Robert Paterson's Weblog

The The Whole Truth Revisited

Miracle in Wisconsin

APPLETON, Wisconsin -- A revolution has occurred. It's taken place in the Central Alternative High School. The kids now behave. The hallways aren't frantic. Even the teachers are happy.
 
The school used to be out of control. Kids packed weapons. Discipline problems swamped the principal's office.
 
But not since 1997.
 
What happened? Did they line every inch of space with cops? Did they spray valium gas in the classrooms? Did they install metal detectors in the bathrooms? Did they build holding cells in the gym?
 
Afraid not. In 1997, a private group called Natural Ovens began installing a healthy lunch program. Huh?
 
Fast-food burgers, fries, and burritos gave way to fresh salads, meats "prepared with old-fashioned recipes," and whole grain bread. Fresh fruits were added to the menu. Good drinking water arrived.
 
Vending machines were removed.
 
As reported in a newsletter called Pure Facts, "Grades are up, truancy is no longer a problem, arguments are rare, and teachers are able to spend their time teaching."
 
Principal LuAnn Coenen, who files annual reports with the state of Wisconsin, has turned in some staggering figures since 1997. Drop-outs? Students expelled? Students discovered to be using drugs? Carrying weapons? Committing suicide? Every category has come up ZERO. Every year.
 
Mary Bruyette, a teacher, states, "I don't have to deal with daily discipline issues. I don't have disruptions in class or the difficulties with student behavior I experienced before we started the food program."
 
One student asserted, "Now that I can concentrate I think it's easier to get along with people" What a concept---eating healthier food increases concentration.
 
Principal Coenen sums it up: "I can't buy the argument that it's too costly for schools to provide good nutrition for their students. I found that one cost will reduce another. I don't have the vandalism. I don't have the litter. I don't have the need for high security."
 
At a nearby middle school, the new food program is catching on. A teacher there, Dennis Abram, reports, "I've taught here almost 30 years. I see the kids this year as calmer, easier to talk to. They just seem more rational. I had thought about retiring this year and basically I've decided to teach another year---I'm having too much fun!"
 
Pure Facts, the newsletter that ran this story, is published by a non-profit organization called The Feingold Association, which has existed since 1976. Part of its mission is to "generate public awareness of the potential role of foods and synthetic additives in behavior, learning and health problems. The [Feingold] program is based on a diet eliminating synthetic colors, synthetic flavors, and the preservatives BHA, BHT, and TBHQ."
 
Thirty years ago there was a Dr. Feingold. His breakthrough work proved the connection between these negative factors in food and the lives of children. Hailed as a revolutionary advance, Feingold's findings were soon trashed by the medical cartel, since those findings threatened the drugs-for-everything, disease-model concept of modern healthcare.
 
But Feingold's followers have kept his work alive.
 
If what happened in Appleton, Wisconsin, takes hold in many other communities across America, perhaps the ravenous corporations who invade school space with their vending machines and junk food will be tossed out on their behinds. It could happen.
 
And perhaps ADHD will become a dinosaur.

via teamjp.net

Astonishing piece - "knew food was important - but this suggests that it could be pivotal. I wonder if the Eastern School Board might consider a test?

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Khan Academy - Your next High School - Free & on your terms

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.

We have 800+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance which have been recorded by Salman Khan. He has also developed a free, adaptive math program available here.

To keep abreast of new videos as we add them, see the Channel here

The entire video library is shown below. Just click on a category or video title to start learning from the Khan Academy!

Calculus  |  Precalculus  |  Trigonometry  |  Algebra  |  Finance  |  Pre-algebra  |  Arithmetic  |  Geometry  |  Physics  |  SAT Preparation  |  Probability  |  Linear Algebra  |  Differential Equations  |  Credit Crisis  |  Banking and Money  |  Paulson Bailout  |  California Standards Test: Algebra II  |  California Standards Test: Algebra I  |  California Standards Test: Geometry  |  Venture Capital and Capital Markets  |  Statistics  |  Geithner Plan  |  Current Economics  |  Brain Teasers  |  Valuation and Investing  |  Chemistry

Thanks again to Johnnie Moore - The Khan Academy I think shows us how much of Education will work soon. His over 800 videos - plus a very sophisticated interface that plots your learning - offers a core curriculum to most young students.

I have also been through Sal's videos on the Housing Crisis - I have seen nothing as good as they are at explainng what happened and why - he is a brilliant teacher. When does he sleep?

What this means is that very shortly the very best teaching will be available free and in a form that works for people. For there is much more here than the lessons. Sal has created a brilliant learning platform that works like games do - you can progress at your own speed but you have to have mastered the prior steps top move on. There is full support for coaches, parents, teachers as well - who can look inside the box and see what the student has been doing in exquisite detail.

So who will use this first? All the self motivated kids who want to get on. Who will use this last? The schools!

The High Cost of University - The Students Respond

Harvard still rules but the regular kind of university is a tough choice now for many students.

So what to do? Well Community Colleges are booming. Less money, less time and a more useful result. Surely a trend here?

Here is a report from PRX who is doing a round up of news sources from public radio that will give you a taste of what is going on.

It’s Labor Day weekend, and Tuesday students all over the country will be heading back to school – some to the neighborhood elementary school, others to colleges far away, but a larger number than usual are starting classes at community colleges. Why the uptick?

The struggling economy has boosted community college enrollment all over the country, and in this week’s station roundup, we take a look at places where this trend is apparent.

WOSU in Columbus, Ohio first reported on this trend back in Februrary , citing both the less expensive tuition and older students who are returning to study after being laid off from their jobs as reasons enrollments have increased.

“DeVry University has grown steadily nationwide says Galen Graham, President of the Columbus Campus. In Ohio enrollment in online classes has grown by 30 percent in the past year, a change that he says could be attributed to higher gas prices and the slowing economy. Students are also staying enrolled longer.”

Salt Lake City NPR station KPCW recently found a 33% rise in community college enrollment in their area, and that the local colleges are having trouble staffing up.

“She says the college is trying to keep up with the influx of students by hiring new faculty and opening more courses. But she adds that prospective students should know their choices could be limited if they don’t act soon.”

A school counselor in California relayed her concerns about growing enrollment to Marketplace’s Tamara Keith in July:

“You know there’s nothing I hate worse than knowing there are students who have personal and family responsibilities that depend on them getting the training they need to get a job, and they come to our institutions and they can’t find the courses they need.”

At the heart of community college growth is the overwhelming expense of a four-year college education. NPR’s Tell Me More analyzed whether the pricetag reflects the benefits of education in trying economic times.

Universities will meet their version of Craigslist!

Newspapers were struck a death blow by Craigslist - We all know that story. But what was it like when Craisglist just got started and we did not know that was going to happen? What will it be like when a new "Craigslist" enters a new sector with all the potential to disrupt?

Well today I read 4 articles that lead me to believe that Universities - as we know them - are DEAD! The Death Star has arrived and in the end - there can be no defence.

Article 1 - The NYT - 25% of kids are unemployed - this includes most graduates who also have large student loans. If they get jobs it is in the McJob world. It will take years for this to change - see my post below - meanwhile the debt has to be paid and the summer jobs are not there. But if you don't have a degree - there is no employment that will pay enough to raise a middle class family - so there is a paradox

Article 2 - Why University costs are so high and so impossible to cut - basically the President has no power over the faculty - like the print union at the paper - the faculty have a lock on how work is done and how they are paid and will not give this up.

Article 3 (Via John Robb) A story on a new way of getting a degree on your own at your own pace for $99 a course at Straightline. A real degree using all the same material with better access to teaching - all at your onw pace and time - all at home.

Article 4 the link (John Robb) to Straighterline - a very neat idea

Here why I say DEATH. If universities cannot change their costs. If unemployment for the young lasts a decade and the only way of paying is debt - then the "smart" kids and parents will find "smart" alternatives. Straighterline is maybe the Craigslist challenge.

It's all about the economics - isn't it?

What do you think? More after the Jump from the article by Kevin Carey

Research on PEI - When did Innovation ever happen in a Big Place

There is a war on right now for government research dollars. The big universities claim that it is "inefficient" and a waste to give the smaller universities any money.

University leaders in British Columbia, Alberta, Toronto and Montreal, as well as McGill, want a greater concentration of research dollars and graduate students at their universities. They argue Canada is falling behind the rest of the world in research and development and more can be done by concentrating the dollars that are available for research at Canada’s big five universities. (Guardian)

UPEI President Wade MacLauchlan refutes the idea that big is best.

History surely proves Wade correct. I cannot recall a single really innovative idea that has come from Big Money. Big Money brings big bureaucracy and the full on power of the Conventional. Innovation gets crushed early in such places.

We don't see the results in big business and we don't see them in big universities. What we do see is that Big Business and Big Universities buy the talent when it has done the original work in smaller places - isn't this what happens in oil and mineral exploration? Isn't this what happens in the movies?

Better we go back to the problem - if Canada is falling behind in R and D - then ask why. What would be the conditions that would help the most? My bet is that the researched answer to that question might be that we do not have a vibrant enough environment - there may be in fact too much concentration!

Go Wade Go!

What Courses Should I Take to get Ready for What is to Come?

Students interested in pursuing a job in sustainability now can choose from a variety of "green" degree programs.

With an increased interest in the environment and growth in the "green collar" job sector, colleges and universities are beginning to incorporate sustainability into their programs. From MBAs in sustainable-business practices to programs that give students the technical training necessary to operate wind turbines, students have an increasing array of options to choose from.

GOING GREEN: Strikes a chord with colleges

VERMONT: Students dig into organic farming

IN-DEPTH: Get your eco-score, see latest environmental headlines

"Clearly, demand is there for these types of workers," says Marisa Michaud of Eduventures, a higher-education research and consulting firm. "Colleges are seeing that, and they want to provide appropriate educational programs to meet that demand."

Concern for the environment is the motivation, says Julian Dautremont-Smith of the Association for Sustainability in Higher Education.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: University of Pennsylvania | The Princeton Review | Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

"The past few years, society as a whole has become increasingly interested in sustainability," he says. "Higher education has been swept up as well."

David Soto of The Princeton Review says student interest is driving colleges to create programs that offer training in sustainability. Two-thirds of students surveyed for the company's recent "College Hopes and Worries" survey said a college's "environmental commitment" would be a factor in where they applied.

"Students are really savvy shoppers these days, so they're realizing, with a changing economy and green jobs looking to take a leap within the next couple of years, that they want to be armed with those types of skills," Soto says.

Green — not greed — is good

One popular program is an MBA that teaches skills for operating sustainable businesses.

A University of Pennsylvania program that started this year lets students earn an MBA and a master's in environmental studies at the same time.

"There's an increasing interest among businesses to take the environment seriously," says Eric Orts, director of the Wharton School's Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership at Penn.

More Here:

Euan on his hopes for his kids' education - To remain inquisitive & independent

Stories on our kids' education - Euan from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

Made by Elmine Wijnia

The Rise of the Old Academy from the ashes of the University?

Harvard announced that its endowment has taken an $8 billion hit. It will have to make cuts.

According to a letter to deans from university heads, Harvard must take a "hard look" at staffing levels and compensation. They're also forecasting a 30 percent drop for the fiscal year ending in June 2009.

But already, University is now financially out of reach for most people. Many who used to borrow won't or can't.

The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.

But universities are stuck, like auto plants - like news papers - like TV Studios - like the US Armed Forces - with infrastructure and unionized workforces that cost a bomb.

Like the newspapers or auto makers, they will soon be faced with a dilemma. They cannot get their revenues up to cover their costs. Like papers they will have to cut "content". At some point like the news papers they will be left with being expensive and poor value.

I don't see any way around this. For like the Big 3 automakers and the UAW, for like the Newspapers and their presses, unions and pride in their craft of Journalism, most universities' identity is tied into the campus, into their academic closed shop and their unionized helots. If they step away from this, they will kill who they are.

So what will happen?

I think that there is a chance to return to what universities started to be. Padua was a city where the influence of the Pope was minimal. Teachers went there and hung up a shingle:

The university was founded in 1222 when a large group of students and professors left the University of Bologna in search of more academic freedom ('Libertas scholastica').

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, the university was renowned for its research, particularly in the areas of medicine, astronomy, philosophy and law. This was thanks in part to the protection of the Republic of Venice, which enabled the university to maintain some freedom and independence from the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. (Wikipedia)

I am nearly 60. I know some stuff. I also know I love teaching. I also know that I am good at it.

I intend to hang out my shingle. I am also looking forward to having a few friends do this with me. This is the work I want to do in the evening of my life.

So what about the "credential"? Will a student miss out by being taught by me or someone like me?

First of all, in the post industrial world. I suspect that having a meaningless credential that really says that all you did was attended a school, may not have much value. But I think that if you showed that you learned math from an acknowledged great math teacher, this would mean something. If you learned how to write code from a player in the field - that would mean more than a computer science degree. If John Robb taught you about global security that would mean something. If Stuart Baker taught you abut how values really work in society, that would mean something. You would also be part of the network of real teachers and there would not be that gulf between university and life You would show that because you had been accepted by a leader in your filed as a pupil that you were indeed special..

This would be very inexpensive compared to the alternative. All the institutional costs in money and effort would go away.

But this would not fit everyone! Of course not. The idea that higher education is for everyone is a silly idea as well. I taught for 5 years at UPEI. My sense is that at best 15% of the kids had the talent to be there. The rest were there because they felt they should be. Universities have become car plants.

When I say higher education, I am talking about symbolic thinking. Most people I meet find symbolic thinking a real trial - even though they have been to university. They are much more comfortable in the concrete world.

Well there are millions of great teachers out there too and a great need for people with skills that enable them to do concrete things too.

It's going to be interesting to see how this unfolds. The web offers a whole new way of restoring this way of learning directly from an expert rather than from an institution.

PEI's Declining School Enrollment - An Opportunity?

The PEI Government has just released an excellent report on the School Enrollment Question. You can find the link to the PDF here.

As the chart shows, we are at a Tipping Point where the enrollment drops below numbers that can sustain the infrastructure.

A simple way out is to consolidate even further ending up with a few large schools and very very long bus rides. But as the report says very large schools do not often produce the best results. Closing many smaller rural schools may also spell doom for the community and drive yet more people to Charlottetown. The politics of closing local schools are tortuous.

I would like to offer up a few ideas for having our cake and eating it too.

• See Schools as the Hub of a  Distributed local local economy - To cope with the new energy reality - it will be best to push work and activity out to the communities - telecommuting - local local food, local local power etc. In this context, the school expands its role in the community and becomes the hub of all local social and work activity

• Use the web to gain diversity and resources - In the era of the one room school literacy was far higher than today but the price paid for more cohesion at the school - where children walked to school - where parents did work for the school - was that the social world was very very small. The web can extend the walls of a school not only to the next community but to the world. The one room school was also very dependent on the quality of the one teacher - again the web can open up the school to thousands of teachers

• Change the Model of teaching to facilitation - The industrial model of grade by grade and teaching at pupils is a product of the industrial school design that we have made the new normal. Have a look at this picture by Harris of the One room School: See how the teacher is not trying to teach at the entire room. See how the pupils have organized themselves into learning groups. see how some are teaching each other - see the interaction that is going on - see how some are on their own!

If you look into the "pattern" here - you will see a very different philosophy than the mass market model. I see a model very much more attuned to our own times and needs. I see the Web attached to this old/new idea. I see much lower costs but much better results.

I think what we are facing in schools is the same that is facing newspapers, TV, Car making etc. The industrial mass market process of building a very expensive Factory no longer works. Those that rely on the mass market factory - the printing press, the Studio, the production line and the unions and the work habits are dying. They can't maintain an ROI that will keep it going.

Instead - the web and the idea of a network is coming  up with a new more organic and distributed model that does make economic sense and also fits the people better.

I doubt that trying to keep the mass market factory model will work for our kids. After all it is a mass model.

I suspect that we can all win by exploring a network model. Please let's acknowledge that the factory model is failing everywhere and that we can best look at the alternative. Here are some suggestions

1. Let's experiment with a New Type of One Room School in one or 2 places. Here is more on why this will be worth while
2. Let's pick a community - why not Kinkora! - and test the idea of the school becoming the centre of the community and the buses the core of a new public transport system

Kindergarten - Curriculum???? - What to do on PEI?

When we think of kindergarten at school we tend to think it looks like this. Sort like school.

Everyone is talking on PEI right now about the proper kindergarten curriculum. Is sort of like school what is best?

So what about this?

The founder of Kindergarten,  Friedrich Froebel's great insight was to recognise the importance of the activity of the child in learning. Activities in the first kindergarten included singing, dancing, gardening and playing with the Froebel Gifts.

Oh there goes Rob again - but I am not alone. The very folks who invented Kindergarten are going back to this this as its heart. (Thanks Steve)

IDSTEIN, Germany -- Each weekday, come rain or shine, a group of children, ages 3 to 6, walk into a forest outside Frankfurt to sing songs, build fires and roll in the mud. To relax, they kick back in a giant "sofa" made of tree stumps and twigs.

The birthplace of kindergarten is returning to its roots. While schools and parents elsewhere push young children to read, write and surf the Internet earlier in order to prepare for an increasingly cutthroat global economy, some little Germans are taking a less traveled path -- deep into the woods.

Germany has about 700 Waldkindergärten, or "forest kindergartens," in which children spend their days outdoors year-round. Blackboards surrender to the Black Forest. Erasers give way to pine cones. Hall passes aren't required, but bug repellent is a good idea.

Trees are a temptation -- and sometimes worse. Recently, "I had to rescue a girl" who had climbed too high, says Margit Kluge, a teacher at Idstein's forest kindergarten. Last year, a big tree "fell right before our noses."

The schools are a throwback to Friedrich Fröbel, the German educator who opened the world's first kindergarten, or "children's garden," more than 150 years ago. Mr. Fröbel counseled that young children should play in nature, cordoned off from too many numbers and letters.

They are also a modern-day snapshot of environmentally conscious and consumption-wary Germany, where the Green Party polls more than 10% and stores are closed on Sundays.

Only a fraction of German children attend Waldkindergärten, but their numbers have been rising since local parent groups began setting up these programs in the mid-1990s, following the lead of a Danish community. Similar schools exist in smaller numbers in Scandinavia, Switzerland and Austria. The concept is sparking interest far afield -- even in the U.S., whose first Waldkindergarten opened in Portland, Ore., last fall.

"The computer arrives early enough," adds Norbert Huppertz, a specialist in child development at the Freiburg University of Education and a Waldkindergärten booster in Germany.

Of course many worry about the DANGER that being in nature provides. Many worry that their little darling should be writing essays at 5.

Children in Germany and Nordic countries start being taught reading at 6 or 7. They do a lot better than we do. The emotional foundation and the child's curiosity is what they tend to emphasize before.

I think we should be very careful as the debate hots up on PEI about what we should offer in Kindergarten.

So that we might ground the debate in a third party who has real authority, let's look back at how Kindergarten was started and see how close we are to its principles. Let's see if Frobel's principles fit our time and whether we should adopt them. Here are Frobels' principles - see how they fit our time. 

Bill Lucas

    “ ”... Fröbel’s historic innovation provides an informative case study for all who endeavor to compose experiential systems in the future.” ”

Two hundred years ago, a youthful academic named Friedrich Fröbel began to experience the convergence of his primary interests—nature and education. About 30 years later, his pursuits culminated in the creation of kindergarten.

Fröbel viewed nature as a quintessential source of education and the perfect model for design. He also believed in placing students at the center of his pedagogy. Thus, the story of Fröbel’s invention corresponds with the contemporary field of “experience design.”

Now as then

The dawn of the information age has given rise to the notion of an emergent experience economy. In the new era, hallmarks of the industrial age, such as mass production and broadcast media, are giving way to mass customization and interactive media. [1] Examples abound in every corner of the modern marketplace. Internet blogs scoop corporate newsmakers. Fantasy football leagues augment live-action games. And everything from dolls to diamonds can be “made to order.”

The shift in emphasis from purveyance to participation resembles a time of revolutionary change within the field of education. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a handful of European theorists rejected the purely dispensational tenets of mainstream pedagogy in favor of a trend known as “natural education.” [2]

The new doctrine called for nourishing a child’s innate curiosity through hands-on activity. In turn, proponents transformed the instructor’s role from lecturer to facilitator. They replaced rote learning with object lessons, extended the classroom beyond the walls of the schoolhouse, and encouraged sensory engagement in, and about, the environment.