Beyond School

[Update: Ouch, that title bit me when I revisited this post after moving more boxes into my new apartment. I want to make it so clear (and try to below) that, as I've said before, I admire Karl immensely. Not only is he brilliant, he's also one of the few giants in this field who did more than look on with interest when I was trying to turn the 1001 Flat World Tales idea into a flat classroom reality. He helped turn "talk to action," to quote one of my favorite blogs, by lining me up with Michele in Denver, my first flat classroom collaborative partner. Quite possibly, that project would have remained an idea without Karl's contribution.

So the focus here is on ideas, and on extending them. To allude to "Did You Know?" is just shorthand - and I know that Karl knows that it's more than just economics. I hope the post below makes it clear that this is about ideas, and about one more unintended consequence of the dizzying effects Karl's "viral" video.]

Diane posts a thoughtful extension of the “student voices” conversation taking place (and here) lately on her new-ish (and worthwhile) blog, Journeys. She starts with this definition of “student voice” from Wikipedia:

“the individual and collective perspective and actions of young people within the context of learning and education.”

After summarizing the conversation amongst Karl Fisch, me, Scott Schwister, and Carolyn Foote, Diane reflects:

All of these conversations have led me to reconsider some of my plans and strategies for next school year. I had intended to encourage students in my class to share their projects with our Board of Education, both to demonstrate what they’ve accomplished and to advocate for more technology tools being made available in the district. But if I, as teacher, choose what they present, is this truly “student voice”? Should I let them decide what to request and how to do so?

Diane then closes with one very pregnant, very relevant (my new shibboleth for education) quote from Piaget:

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.

Diane concludes, “Our students need to find their voice, and we need to learn how to listen to it.”

I left a lengthy comment on Diane’s post that readers on aggregators won’t see on my CoComment widget, so I’m going to paste it here (I’m getting more and more frustrated with this and other shortcomings of blogging). It concerns the proper role of teachers and educators in relation to “student voices,” and argues that “student voices” are, without teachers as “futurist guides,” simply the voices of the status quo cultural forces, and the opposite of what Piaget envisions. Here it is:

What jumps out at me in your post are, first, the inclusion of the word actions in the Wikipedia definition of “student voice.” I’m currently ambivalent about creating more blog-talkers as the ultimate goal of this initiative. Talking and writing aren’t enough, though schools typically seem to think so. No wonder citizenship is dead. We have to change that.

The second thing is your closing quote by Piaget. The next generation, which we’re teaching now to be replicants of our own problematic lifestyles, are damned if they’re not equipped - or even conscious of - the world of their future. It’s been said a million times: “Our past is not their future.”

The one wrinkle I see in letting students decide what to present is this: they are only aware of what their community - parents, teachers, preachers - make them aware of. And that community is generally not cognizant of the shape of the future, busy as it is with its own daily round and daily diet of soft news.

So I still see a role for adult educators to serve as sort of “futurist guides” to the next generation of adults.

Karl Fisch is already an example of someone playing that role, however unintentionally, by virtue of the viral reach of his “Did You Know?” video. According to that vision, largely a condensation of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, the future to prepare for is one of economic competition with China and India.

But there’s more to our young people’s future than economics - especially when most of those economic practices are unsustainable. All this talk about “21st century workplace skills” disturbs me to no end for its trancelike oblivion to the unsustainability of that workplace.

Friedman actually mentions “green innovation” as one of those skills, incidentally, but that’s not mentioned in “Did You Know?”, so educators are largely not thinking of it. This isn’t Karl’s fault, since that video wasn’t intended to be anything more than a district edtech professional development presentation. But it’s taken a life of its own, and educators are so wowed by the flash of the animation they don’t seem to think beyond it to what else awaits in the future.

There are other futures we need to alert this generation to that are more fundamental, in my view. Global Warming and Climate Change, combined with the Peak Oil situation, top the list.

If we adults don’t use our capacity for being more informed, beyond the media, about the future we’re creating for our young, they have nobody to educate them in what is relevant to their future. We’ve surrendered our role to the larger forces of culture and media that are stuck in the status quo.