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Andrew McCluskey

Occupy Your Brain - 111 views

schoolingtheworld.org/...occupy

education education reform education system schooling pedagogy indigenous indigenous pedagogies knowledge alternative education standardization state standards national standards global standards power authority intellect

shared by Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13 - No Cached
Ant Heald liked it
  • One of the most profound changes that occurs when modern schooling is introduced into traditional societies around the world is a radical shift in the locus of power and control over learning from children, families, and communities to ever more centralized systems of authority.
  • Once learning is institutionalized under a central authority, both freedom for the individual and respect for the local are radically curtailed.  The child in a classroom generally finds herself in a situation where she may not move, speak, laugh, sing, eat, drink, read, think her own thoughts, or even  use the toilet without explicit permission from an authority figure.
  • In what should be considered a chilling development, there are murmurings of the idea of creating global standards for education – in other words, the creation of a single centralized authority dictating what every child on the planet must learn.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • In “developed” societies, we are so accustomed to centralized control over learning that it has become functionally invisible to us, and most people accept it as natural, inevitable, and consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy.   We assume that this central authority, because it is associated with something that seems like an unequivocal good – “education” – must itself be fundamentally good, a sort of benevolent dictatorship of the intellect. 
  • We endorse strict legal codes which render this process compulsory, and in a truly Orwellian twist, many of us now view it as a fundamental human right to be legally compelled to learn what a higher authority tells us to learn.
  • And yet the idea of centrally-controlled education is as problematic as the idea of centrally-controlled media – and for exactly the same reasons.
  • The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect all forms of communication, information-sharing, knowledge, opinion and belief – what the Supreme Court has termed “the sphere of intellect and spirit” – from government control.
  • by the mid-19th century, with Indians still to conquer and waves of immigrants to assimilate, the temptation to find a way to manage the minds of an increasingly diverse and independent-minded population became too great to resist, and the idea of the Common School was born.
  • We would keep our freedom of speech and press, but first we would all be well-schooled by those in power.
  • A deeply democratic idea — the free and equal education of every child — was wedded to a deeply anti-democratic idea — that this education would be controlled from the top down by state-appointed educrats.
  • The fundamental point of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that the apparatus of democratic government has been completely bought and paid for by a tiny number of grotesquely wealthy individuals, corporations, and lobbying groups.  Our votes no longer matter.  Our wishes no longer count.  Our power as citizens has been sold to the highest bidder.
  • Our kids are so drowned in disconnected information that it becomes quite random what they do and don’t remember, and they’re so overburdened with endless homework and tests that they have little time or energy to pay attention to what’s happening in the world around them.
  • If in ten years we can create Wikipedia out of thin air, what could we create if we trusted our children, our teachers, our parents, our neighbors, to generate community learning webs that are open, alive, and responsive to individual needs and aspirations?  What could we create if instead of trying to “scale up” every innovation into a monolithic bureaucracy we “scaled down” to allow local and individual control, freedom, experimentation, and diversity?
  • The most academically “gifted” students excel at obedience, instinctively shaping their thinking to the prescribed curriculum and unconsciously framing out of their awareness ideas that won’t earn the praise of their superiors.  Those who resist sitting still for this process are marginalized, labeled as less intelligent or even as mildly brain-damaged, and, increasingly, drugged into compliance.
  • the very root, the very essence, of any theory of democratic liberty is a basic trust in the fundamental intelligence of the ordinary person.   Democracy rests on the premise that the ordinary person — the waitress, the carpenter, the shopkeeper — is competent to make her own judgments about matters of domestic policy, international affairs, taxes, justice, peace, and war, and that the government must abide by the decisions of ordinary people, not vice versa.  Of course that’s not the way our system really works, and never has been.   But most of us recall at some deep level of our beings that any vision of a just world relies on this fundamental respect for the common sense of the ordinary human being.
  • This is what we spend our childhood in school unlearning. 
  • If before we reach the age of majority we must submit our brains for twelve years of evaluation and control by government experts, are we then truly free to exercise our vote according to the dictates of our own common sense and conscience?  Do we even know what our own common sense is anymore?
  • We live in a country where a serious candidate for the Presidency is unaware that China has nuclear weapons, where half the population does not understand that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, where nobody pays attention as Congress dismantles the securities regulations that limit the power of the banks, where 45% of American high school students graduate without knowing that the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press.   At what point do we begin to ask ourselves if we are trying to control quality in the wrong way?
  • Human beings, collaborating with one another in voluntary relationships, communicating and checking and counter-checking and elaborating and expanding on one another’s knowledge and intelligence, have created a collective public resource more vast and more alive than anything that has ever existed on the planet.
  • But this is not a paeon to technology; this is about what human intelligence is capable of when people are free to interact in open, horizontal, non-hierarchical networks of communication and collaboration.
  • Positive social change has occurred not through top-down, hierarchically controlled organizations, but through what the Berkana Institute calls “emergence,” where people begin networking and forming voluntary communities of practice. When the goal is to maximize the functioning of human intelligence, you need to activate the unique skills, talents, and knowledge bases of diverse individuals, not put everybody through a uniform mill to produce uniform results. 
  • You need a non-punitive structure that encourages collaboration rather than competition, risk-taking rather than mistake-avoidance, and innovation rather than repetition of known quantities.
  • if we really want to return power to the 99% in a lasting, stable, sustainable way, we need to begin the work of creating open, egalitarian, horizontal networks of learning in our communities.
  • They are taught to focus on competing with each other and gaming the system rather than on gaining a deep understanding of the way power flows through their world.
  • And what could we create, what ecological problems could we solve, what despair might we alleviate, if instead of imposing our rigid curriculum and the destructive economy it serves on the entire world, we embraced as part of our vast collective intelligence the wisdom and knowledge of the world’s thousands of sustainable indigenous cultures?
  • They knew this about their situation: nobody was on their side.  Certainly not the moneyed classes and the economic system, and not the government, either.  So if they were going to change anything, it had to come out of themselves.
  • As our climate heats up, as mountaintops are removed from Orissa to West Virginia, as the oceans fill with plastic and soils become too contaminated to grow food, as the economy crumbles and children go hungry and the 0.001% grows so concentrated, so powerful, so wealthy that democracy becomes impossible, it’s time to ask ourselves; who’s educating us?  To what end?  The Adivasis are occupying their forests and mountains as our children are occupying our cities and parks.  But they understand that the first thing they must take back is their common sense. 
  • They must occupy their brains.
  • Isn’t it time for us to do the same?
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    Carol Black, creator of the documentary, "Schooling the World" discusses the conflicting ideas of centralized control of education and standardization against the so-called freedom to think independently--"what the Supreme Court has termed 'the sphere of intellect and spirit" (Black, 2012). Root questions: "who's educating us? to what end?" (Black, 2012).
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    This is a must read. Carol Black echoes here many of the ideas of Paulo Freire, John Taylor Gatto and the like.
anonymous

Is Real Educational Reform Possible? If So, How? | Psychology Today - 3 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...onal-reform-possible-if-so-how

education reform psychology

shared by anonymous on 21 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Children come into the world intensely motivated to learn about the physical, social, and cultural world around them; but they need freedom in order to pursue that motive.  For their first four or five years of life we generally grant them that freedom. During those first few years, without any teaching, they learn a large portion of what any human being ever learns. They learn their entire native language, from scratch. They learn the basic practical principles of physics. They learn psychology to such a degree that they become experts in how to please, annoy, manipulate, and charm the other people in their environment.  They acquire a huge store of factual knowledge.  They learn how to operate the gadgets that they are allowed to operate, even those that seem extraordinarily complex to us adults.They do all this on their own initiative, with essentially no direction from adults.
  • anonymous on 21 Nov 11
     
    "Children come into the world intensely motivated to learn about the physical, social, and cultural world around them; but they need freedom in order to pursue that motive."
LuAnne Holder

Academic Freedom vs. Mandated Course Content - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Edu... - 41 views

chronicle.com/...28764

master courses academic freedom intellectual property PDC standards adjuncts

shared by LuAnne Holder on 19 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • LuAnne Holder on 19 Nov 10
     
    An article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed that discusses the tension between course consistency among multiple sections of the same course and academic freedom for instructors to design their courses as they see fit.
Steven Szalaj

What changed my mind about the Fourth of July - chicagotribune.com - 25 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...reedom-20130704,0,153971.story

Education Journalism freedom American

shared by Steven Szalaj on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Steven Szalaj on 04 Jul 13
     
    An essay on freedom in America, and particularly in journalism and education
Sheri Edwards

Freedom of Information: How a Wisconsin School District Ditched Internet Filters | Edut... - 19 views

www.edutopia.org/...eedom-of-information-wisconsin

information freedom school filters

shared by Sheri Edwards on 06 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 06 Jul 10
     
    "If you take the Internet away, it's kind of like saying, 'You can't have this textbook.'"
Daryl Bambic

Access to Knowledge as a Foundation for an Open World (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE - 9 views

www.educause.edu/...209327

shared by Daryl Bambic on 22 Aug 10 - Cached
  • The rights to be a creator, to govern and develop one's own knowledge, and to share with others are fundamental freedoms for the Internet age.
  • Daryl Bambic on 22 Aug 10
     
    The rights to be a creator, to govern and develop one's own knowledge, and to share with others are fundamental freedoms for the Internet age.
Jeannie Anderson

The Air Force Painting Atheists Found Repugnant - 54 views

www.reagancoalition.com/...20130605001-af-painting.html

shared by Jeannie Anderson on 06 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • They allegedly received a complaint from someone at the base who said the picture made “me feel terribly uncomfortable, disheartened and disappointed.”
  • Martha Hickson on 08 Jun 13
     
    Diigo in Education is not an appropriate forum for promoting political views. Perhaps there's another Diigo group that's a better fit for this link/comment.
  • macmaven webster on 09 Jun 13
     
    I agree with Martha, this is not a forum for promoting political views. I find your comments and links especially distasteful, full of hate and prejudice. Please find another way to look at and interact with the world.
  • Jeannie Anderson on 09 Jun 13
     
    Sorry Martha. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I just realized that comment was public; it was meant to be private and an expression of frustration (and sarcasm) over all the issues of privacy and freedom of speech discussed in the news this week. Just trying to make sense it all. I haven't done much on Diigo outside of bookmarking, so I'm still trying to understand how this part of the site works. Webster, I'm sorry I offended you. That's not my intent. If you find my links distasteful, you don't need to review them. I'm simply bookmarking troublesome subjects I see to further investigate whether or not I should be concerned, what I should believe, and if I need to take any form of action within my own community. I have a right to be concerned: every time I turn on the news, another issue of privacy and freedom of speech is being trampled on by our government. Bookmarking sources and highlighting ideas that stand out in an effort to further investigate the validity of the sources and see what other sources say to counter is not hateful and full of prejudice: it's simply a process by which one can attempt to find hope to better understand a topic. That's really all that's going on here. Hope I've clarified my intent and appeased you both by removing my comment. Again, thanks Martha for your kind reminder.
psmiley

- From the Principal's Office: Autonomy Breeds Change - 31 views

www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx

principal office autonomy breeds change

shared by psmiley on 18 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • psmiley on 18 Apr 13
     
    For administrators - try freedom
Mark Gleeson

Technology - Providing Incredible Opportunities for Students whether we want it to or not - 4 views

mgleeson.edublogs.org/...ing-opportunities-for-students

technology student led learning engagement opportunities

shared by Mark Gleeson on 08 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Mark Gleeson on 08 Nov 12
     
    If you believed the media shock jocks, every kid on the internet is either an idiot or in great peril. But I want to tell a different story starring my daughter, her best friend and a small group of friends ( including my opportunistic son!). This is a completely different story that highlights the amazing opportunities that today's available technology offers our students. It's also a story about how, if given the freedom, children will take what we 'make' them do at school and take it to a whole new level that the limited minds of us teachers don't even plan for. It explains why student led learning can be a success if we don't restrict our students from going beyond our stated objectives. It shows how true engagement doesn't need a teacher or a classroom for children to achieve great things and how technology can allow young students follow their dreams with the restrictions we had in the past.
Mariusz Leś

The Nerdy Teacher: What Makes Project Based Learning Effective? #Edchat #EngChat - 132 views

www.thenerdyteacher.com/...es-project-based-learning.html

Edchat Twitter learning project

shared by Mariusz Leś on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Mariusz Leś on 28 Nov 11
     
    1. OWNERSHIP is key. For this project, the students were not listening to me on why Twain was or was not a racist, they were showing me and the rest of class what they thought. They were invested in winning their argument. They knew that their work was going to determine if he was guilty or not. Although I gave the assignment, the students were in charge the rest of the way. It was their project and they wanted to do it win. When students feel they own what they are doing, they will work harder. When the audience is larger, they want to impress everyone. These are not crazy ideas, they are the results of owning the work they are doing. OWNERSHIP is a major factor in the value of PBL. 2. CREATIVITY is the another major part of the PBL and is closely linked with OWNERSHIP. Students were allowed to be creative in their work as a lawyer or witness. Witnesses needed to stay within character, but could add their own elements on the witness stand. Allowing the students to create gives them a bigger sense of OWNERSHIP. 3. Another part of the PBL is the COLLABORATION. Students were working with each other trying to decide the best plan of attack. Witnesses would meet with their lawyers and discuss how the questions they were going to ask and how they should dress. The Jury worked on group projects researching the previous public opinions on Twain and his writing. Students were sharing ideas freely with one another. I had three sections of American Lit at the time, so I had three trails running. Lawyers would help others in the other classes and trash talk the opposing lawyers as well. It was all in good fun, but the collaboration had students working hard with one another to accomplish this goal. 4. Depending on how you set up your project, CRITICAL THINKING, is also an important part of PBL. With my Twain Trail, students needed to think about both sides of the argument. Students needed to prepare their witnesses for potential cross-examination questions. They needed to
Sharin Tebo

Creative Educator - Build Thinking Skills with Informational Text Projects - 38 views

creativeeducator.tech4learning.com/...th_Informational_Text_Projects

MakingThinkingVisible MTV Engagement creativity commoncore thinking skills projects texts literature

shared by Sharin Tebo on 20 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • This informational text piece lends itself to having students create an associative letter project versus a traditional report. In an associative letter project, students are assigned a letter that they must use to find words representing the text they’ve just read. For example, “R is for the Montgomery Bus Boycott” might lead a student to choose words like race, rights, or Rosa as the focus of a variety of paragraphs that describe the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
    • Sharin Tebo
      Sharin Tebo on 20 Nov 14
       
      I like this associative activity!
  • By providing students with meaningful, thought-provoking experiences, you can turn informational text study into an exercise in creative and critical thinking!
  • Informational text isn’t going to bring about the death of creativity; rather, creativity depends upon what we ask students to do with the text once they’ve read it. If we ask students to read a non-fiction passage then fill out a worksheet about the passage, we are missing a chance to provide our students with an opportunity to create imaginative, artistic end products demonstrating critical thinking skills hard at work.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Grades 6-8 Exemplar Informational Text: Freedom Walkers, the Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, by Russell Freedman Creative Thinking Approach: Associative Letter Project In Freedom Walkers,
Roland Gesthuizen

The Innovative Educator: Ideas for Bringing Your Own Device (BYOD) Even If You Are Poor - 107 views

theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/...ging-your-own-device-even.html

byod mlearning technology poverty equity

shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 02 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • When we shift our thinking from demanding the government provides one-size-fits-some solutions and move it to let's empower families to take ownership of securing tools for their learning, change can happen.  
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 02 Dec 11
     
    When the topic of bring your own device comes up, one of the first complaints we often hear, is "What about the have nots." Yes, there are have nots.  However, students should not only be given the freedom to do what those who have the least can do. Students are not prisoners and they are not widgets. They are people with minds, choices, and parents or guardians who can make decisions and should be empowered to use the learning devices they choose. 
Kalin Wilburn

Adopt A US Soldier - 2 views

www.adoptaussoldier.org

soldier resources

shared by Kalin Wilburn on 05 Dec 11 - Cached
  • Kalin Wilburn on 05 Dec 11
     
    Adopt A US Soldier is a non-profit organization that seeks volunteers to help show the brave men and women fighting for our freedom that their sacrifices will nott go unnoticed. It connects supportive civilians with deployed troops and offers a channel by which to communicate encouragment and express gratitude to those brave men and women serving in the United States Armed Forces.
Roland Gesthuizen

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice | Video on TED.com - 60 views

www.ted.com/..._on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

TED video choice psychology paradox TEDTalks

shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 05 Dec 11 - Cached
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 05 Dec 11
     
    Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.
dmassicg

How to Embrace the Wild, Wild Web | MindShift - 1 views

mindshift.kqed.org/...w-to-embrace-the-wild-wild-web

web education news

shared by dmassicg on 27 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • dmassicg on 27 Jan 12
     
    "In his book "Too Big to Know" Weinberger argues that society is evolving towards a system of knowledge that values uncertainty, freedom, and sheer volume, where knowledge is "the property of the network rather than that of individuals who know things." (This process becomes more apparent as more data are sent to virtual "clouds" for storage.)"
Roland Gesthuizen

Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 10 Proven Strategies to Break the Ban and Build ... - 60 views

theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com.au/...g-blocks-to-break-ban-and.html

mlearning studentvoice mobilephone blog list classroom rules behaviour

shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 29 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The nice thing, however, about cell phones is that you don’t have to worry about distribution, collection, storage, imaging , and charging of devices. Consider working with your students to develop this plan, you may find that they build a strong, comprehensive policy of which they will take ownership and be more likely to follow.
  • Breaking the ban starts with the building of relationships with key constituents.
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 29 Dec 13
     
    when it comes to preparing students for success in the 21st century you not only have to think outside the ban, sometimes you have to dive in head first and break it. The following is a collection of ideas each teacher implemented to successfully break and/or work within the ban where they teach in an effort to empower students with the freedom to use their cell phones as personal learning devices.
Roland Gesthuizen

Don't Blame Social Media if Your Teen Is Unsocial. It's Your Fault | Wired Opinion | Wi... - 33 views

www.wired.com/...ap_thompson-2

socialmedia teenage behaviour wired socialnetworking

shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends. But adult society won’t let them. “Teens aren’t addicted to social media. They’re addicted to each other,” Boyd says. “They’re not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.”
  • today’s teens have neither the time nor the freedom to hang out. So their avid migration to social media is a rational response to a crazy situation. They’d rather socialize F2F, so long as it’s unstructured and away from grown-ups.
  • If you want your kids to learn valuable face-to-face skills, conquer your own irrational fears and give them more freedom. They want the same face-to-face intimacy you grew up with.
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 31 Dec 13
     
    "Are teenagers losing their social skills? Parents and pundits seem to think so. Teens spend so much time online, we're told, that they're no longer able to handle the messy, intimate task of hanging out face-to-face .. Now, I'm not convinced this trend is real."
Marc Patton

Quia - 47 views

www.quia.com

Teaching_Ideas Teaching_Tools Mathematics Online_Learning_Environments

shared by Marc Patton on 13 Jun 11 - Cached
  • Anne-Mette Krejberg on 13 Jun 11
     
    Quia web - create your own ... costs 49$ 
  • Marc Patton on 07 Sep 12
     
    IXL Practice makes perfect, and IXL makes math practice fun! IXL allows teachers and parents to monitor the progress of their students and motivate them through interactive games and practice questions. Widely recognized as the Web's most comprehensive math site, IXL offers a dynamic and enjoyable environment for children to practice math. Students who use IXL are succeeding like never before. Quia Web Quia Web provides educators with learning tools to create, customize, and share their curriculum online. Quia Web pioneered and brought the "create-your-own" concept to educators around the world-giving them the freedom to go beyond publisher-provided materials and create their own interactive, online experiences for their students. Quia Books Quia Books are Web-based versions of workbooks and textbooks, and are produced in partnership with the world's leading publishers. Built on our award-winning technology platform, Quia books engage students and make the learning process more satisfying through interactive exercises replete with vibrant color, sound, and images. Educators reap the timesaving benefits of computer-based grading and tracking and can fully customize Quia books based on individual course materials.
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