Archive for 2008
Truly Twenty-First C. Literacy (Beyond Buzzwords)
Ben Grey’s “21st Century Confusion” post asks a simple question that I’ve often toyed with too:
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills believes demonstrating originality, communicating, being open and responsive, acting on creative ideas, utilizing time efficiently, accessing information, etc. are all 21st Century Skills. I’d retort that in reality, these skills have always been in existence and of the utmost importance. They don’t need to have the 21st Century moniker on them to make them significant.
I’ve often wondered the same thing: “What’s all this talk of ’21st century literacy’? (Ben somewhat conflates “literacy” and “skills” in his post.) Is there anything really new here? My comment:
The only uniquely “21st century literacies” I can think of involve the web.
Students need to be able to evaluate information on screens upon which any sage, charlatan, or idiot can publish. That’s new (sort of. Books really are open to the same range of authors).
They need to learn “online identity management,” and I would argue that’s a new literacy. New because they’re publishing themselves, and that means reading/writing/speaking/filming/photo-ing (literacy), and 21st century because privacy has never been so porous as now. They need to know how to keep Big Brother, Big Employer, and Big Google from knowing too much.
They need to learn “social reading” online. By that attempt at a cute label I mean the ability to evaluate communication acts by strangers in social networks, emails, comment threads wherever, and the whole range of places people can attempt to connect to us individually now. They need to be able to “read” a phish, for example, and a fraudster, and yes, a p&rv.
Hm. What else. Co-writing might be new. “How to participate in collaborative writing communities.” Wikipedia, for example. I know I don’t know how to do that.
Could we even go so far as to say that social networking online is itself a “new literacy”? That networking is (or may be) an essential skill for adulthood in the 21st century?
Hm. Searching. That’s new, yes? How to effectively search for good, timely information online, and do so efficiently. I know I’m still not great at that.
I’ll stop there. Thanks for the prompt. I agree the “21st c.” buzz can be as tiresome as the “2.0.” But I think the Berners-Lee Revolution has created some unique changes, just as Gutenberg’s did. Can you see any I missed?
If you like this post, please spread it: 
(But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
Reply to Gary Stager’s HuffPo Post on Duncan
The comment thread on Gary Stager’s HuffPo article on the Duncan appointment wouldn’t allow this long response, so I’m posting it here.
Gary,
I’m still informing myself (and as others have noted, your links are now more of my homework), so I’m going to withhold judgment somewhat.
I will say that all the reading I’ve done so far - and I’ve been reading a lot - confirms that Duncan’s record in Chicago is far from miraculous.
But I’ve read some ‘benefit of the doubt’ types who note that Duncan’s hands may have been tied by the Daley machine. Since Duncan’s appointment is now a fait accompli, we can only hope he’ll surprise us under Obama.
I’ll also note that, a propos the tempest around gay-basher Rick Warren’s selection for the inauguration, Duncan gave strong support to a “gay-friendly” school in Chicago. (Yes, I’m aware such an idea smacks of “separate but equal,” but wrote here about why I still think it’s a good idea.) While not an educational feather, it’s still a refreshing one to see in a cabinet member’s cap.
We may as well add that Duncan is on record as condemning the lack of funding for NCLB, its stick-instead-of-carrot posture (which could be changed), and its low-cognition assessments. If he “reforms” NCLB along these lines - and yes, many more - I can think of worse outcomes.
In the end, the decisions on education under the Obama administration are Obama’s responsibility; what he said regarding HRC at State pertains to education as well: “I’ll make the decisions.” And while I’m as nervous as the next guy over so many of his moves lately, I guess I’m holding out hope that all the recent theater is outside-the-box tactics in a longer-term strategy that will make progressives proud. His campaign - a masterpiece of proving the nay-sayers wrong - makes me think more than twice that I can unriddle his long-term plan. So maybe he is selling out or simply making stupid choices; but maybe he’s not. He’s so damn poker-faced and close to the chest, it’s beyond me to know at this point.
I also take heart in the fact that he tapped Darling-Hammond to lead his transition team, and by choosing Duncan instead of a Rhee or Klein, arguably signaled his opposition to those more extreme edubiz proponents. I also take heart in the possibility that BO is so enamored of the “cabinet of rivals” idea in the Lincoln book he’s been touting lately that his appointment of Duncan might not equal an endorsement of Duncan’s record. Again: fait accompli - I’ll cling to any shred of hope until actions in office shred it beyond clinging.
This is all a long-winded way of saying you may be right, but until we see more, you’re not yet. Let’s hope you never are 
Parting shot: To me, the money quote of your article was this: “Perhaps we need federal legislation requiring a fully qualified superintendent in every school district!”
I’ve been thinking the same thing since I began watching the Texas Board of Edu-Creationism try to jimmy Genesis into science classes and, worse yet, textbooks nationwide (Texas standards wag the national textbook industry dog: if Texas votes to deny Darwin, all the science textbooks will aim to please. I still pray somebody stateside takes on the Smart Mobs idea to protest this putsch).
So I’d revise your money quote to add Board of Education members to the list of politicians requiring expertise in education. Failing that, we’re prey to anti-primate jackasses evermore.
If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
An Approach to Teacher Merit Pay I Could Live With
Who is Arne Duncan and how will his choice as Secretary of Education affect education in the US (and, for better or worse in this hegemonic age, much of the rest of the world)? I’ve spent so many hours since the announcement reading reactions online that both my eyes and my brain cells are fried. (Enjoy the Diigo bookmarks if you’re masochistic.) All that reading will have to steep for a while before I can serve it as tea.
Until that happens, I’m going to focus on one controversy surrounding Duncan, and toss out some thoughts on it. That controversy is performance pay for teachers.
Bill Ferriter’s excellent recent post on this issue at the Tempered Radical got me thinking. I replied there,
Thinking about it a little more, this is what I can come up with so far:
We’d have to define “merit” to include the higher-order thinking skills - analysis, synthesis, evalutation/critical thinking, creativity - that the best learning projects require. This is not the opposite of the “fact-based, right/wrong, multiple choice” testing that NCLB and the College Board/AP/SAT pushes, but what you might call the upward extension of it. Mastery of facts is the beginning, not the end, of the assessment for meritorious teaching and learning.
If we start there, that means teacher merit is measured by the types of projects that are assigned in the classroom - not by the standardized testing industry - and by the performance of students who complete these projects. This further means that said teacher measurement is performed not centrally, but locally - or perhaps by boards consisting of local and central judges. (I know that “central” is vague.)
My thinking is that if teachers were rewarded for designing learning activities that measured positively against a checklist of such higher-order thinking traits - and crucially, that the measurement was based not on a single unit, but on a portfolio of all units assigned throughout the semester or year (this eliminates the dog-and-pony show liability of single principal evaluations) - then the best teachers would be rewarded with higher pay, while the worst ones would have an incentive to change their practice for the better. Teaching to the test wouldn’t be the goal any more; teaching to higher instructional standards would be.
As for what those higher instructional standards would look like, we need look no further than Linda Darling-Hammond for answers. Her presentation linked in an earlier post lays the groundwork for such guidelines.
As I commented on Will’s post about the Duncan pick,
Since Darling-Hammond led BO’s ed transition team, she may have had his ear long enough to fill it with good sense on how to reform NCLB’s assessments for the better - so that they align with better teaching-and-learning.
And I just discovered Bill Ferriter posted a follow-up to my comment, so off I go to fry a few more cells. Bill’s worth it.
If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
Bush Accepts Evolution, not a “Literalist” (video)
Oh, the French wit. Just the right sauce for my Freedom Fries:
Asked to sum up Bush’s record on the [climate change] issue, France’s climate ambassador Brice Lalonde chose instead to pass on a story he had heard.
A man comes to the White House asking to see Bush. “He doesn’t live here anymore,” he is told. The next two days he comes again asking the same question, and receiving the same answer.
On the fourth day, the exasperated guard shot back: “I’ve already told you, he’s no longer here.”
“I know, I know,” the man replied. “But it’s such a pleasure to hear you say it.” (source)
It really is a pleasure.
It’s also a pleasure to hear the (at long last) outgoing Texan-in-Chief tell us that there’s “proof of evolution” that Biblical literalism can’t reasonably refute. If you missed that, here’s a little video I cooked up to applaud the occasion:
Help the Texas Freedom Network in their work to defend science in schools.
In case you missed the post on Smart Mobbing against creationism in U.S. science textbooks - my, how I’d love to see high school students jump on this idea - the post is here.
If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
Clarifications (?) on “Slow Blogging” and “Fast Reading”
(A response to Morgante Pell’s “Slow Blogging in Fast Times.”)
“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
–Ben Hecht
Nice post. I’m sympathetic to the thrust, but would argue it’s not the length of the post that measures the quality of the writing, but the length of each idea within that post.
I’m thankful for almost every long sentence and long novel from our Joyces and Faulkners and Barths, and would never complain over their expansiveness. They teach us that “really long” can still be “not too long, but precisely long enough.” And that’s always the way it’s been with real writing. There’s nothing new here.
In this connection, the issue of slow blogging can easily become an object of abuse itself (and no accusations that that’s happening here). I’d argue we need to be careful to keep a high priority on regular, daily writing, and not pooh-pooh a high word count as the goal for our daily quota. That’s what real writers do. (“Inspiration is a lazy bitch. She won’t come to you. You have to chase her down every day.” - a paraphrase of something I read somewhere and hold dear, sexist language and all.)
So length, to repeat, is not the problem. The perennial teacher-answer to the perennial student-question - “How long does it have to be?” - “Not too short and not too long: just long enough to meet the demands of the assignment” - holds true for a writer’s self-assignments too.
It’s those “self-assignments” that bring us closer to any “problem” raised by the “slow blogging” camp. And to me, it’s only a problem for people who want to be writers instead of journalists.
There’s a place for them both, obviously. Fragmented reactions to the events of the day are the rightful domain of journalism, and many bloggers have placed their stakes in that territory. There’s nothing wrong with that. There could even be something very right with it, for blogger-journalists who choose to specialize in a narrow range of one or two topics - film, publishing, politics, whatever. Such daily engagement would not produce a “dumber” person at all, I would argue; on the contrary, it would grow into an “expertise” over time, a “deep learning” as a result of the daily reading-reflecting-writing cycle such “fast blogging” follows. (In many cases, it’s hard to deny this would also lead to improved writing skills, since these daily push-ups in sentence construction, organization, voice, and all the rest would serve as workouts to build the writing muscles.)
Where “fast blogging” goes wrong, then, is with that other writer: the one who wants something less daily, and more timeless. (Not to be prissy, but the French “belles-lettrist” is a label that comes to mind for this type of writer. Other labels such as “essayist,” “novelist,” “fiction-writer,” “non-fiction writer,” “philosopher,” “theorist,” and “poet” belong in this set too.)
For this writer, “fast blogging” is anathema. Not in length, mind you, but in subject matter. This writer is the one who should embrace “slow blogging,” it seems to me. And the surprise comes in that such an embrace demands decisions, above all, about what to read. And here’s where we might talk about “fast reading” - my term for S.P. Greenlaw’s mention of his RSS Reader addiction - as the real problem, not “fast blogging.”
Because it’s the “fast reading” that seduces us into fragmentation, immediacy, the second-hand instead of the hour-hand or, better, the historical timeline spanning centuries. Our writing reflects our ideas, and our ideas come to a large degree from the reading with which we occupy our minds. If we’re reading blogs daily, our minds and ideas are not only occupied by, but also sound like, “Boing Boing.” (Couldn’t resist.)
So for the writer aiming at timelessness, maybe the enemy is not the daily “fast blogging.” Maybe it’s the daily “fast reading”: the Google Reader, the Stumbling Upon, the one-inch “Digging” and consumption of the latest hi-calorie Delicious thing.
But let’s be fair. These “filtered” publishings we daily (hourly, secondly) consume are often of high quality and high value. The problem comes in the fact that, taken together, they are disjointed, fragmentary, somewhat random, and almost always “contemporaneous” and “immediate” - connected to the day or the year, but by no means the longer river of time. And that makes our thoughts more like mayflies flitting on that river than old growths towering beside it. Not much timelessness there.
So maybe the answer for “slow bloggers” isn’t the imperative to write daily online; maybe it’s to read daily - offline.
And yes, that means books.
If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
