when voices are lost...

"It's a problem that can be solved with more caring. I don't think it's a problem that can be solved with more security." - Bill Bond - school safety specialist at the National Association of Secondary School Principals

What links the events Friday in Newtown, Connecticut to my opposition to the "Common Core"?

It is that question of Democracy of Voice.

Democracy of Voice means giving every kid a chance to be heard, not heard as "you" or "we" or "society" or those who write expectations about fifth grade essays want them to be heard, but heard as themselves, for who they are, for what they need to say.

It is that right to an authentic voice, in whatever form that voice must take shape, which makes children safe. Honestly, that is the keystone of anyone being safe, for if you cannot be heard and understood, you cannot be safe.

Sadly, not every child has a voice in their school.

This is our first task, caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we're meeting our obligations?
Can we honestly say that we're doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?

Can we claim, as a nation, that we're all together there, letting them know they are loved and teaching them to love in return?

Can we say that we're truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I've been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we're honest with ourselves, the answer's no. We're not doing enough. And we will have to change. - Barack Obama

Amidst all the talk of a "perfect town" and a "close-knit community" - as if those phrases have much meaning wherever we might live - we certainly know of at least young person who was not comfortable, not happy, not OK, not part of an idyllic family, and who, quite obviously, did not receive the kinds of help he needed.

This is not excuse making. Excuses are worthless, but explanations can help us understand even the un-understandable. There are people who have psychotic breaks from reality, there are people who develop amoral personalities, there are people so paranoid as to be dangerous, there are people without the capacity for human reason - I have met them all - and these are explanations, not excuses, but in every case it is ours to wonder, "what did we not see?" "why could we not have intervened?"

I struggled Sunday night as I listened to the victim count. One minister talked only of "twenty new angels," I'm not sure what happened to the teachers who died. The President, and the votive candles on display, spoke of "twenty-six" lost. Governor Malloy of Connecticut of "twenty-seven." But twenty-eight people died in Newtown on Friday, twenty-one of them deemed, by American law, not old enough to have the mental capacity which would allow them to buy alcohol.

from The Guardian

Whatever the causes, and damn the excuses, that is twenty-eight moments of incredible failure for us as a society.

"They talk of a boy who dressed smartly and worked hard, but who barely said a word during his time at school and made few friends. Intelligent but shy and nervous, most said. A former classmate,  told the New York Times: "I never saw him with anyone. I can't even think of one person that was associated with him."

"He had no Facebook page and his electronic footprint was minimal although yesterday the police chief seemed to suggest he may have left behind emails which could help explain his state of mind."

"a skinny, shaggy-haired boy "who never really talked at all" and who stayed tight to the corridor walls when he walked, often clutching his laptop."

I am not diagnosing here, I have no depth of information which would allow me to do that, and I am not blaming anyone, but I am discussing "us" in the biggest possible sense of that word. I am not describing anything new either, the heart of the book To Kill a Mockingbirdlies in the questions I am asking.

"The Lanzas' neighbors on Yogananda Street say it's puzzling that on such a close-knit block where residents throw barbecues for newcomers, so few of them knew [him] or had ever seen him.

"It's a mystery. Nobody knows them, which is odd for this neighborhood," Len Strocchia said. "Everyone knows each other through the children, the school bus. The community here is kids."'

But what I am saying is that at least one child in Newtown, Connecticut seemed to lack his own opportunity for voice. At least one child was not heard.

Interestingly, it is children who seem to understand this first. After a horrible event around schools in Virginia this fall it was high school students, the friends of two of the victims, who expressed anguish over what had happened with that "shooter." And in USA Today a classmate of the Newtown shooter said, "Maybe if someone had tried to reach out  — maybe he needed a friend. Maybe this wouldn't have happened," [the classmate] said. "He's just one kid who slipped through the cracks."

Kids slip through the cracks when their voices are not heard, that is the truth, and it is the truth even though hearing their authentic voices will never be any guarantee against mental illness or violence. But simply, allowing each child, helping each child achieve authentic voice is all that we, as humans - not deities - can do.

This is true whether the result is the horror we saw on Friday, or the brilliance we also witnessed on Friday when Connecticut's Governor chose to make every death notification himself, knowing the importance of that symbolism to the families involved:

"Malloy spoke candidly to the students [in 2011] about his struggles growing up in Stamford in the 1960s, recalling when teachers would post his failing scores on the classroom board, or how he stayed away from collecting baseball cards like many other boys because deciphering the words and statistics was so torturous.

'"Honestly, it was just terrible. I was embarrassed most of the time," he said"

Voice matters, and voice is not common, and voice cannot be "grade-levelled," and voice must not be guided into specific kinds of questions, answers, reviews, and essays.

"Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts, including using frequently occurring conjunctions to signal simple relationships (e.g., because)." - page 27

Voice cannot flourish when it is battened down with "standards" and forced to march in a progressive sequence.

"Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text." - page 36

Voice cannot flourish when it is forced into over analysis, when stories are not allowed to be stories, or when our stories are forced into the temporal world of another.

"Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
"a. Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically." - page 43

And voice cannot flourish when it must be measured against culturally-ignorant linear models. For voice needs to soar, to experiment, to push against every boundary and break through whenever possible.

Video streaming by Ustream

Authentic voice heard globally - Middle School students Ustream autobiographies to the world.

And voice cannot flourish unless children can express themselves as they need to, in the safety of a community which accepts that voice and encourages it and hears it carefully, and all of that exists in a place where children do not crawl down the sides of corridors in fear, or fear punishments because they behave as children, or where they are measured according to nonsensical adult measuring sticks.

The President on Sunday Night

In the end, we don't need "more security" and we don't need "higher standards." Yes, we need to remove killing machines from our nation, but really, we need to care a whole lot more. We need to rearrange our priorities in such a way that our children come first, that our children and our learning spaces and our educators have the resources - all the resources - which they need and all the safety which allows them to be children and adolescents - to learn, to f--- up, to learn more, to grow, to be who they are.

- Ira Socol

"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."

of loss and anger and memory on a rainy winter day

I am watching the rain fall on a chill winter's day, and I am thinking.

Yesterday morning I had the joyous opportunity to play with letters and words with kindergarten kids in three different schools in Albemarle County, Virginia.

They showed me how to make a J.
I challenged them with a special "J-word" - Jelloricious.

This was special. Special because, though I am not in Virginia this week, I could join through the contemporary technologies which make the world of these children something unique, and special because, unless you routinely see "school,' "education," and our planet through the eyes of young children, you are in no position to discuss education and educational poverty. The gift these five-year-olds give to me is a gift which makes my work possible.

But yesterday morning I also became aware of the horrible evil playing out in a Connecticut suburb, a place close to the homes of friends, a place close to the homes of dearly loved cousins - not that that matters, really - but a place any of us might find ourselves... as parents or teachers.

A mentally ill young white suburban male - does this sound familiar - who did not get the help he probably needed in school, whose family was spread out too far, whose father spent three hours a day commuting to a job I know was longer than eight hours in length, whose - well, we'll never know most of it but we know it all too well, walked into an elementary school, an elementary school secured with all the silly security systems politicians and media-trained parents demanded after Columbine, and murdered 20 babies, five and six-year-olds, and six of those "lazy, unionized" adults our leaders say work in our schools.

Why? There's no answer. I could tell you about profiling the paranoia which grows in certain isolated minds, about how that morphs into conspiracy, merges with America's peculiar machismo love of heavy weapons, and turns lethal, but that's the stuff of stupid Today Show interviews now. It doesn't matter.

There may be answers in American gun laws. America's leaders are far more interested in arresting 19-year-olds with beer cans than people with assault weaponry - "killing machines" is the only term we can use. (A police academy instructor once told us, "There may be legitimate reasons to own a single shot rifle, but the only purpose of handguns and multi-shot weapons is the murder of humans.") There is a great deal of the mantra of the American right wing in this, "the "right-to-life" ends at birth." We like to pretend, in America, that we are heroes instead of an increasingly frightened population, terrified of our own shadows, so we cling to our guns as a faux masculinity, unwilling to take any necessary steps which might make our children safer.

There may be answers in our health care system as well. As middle class health insurance has been gutted by greedy corporations and moronic state legislators, mental health supports have dropped. As school budgets have been cut so has counseling support. I remember being amazed, when I first went to work in a high school, that we had one social worker for 1800 adolescents. Many football coaches, one social worker. It is only because of Obamacare that this shooter could have even had health insurance as a 20-year-old not in college, and, you know, Obamacare is a socialist plot.

The Twilight Zone - The Bewitching Pool - not every suburban idyll is idyllic

There may be answers in our desires for status. I do not know if I would have spent a great deal of money to live in a place which left me with three hours of commuting each day, and only minutes with my children. I earned very little during the time I had to devote to parenting, but I was there. And I'm glad my son and I watched TV together and ate dinner together almost every night. I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilt here, but I think we might need to examine our priorities, to stop laughing at the Greeks or Irish because they value time home with their families more than money and 3,000 square foot homes on half acre lots. I think we need to decide whether our time is better spent in our adult pursuits or in parenting. I think we need to wonder about living in neighborhoods instead of subdivisions.

President Obama

And there may need to be a rethink about how we act when our kids are in trouble. Do we protect our reputation or do we get help?

But, as I watch today's rain, I guess the biggest question is our priorities as a society. I understand that I, as someone who hates guns - I carried one every day for my job, I'd never do that again - its no big deal for me to give up guns if it makes kids safer, but if guns are your love, your hobby, your passion, would you make that choice? I know every tax dollar I pay "hurts" - but I pay, as Michigan's late great Governor George Romney said, "because its my responsibility." I'd rather pay ten more bucks and have a psychologist in every school. I'd rather pay another ten bucks more and make sure the teenager on the next block over has the access to great mental health services. I'd rather pay more at a store which offers benefits to my retail-employed neighbors than shop at Walmart. I'd rather drive a car built by an American unionized worker because I know they have the salary and benefits they need to take care of their families and have dignity in their lives. And I'd rather do what I do with schools than make a lot of money.

I'm hardly a saint. That's not the point. The point is that from every direction, the White House, the Republicans in Congress, America's governors, the Koch Brothers, even Andrew Cuomo (who, like Mitt Romney, was raised to know better), and especially corporate America, children in our society have been pushed to the back of our priorities list. We worry about taxes, and rights, and unions and socialism, but maybe the first question should be, "what about our children?"

We are hurting right now. Horribly hurting. It is beyond our imaginations. But it will go on and on like this until we choose to make different decisions.

There is nothing a school policy or any school security can do about this. This is a society which needs to ask itself some very deep questions.

Because when I next interact with five-year-olds, I do not want to look at them with fear in my heart. I do not want to do that.

- Ira Socol

The System Effect

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

portrait of a young Leninist:
a 1925 Ayn Rand bookcover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The System Effect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Ira Socol

One Ethos, Open Culture, Many Paths, Many Tools

"Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology."

A Twitter conversation led me to this place. What does a place of learning need to welcome all, to offer all the kinds of paths to the future which our children need?

I settled on a set of four thoughts: One Ethos, Open Culture, Many Paths, Many Tools.

If that is the belief system, I think that the rest - the pedagogies, the spaces, the schedules, the ways we treat each other, and the kind of deep, inspired learning humans deserve - will follow.

One Ethos

High School Math Teacher (1996): "That damn kid, he's rather go to Saturday School than come to my class."
High School Librarian (replying): "Well, you'll have to think about that!"

Why would a student come to your school, if she/he were not forced to? This is a question you must ask every day, as every teacher ought to ask, Why would a student come to my class...?

What does your school, as a whole and in every space inside, offer children? Safety from unsafe families or communities? Food which otherwise be in short supply? A chance to hang out with their friends? Do they come for just one teacher, or only because of music or sport? Is that good enough for you?

These kids of questions are rarely asked in American education, though we fill millions of square feet of wall space with "mission statements" and "learning goals." We just don't ask, "What is this school for?" In fact, we avoid that question so deeply that last January the US President got up in front of the nation and actually suggested that the solution to high school dropouts was to make dropping out illegal. Talk about giving up...

So why? What do you - as an entire school - offer every student that would make them come if compulsory attendance laws and the parental need for babysitting disappeared? Would they come because they understand that your school is a safe and happy place in which they are offered a world to learn in a somewhat less-risky-than-real-life situation? Would they come because they are excited about what they invest in when they walk through your doors? Would they come because they find the push to discovery, learning, and growth to be inspirational instead of coercive? Would they come because you offer a great collection of paths to an independent future? Would they come because you offer a laboratory for democracy and life - that you are - all together - creating a future better than the present?

I cannot tell you why... but you must find this answer, and that answer is the ethos your school must embrace - universally.

Open Culture

I'm not against the"Common Core" because I'm a crazed postmodernist. There are other things I'm against because of that. And I'm not against the "Common Core" because I doubt the need for us to share some commonalities of knowledge.

I'm against the "Common Core" because it is neither "common" in my experience nor is it generally at the "core" of what people need. Instead it is part of a long history of education as Pygmalion - to use George Bernard Shaw's lovely mythological metaphor.

"None of this is new. "Established in 1914, the Ford English School taught the company’s immigrant workers more than just how to speak English. It taught them about American culture and history and instilled the importance of such virtues as thriftiness, cleanliness, good manners, and timeliness." There has always been a tension in the United States between the expressed ideal of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society - you know, that brilliant combination of ethnicities in any World War II film - and the reality on the political ground, which is that "our leadership" would find things "much easier" if we were all "white, protestant, straight, northern Europeans,"' I wrote more than a year ago, while pointing out that even that belief is a lie, a cover for something else, that is, if school is about being a "white, protestant, straight, northern European," it guarantees that those now in power will watch their children begin school with an insurmountable lead on everyone else, thus assuring social reproduction.

People think the "Common Core" is inclusive because teachers can choose books, but in this, they miss the point. The "Common Core" is "white protestantism" because of the values it suggests while pushing all children to meet Middle Class Age "Appropriate" Learning Targets - or in their carefully crafted words - "provide teachers and parents with a common understanding of what students are expected to learn. Consistent standards will provide appropriate benchmarks for all students, regardless of where they live."

What if it doesn't really make a f---ing bit of difference to my kid's, or my community's, life, if my 7-year-old doesn't... "by the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range"?

Pygmalion, why are you superior? 

Could my 7-year-old spend that year investigating physics with balls and paper airplanes and by building bridges instead? Or learn to speak the languages which might surround her in our community? Or learn measurement concepts by learning to cook? Or might he just want to listen to, and tell, stories? Or, as was the case of my kid at that age, was he far more interested in adult reading and music than in the "grades 2-3 text complexity band"?

In Finland, much of Scandinavia, kids don't even begin school until they're 7-years-old, and since the "Common Core" claims to be built on "best practices," and Finland tops those international comparisons, maybe the alphabet is the best cultural target. In Ireland I watched 7-years-olds from all over participating in classrooms with kids up to age 12, with all that subject matter, but mostly... participating by listening and talking.

A culturally diverse school is not about flags in the hallway or "welcome" written in a bunch of languages, its about being a learning space where kids get to negotiate how their culture meets the others around them. Where, say to begin, holidays are shared on equal terms, without pressure to either "opt in" or "opt out." Where time is respectful of cultural differences, whether it is Ramadan and Yom Kippur or "on-timeness" or "appropriate speed." Where communication is accepted and developed because it is authentic, not because it meets E.D. Hirsch's cultural expectations, and as it is developed, we all learn to communicate more widely, and we learn far more about communication choices.

A culturally diverse - a culturally "open" - school also refuses to grade by compliance to Anglo norms. It is not a question of why read For Whom the Bell Tollsinstead of The English Patient, but rather, the violence you will do to The English Patientif you try to analyze it and write essays about it "the common core way"?

Many Paths

Where is the student now? Where does the student want and need to go? What are the possible ways to get from point A to the much more nebulous point B?

There is really never one way to learn anything, to read anything, to write anything, to calculate anything. There are always choices, and there must be choices - unless we plan to never improve as a species. "Why is fastest better?" I once heard James Gee ask. "Why is the shorter proof better in Geometry? Why is it better to finish an assignment faster?"

Or why is a five paragraph essay better than a one paragraph argument? Or a ten page rant? If this were true Tom Clancy would be a better writer than James Joyce or Virginia Woolf or Colm Toibin, and (let me just assert this truth), he is not.

If all the rules were true, this wouldn't be great literature

Or, why should addition come before calculus? Or biology before physics? Or why is music composition less important than reading about Abraham Lincoln? Or why can't soccer practice count as math class? Is it about "rules," or is it because educators are not imaginative enough to help students pursue the world their own way?

It is way past time to stop imposing single solutions on our learners, Neil Postman and Charley Weingartnerrecognized the choices created by (then) new media in 1968 required teaching practice to radically change. You are now over 40 years late.

And that lateness has been horribly destructive. I am sorry to have to tell you this, but the majority of students leaving American schools at the end of 12th Grade (or before), will describe most of their education to that point as an irrelevant waste of time. That's because it is not "their education" at all, but something imposed on them by people who appear to have nothing in common with them.

Many Tools

"Most of us lack all kinds of powers. I can't lift my car by the bumper in order to change a tire. That's what jacks are for. I can't add long columns of figures in my head. That's what calculators are for. Tools give us the ability to make up for what we lack in native powers." John Perry in the Wall Street Journal.

I believe in Toolbelt Theory, which begins with the concept that we humans are, perhaps above all, toolmakers and tool users, and that thus, in the education of our children, the most important thing we can help them learn is how to be very good at both. "After all," I tell people, "without tools humans are a very long way from the top of the food chain."

It is human to make, choose, use tools

Schools need to stop limiting tool use and equating tool use with "cheating." The tools of today are incredibly powerful, incredibly diverse, and create never-before-seen opportunities for so many students failed, consistently, by our one-size-fits-all education system, that we must embrace these tools, and help students learn to get the most out of the technologies which sit - or will sit - in their pockets. We can't do that by limiting, filtering, and blocking.

Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can read from paper, from a computer screen, from a tablet screen, from a mobile phone screen, or listen to their computer, tablet, or phone read to them, or some combination of those things. Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can write with a pen, a pencil, a stylus, their finger, a big keyboard, a little keyboard, a touch screen, or just by speaking. Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can communicate through text or speech, audio or video, music or art, with much of the world. Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can pull in information from anywhere on the globe, at any time - and truly - that is a skill you must help them learn to do well. And we can't do that unless the tools are present every day, all the time, so that we can all learn what works for each of us.

One Ethos, Open Culture, Many Paths, Many Tools. Because if education matters, it matters enough to do the right things for our kids.

- Ira Socol

of handball and hurling, archery and inclusion

Team Handball, basketball without the height issues, equipment cost? near zero

Like many in the world, I've been watching lots of sport(s) this month. And as I do most Olympic years, I wonder why American schools spend so much money on so few sports for so few students.

Archery... why not? It might allow boys and girls to compete together,
it would surely allow kids who might use wheelchairs to play team sports with other kids.

This isn't an issue for schools elsewhere in the world who can rely on intact communities to support youth (and adult) sport(s), but in the United States it is a huge issue. In most communities I visit certain sport-activities receive massive funding from the schools, while most students miss out entirely on the benefits of this kind of physical activity joined to social learning.

As I used to say, often, when I was fighting for soccer programs for boys and girls at North Muskegon High School in Michigan - if varsity athletics have educational value they need to be available to every student who wishes to participate, if varsity athletics don't have that kind of educational value schools surely should stop including them in their programs and budgets.

Hurling, another relatively low-cost sport with high participation potential
(much cheaper in equipment costs than lacrosse, and without the negative role modelling)

My thought has always been this... the purpose of varsity athletics is participation, pursuit of the personal best, and teamwork. It is not - it cannot be - about American public schools needing to entertain an overweight population snacking on hot dogs after tailgating. It infuriated me that when I suggested that Penn State play football without fans, many said this was "unfair to the players." As someone who played sports few, if any, watched, I wondered, how sick is our academic athletics environment if the only purpose is externally-provided gratification?

Croquet... why not?

With this in mind I am always on the lookout for athletic opportunities which could involve a bunch of kids, especially kids usually left out, while using shared - not new - facilities (even if that cuts down some practice time for some other sports, which is a side benefit for everyone). If you have a pool, do you offer boys and girls water polo? If you have a field do you offer boys and girls lacrosse, hurling, field hockey, rugby (you might do both Rugby Union and Rugby Sevens)? If you have a gym do you offer boys and girls team handball, and team volleyball? If you have some space outside do you offer boys and girls archery, and croquet?

Women's Rugby Sevens. The equipment will not break your budget.

None of this will cost much, beyond a certain diversion of resources (including assistant coaching positions from some sports being shifted to head coaching positions for these new activities), except for lacrosse (and perhaps archery), equipment is cheap, and lack of many opponents is not a problem - a multi-high school or middle school district or division could form its own league, or just a couple of nearby towns could do this together. Remember, the National Hockey League played for 25 years with just six teams. It is still remembered as the glory days.

And most importantly, opportunities to redefine the school culture and climate will be created. There will be less of the elitism which inevitably surrounds the few "important" activities.

So dive into the list of Olympic sports, past and present, and see what opportunities your school can add.

- Ira Socol

School Restart: Change on Day One

One of the statements which drives me insane is the teacher who tells me that they must, "set the strict rules from the first day, then they can ease off later." I always "suggest" that when they do that, they not only lose all the respect of their students, the literally create a room full of enemies, and if they try to "ease off" later it will go as well as... say the last days of the East German or Romanian Ceauşescu regimes.

"We cracked down, then we allowed a little more freedom"
the end of the Romanian dictatorship, 1989

If you want to begin the school year educationally, creating an ecosystem designed around student learning, you surely don't need to begin as a "tough guy," you instead have to throw out all of your "classroom management" strategies and probably almost everything else your school usually does the day kids come back from summer holidays...

Here are ten things to change at the start:

1. Do NOT welcome kids to a "new school" or a "new grade" - that's your vanity showing through, and it insists that children adapt their learning to you, instead of the educational ecosystem flexing to meet the child. Instead, welcome them to a "continuation of their learning" and of "their life." As I will say over and over here, school is about the children, it is not about the adults - it is about meeting students where they are, not creating hoops for trained monkeys to jump through.

"Step in, sit there" - Alcatraz, early 1960s

2. Do NOT assign seats, or even require sitting - imagine, you walk into a party and the first thing you hear is, "sit down over there and shut up." I, for one, am probably walking back out of the door and not coming back. If you start minute one of day one with an exercise in compliance, your school year is already "over" in many ways, and you've already lost half of your students in significant ways.

So say instead, "welcome, come on in, make yourself comfortable." If this space is to be your shared home for the next nine months, would you want to begin any other way?

3. Avoid the "ice breaker" events until you know your students well, and then they aren't needed. "Ice Breaker" games you have designed are - I'll assume unintentionally - designed to humiliate. Whatever they involve, writing, walking, running, reading, speaking may be incredibly difficult for some kids in the room, creating first day failure, first day humiliation, and, inevitably, justified anger.

Whatever age, whatever place, allow students to find their own places of comfort on day one, only then can you actually observe what the children in your room need.

4. Do NOT let your classroom be set up according to what you like - it is NOT your space, but "their's." I hear all the time from teachers, "I like this color," "I want my desk here," "I want to use this space this way," "I don't want kids writing on the floor, it's dirty," "I cannot handle too much noise," "If I don't have desks this way, I can't see." Lots and lots of "I" statements in a profession which is - quite definably - supposed to be about the children.

This moves from the (perhaps) minor, an odd love for motivational posters for example, to the ridiculous (and perhaps dangerous) - I recently saw an elementary classroom where the teacher had completely blocked the only classroom window with a "presidential-sized" desk of her own, and had filled the windowsill with her stuff so no child could possibly get to natural light. I often see middle school classrooms where teachers have covered every window, both to corridors and to the outside. I see school entryways painted in colors chosen because "the principal likes it."

It is NOT your space. It is the students' space and an essential part of education is learning to negotiate the development of shared space - especially in a society of one or two-child families, kids with their own rooms, and homes which separate instead of bringing families together.

"don't think, just repeat"
Chaplin in Modern Times

5. Stop encouraging automaticity, cultivate mindfulness instead. It is time to embrace Ellen Langer and work to replace the "robot brain" so many schools encourage with the engaged mindfulness of students consciously making decisions. "Mindfulness, [Langer] tells the medical school audience, is the process of actively noticing new things, relinquishing preconceived mindsets, and then acting on the new observations."

Langer describes what is needed everywhere in education - “the psychology of possibility,” because, “...knowing what is and what can be are not the same things,” and for students, obviously, the "can be" is all important. If it wasn't, they'd be done.

So much that we do in schools to "create habits" works toward what Langer calls "mindlessness." If a child gets off the same bus each day, walks through the same school door, down the same corridor, to the same classroom, and takes the same seat, they have begun their school day by shutting their brain down. The same is true of everything from "homework every night," to memorizing facts - is our goal really the absence of thinking?

Automaticity - mindlessness - is an industrial efficiency concept. Don't think, just repeat. Does that belong in your school?

6. Hypocrisy doesn't work - it tells children that you are a liar and a tyrant. So many children go to schools where every adult eats and drinks while using their computers, but the kids are not allowed to do the same. Many teachers have beverages while kids must wait until "snack time." Many communities tolerate behaviors in adults - and in adult leaders - which would get kids suspended or worse.

This is especially true for the young adolescents who occupy American middle schools, kids who live in the most absurd world where the only sure way they can be treated as an adult is to murder someone, but they are constantly told to "behave like an adult." Either trust kids as the humans they are, or choose to treat them like animals - but understand - they will act as you expect them to act.

7. Do NOT overdecorate with stuff you've bought - let the kids make it their own. Don't fill your classroom with purchased stuff. A great way to begin the year is to make our children into "makers." Let them paint, draw, write, build, sculpt - their passions, their lives, their dreams - and decorate right from the start with what your kids have created.

Really? Really?!

8. Human dignity matters above all - do NOT take it away. A few things must be unacceptable across your school - no one should have the right to tell someone else when they can or cannot use the toilet, no one should have the right to tell someone else when they can or cannot move to make themselves more comfortable, no one should have the right to imprison anyone in a space without something like "cause."

Now, none of this suggests that we don't learn to negotiate all of this within our own community - "how do I get up and head toward the bathroom?" "how do I move from my chair to standing in the back without bothering people?" "what are my responsibilities if I need to leave the classroom?" - but prohibitions based on whim - or some belief in "church-like" behavior - are simply not tolerable.

9. Don't tell, ask instead. I hate the notion that years in school are nothing more than preparation for some pre-cooked set of expectations for the next year. That's absurd, it tells students that their is no actual goal and that none of us understand why any kid would come to school.

Instead, we must meet students where they are. It is not the job of fifth grade teachers to prep future middle school students, it is the job of sixth grade teachers to meet their new students where they are, and then to help them move forward.

So this year, ask. Open a Google Doc and share the link. Put paper on the floor or wall. Create a TodaysMeet room, and ask your students to tell you what they did last year, and where they want to go this year.

10. Don't do what I've done here - nobody wants to look at negative lists. I recently wandered some school corridors with principals during this summer "quiet time" and in one case we tore down every "No" and behavioral "control" sign in the building, because "no" is a restriction, and a limited one at that - far better to empower possibility than to restrict the few things you can think of.

So frame things in the positive, embrace common sense, and remember, people make rules and put up signs when they have failed - when people in a community do not understand the need to do the right thing.

- Ira Socol

The Silent Stadium (Penn State part five)

Previous posts on Penn State: Cultures of Compliance,  The Teaching of Tribalism, Darkness at Noon (Saturday), The Realities of the Victims (Omelas). Please see Voices4Victims at Penn State for more information.

The Freeh Report on the child rape scandal and cover up at the Pennsylvania State University is a frightening glimpse into what can occur when an educational institution, from top to bottom, forgets what its purpose is.

Though the institution in question is one horrifically malignant example, that singularity should not make anyone, in any school, feel comfortable. One of the key things former FBI chief Louis Freeh's report does so well is to point out the very common mis-steps, many going back decades or even more than half a century, which led the Pennsylvania State University into this criminal place, and it is vital reading, because at so many levels of education - especially in the United States where being an educational institution conflates with so many other tangentially connected roles - the seeds of "the next Penn State" lie in fertile ground.

Case Hall at MSU houses both jocks and top students,
but that does not suggest that Michigan State students and programs
are treated equally.

As I read the report, I thought about my "own" Michigan State University. When I was an undergraduate student there in the 1970s a large field sat across the street from the "jock dorm" in which I lived. Actually, to MSU's credit, it was (and is) "half jock dorm" and half residential college for top achieving social science students, a fascinating mix. But then, that mix met every night in "the grill" on the third floor which connected the dorm's two wings, and flag football teams representing floors in all of the South Complex dorms (all of which housed varsity athletes) played each other on the broad green grass across the street in the fall, and floor basketball teams played each other in Jenison Fieldhouse (often on the same court used by Magic Johnson) in the winter.

Magic Johnson and the "Cannabis University [Fourth Floor of South Case Hall] Jointrollers"
both played on this court in the 1970s

Today, that broad green field is occupied by the "football building" - the Spartan equivalent of the infamous Lasch Building in State College, Pennsylvania - and vast, private-for-varsity-football, practice fields. The basketball teams play in the Breslin Center, where no intramural team would ever find welcome. And the third floor grill in Case Hall is now a private dining room for revenue sport athletes.

Splendid isolation from the campus and the norms of society:
The Lasch Building at Penn State (above)
The Skandalaris Football Building at Michigan State (below)

And I thought about a tiny Michigan high school I once coached soccer at. Tiny, the whole pre-K through grade 12 school district had fewer than 800 kids in one building, but football mattered in a huge way to the tiny city in which it sat. I had worked with kids who fought for boys and girls varsity soccer teams for years against, primarily, the football coach and his staff who thought that soccer would dilute his football pool of talent. (I continually pointed out that the football coach cut many potential players, and usually had a 14 boy team though only 12 would ever play most seasons.) When we finally got the teams, I reported to an Athletic Director who was the son of the football coach. Now, he was a really nice guy and a great physical education teacher, but... "Ira," he once told me, "you have no idea of what I go through at family dinners. We talk about you and your "fag" soccer players more than we talk about anything else."

And when the football team's star running back assaulted a teacher at a school-sponsored camp one summer, he was suspended for one game - that easy, non-conference opponent game which began the season.

Penn State Women's
Basketball Coach
Rene Portland sexually
harassed players for decades
without consequence

So, it isn't just Penn State, it isn't just NCAA Division 1, it isn't just big. The University of Montana football program tried to cover up gang rapes. The Baylor University basketball team tried to cover up murder. Penn State was just better at criminal behavior, or more successful, or both. They spent years covering up sexual harassment in their women's basketball program, and apparently much of this century covering up crimes committed by football players. The worst scandals, yes, but as I've said, the seeds of this lie everywhere.

What do we do now?

The only good thing I see which has come out of the Penn State crimes right now is the sudden commitment of Pennsylvania educators and politicians to the idea that "punishment doesn't work." I've seen that all over blogs in the past couple of days, and this is huge progress for a state last seen trying to charge an 11-year-old as an adult for murder. Pennsylvania has almost 500 people serving life sentences for crimes they committed as children, so it is fabulous to see that the Commonwealth will, apparently, revisit all of this, along with those in prison for drugs, and those currently on public sex offender lists.

I agree, punishment doesn't work, but required changes in behavior can work, and the Pennsylvania State University, the institution and community which together built the toxic culture Freeh's report speaks of, needs required changes in behavior. We know this not because a few morons gathered at the statue of child-rape-collaborator, but because, on the day after the Freeh Report's release, Penn State's one action was to announce that it would be spending money to renovate - yes - the Lasch Football Building. If anything says, "we don't get it," that bizarre news moment does.

Thankfully, European Football - the football with feet and no helmets - offers the answer. And we reach across the sea for new solutions when our issues overwhelm our old solutions.

Chilling: The Paterno statue right after Sanduskey's arrest.

Punishment doesn't work (please keep repeating that all you educators and politicians), and shutting down the Penn State football program for a year or two would punish current players and coaches, I am told, who were "uninvolved" (except for the few staff holdovers rarely mentioned). It might also punish other Big Ten football programs. OK, don't shut the program down. Yes, deprive it of post-season play opportunities. That's basic. Force it to contribute 100% of its Big Ten football revenues to non-Penn State related charities and research groups, that's vital. Do both for four years, enough to help break the cycle of football worship and profit across one "collegiate generation"... but then...

Do one more thing. End the football culture for four years. End it. When it returns, make sure it is part of the university, and that is is not the university.

UEFA, the European Football Association - and other global football associations worldwide - has the solution. When culture is the problem, culture is eliminated, and teams are required to play their home games in empty stadiums. This solution is used against clubs big and small, and it is effective. It targets - directly - the culture which lies at the heart of the problem.

in Kenya, a team endures the empty stadium

A Turkish team deals with the silence of fan misbehavior

Penn State should play its home games in an empty Beaver Stadium for the next four years. The games should not be on local television or on local cable systems or on the radio. ESPN3 and similar internet providers should block games from IP addresses in Pennsylvania. Those who "live and die" with Penn State football would have to find other things to do with their lives. The university would have to find other heroes. And, I suspect, all would gain dramatically from the experience.

Let the games go on, but let the culture die.

- Ira Socol

Heroes of the Republic of Ireland

An Open Letter to Uachtarán na hÉireann Michael D. Higgins:

President Higgins:

In May of this year I was privileged to be invited to Ireland to speak to, and work with, the fabulous educators of your nation. At the ICT in Education Conference|Comhdháil ICT san Oideachas
at the Limerick Institute of Technology campus in Thurles, County Tipperary, and in schools from the center of Dublin to the shore at St. Finan's Bay in Baile an Sceilg, we met, conversed with, and worked with many transformational educators who are seeking to create a future full of possibility for their students, for their nation, for their Europe, and for their world.

But what we also saw was a national government, if not a society in general, forgetting that most basic axiom of Irish history... when times are tough we worry first about our children and our future.

And we saw these wondrous educators, among the finest on this planet, struggling to understand how that could axiom could be forgotten.

Children play outside at the An Scoil ag an Ghleanna|Glen National School at St. Finan's Bay

On the edge of the world in County Kerry we found one tiny Gaelscoil leading a small group of rural students both into the future and deep into the collective past. The words were in Irish, the storytelling as ancient as the rocks on which the Atlantic crashed outside the windows, but the children were connected to the world through both technology and their committed, devoted teachers.

At a Shehy Mountains pass in County Cork we found an even tinier school, Cuppabue National School, which has won, in the past year, national awards for everything from maths and sciences to film-making, but whose teachers, students, and parents fear Ruairi Quinn's policies ("Very few young children now would walk to school. Many of the schools in rural Ireland were located because of the fact that people walked to school. The arrival of traffic… makes it virtually impossible, certainly not safe, for people to walk to school. The face of Ireland has changed, not just urban or rural Ireland. We have to reflect that change.") will shutter a school which has educated students brilliantly since the Catholic Emancipation.

St. Mocholomog National School/Cuppabue National School has been a place of learning
for as far back as the stories recall. That students "could go elsewhere" according to the
Minister of Education and Skills should not shutter a fabulous school.
(below) the (pre-K-grade 6) students' award-winning film on the fiscal crisis

In Dublin we found Bridge 21 Learning offering secondary students with few traditional paths to opportunity coming to a "school" on their off-hours just to participate in collaborative community learning, yet euros are short, and the program can only reach a small percentage of the adolescents who desperately need this support.

In Thurles the Presentation Secondary School, a beautiful place filled with higher level thinking, arts, and music struggles with furnishings so old, and classroom spaces so tight, that students are wedged into desks with, yes, inkwells.

St. Martin de Porres N.S. multiage choir says it all.

(below) students at St. Martin de Porres know how to leverage technology to
overcome learning issues.

And in Tallaght we found the remarkably diverse and exciting St. Martin de Porres National School with an incredible technology program powering every learner which needs newer equipment and greater bandwidth if they are going to continue their children's growth.

Before I began the visit I wrote...

"Ireland is wasting time and energy worrying about “efficiency,” “saving money,” “teacher pay,” and battles over the Junior and Leaving Certs, instead of investing in imagining, and moving towards, a lifespan educational structure which will carry Ireland into the future. In this, this nation is hardly alone, but perhaps the stakes are much higher for a small island nation which knows the ability of education to transform a society, which saw the changes of the 1970s and 1980s, in all levels of schooling, lead a societal and socio-economic revolution... we will not focus on “rigour” – the making of things difficult for the sake of difficulty, nor on “efficiency,” an odd concept to embrace as we discuss the raising of our children, nor on “standards,” which involve statistical tests originally designed to ensure the consistency of barrels of Guinness. Instead we will begin with the idea of creating “learning space,” real, virtual, even imagined, where every student, at every age, has the opportunity to not just succeed, but to thrive."

And just last week, Ireland's Secondary Teacher of the Year answered in an impassioned address, which included this:

"Obviously I have a personal agenda here - I want to save my job. But I don't have a political agenda.

My grandfather was a proud Fine Gaeler and I have many friends in the Labour party. I want to believe that Fine Gael and Labour can find a way to be better than the idiots who got us into this mess in the first place.

Some positive things are happening in education: our minister Ruairi Quinn is determined to bring about changes in our in-many-ways antiquated educational system - and for this I admire him.

The proposals for the new Junior Cert have the potential to bring about real and meaningful change (but the department need to listen to the teachers) and this is a change I want to be a part of.

But we need to make sure we're making things better not worse. Destroying the morale of the teachers who will be implementing this change is not the way forward.

Minister Quinn will no doubt throw his hands in the air and say there is no money.

Well I say to Ruairi Quinn and the Department of Education, if this is the limit of your creativity, imagination and passion to protect our children's education - shame on you."

Secondary Teacher of the Year Evelyn O'Connor

President Higgins, much of what I, and Dr. Pamela Moran of Virginia, saw on our visit demonstrated that Irish education - especially Irish primary education - could be the envy of the world. We saw a wondrous commitment to natural child development unhindered by the panic over "grade-level standards" which have threatened to destroy education in the United States and United Kingdom.

We saw a level of humanity, a commitment to arts and the whole child, which should be "the standard" everywhere. We saw local control and local opportunity which allowed teachers to build classrooms around the needs and passions of their children. We saw teachers that anyone, in any nation, would want supporting our next generation of leaders.

We saw a commitment to the concept of "the public space" you so beautifully express in your book . Renewing the Republic. A belief in an unselfish dedication to a shared future that should be the pride of any nation.


Of course we saw problems. We saw secondary education far too bound by test preparation, and tests which, though in some ways excellent, are graded on the wrong parameters, are taken with the wrong (19th century) technologies, and which hold far too great a sway over both individual and national futures. We saw a lack of investment in learning spaces, a lack of investment in this century's communications technology, and a lack of support for a fabulous teaching community.

Grades 2 through 6 at Dualla National School

One afternoon in Dualla in County Tipperary we visited the Dualla National School. There we met brilliant educators working with another small cohort of children, and making the best of limited, old, technology. It was wondrous what Principal Teacher John Manley accomplished with a few old laptops and an old iPhone with a shattered screen, and how that combined with a fully inclusive multiage environment (and a heavy dose of hurling) to offer a broad path to success for every child. But their energy should be poured into their students, not concerns about how to update antiquated communications systems.

On another day we met Hellie Bullock of Limerick, a brilliant young educator who should be working every day with children - and being paid a respectable wage for that. On other days we met some of the world's leading university experts in the future of education, who should be going about their work without panicking about the ability to care for their families.

President Higgins, we must, as you know, measure nations and societies by their commitment to their children, and their commitment to a better future. Ireland, like many nations, has deep problems and little in the way of available funds. But Ireland also has a grand tradition of putting education and children first. From the ancient monasteries to the hedge schools of the worst occupation days, from the re-birth of the education system after entering the European Economic Community to, hopefully, today, Ireland has sought whatever creative solutions were necessary to protect its communal future.

Seeking creative solutions to ensure our future: CoderDojo Thurles

The educators we met, President Higgins, are the heroes of today's Republic of Ireland. They are fighting, working, and struggling every day to ensure the future of this nation, and to protect its children from the ravages caused by the greed of another generation, and they, whether Hellie, or Evelyn O'Connor, or Stephen Howell at the Institute of Technology Tallaght (who has given our children Scratch to Kinect) deserve the support of their nation, in their work and in the security of their positions and ability to live.

So I ask you to join us President Higgins in our conversations, to join us in our search for creative solutions, to join us in our drive for universally designed learning spaces which can carry all of our children into successful futures, in our attempts to bring the Labour and Fine Gael leaders into true conversation about what our children need.

I write this not as a meddlesome outsider, but because I have been welcomed into this conversation warmly by the education community of the Irish nation. I know this community views you as a hero, as a man who has stood for what is right for half a century, and so I ask you to, please, become a part of this essential discussion.

- Ira Socol

Please don't stop us now... the future can be wondrous