Robert Paterson's Weblog

Fixing Education - #One size does not fit all

 

Who gets the most bored and disengaged at school? The very bright and the very concrete.

School can be ok for those in the middle. But if you are intellectually a race horse, then school can become very boring. Boys like my son ended up having fights with the teachers - because he would question them and worse might know more than they did. He was quickly labelled a trouble maker.

Others, who have a very concrete mindset, just can't tune in to all this abstract stuff. It is just not how they experience the world. The teacher is just a source of noise. They get labelled as stupid.

The irony of our one size fits all situation is that it discounts two very talented groups of students - the truly academic and the truly pragmatic and concrete.

So what can be done? What can be done to make learning rich for these two extreme wings of the Bell Curve? The good news is that we have working experiments that we can draw on.

 

This is UTS University of Toronto Schools. It is a school in Toronto designed to meet the needs of a very misunderstood and badly served group of kids. The really really bright kids! I had the honour of working there back in the mid 1990's as the Principal was looking at the needs of this group of kids. I interviewed hundreds of them and spent months there. This is what I learned.

Really bright kids are under terrible social pressure at a "normal" school. They are among the least respected of all groups. Many have few peers to relate too. Many hide their gifts. Many are numbed by the pace and the low threshold of the work. Many are isolated and depressed. 

UTS is designed as a haven for such kids. It only takes the very gifted. While it is fee paying, money is never a barrier. They find a way to take any child who has this gift.

What is UTS like for these kids? It is a haven. Everyone is like you. This is the only school I know where the kids break into the school on weekends! We all knew that they did this and we all knew the "open window" that they used - it was an open secret. It was a hot house for all types of learning. At the concert where many bands, groups and orchestras played, a girl would play Chopin as they moved the chairs around as a filler - she would have been the star in any other school. I have never experienced such positive energy in a school.

So what can we do here on PEI? What about setting up such a school at UPEI?

Would it be so hard to set up a small school at UPEI that is modelled on UTS - where the bright kids can have their own place? Where they can be taught by University profs? Where they can truly fly? 

What then about the concrete thinkers?

Holland College has run a very successful experiment with this group. At its centre is a "carpentry" class. But it is also a maths class. All the key lessons about maths can be found in carpentry. Like the UTS experience, there is a social aspect to such an approach as well. These are kids who are easily labelled Stupid. They also tend to hide. They also get depressed. They also don't fit. they also can act out. But here they are among their peers.

There is a body of evidence behind this experiment. So the next step may well be to accept that such an approach can be expanded to include more kids and to include more areas of expertise. Mechanics? Really any of the practical fields has the power to explain all to concrete learners.

What about the resources? 

If we had 2 programs - one for the academic and one for the concrete - they leverage existing platforms. For the Academic group, they expand the use of UPEI's physical plant and they expand the use of UPEI's existing teaching staff and the Department of Ed - OISE has very close links to UTS and is just down the road from the school. For the Concrete Group, the do the same for Holland College.

What about the results?

By differentiating like this, we boost these two vital groups. We also free up the centre of the Bell Curve back in the school. For both the extreme wings of the curve create friction for those that find the existing system just fine. All win.

Is there any case for not doing this?

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

With Salmonella, It's A Chicken-Or-Egg Conundrum : NPR

There are very few places in the world that are naturally germ-free, but eggs from a healthy bird are one of them.  Ingraham says they stay that way because of their chemical defenses. Bacteria may get through a crack in the shell and the membrane underneath, but then the egg white fights back. In the egg white, there are three proteins that are very effective at combating bacteria.

One of these is called lysozyme. It isn't just in egg whites — it's also in tears, saliva and the drippy stuff that comes out of your nose. In fact, that's how it was discovered by Alexander Fleming (who also discovered penicillin) — Fleming happened to notice that when drips from his nose fell onto certain bacteria, they died.

It's a pretty neat trick. Lysozyme breaks the wall of the bacteria. And since bacteria are under pressure — like a balloon — if you break the wall, they explode. Lysozyme doesn't work on everything, but it can pop a lot of bacteria.

But the egg has two other ways to kill invaders. One is a protein that prevents bacteria from getting an essential vitamin that they need. The other is called conalbumin, and it's this protein keeps bacteria from getting the iron they need to grow.

via npr.org

Eggs are inherently safe - so what is the risk? The risk is how you keep and feed the hens. Big factory settings drive disease and risk.

Sunday's New York Times editorial says it all again:

"It wasn't simply that the operation is out of scale with the Iowa landscape. It is out of scale with any landscape, except perhaps the industrial districts of Los Angeles County. What shocked me most was the thought that this is where the logic of industrial farming gets us. Instead of people on the land, committed to the welfare of the agricultural enterprise and the resources that make it possible, there was this horror -- a place where millions of chickens are crowded in tiny cages and hundreds of laborers work in dire conditions."

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Hurricane Earl on his way to PEI

A friend made the point yesterday that the very warm weather we have been having here on PEI - warms our waters and opens up a pathway for hurricanes. 

Nothing is harder to predict than weather - But we might get hit harder than usual at some point this fall - fingers crossed and get your store of water in as Cynthia Dennis posted the other day - "Noah built the Ark before it rained"

Update: From Globe and Mail

Hurricane Earl, now a powerful Category 4 storm, barreled toward the U.S. coast early Tuesday after battering tiny islands across the northeastern Caribbean with heavy rain and winds that damaged homes and toppled power lines.

Earl is forecast to potentially brush the U.S. East Coast late Thursday, before curving back out to sea, possibly swiping New England or far-eastern Canada. The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned coastal residents from North Carolina to Maine to watch the storm closely.

“Any small shift in the track could dramatically alter whether it makes landfall or whether it remains over the open ocean,” said Wallace Hogsett, a meteorologist at the centre. “I can't urge enough to just stay tuned.”

In the Caribbean, Earl caused flooding in low-lying areas and damaged homes on islands including Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla and St. Maarten. Several countries and territories reported power outages. Cruise ships were diverted and flights cancelled across the region.

At NPR, The Web Is Not Dead : Go Figure : NPR

Is the Web dead for NPR? Again, my exhibit A. In the last year, unique visitor audience to our main Web site have grown by 30%. If you throw in traffic to the mobile Web site, it’s grown 37%. By comparison, our audience for our mobile apps have grown from nothing in July of 2009 to more than a million in July 2010. So, the mobile apps audience isn’t peanuts, and it’s growing much faster than our main site, but it’s not going to be the majority of our audience overnight. Also, the fact that both Web and non-Web traffic is still growing shows us that people aren’t SHIFTING from Web to non-Web usage in droves. Rather, they seem to be using both.

via npr.org

Feels good

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

The end of text books - the end to school?

It’s back to school. One of the worst things about being a student are text books.  They cost a bomb. They are “New” every year but like many new cars new only in a minor way. They are Mandatory. They are often out of date – always boring and often wrong.

In the emerging web world – will Text Boks as we know them last?

Arguably the most expensive reference book – the English Oxford Dictionary – 21 years in the making for the next edition will never be printed! Why? Because it does not make any sense to print it. Web search is so much better than manual and the costs of a print edition are too high. (Telegraph) HT Johnnie Moore. Today most access the OED via subscription online – 2 million hits a month from subscribers who pay $500 a year. Web search and printing costs have killed the print side.

Academic Journals are also coming under attack for being too expensive.

The Text Book has its replacement in use already.

My favorite alternative is the Khan Academy. A free online site that has a math and science focus. My son like the MIT site.

So why pay $200 for a text book that is not as good as this?

Bigger question – does not this cause you to question how schools are set up now? Why if math is so poorly taught do most kids have to endure Miss Jones plodding her way along when they could use Khan?What might this do to schools?

Might this see a return to a university where the core structure was a network of teachers as they were in Padua and Oxford in the 14th century? And what about K-12? Could a one room school that had a small staff of coaches and access to the best teaching in the world knock the pants off a regular school?

via fastforwardblog.com

More on Khan

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Fixing Education - 1 Put the Child in the Centre - Make reading #1

Can we do better in educating our children?

It's easy to criticize - so here is the first of a series of posts about Schools that have made the kind of changes that change everything. These are changes that any school can make.

Please have a quick look at these stats. You will see that this school has significantly out performed all others in the district. You might think that it draws from a middle class neighborhood. You might think that it is very well equipped.

In fact the Alice Byrne School in Yuma draws 60% of its kids from itinerant Hispanic food workers. 40% of the families are officially "Economically Disadvantaged" (Link to data)

Alice Byrne draws from a tough pool - but look how it delivers compared to other schools that are in the same district. What is going on and can we copy this?

See anything a bit different here? 

Let me tell you about what you can't see first for what you can't see is the real issue.

At Alice Byrne each child has their own learning plan that is built with all the staff who are connected to that child, the parets and the child.  All have a part in this plan. Weekly the staff discuss each child and share what they observe. Alice Byrne has put the child in the centre. The family has been brought in as well. All are focused on one core thing.

Learning to read!

Alice Byrne is exceptionally focused on this reality - by learning to read you can then read to learn. Reading is the key to the kingdom. The school is utterly focused on this ONE strategic point. From that then comes the rest.

Their job has been to help all the kids read well by grade 3. Most of the nice to have has been removed in favour of what has to be learned by Grade 3. They know that the battle has to be won Early!

Engagement has been seen as being key. So the class is split up like a one room school. Never more than 7 kids have the attention of the teacher - as we look at the picture, we see this in practice. Overall class sizes are still conventional. 

Another key element is teacher quality. The Principal insists on excellence. Alice Byrne has fewer teachers per school than other less performing schools. Quality and engagement of the teachers is the deciding factor.

Have we missed these factors? That it is all for nought if a child cannot read well by grade 3. That this has to be the focus. That the pathway is ENGAGEMENT. Engagement with the child and her family and with the entire staff.

Let's have a look then at how we used to run a school and see that these ideas are in fact old ideas.

Here is Robert Harris's classic painting of a PEI One Room School.

Do you see rows of desks? Look how many kids the teacher is focusing on. There are 8. How many kids does the ABS teacher focus on at any one time? No more than 7. These numbers are important and we will get back to them later (Magic Numbers) 8 is the ideal number of a human group that offers the maximum intimacy, trust and interaction.

If we could look back at the rest of the class at ABS we might see a variant of what is happening in the Harris picture. The other kids are getting on with stuff. 

If you want engagement, you can't have it in groups larger than 8 - so you have to design a system so that kids fall into such groups.

In the one room school there are some other hidden similarities. The parents are just down the road and have a vested stake in what is happening in the class room. They have not given up their own part of all of this.

In my next post I will tell you a story of a PEI school where getting the parents back inside is a key feature and where the social aspects of what is going on are now being recognized and acted upon.

But in closing - what happened at Alice Byrne can happen in any school with a good principal and with a board that wants to do better. It does not require more money. It requires focus and effort. ABS draws from the toughest demographics - so ABS shows that even under the most challenging circumstances, this focus can deliver.

How hard is this?

Is Home Grown Food Subversive?

A darling young girl of about 8 years came up to the table and looked over our selection. Then she shyly asked if she could have a slice of cucumber.  I said, "of course".  She picked one up, popped it into her mouth and scampered away.

A Francophone couple from New Brunswick came to the table and I offered them tastes of our lightly flavored Mediteranian cucumbers, our orange cherry tomato, and a bit of fresh basil.  The gentleman came back a few minutes later and asked me if he could have another basil top, "Because it smell so good!"

A bit later, a couple with several young children came up.  I offered them a taste of a just-picked ripe tomato, a bit of fresh cilantro and a taste of basil. I joked with the parents that I was "subverting their children".  I said, "Once they learn what fresh food tastes like, they won't want anything else."

I was kidding.  Until I thought about it.

Maybe it really is subversive, an act designed to overthrow the establishment, to offer fresh, clean, naturally grown food to people.                 

Powerful forces in our economy and our governments are continuing to move against small producers. And new legislation is pending in the states that could make it impossible for homestead and market garden producers to supply their neighbors with healthy local food.

The premise of the new regulation is food safety,  as though selling a few hand raised tomatoes to a neighbor is as risky as shipping e-coli tainted hamburger to 12 states. It seems to me that the real risk is that we will continue to reduce the number of producers until no small farms are left and government has only a handful  of "too big to fail" producers to support as rural communities die. I've met senior farmers who nearly go to tears when they tell me that after 5 generations, they are retiring off the land because the kids don't want the farm. In many places today, its just too hard for our young people to make a go of it.  

But that all seems too grim on a day when local people stepped up to buy a few beans, some herbs, a bit of squash and to take a moment to share the news in the Farmers Market at The Dundas Plowing Match. 

via dunncreekfarm.blogspot.com

I finally met John this weekend at the Dundas Plowing Match - He offers up an important warning I think. That in the guise of helping the public, the regulators are doing their best to shut down small operators.

The real risk, as John points out, is that we will have no alternative left and worse - lose the skills.

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

New School Year Ahead - what is the result that we need?

School is back soon. So what is the best result that we need for our children? Many focus on the 3 R's. Some worry about how kids will fit into the so called Knowledge Economy. 

So maybe the higher question is what is the world that our kids will have to cope with? Will it be getting a job at GM on the line? Will it be trading at Goldman Sachs? Will it be being a musician with their own studio?

What really is most likely the world that will face our kids? Will it look like ours at all? What if Peak Oil hits? What if government fails us as we are seeing in states like California? What about major weather disruption such as is happening in Pakistan?

I think that what is likely to confront our kids are tough times and disruptions. I think our kids will have to cope with lots of novel circumstances. 

So what then should we be thinking about in this context? What kind of society may have a chance in coping with these types of novel changes? I don’t think that this novelty demands that we all have PHD’s. I suspect that this novelty demands instead a “Pioneering Spirit”.

When many people came to the Island (PEI) for the first time 100 -200 years ago, they too were confronted by a New World. At first, all their challenges were novel. How to clear land and how to grow food? How to build a house and a barn? How to use the water for energy? How to educate their children? How to have an economy? Most on PEI came as indentured people who had little experience back in Scotland of any of these issues.

So how did they do it? How did they create a new society from scratch? I think what made them successful was the pioneering spirit.

What is it then?

• A Sense of Adventure and Hope - They wanted a better life - if not for themselves then for their kids and they took control of getting there. They knew that there was no going back home to the old world. They knew that no one could or would help from outside. They knew that they would have to do it themselves. They learned that being with others who also dared and shared made the adventure better.

• They had a sense of a future - They knew that if they cleared 2 acres this year, that they could clear another 2 the next and that by the time their kids were adult - there would be a real farm. They could see in the clearing by the water’s edge a town. They could see in the oak grove, ships. They did not dwell in the past.

• Good Coping skills - Pioneers accepted that there were challenges out there and were not put off by the first problem or failure. They became mentally tough. They could lose a crop and a child and still keep going.

• Technical Skills - They quickly developed technical skills that would help them be as self sufficient as possible. They knew how to do things that had real value to them and to their community. This then gave them a natural self confidence. Having mastered some skills, they knew that they could master others. The more real skills a person had, the greater their standing. Men and woman became famous for being capable.

• Social Skills - It was clear to all in a pioneer state that no individual could thrive on their own. Much of the work that had to be done had to involve others. So establishing and maintaining family and community were centrally important building blocks for success. Family and community were not buzz words - they were the keys to an in- dividual’s success and survival.

• Literacy - It was clear to most that the more you knew, the better off you were going to be. Literacy was paramount. At the time of the revolution in America, literacy was about 90%1. Literacy was rooted in what happened in the home.

So for me the issue of what is a good education is one of Context. What should we prepare for?

How does our current system stack up against the Pioneering Spirit - what does it instill?

• Obedience  - Thought is punished - giving the "right answer" is how you get on. They have little sense of hope or adventure. 

• No sense of a future - My sense is that intuitively most kids know that the system is broken and they play the game to get the credential or not - the context given to them of "Work hard at school and you will get a good job etc" they know is a lie. School as it is does not offer a way ahead but for most a way down.

• Poor Coping Skills - All real challenge is removed - there are no consequences for not doing well - so the true lesson of life - that it is hard - is never acquired. They are not resilient.

• Poor Social Skills - All social interactions are mediated by the staff and by parents - I hear that today college dorm issues are shoed by warring mums! The kids are given no social responsibility and so are socially clueless and dependent.

• Literacy - Not only are more than 60% of our grads functionally illiterate but are unable to think critically. They find it very hard to discriminate between true and false, right or wrong and a god idea and a poor one. 

In reality we have a system that produces incompetence at all levels.

What should be the aim of an education system? I can't help but go back to the Greeks. It is surely to work as a community to produce good citizens.

When King Philip of Macedon hired Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander, it was not with the intent of Alexander getting into Harvard, passing some exams or getting some kind of diploma.

King Philip’s aim in educating his son was to prepare him to be a King. The purpose of an education in Greece, the most innovative society that has ever existed, was to prepare the child to be a citizen.

I fear that we have got ourselves lost today. We have lost the broader aim for education which is to create citizens who can take their full place in their polis. In practice we have set up an education system whose objective is to screen out all who cannot use abstract thought well. Rather than create citizens, we create helots - dependent manual laborers.

80% of our children leave school feeling helpless. Because they do not fit into a narrow definition of ability, they are labeled sub par.. But in reality most have many gifts. Many have great gifts. But because these gifts do not fit our narrow definition of ability, we exclude them. If we are not to waste most of our children’s potential, we will have to start instead with where their gifts are to be found.

We have to fit them and not them us. 

Widening our focus does not have to be hard. Holland College has found that if some boys are given a concrete task such as learning to build something, that this will give these boys the context and the motivation to learn how to read, write and to use math.

Giving most of our children a chance demands that we acknowledge what we have been doing and vow to widen our perspective of ability and commit to supporting the growth of citizens.

Can we reform our system directly? I doubt it for the system is too entrenched. So what do we do?

Starting in small groups of families who are sure that the system if broken, build a new one in parallel use the provision for Home Schooling to create a new network that is based on the principles of helping our kids be pioneers and good citizens - people who can cope with novelty and hardship.

Maybe even negotiate with the board for one school - on PEI we have a number that are now vacant.

Co create a curriculum that shifts the emphasis from mind to experience. Reach out to the wider world for help and resources.

If you think that this is too hard - I will post later this week a series of examples of schools are are doing well at this.

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

This Is How It Starts « Rosenblum TV

Hitler arrives at Nuremberg for rally 1933 – another very popular orator

Normally I don’t write about politics here.

But not today.

I recently posted a note to Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. She had an item on her Facebook page asking what she should cover in her show.

Most of the answers posted related to shoes or clothing or divorces.  I told her she should speak out about the growing trend to publicly accepted racism in our culture, with Muslims paying the role of the Jews this time.

So far, she is sticking to shoes. Kotb, by the way, is Arabic for book.

The Failings of Public Education

When I went to school in the 1960s, almost all of my teachers were women.

They were women because in those days, the only jobs women could get were teacher, nurse or secretary. And so the smartest went into teaching.

And they were good. Very good.

When new opportunities opened for women in the 70s, (and I am old enough to remember when a woman going to Harvard Business School was still a big story), the smartest flocked to careers as lawyers or MDs or CEOs.  They followed the money.

In the days when women had no choice, schools could get away with paying teachers $23,000 a year, or less for women, and no one said a word – and they were able to attract the best talent in the country.

When other opportunities became available, the schools should have responded by making teaching as competitive as law, and paying as much.  But they didn’t. Instead, we debased the public educational system in America.  Oh, there are still those who teach out of pure dedication, but that’s like asking people to go to medical school and then head off to work for Medcin sans Frontiers. There are those who do, but not many.

I taught for many years at both Columbia University and NYU, and over the course of time, I watched as the level of basic education that my students came in with dropped and dropped and dropped. They were not stupid. Far from it, they were just uneducated – increasingly so. And interestingly, they didn’t care.  Most did not know the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, and if they had to find out, they could always go to the web and Google it.

What we eroded was a basic foundation of fundamental knowledge, which by now, I think, is pretty much gone.

And the price we pay is that we have created a society without the ability to process information through any kind of historical wisdom.

So when Glenn Beck goes to the Lincoln Memorial and proclaims that he is the true heir to the Civil Rights Movement; when he and his Tea Party follower proclaim that the President is the racist here; when he fundamentally rewrites the history of this country to suit his own ends, one would think that an educated nation would laugh him off the stage.

But they don’t.

They don’t because we no longer have an educated nation that can process what he says through a lens of intelligence.

We have a nation of people who get their information superficially, and lacking in any kind of grounding of basic education, can be easily swayed by demagoguery of the worst kind.

For two generations we have ignored the infrastructure of this country.

Our bridges rust out and collapse.

That makes news.

Well our schools are rusted out and collapsing. And when the education of our nation rots and collapses, its is a whole lot more serious than when a bridge collapses, or deciding which shoes to buy.

What is happening today at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream Speech is nothing short of pornography. Public pornography based on a collection of lies.

But we have a public that has lost the ability to discern the truth for itself.

This is how it starts.

And if you know anything about history, you already know how it finishes.

But alas, most people don’t even know that.

But they will. Sadly.

via rosenblumtv.com

I quote Michael Rosenblum in full today. For he touches on the peril that confronts America today.

Can America get its Mojo back?

In Jane Jacobs great book Dark Age Ahead - she makes the point that the signifier for a great states's decline is growing xenophobia. Leading to a retreat into a fortress culture. This is what happened to China and what happened to the Muslim world. Both were many steps ahead of Europe but bothy retreated into themselves.

In the "fortress" thinking is not allowed or welcome. As Michael notes - many do not care that they know nothing. There is a pride in ignorance.

Such a society will look to the simple and to demagogues. Such a society will set up the the preconditions of "Collapse" - a structural inability to respond to challenges.

Don't we see signs of this inability today? As I see it we do.

This is why I am passionate in my support for public TV and radio's efforts to expand their role from providing good content to providing a safe place where the community can have a discourse about issues that are important to them.

At KETC in St Louis this effort began with creating such a safe place to help each other cope with the mortgage crisis. Now we are trying to find a way of facilitating the kind of discourse that will enable America to have a better approach to Immigration - an issue that will surely determine America's future as much as any other.

WGTE in Toledo will be doing the same soon on local agriculture.

My hope is that such an approach - of having a local in depth discourse on challenging topics such as who is an American? How we get our food? Jobs and the economy? Health? Education? Is our only chance of breaking out of the polarization of our politices and the over influence of the corporate will.

I don't see any other opportunity? Do you?

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Stunned when I saw this

Aids PSA Topsy 90 human Mix-Simian H.264 2 from Human Music & Sound Design on Vimeo.