they can do. I want them to be effective communicators, not just in business, but in their own lives. I want them to want the best not just for themselves and their families but for their societies and their world, and I want them to have the tools - thinking tools, communication tools, information tools, productivity tools - which allow them to chase their dreams.

Titanicat research in action.

That requires "real" education, but it requires no "rigor" at all. Rather, it requires the opposite.

Let me talk about "expecting the most," and Twitter followers will know some of this as "the Titanicat lesson." In early December, in a school in one of those "most at risk" communities in America, I worked with a class of 25 or 26 fourth graders. Not a tiny class. Not kids who come from families with college educated parents. Not kids with computers or broadband at home. Not kids - often - with family food money. These are kids who people often do not expect much of. The kind of kids Teach for America thinks need untrained teachers. The kind of kids Arne Duncan thinks need KIPP Academies with training in staring and chanting.

We decided to try and teach these fourth graders to effectively multitask. So as the school's librarian read Titanicat, a book about the Titanic which takes place in Belfast and Southampton, I played on an Interactive White Board bringing up maps, and the students, armed with 15 new MacBook Airs (we had 20, but I held 5 back to encourage sharing and cooperation instead of 1:1 individualism), searched for anything in the story they did not know or didn't understand, or for things the story got them interested in.

It was pretty magical. While neither the kids nor their teacher had any preparation for this, the students were brilliant. "What's Belfast?" I asked, "Where is it?" They all found Belfast, despite my refusal to help them spell it ("I'm not sure how to spell it," I told them, "why don't you try and see what happens?"). "Where is it? What country is it in? I asked. "It says, 'U.K.'" a few yelled. So, "What's 'U.K.' mean?" I asked.

"University of Kentucky," one girl called out. "University of Kentucky?" I asked, "does that make sense?" "Kentucky doesn't have an ocean," a boy said very quietly. I repeated his statement. Quickly, "United Kingdom," came as an answer. "United Kingdom?" I said, "what's that?"

We rolled through the story and all of its places and ideas. Was the United Kingdom in England or England in the United Kingdom? If Belfast was in Ireland, why did it say U.K.? Did they still build ships in Belfast? Where, exactly, is Southampton? Didn't the founders of Jamestown, Virginia also sail from there? Why didn't ships sail from London? Why did they sail across the ocean? Were there airplanes in 1912?

Students found this 1913 German Film In Night and Ice (Part 1, all parts are on YouTube)

Alone, together, with or without adult help.

The students raced through searches, finding movies old (even silent) and new (Leonardo DiCaprio), finding the streets of Southampton, yes, even wandering in  Google Maps to find their own school, their own houses. They found pictures of 1912 airplanes. They found other old ships. They found stuff about southern England. And, let me add this, these are children who often have yet to visit their county seat, much less anywhere further.

But they were being pushed, yes, pushed, to engage with the world in terms of expansive space, expansive time, and expansive ideas, and they weren't resisting, they were leaping forward to engage in this very active learning. And I'll add something else, though none of this directly linked to anyone's curricular content for nine-year-olds, though none of this required long hours of homework to reinforce learning, the kids were high-fiving me in the hall two hours later about how excited they were.

So here was the follow up, and it was for me - the educator - to do. I got back to Michigan and I ordered Titanicat, I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912, and A Night to Rememberand sent all three books, along with digital and audio versions of A Night to Remember, to the school library. Now, if any kids want to go further in investigating this tale, this bit of history, they have both the tools and the opportunity.

This is what we can offer every child. Opportunity and access. We gave these kids something to be excited about which introduced them to other nations, to geography, to science, to history. We gave them the tools with which they could all find ways to research - alone, together, which adult support, whatever each student needed. We gave them the time and the freedom to learn - did all hear the whole story? of course not, half said they got lost in what they were doing. Was that wrong? of course not, I simply said that this kind of "multitasking," knowing how to find out what you didn't know as you read or listened, was something we all need to get better at, because we have to do it all the time. They even had ideas about getting better, "we have to be quieter when we search," more than one child said.

"Helping students develop the capacity to understand content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging.” "Active." "Deep." "Engaging."Complex and deep. What is the difference between mapping John Smith's journey to Virginia on an outline map (the fifth grade history curriculum for these kids next fall) and knowing what the Quay in Southampton looks like? Provocative. What happens when children attending what was once a "Colored School" (by law) discover that in Belfast discrimination like that happens among white people? Personally or emotionally challenging. What to make of the story of a twelve-year-old living on his own, when you are nine? Ambiguous. Could this story be true? Does it make sense? Active and engaging. Well, yes it was.

And for every child? It was clear to me that there was not a hair's worth of difference - if any - in intelligence, capability, and possibility between these "at risk" kids and the wealthiest kids in the nation, because we were not measuring parentally-granted capability.
See, it is not "rigor" that we need. Nor should we seek it. "Rigor" is a word which comes from our Reformation past, in which text was fixed and unchallengable, and the boundaries of what was worth learning were clearly described. You read the Bible, then McGuffey's readers, then your secondary textbook, and that was all there was worth knowing. Fixed, Rigid. 

Freedom to be.

If we are real educators we now know that our students need something else. Not more hours, but better used, and much more flexibly used time. Not seat time but imagination time. Not 20 page papers but the chance to explain our ideas to people who do not know our answers. Not reams of arithmetic problems to do but lots of ways of understanding the systems which make maths work. Not memorized formulas and dates but basic understanding of relationships and great search skills combined with powerful "crap detection" skills.

Flexible. Adaptive. Active. Communicative. Collaborative. Efficient.

There is literally a million times more to know in this universe today than when Barack Obama sat in his classrooms in Hawaii and in Djakarta. Literally. The universe is both much, much larger, and much, much smaller. We can, any day, look back billions of years in time, and we can watch neurons fire in the brain. We can speak with almost anyone on earth anytime, and we will probably have to work with everyone on earth at some point in some way.


"Rigor" was an idea for a fixed universe with a fixed set of knowledge. There is nothing in that word we need in our schools today. Except for an adolescent snicker or two.


- Ira Socol
next: It's not about 1:1

Changing Gears 2012: rejecting the "flip"

(1) ending required sameness     (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

"I can't wait to watch my Khan
Academy videos tonight..."

Maybe I'm highly sensitive to this. I grew up in a 420 square foot home with two parents and four kids. This was not a place for the calm production of homework. Now, yes, I had two university educated parents, smart, dedicated parents who did whatever they could, but both worked or went to school or both, and if my older siblings were struggling to help the "dumb little brother" with his homework, obviously, they weren't doing their own.

Anyway, this is not to be confused with an Oprah-style faux memoir, that's not the point. The point is that in my memory, my home had more important things to worry about than getting up at 4.30 am to do a kid's homework, the way President Obama remembers in his "tough" family life.

In later years, as a cop in Brooklyn and The Bronx, as the computer co-ordinator for a homeless mission with before and after school programs for homeless kids, and in work in high poverty schools, I know what kids in poverty face at home. And it isn't a few hours curled up with their own laptop watching video instruction anymore than it was ever my siblings and me curled up with textbooks. Real life, as they say, is different.

So in changing gears for this new year,
step two is "rejecting the flipped classroom."

Let me begin here: Any pedagogical design which relies, in essential terms, on homework is a problem for me, and many others.

"There is a growing number of parents and educators who don't believe we should rob children of the time after school with mandatory homework. We believe time at home should be for pursuing passions, connecting with friends and family, playing and engaging in physical activity.  In some families it might be the time needed to take care of a sibling, work a job, or take care of their own child.  Let us leave children to the activities they and their family choose or find necessary and instead as John Taylor Gatto suggests (in lesson 7), that we should "give children more independent time during the school day" at which time they may also choose to watch flipped classroom lessons." - Lisa Nielson 

in the family room, time for homework

Students, as I noted at the start, "go home" to radically variable environments. Some head home to houses with university educated parents with the time and inclination to support their learning, others to university educated parents with an inclination to do their work for them, others to university educated parents who are either not home or are 'not present' in their children's lives. Many more go home to homes without the parental resources or skillsets to support student learning, or go home to houses where the children themselves have real responsibilities - including child and/or parent care and/or employment which is essential to their survival within a family unit. Further, home resources vary dramatically. There are broadband - everybody has a computer at home - homes, and there are disconnected homes (see New Rochelle, NY's attempted solution for students who lack Broadband) - but these requirements are never mentioned by either homework or "Flipped Classroom" advocates. So, "Homework" - an essential part of the "flip" - has always been controversial for many good reasons.

"Structurally, homework might have one of two fundamentally opposite effects on the home. On the one hand, homework might be viewed as an intrusion by the school into hours reserved for the family--a direct threat to parents' authority to manage their children's time outside of school. According to this model, homework is an exercise of what might be termed "school imperialism" at the expense of parents. It interferes, for example, with chores, with music and dancing lessons, and with the social intercourse that parents and children may expect from each other in the evening.

"Alternately, parents might perceive homework very differently: not as an intrusion or a threat to their authority but, rather, as the primary means by which schools communicate and collaborate with parents on academic matters and engage them in the educational process. According to this model, homework is a link from school to home that keeps parents informed about what the school is teaching, gives them a chance to participate in their children's schooling, and helps to keep the schools accountable to parents. Not to assign homework is to exclude parents from playing an active role in their children's academic development." - Gill and Schlossman, 2003, TCR 105-5 846-871

"Children explained that the parents are `hardworking' people
who try `to support  their children' and `keep their children
safe' and who `worry a lot about how they can make (it so that)
their kids go to college'. [They] witness at an early age that
even if parents work hard, they may not be able to protect and
support their children. Poor children who witness people who
are working hard and not getting rewarded may well be likely
to have a more profound, complicated understanding
of the consequences of poverty." (Weinger 2000)

From the 1890s until World War II homework was consistently highly controversial, with laws against it (California 1901 among many others), the muckraking work of Joseph Mayer Rice The Futility of the Spelling Grind, 1897), editorials in publications such as Ladies Home Journal, "It forced families to play a nightly "comedy of fathers and mothers teaching the children their lessons, with the teachers playing the detective the next morning to see how well the parents have done the work of instruction."' (from Gill and Schlossman among other locations), and the general weight of the Dewey-inspired progressive education movement. Homework was and is "unequal" because of home difference. It was/is "unhealthy" by virtue of trapping children inside and keeping them inactive. It destroys/destroyed "family time" wrecking the transmission of family culture between generations and between differently aged children within families and communities. It did/does undermine parental authority by making parents nothing more than enforcers of the schools' discipline codes.

Kralovec and Buell(2001) make the argument contemporary with their assertions that homework works against the poor and working class children via home inequity, Kevin Thomas explores the demographic impact of immigrant status combined with homework in this century, ("English-language proficiency, for example, affects the ability of immigrant parents to navigate the vicissitudes of parent-teacher relationships and labor market conditions and is also likely to affect their ability to help their children with their homework.") (see also Lareau, Home Advantage), and Alfie Kohn has loudly brought the Deweyan arguments into the present.

So, first, the "Flipped Classroom" is homework dependent, and I would argue that "homework" is, and always has been, a socially reproductive construct, which rewards the wealthy and educated parents by giving their children a huge advantage in school.

Here Comes the Neighborhood
Get More: SOUTH
PARKmore...

Nobody says it better, South Park explains homework as Social Reproduction in "Token is Rich"
(much as I hate to say that Cartman is right)

But the "Flipped Classroom" is worse than 'typical homework' - it literally shifts the explanatory part of school away from the educators and to the home, however disconnected that home might be, however un-educated parents might be, however non-English speaking that home might be, however chaotic that home might be. So, kids with built in advantages get help with the understanding, and kids without come to school the next day clueless. Those "flip" advocates who acknowledge this talk about ways of "catching kids up," of providing school time for those without access or resources at home, but what this really means is putting the kids from homes in poverty into perpetual remediation as the wealthy continue to blaze ahead.

Homework under the Streetlights (New York Times)

This is the same as the teacher who gives kids "free time" or extra study advantages if they complete work or tests quickly. What they are doing is punishing kids who require or prefer more time. Punishing those who read slowly or who use alternative text, for example. Recently my "spousal equivalent" moved through the first 375 pages of Wonderstruckas we sat in a Barnes&Noble on a Saturday afternoon. I bought the book, brought it home, and after three days was on page 23. In school, and especially under the Flip Principle, she's have 2.75 extra days of doing other work - more advanced work - already, while I'd be locked in remedial hell.

In the worst cases, the Khan Academy model, the flip is just an especially brutal version of the old, "go home and read pages 741-749 and do the problems on 750-751," but with videos instead of text. Now videos might be better than text for some kids, but there is no more choice, no more explanation, no more interaction than in this worst model of schooling. I think these are the parts of education which require the most care, the most individualization, and the most interaction between educator and learner.

School is the place for schoolwork. School is also the place where we can help children make sense of their "outside of school" lives. It is the responsibility of educators to help students with their outside lives, not the reverse. And if there is homework - as I told Virginia educators last month - that homework should be, "what can I bring home from school which helps my family and community."

Especially in these times when the economic divide in the United States and in the United Kingdom is at or near historic - Dickensian - levels, the embrace of a pedagogical system designed to increase educational outcomes disparity on the basis of home life seems particularly horrible. We need to be better educators than that, better people than that.

So while I fully embrace, encourage, am even part of initiatives which bring the information resources of school to all children's homes - I think we must move beyond WiFi to 4G-WiMax efforts which connect our students and their families wherever they are - I believe the uses of those technologies and information access at home should be in support of the students themselves, their families, and their communities, and not in support of narrow pedagogical efforts which belong within the school day.

So please, reject the flip. Re-imagine your school day and everything you do instead. A "flipped classroom" is the same classroom, just re-arranged. Our students deserve more imaginative thinking than that. And all of our students deserve an educational environment which moves us toward equality of opportunity, not further away from that.

- Ira Socol
next (delayed by a day or two): re-thinking rigor

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