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Andrew McCluskey

Occupy Your Brain - 111 views

  • 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.
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  • 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?
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    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).
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    This is a must read. Carol Black echoes here many of the ideas of Paulo Freire, John Taylor Gatto and the like.
Mary Glackin

Rubrics for Evaluating Discussion Forums in Online Courses | Faculty Focus - 109 views

  • The quality of the discussion forum depends on the ability to develop a sense of community, the clarity of the discussion questions, and the use of a grading rubric that includes standards of performance.
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    "The quality of the discussion forum depends on the ability to develop a sense of community, the clarity of the discussion questions, and the use of a grading rubric that includes standards of performance."
Jennie Snyder

Will Richardson: My Kids are Illiterate. Most Likely, Yours Are Too - 10 views

    • anonymous
       
      I wonder if most parents (and even some teachers) even know what this means.  Sometimes I think we are too entrenched in old-school ways of thinking students need to know and love classics instead of understanding how literature is a reflection of the times and using the classics as mentor pieces for creating something which reflects here and now!
  • kids need to be in systems that care for them and are focused on literacy they will need to be successful in their lives instead of being focused primarily on standardizing their way to "high student achievement" based on a metric that is growing less and less relevant each day
    • anonymous
       
      We need to really look at our definition of the word achievement!  Do we mean they have achieved a high score by regurgitating info/facts?  Do we mean they understand something and can apply that understanding in a new and meaningful way?
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  • I'm mad that the "big" conversations around "reform" in education right now all revolve around basically doing what we've been doing for the past 100 years only "better," and that we'll get there by incentivizing teachers to teach for a test.
  • That is their reality; it wasn't ours. The NCTE knows it.
    • anonymous
       
      Just like we recognize that times are different from when my parents attended a 1-room school or when there less than 50-100 in a graduating class in a whole town, we need to recognize that times today are different.
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    Literacies needed for future success by Will Richardson
kmosei_2k16

(Re)Marking upon #ProfChat - 11 views

    • kmosei_2k16
       
      VCUOLE It appears that many students (graduate, undergraduate, professional) are oriented towards receiving answers rather than engaging in exploration. Would the 'curiosity cultivating' learning technologies provide a frustrating experience for such students?
    • nursprof58
       
      Possibly, but who says frustration is not a learning experience? The old adage "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" comes to mind. Teach a student to be intellectually and technologically curious and you've given them tools for success long after they've left your tutelage. vcuole
  • The challenges and opportunities confronting higher education pedagogy will not be adequately addressed by platforms designed to provide answers
Maureen Greenbaum

How diplomas based on skill acquisition, not credits earned, could change education - T... - 15 views

  • a new teaching approach here called “proficiency-based education” that was inspired by a 2012 state law.
  • law requires that by 2021, students graduating from Maine high schools must show they have mastered specific skills to earn a high school diploma.
  • CompetencyWorks, a national organization t
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  • By 2021, schools must offer diplomas based students reaching proficiency in the four core academic subject areas: English, math, science and social studies. By 2025, four additional subject areas will be included: a second language, the arts, health and physical education.
  • proficiency-based idea has also created headaches at some schools for teachers trying to monitor students’ individual progress.
  • Students have more flexibility to learn at their own pace and teachers get time to provide extra help for students who need it
  • It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Bowen said. “It was a systems design problem.”
  • offer students clarity about what they have to learn and how they are expected to demonstrate they’ve learned it.
  • at schools that have embraced the new system, teachers say they are finding that struggling students are seeing the biggest gains because teachers are given more time to re-teach skills and students better understand the parameters for earning a diploma.
  • Deciding to believe that all students are capable of learning all of the standards, she said, “was scary.”
  • Multiple-choice questions have virtually disappeared. Homework is checked, but not graded.
  • students get less than a proficient score, they must go back and study the skill they missed. They are then given a chance to retake the relevant portions of the test until they earn a satisfactory score.
  • We inherited a structure for schooling that was based on time and on philosophical beliefs that learning would be distributed across a bell curve,
  • get crystal clear about what we want students to know and be able to do and then how to measure it.”
meghankelly492

The rise of creative youth development: Arts Education Policy Review: Vol 118, No 1 - 3 views

  • The article describes creative youth development in the larger contexts of arts education and of education reform.
  • Lastly, the article discusses policy, funding, and research needs and opportunities and provides questions for consideration.
  • Yet these two worlds largely exist apart, failing to address the reality that youth learn and grow—or fail to reach their potential—through influences and experiences in all spheres of their lives, including home, school, and the settings where they spend time outside of schoo
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  • attention due to their high levels of youth engagement that contribute to substantial learning, enhanced critical thinking
  • such as heightened confidence and sense of agency
  • Decades of research findings link adolescent engagement, efficacy, and responsibility with opportunities for immersion and mastery, connection in a community of practice, embracing youth voice, and cultivating youth leadership with adolescent engagement, and non-school settings have emerged as crucial developmental and learning environments for youth
  • Throughout the United States, teen participants in CYD programs assert that the programs saved their lives, putting them on positive trajectories and away from gangs, drug use, crime, and ennui.
  • The creative process at the center of CYD programs contributes to profound personal growth for youth participants
  • And as they experience the creative process over an extended period, they learn that they can use it to express their own identities, understand and change the world around them, and connect to the greater human experience.”
  • community of practice of youth artists and their artist mentors, the paid, professional artists who comprise the full-time faculty. SAY Sí boasts a 100% rate of graduation and pursuit of higher education in a community with a 45% dropout rat
  • hese programs had a central belief in the ability of young people to achieve and grow artistically and personally through creative expression and skill building in the arts.
  • impact of arts-based youth programs in reducing risk factors and building protective factors in a study conducted in three American cities
  • She also catalogued characteristics of effective CYD programs, such as supporting risk within a safe space (
  • Teens develop intrinsic motivation as they immerse themselves and develop competence in a topic, connect with others who share this interest, and work with educators positioned as senior collaborators—
Siri Anderson

Scholarships for New Graduate Students | St. Catherine University - 2 views

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    Teachers in Catholic settings can get $6000 scholarships towards certificates in Computational Thinking and Coding, Digital Video, Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Literacy Leadership, STEM, Technology Integration, or Special Education for General Education Teachers. Teachers in traditional settings can get scholarships for the same for up $2500 for certificates or $5000 towards MAED.
Tara Heath

Know Your Rights | Students' Rights | American Civil Liberties Union - 2 views

  • Do I have First Amendment rights in school? You have the right to speak out, hand out flyers and petitions, and wear expressive clothing in school — as long as you don’t disrupt the functioning of the school or violate school policies that don’t hinge on the message expressed. What counts as “disruptive” will vary by context, but a school disagreeing with your position or thinking your speech is controversial or in “bad taste” is not enough to qualify. Courts have upheld students’ rights to wear things like an anti-war armband, an armband opposing the right to get an abortion, and a shirt supporting the LGBTQ community. Schools can have rules that have nothing to do with the message expressed, like dress codes. So, for example, a school can prohibit you from wearing hats — because that rule is not based on what the hats say — but it can’t prohibit you from wearing only pink pussycat hats or pro-NRA hats. Outside of school, you enjoy essentially the same rights to protest and speak out as anyone else. This means you’re likely to be most protected if you organize, protest, and advocate for your views off campus and outside of school hours. You have the right to speak your mind on social media, and your school cannot punish you for content you post off campus and outside of school hours that does not relate to school.
  • Can my school tell me what I can and cannot wear based on my gender? Public schools can have dress codes, but under federal law dress codes can’t treat students differently based on their gender, force students to conform to sex stereotypes, or censor particular viewpoints. Schools can’t create a dress code based on the stereotype that only girls can wear some types of clothes and only boys can wear other types of clothes. For example, your school can require that skirts must be a certain length, but it cannot require that some students wear skirts and prohibit others from doing so based on the students’ sex or gender expression. That also applies to pants, ties, or any other clothing associated with traditional gender roles. Dress codes also must be enforced equally. For example, rules against “revealing” clothing, such as bans on tank tops or leggings, shouldn’t be enforced only or disproportionately against girls. All students should be allowed to wear clothing consistent with their gender identity and expression, whether they identify as transgender or cisgender. This also applies to homecoming, prom, graduation, and other special school events. Schools shouldn’t require different types of clothing for special events based on students’ sex or gender identity — for example, requiring tuxedos for boys and prom dresses for girls.
  • Can my school discipline me for participating in a walkout? Because the law in most places requires students to go to school, schools can discipline you for missing class. But schools cannot discipline you more harshly because of the message or the political nature of your action. The punishment you could face will vary by your state, school district, and school. If you’re planning to miss a class or two, look up the policy for unexcused absences for your school and school district. If you’re considering missing several days, read about truancy. Also take a look at the policy for suspensions. If you are facing a suspension of 10 days or more, you have a right to a formal process and can be represented by a lawyer. Some states and school districts require a formal process for fewer days. You should be given the same right to make up work just as any other student who missed classes.
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