Group items tagged

integrating citizenship and 'global education' into a school.

This is a good reminder of why we teach. This is exactly what I wrote my Master's thesis on because education has lost it's inherent citizenship component. It seems as though politicians and policy makers think education only exists as a means of market value, or the market feeds off the exchange of knowledge for capital, thereby generating cultural capital, which can be commodified and further traded. I think people forget that the citizen arrived in the nation state only after the French Revolution and the restructuring of Merchantilism, which could be called proto-neoliberalism. The people revolted to create a center in which the citizen held certain entitlements to life and community built on education that challenged the state through reason, or what Immanuel Kant called, "Sapere Aude", that is, the courage to use your own reason. However, this center has been manipulated by education systems to systemize reason without courage, reason with exchange value, and reason for irrational privilege based on ethnocentrism (the creators of the world system) and technocracy (the maintainers of the world system). Finally, to answer your question, I do think this is an appropriate role for our college. I think education must question the possibility of education, and where it fits in the world we choose to live in. We must support our students and ourselves in the continuous investigation of our citizenship; therefore, our education.

I just read a quote from H.G Wells- "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." (The Outline of History, 1920). The quote is at the top of a paper dealing with the role of education in 'mending broken Britain' and how education can contribute to a more cohesive society. The paper was a summary of a national conference held in response to the anarchic riots of 2011 in England. The conference concluded that educational contributory factors leading to the riots were a lack of moral education, deficiency in the creative curriculum and an insufficient priority given to citizenship education. A sense of alienation and disenfranchisement amongst the youth of disadvantaged communities and a more general feeling that their voice is not being heard were also cited as major factors. The overarching conclusion of 'Mending Broken Britain- Educations' response' is clear- that schools play a central role in shaping our youth and in creating moral, constructive, rational, responsible and active citizens who feel included in our diverse and interdependent society- and that if education fails in this fundamental role, we can expect more (and worse) riots and social breakdown in the future.Prof. Gus John gves an interesting analysis of how our youth have reached this stage and cites 'the grotesque influence of the culture of the street' which has displaced the respect for self and for others and he asks the question: 'How? How have we failed to guide and assist our children in standing for something and in letting that something reflect the basic human values of respect, fairness, justice, interdependence, compassion and integrity?'The conference recognised that schools are not merely the means of transferring knowledge and content, to be absorbed and regurgitated for assessment purposes, but are the key vehicles for the development of values, skills and attitudes.

This post adds to my thinking about how we can facilitate classroom discussions appropriately.

Some interesting thoughts about teachers and change.

This article seems to connect with habits of mind claiming that eastern cultures are more able to persevere with difficult tasks that western cultures. I question whether the cultural differences are accurately described but found it has some good reminders in relation to habits of mind.

It reminds me that I need to be more specific when I point out achievement. I tend to acknowledge what has been done and the actual practice, but I tend to leave out the overall skill or concept. Also, I am reminded that I privilege creativity over perseverance. If a student works diligently to find a solution, and they arrive at a creative solution, then I praise the creativity and not the diligence or downplay the diligence.

"Again, intellectual virtues are the character traits required for good thinking and learning. They presuppose no controversial moral commitments. " Yes. This. An important distinction to keep in mind. If we come in to the classroom teaching moral or even civic character directly, then we rightly run the risk of being accused of educational imperialism. But, if the moral and civic values we may hold have any real worth, then the inherent value of them should be revealed through the application of intellectually virtuous learning and thinking actions.

and if moral/ethical positions are reached (or deconstructed) either in the classroom, or outside, through the sound application of intellectual actions, they have validity. Anything does not go, not all opinions, values etc... are valid unless we can expose the process by which they were reached and allow that process to be scrutinized.

I know this is just a bit of redundancy, but this suggests that not all values are created equal, and they are not. The must have good reason. Good might be defined imperialistically as Jeremy stated, in that a unilateral agency imposes them, but a reciprocal communicative action may prevail, especially within the ideal or virtuous framed by intellectual character. I have been accussed of esoteric comments, but I think this warrants a visit from Habermas: "We can only exercise tolerance towards other people's beliefs if we reject them for subjectively good reasons. We do not need to be tolerant if we are indifferent to other opinions and attitudes anyway or even appreciate the value of such 'otherness'. The expectation of tolerance assumes that we can endure a form of ongoing non-concurrence at the level of social interaction, while we accept the persistence of mutually exclusive validity claims at the cognitive level of existentially relevant beliefs." In other words, Habermas believes you can't just say, "I don't care" or "This doesn't matter" or "This doesn't happen here" and claim tolerance. You must engage to be tolerant, and you must engage in a way that presents your ideas or beliefs in contrast to the other, and that contrast must be relatable, or what Habermas means by "relevant" is communicable in the logical sense that rational ideas are modular, and they may be fitted into intellectual chains of rational arguments and "ongoing non-concurrence" in social interactions. Through this lens, intellectual virtues occupy toleration/tolerance because intellectual virtues "naturally" lend themselves or, as Jeremy stated, display the inherent value of the ideas through engagement and action which must be communicable and reciprocal, i.e. function as tolerant.

Interesting discussion about the evolution of the concept of a fact. I think we all probably claim the authority of a 'fact' sometimes, so it's relevant to understand how they are changing. The psychology behind wanting to believe facts is fascinating.

This has some interesting perspectives, but it does little to address belief. The people interviewed seem frustrated by belief, so they take a negative stance. I would like to know more about the experiment where participants had a more open-minded response to climate change after writing an essay about a time they fought for something they believe in. In that case, belief played a constructive role because of their lateral entry. There is a greater thinking level to this issue.

Another interesting avenue my mind took while reading this was toward Owen Barfield's early 20th century investigation of history in English words. He shows how thinking develops through language. It is a good read if you can get past some of the antiquated language he uses to categorize his thoughts. It is titled, History in English Words. I have a copy if anyone wants to check it out.

An interesting paper summarising a conference held in England in response to the 2011 riots. It emphasises the role of education, specifically citizenship education in creating a more cohesive society.

I just read a quote from H.G Wells- "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." (The Outline of History, 1920). The quote is at the top of a paper dealing with the role of education in 'mending broken Britain' and how education can contribute to a more cohesive society. The paper was a summary of a national conference held in response to the anarchic riots of 2011 in England. The conference concluded that educational contributory factors leading to the riots were a lack of moral education, deficiency in the creative curriculum and an insufficient priority given to citizenship education. A sense of alienation and disenfranchisement amongst the youth of disadvantaged communities and a more general feeling that their voice is not being heard were also cited as major factors. The overarching conclusion of 'Mending Broken Britain- Educations' response' is clear- that schools play a central role in shaping our youth and in creating moral, constructive, rational, responsible and active citizens who feel included in our diverse and interdependent society- and that if education fails in this fundamental role, we can expect more (and worse) riots and social breakdown in the future. Prof. Gus John gves an interesting analysis of how our youth have reached this stage and cites 'the grotesque influence of the culture of the street' which has displaced the respect for self and for others and he asks the question: 'How? How have we failed to guide and assist our children in standing for something and in letting that something reflect the basic human values of respect, fairness, justice, interdependence, compassion and integrity?' The conference recognised that schools are not merely the means of transferring knowledge and content, to be absorbed and regurgitated for assessment purposes, but are the key vehicles for the development of values, skills and attitudes.

Yikes!

Some of these might be interesting to consider not only for ourselves but also if we want to come up with our own set of Habits of Mind which are most applicable to our students....resilience, grit, etc.

Common wisdom holds that we learn best from our mistakes. But researchers at Michigan State University have published a new study that suggests something more is needed: We must be conscious of our mistakes to reap the benefits of improved performance. "Those with traumatic brain injury or other brain injuries that result in impairments in self-awareness suggest that your level of awareness of your own symptoms, for example, actually correlates with the probability that you'll recover from them," he says. "But there is still quite a bit we need to learn about conscious awareness and the role it plays in performance and judgment before we can say for certain." Hmmm. what does this mean in relation to the errors our students make?

Thinking about UIWT and how we get students to move beyond comprehension to grappling with ideas when the reality is they are grappling to understand the content in the text...

Reference to this came up on LaoFab. This blog is interesting as it raises an alternative perspective on this as well... While this not generally an issue for our students it may be interesting to add as another use of a model as a way to organize ideas.

Well worth a read and visit to the blog that this one is responding to.

I feel like an idiot because I did not understand much of this. I understand that people misapprehend the Thinking Routines as algorithms that simulate thinking instead of visual representations of the internal process of thinking. Despite the author's insistence that he did support his argument, I merely read quotes from Making Thinking Visible without syllogism, dialectics, or exegesis. I just did not see how the case was made other than believe me because I read the book, and the authors said so.

Hi Troy- I think the point was the Webb didn't read the book and hasn't represented VT accurately.

I finally got around to reading this, and even though it is short, it outlines what we do internally very well. In AES this last year, we constantly modeled the series of questions they mentioned, especially the consciousness, craftmanship, and flexibility questions. Students often want us to provide them with the answers to these questions, but do not readily realize that the question is the important part. If you can experience conflict, which I tend to label crisis because of the cognitive or cultural gap, by calling it into question, then you can see both the origin and yourself in it. I know this is simplistic, but the courage to question plays a major role in validating the crisis and your stake in it.

What do you think of these three pillars of Web literacy? I wonder if this year we can do even better at highlighting the importance of these in IL. The section about the use of Diigo is interesting. We exploited last year as an information sharing site but perhaps we need to approach it more as a personal library???

Why does "test panic" cause some students to shut down and others to thrive? Why does that straight-A student turn into sand during standardized test season? The problem has a lot to do with the rate of dopamine-processing in the brain, and it can be mitigated by experience, so sayeth the NYT.

I've always been a worrier who shuts down. I can remember vividly running out of the music room in 6th grade crying as I was so stressed and couldn't handle the forced auditions to sing 'All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth...". I find my son who seemed to have no anxiety about MCing a school concert in front of a crowd of 1000 in Lao amazing.