“What is Schooliness?” - Overview and Open Thread
[Cross-post from my guest-blogger stint on Wes Fryer's Moving at the Speed of Creativity. Thanks, Wes!]
I Hate Schooliness. I Love Learning.
–this is my motto. It’s one of the reasons I wrote (in a post, “On Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher,” with about 70 comments now),
I’m not sure how much longer I want to work for schools. I’d so much rather teach.
So what is “schooliness”?
I have no idea. But that’s not a problem: I’m a teacher. I’m quite comfortable speaking with confidence on subjects I know next to nothing about. That’s why I don’t believe in computers in my classroom. My students have me. I’m the teacher.
Fans of Stephen Colbert will note that “schooliness” riffs on Colbert’s “truthiness,” which won the Word of the Year awards from the American Dialect Society in 2005, and from Merriam-Webster in 2006.
Colbert, in a serious interview as himself, instead of as his Bill O’Reilly satire persona, had this to say about “truthiness”:
Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word…
It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the President because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…
Truthiness is ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.
I’ve never tried to define “schooliness,” but so many people are quoting it as “Clay’s idea,” I feel it’s time to try - and to ask for your help in the Open Thread invitation at the end of this post.
The Birth of Schooliness
I first used the word “schooliness” in March 2007 - my third month of blogging - in one of a series of posts on “how to save blogging from teachers.” (I still worry about that danger, and still think-aloud about that challenge a year later.) I was envisioning a future in which all the edtech evangelists got what they wanted: schools full of teachers in every classroom using blogging with their students. But rather than seeing a utopia to celebrate, I saw a bleak dystopia: Blogging as “just another way to turn in homework.” Blogging, like thinking, creativity, and other joys, turned into an aversive horror by the forces of schooliness:
. . . . what reader will ever return to a blog that’s full of homework posts? If Stephen Colbert were here, he’d say such a blog smelled of this: “Schooliness.”
Like Colbert’s “truthiness,” “schooliness” stuck with me. It was a word without a dictionary definition that still seemed to identify something we all know, all too well.
Schooly Student Leadership
The next time I used the term was this past September. With a few other teachers around the world, I’ve started a Green Schools movement called Project Global Cooling. The project’s purpose is for student members to research waste-reduction measures, and their cost benefits for the school, and then present them for adoption in a formal proposal to the school administration - and to have, ideally, an Earth Day concert in cities around the world, student-promoted, on the same day, which will be filmed and uploaded to the Project Global Cooling website (it’s ugly right now, but it’s starting, finally, to grow legs - see my blog for future focus on this as it nears its April 19 climax).
One of the PGC students, a student council member, was ordered by the student council teacher-leaders to drop our club. It conflicted with the student council meeting times. That sent me into my second rage against the schooly in my post, “Student Council: Creating Tomorrow’s Followers (or, “Smells Like School Spirit”)“:
Me: “So what are you guys going to be planning in the Student Council that’s so important she’s forcing you to drop all other activities?”
Student: “The Haunted House for Halloween. And the next Student Assembly.”
Me: “The Haunted House….so, like, getting the pumpkins and doing some Halloween thing in the gym?”
Student: “Yeah.”
Me: “And the Student Assembly: what are you planning for that?”
Student: “Introducing the Sports teams. And raising school spirit.”
Me: “And how many people do you have meeting twice a week to plan a Haunted House and a 40-minute assembly to introduce the basketball players and give a few speeches and such?”
Student: “Seventeen.”
Me: “Seventeen?”
Student: “Yeah.”
Me: “Seventeen people meeting twice a week for the next 20 weeks to plan a haunted house in the gym, and an assembly to introduce sports teams? How long can it take to come up with a plan to introduce sports teams?”
Student: “I know.”
Me: “I hate school. Look at how trivial it makes you, even when you want to make a difference in the real world.”
Student: “I don’t have any choice. The Student Council teachers won’t let me out.”
Me: “And look how powerless you suddenly are. You’re 17. You’re a young adult. You know physics, calculus, and history far more than most of your teachers, but have zero power in school despite that. ‘They won’t let me.’ I hate school.”
* * *
So, your advice: I want to suggest he quit Student Council, since it’s clearly one very school-blindered, trivial waste of time for all these poor students seeking election in order to show they can handle power effectively - like adults do.
Another idea is to instead advise him to wage a bit of a rebellion inside the Student Council, by asking the very sensible question - “Is this the best we can do? Jack-o-lanterns and basketballs? Can we give the StuCo some teeth? Extend it into the real world? Isn’t it pathetically fay right now? Trivial? Irrelevant? Infantile?”
The sad thing is, it’s institutionalized. The Rat-Race for college admissions puts a high premium on silly bullets like holding a class office. College counselors, administrators, parents, students, teachers - the whole school culture - treat the Student Council like it’s an honorable thing. In reality, it limits the horizons of the 17 most motivated leaders from each grade level to the paltry world of the schoolhouse. It’s outrageously trivial and infantile.
I don’t know if it’s “consensus trance,” blind traditionalism, or winking condescension (”Let the kids play like they have power”), but it smells really bad to me.
Schooly Ethics
Schooliness raised its ugly head again when I considered the moral “offenses” schools choose to punish at school. Drive a gas-guzzler? Promote the bloody diamond trade with your flashy jewelry? Enjoy murder in video games or on your favorite movies? No worries. No punishment.
But use certain taboo vowel-consonant combinations, or look at the human form with certain taboo portions visible? We’ll throw the book at you, in our duty to teach you the difference between right and wrong. Schooly morality seems to have been held back since the mid-Victorian era. That was a fun post: “To Curse or Not to Curse: On Teaching the F-Bomb and Other Colorful Words.” Read it before you judge it. It’s about Shakespeare’s mastery of cursing, as an art form. Here’s a snippet:
Lear curses with style and grace, as befits a king. But Kent, his chief knight - Lear’s “Army Chief of Staff,” as it were - curses, as befits a career soldier, with much more salt and directness. Check out his classic “cussing out” of the slimy Oswald, servant of Goneril –
OSWALD:
What dost thou know me for?KENT:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of they addition. (Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 14-24)
If your Elizabethan English is rusty, and you don’t hear the vulgarity and sexual insult sloshing in practically every line, download the free “Answers” Firefox addon, and click the unknown words while holding down “alt” on your Mac for an instant popup definition and more (PC users, you’re on your own - maybe “ctrl”?). Kent calls Oswald a pimp, son of a bitch, bastard, son of a whore, “wussy,” a suck-up, and more, and then says, in today’s language, “Deny one word, and I’ll kick your disgusting little donkey” (substitute the King James Bible word for donkey here).
It’s depressing, isn’t it, how the art of cursing has degenerated in our own modern age? Our four-letter words are so unimaginative and artless by comparison.
So if you were me, how would you guide students to translate these curses? Having Kent abuse Oswald by hissing,
You bad person, I’m going to kick your bottom.
You son of a bad woman, you sissy, you person born out of wedlock,
You big meanie, etc
just doesn’t strike me as a faithful literary adaptation. (It does strike me as schooliness, though. Some teachers, like Wilde’s classic Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, would give such a bowdlerizing an “A,” I’ve no doubt.)
Schooly Imagination and Curiosity
I’m battling with schooliness now, most distressingly, in the very people I thought would battle it with me: my high school seniors. It seems they are so unfamiliar with having their own ideas, and writing about them, that they simply cannot do it with any engagement. Their free-choice blogs are, overall, schooly imitations of authenticity. Pretending to have ideas they pretend to care about. Thank Goodness, there are exceptions. But the rule is so distressing, it’s led me to believe that, by high school, it’s too late to unlock the creativity and engagement Wes so often champions. Twelve years of schooliness seems to have beaten the desire to learn - the pleasure of learning - completely out of most seniors. It seems to me now that, if we’re going to feed fires for learning, we have to do it before they’re snuffed out. And that means, to be clear, focus on school reform in primary and middle years. (How to reform secondary school, so in the grips of the SAT and AP and College Admissions - not to mention high school teachers living out college professor fantasies - is beyond me.)
Here’s a snippet from, “From the Classroom Blogging Doldrums: What Would Teacher 2.0 Do?“:
The problem? Little vision, little connective writing.
It’s partly senioritis, I think. College applications, SAT’s, too many commitments to too many extra-curricular activities (got to have those bullets for the college application, even if they come at the cost of destroying both my learning and my GPA), too many week-long sports trips, too many AP classes that were chosen not for interest but again for careerist reasons.
It’s partly Korean culture: parents sending students to night and weekend schools for SAT prep, AP prep, tutors. Students confusing memorization skills with academic excellence, trained to “be instructed” rather than to “construct” meaning themselves. Having no time to be, reflect, explore, wonder (or having no energy, rather).
And it’s partly my own fault: all the macho posturing of Advanced Placement courses as “college-level, rigorous,” etc - and Wes Fryer’s etymolological connection, in Shanghai back in September, of “rigor” with “rigid” and “rigor mortis” echoes here - led me to buy in to what now seems a sadistic and pedagogically pathetic imperative to overload AP students with A Mountain Of Homework.
Schooly Critical Thinking: An Oxymoron
This is from, “Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education“:
So: the problem with me, as a teacher, is that I design units that don’t address anything important. I’ve been trained to think that my job is to stuff the headpieces of the next generation with such irrelevant things as the definition of litotes and onomatopoeia, to write cute little stories about nothing, to know Stratford-upon-Avon. To be able, paradoxically, to think critically about safe subjects. And above all, not to think about anything that might, god forbid, rankle the status quo. And let’s not even start to think about taking any sort of action.
Again, so: As soon as I stop thinking like a teacher, designing units derived from an institutional culture that defines me as a teacher, and subconsciously makes me far more traditional in my teaching than my progressively-posing ego likes to acknowledge….as soon as I re-define myself as a community leader - as that once-upon-a-time American thing called a citizen - instead, maybe the young adults of my community might have an opportunity to learn how to function in the world they’ll inherit from and manage for us all-too-soon.
Schooly (Anti-)Science
When Bulgaria is, per capita, more scientifically literate than America about biology, geology, and genetics - and when even science teachers are afraid of the “e-word” - little more needs to be said. I say it anyway, in this post that got 1,000 hits in 8 hours (a record for me): Truly Critical: On Science, Religion, and Goodness.
Schooly Writing Lessons
Under the influence of Oscar Wilde’s aphorisms and Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, and in order to battle evil with wit and thus smile a bit more in hell, I’ve decided to slowly compile twitter-like definitions of all things schooly. Here’s my first effort, from a post last week:
Schooly writing (noun): Assignments by teachers who don’t want to read them, to students who don’t want to write them; a perpetual and unnecessary misery upon which hinges the student’s future, and the teacher’s present, livelihood; an oxymoron.
Open Thread Invitation to Play: Your Definitions of Schooliness?
Readers of my blog will know about the Open Thread idea. It’s simple: A topic or question is proposed in an Open Thread post, and all readers are encouraged to write comments as long as they would like, to copy them to their own blogs if desired, and to converse with each other in the thread. It’s fun.
I’d like to do an Open Thread here: Questions:
1. List the topics that come to your mind when you think of “Schooliness.”
2. Write your own “Devil’s Definition” and give us all a wicked laugh. I’ll carry them over to Beyond School and add them to a page there.
We know what schooliness is. We teachers live it daily. Let’s have some fun with it.
(Other comments are fine too, of course.)
–
Photo Credits:
- Colbert Motivational Poster by Louisville Joe
- Oscar Wilde Action Figure by -sel
- Laptop Computers For Middle School Newspaper
- Mustang Success Academy
- Learning Math Using Manipulatives
Below are all comments I nicked from the original post on Wes’ blog
Keep ‘em coming?
1. On March 1st, 2008, diane said:
Topics:
authentic learning
assessment
lifelong learning
engagement
student voice
Definition:
schooliness - the process of leaching creativity from the soul of a student
Comment:
Like your new wedding hairdo in the poster.
2. 2 On March 1st, 2008, Dean Shareski said:
Wes sure gets his monies worth with you. I recall asking you to do the same for me but I never followed up.
Anyway, what a complete description of your philosophy. It certainly helps to complete the puzzle of Mr. Burrel. This cuts to the heart of the “relevant, authentic and engaging” idea. I’m reminded of the work I’ve done this year on Project Based Learning. The one part that really struck home was how often we returned to the question, “will this matter in 20 years?”. Is this really important? So often we brush over this question for the sake of schooliness. Thanks for not letting go of this question.
3. 3 On March 1st, 2008, Damian said:
OK, I’ll give one a shot:
Schooly Discipline: A philosophy that states that the best method of punishing our most disengaged learners - class cutters - is to remove them from class or school grounds for periods of 1-5 days at a time. This philosophy may be applied inconsistently by any one of multiple official disciplinarians at school.
4. 4 On March 1st, 2008, cburell said:
@Damian: Oh yes, yes, yes. Oscar and Ambrose are smiling from . . . . wherever they are.
Thanks for playing and hope we see more
5. 5 On March 2nd, 2008, Ken Pendergrass said:
How about this-
Schooly Music Lessons:using outdated instruments (i.e. auto harps) to teach outdated songs, typically by rote, with outdated accompaniments that sound nothing like music that is being performed by real musicians in the real world.
and
Schooly Music Concerts:unimaginative, teacher directed, music programs, that are mindless entertainment for the administration to brag about in parent newsletters and press releases.
6. 6 On March 2nd, 2008, cburell said:
Oh Ken, those are priceless. Reminds me of Lisa Simpson intro in the Simpsons opening credits.
We really need to get some students to add some definitions here.
7. 7 On March 2nd, 2008, cburell said:
Here’s one:
School (noun) a place that prepares the young for the world by separating them from it.
8. 8 On March 2nd, 2008, diane said:
Schooly library: a collection of outdated tomes arranged so that no student can locate them without the assistance of a highly trained professional who is usually unavailable
Schooly standards: mandated tests measure a student’s ability to regurgitate facts. As expectations rise, passing grades are lowered so that the statistically impossible goal of having every student test “above average” is reached.
9. 9 On March 2nd, 2008, Penelope Millar said:
schooly gaze: Looking at every new technology, event or idea only in terms of how it can be used for the purposes of schooliness.
10. 10 On March 2nd, 2008, diane said:
Schooly Professional Development:
You [staff] will attend, you will be passive
We [administrators] will decide what will happen before, during, and after
They [students] will not enter into the mix except incidentally
11. 11 On March 2nd, 2008, diane said:
Schooly day: as the doors open, the minds close.
12. 12 On March 2nd, 2008, Lindsea said:
Schooliness: A disease caused by twentieth century teachers, unnecessary rules, and bureaucracy. The mind feels like it’s been wrapped in a very hot, stuffy box. Side affects include lack of passion, mind numbing, and extreme functional fixedness.
Cure: sudden jolts of inspiration applied directly to the frontal lobe in increasing amounts of power.
13. 13 On March 2nd, 2008, mrsdurff said:
1. List the topics that come to your mind when you think of ?Schooliness.?
handwriting; arithmetic; any content area course done for the credit towards graduation not the knowledge; any course where there is a teacher on a stage, one right answer, and/or taught by the textbook; recess; lunchrooms; ISS.
2. Write your own ?Devil?s Definition? and give us all a wicked laugh. I?ll carry them over to Beyond School and add them to a page there.
Schooliness is all about what I am not. I refuse to be a teacher in the classroom, I am a learner among learners. I will be the lead learner, I will facilitate their growth, I will set up a course. But there will usually not be one right answer. Vocabulary and APA formats seem to have one right answer, but often there is more than one way around to a solution. Antischooliness is about a group of learners who gather together, online or offline, to learn about something. Schoolinesss is about walking in straight lines, bells, blocks or periods, attendance lists, & demerits. Sometimes I feel more like a prison guard than a learner. And I went to school for this? Oi veh!
14. 14 On March 2nd, 2008, diane said:
Schooliness is protecting students rather than arming them with knowledge
Schooliness is isolation rather than integration
15. 15 On March 2nd, 2008, pwoessner said:
Two alternate definitions:
Schooliness: A system born of the Agrarian Age, incessantly driven to meet the needs of the Industrial Age, and anxiously waiting for Pink’s Conceptual Age to fall off the Bestseller list.
Schooliness: Preparing students for challenges and careers that don’t exist yet by teaching them about challenges and careers that don’t exist anymore.
16. 16 On March 2nd, 2008, cburell said:
@Pwoessner: You’ve got the writerly knack for this kind of thing. Such craft! I’m laughing as I type this!
17. 17 On March 2nd, 2008, Terry Smith said:
Schooliness - thank you Stephen Colbert - this is the evil spirit in which I pretend to believe, pretend to function in toward the end of year testing frenzy, checklist measurable items for, then in reality couch it all in projects, outings, and kid worldliness - follows what you can hear at teacher conferences: “A good project will have all 750 of our state objectives embedded.” Right. — Terry Smith
18. 18 On March 2nd, 2008, James Sigler said:
Schooly spelling
Monday: Here are your spelling words for this week. Memorize them by Friday.
Friday: Spelling test - Regurgitate onto paper the spelling words you memorized for this week and then forget them.
(You convinced me about spelling tests, Wes)
19. 19 On March 3rd, 2008, Clay Burell, Apple Distinguished Educator, Riffs On the Pitfalls of “Schooliness” « The World Is Your Campus said:
[…] Educator, Riffs On the Pitfalls of “Schooliness” Jump to Comments Found this great guest post on “schooliness” by Clay Burell, an Apple Distinguished Educator who now teaches in South Korea and blogs at […]
20. 20 On March 3rd, 2008, Rodd Lucier said:
Schooliness Anagrams
& “Teachliness Feedback”
Niches Solos…
“Going your own way isn’t allowed, not even in Spanish!”
School Sines!
“You lose marks for spelling…”
Colon Hisses…
“We did metaphors last week, this week it’s similes”
Chosen Soils…
“Stand your ground in debate class, this is History!”
Chess in Silo?
“Where else can games be educational?”
Clone his SOS!
“Should we all cry for help?”
Once his loss…
“Now all a loss we all must suffer…”
Inch loses so…
“Metric rules the day…”
Iconless “ohs”.
“Graphics design is another class…”
Sonic loss eh?
“Did you hear what the Canadian said?”
She sins. Cool!
“Which teacher broke copyright?!”
Con loses his…
“You think it’s your right to read what you want!”
Clay Burell
4 Mar 08 at 6:52 am
Schooly creative writing is an oxymoron.
diane’s last blog post..Guerrilla Teaching
diane
4 Mar 08 at 7:05 am
School isn’t about the subject matter. School is about preparing students for life beyond school.
As boring, hated, meaningless paperwork, schooly assignments have their place for a population that will grow up in cubicles.
To respond to a previous commenter: Spelling tests are absolutely necessary, at least in the formative elementary grades. I have high school seniors on their way to graduation who can’t write a sentence without a spelling mistake every other word.
There is no excuse for this.
Schooliness can teach essential skills. It’s just that I’m talking about basic essential skills.
Benjamin Baxter’s last blog post..Paralyzing Fatigue
Benjamin Baxter
4 Mar 08 at 8:31 am
Philosophy means the love of knowledge, so therefore, I label you a philosopher. Is that okay? I refer to myself as a philosopher sometimes. I love knowledge. I hate having it shoved down my throat.
All of this made me think about how much good “schooliness” actually does. It creates sheep or it creates rebels, as many things do, but it creates sheep or rebels that don’t know what to do. Mr. Baxter was talking about seniors who didn’t know how to do anything, and that’s common in my high school. The teachers restrict us and hold our hands through everything, and even I am guilty of being unable to do anything unless someone tells me what to do. School doesn’t prepare you for the outside world fully, but what can? It just prepares you for the constant interaction with people.
I think I’m rambling. I apologize. But, I would like to say, people say that the change starts with us, the students. But how do we change things when we don’t matter? We’re statistics. Not people.
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..Mixed Tape
Kaelie Curbxstomp
4 Mar 08 at 8:58 am
I’m not sure we need to take the school out of learning. I think maybe we need to re-define just *what* school is. Once we’ve done that properly, “schooliness” could mean all sorts of great things that actually do have to do with learning, curiosity, and growth. The problem is that right now, schools are not fostering this. So, naturally, what we define as being “schooly” is really, really sad, boring, repetitive, and drivelly.
There are endless ways we can change what school is. For starters, why does it all have to be in a classroom with students full of anywhere between 20-40 students and one teacher. (You blog, Clay, has done wonders to show how this is possible.) Anyway, this is just one example. You get my drift. I think we really need to start re-defining what school is. Then what we now consider “schooliness” (see definitions above) will have no place in “new school”.
Adrienne Michetti
4 Mar 08 at 10:35 am
‘Schooliness’ numbs one’s connection with their inner voice and stifles their freedom to express who they are and to explore with confidence and openness what they think and what they believe. How else can one teacher get through the required curriculum, attempting to get 30 or so children to work to the same beat, when they are all so different? We see the result in the Milgram experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Kara
Kara Whittingham
4 Mar 08 at 11:20 am
The sad thing is, it’s institutionalized. The Rat-Race for college admissions puts a high premium on silly bullets like holding a class office. College counselors, administrators, parents, students, teachers - the whole school culture…It’s outrageously trivial and infantile.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: it is a cultural/institutional problem, by which I mean that it’s extremely elusive. How do you can an entire institutional culture?
It doesn’t take much reading of John Taylor Gatto to see that our schools aren’t, in fact, failing. Instead, they’re doing exactly what they were designed for over a century ago: to train the bulk of the populace to be followers, functionally literate and mostly obedient, while preparing a select few to run the asylum.
Bruce Smith
4 Mar 08 at 12:34 pm
The sad thing is, it’s institutionalized. The Rat-Race for college admissions puts a high premium on silly bullets like holding a class office. College counselors, administrators, parents, students, teachers - the whole school culture…It’s outrageously trivial and infantile.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: it is a cultural/institutional problem, by which I mean that it’s extremely elusive. How do you change an entire institutional culture?
It doesn’t take much reading of John Taylor Gatto to see that our schools aren’t, in fact, failing. Instead, they’re doing exactly what they were designed for over a century ago: to train the bulk of the populace to be followers, functionally literate and mostly obedient, while preparing a select few to run the asylum.
Bruce Smith
4 Mar 08 at 12:35 pm
[...] through writing this post I happened upon Clay Burell’s post attempting to define what he commonly terms as “schooliness.” In it, I see much of the [...]
» Learned selfishness Sustainably Digital
4 Mar 08 at 1:22 pm
@ALL: A huge apology for being too busy to individually answer - I swear I’m not making up the “I’m getting married” thing
- but I have to say I love the playfulness, especially of such terse one-liners as Diane’s
“School day: doors open, minds close.”
And the Schooliness anagrams, Rodd, are a stroke of creative goodness.
Where’s Scott Schwister when a twitku entry is needed?
Clay Burell
4 Mar 08 at 2:41 pm
Schooliness is a great phrase that describes so much. Thanks!
kirsten
5 Mar 08 at 12:02 pm
[...] Burell has a post well worth reading. I’m lovin’ his ‘take’ on [...]
Left Lane Ends » Blog Archive » ‘Schooliness’
6 Mar 08 at 2:13 am
[...] even though I rant about not having time to read them. Today I ran across Clay Burell’s discussion of schooliness. I smile as I [...]
Think Like a Teacher » Musing on “Schooliness”
6 Mar 08 at 4:35 am
“School is about preparing students for life beyond school”. While this may be the intent, it rarely is the case.
Barbara
6 Mar 08 at 6:04 am
I’ve actually had a hard time while thinking about it since it could easily become a list of complaints about constraints in our respective school contexts. Here are some of my ideas:
Schooliness is a system where grade negotiation is the main motivator for students to come conference and visit with teachers.
Schooliness is the void between what teachers know about how to learn and what students have to guess about how they learn.
Schooliness is the fear of evaluation when colleagues visit your classroom.
Schooliness is believing that there are certain texts that all students need to read.
Schooliness is teaching English as if all the students are on a literature professor career track.
Schooliness is the assumption that becoming a doctor or a lawyer is the pinnacle of academic accomplishment, and the purpose of secondary education.
Chris Watson’s last blog post..Depth vs. Breadth: English and Technology
Chris Watson
6 Mar 08 at 7:27 am
Thanks for this, Chris. You’ll note the Bierce and Wilde were my attempts to make this not a bitch session, but a celebration of that wonderful thing called writing sentences.
Here’s one:
Schooly success: The sacrifice of happiness to be better than everybody else, in order to sacrifice more happiness doing the same in college and life.
Clay Burell’s last blog post..“What is Schooliness?” - Overview and Open Thread
Clay Burell
6 Mar 08 at 7:56 am
Mark Pullen (from We’s thread) wrote:
At the end of every school year, I ask my third-grade students for reflections about our time together. I really request that the students be honest, and I usually get some great insights as to what worked or didn’t work for them that year. But one response from a while back really stuck with me — the student simply wrote: “This year felt more real.” SUCCESS!! I found it amazing that a third-grader could already verbalize that…
Clay Burell’s last blog post..“What is Schooliness?” - Overview and Open Thread
Clay Burell
6 Mar 08 at 7:57 am
[...] Burell, over at his always-provocative blog entitled “Beyond School,” recently posted this riff about the idea of what he calls “schooliness.” Although difficult to define, [...]
The Notion of “Schooliness” « The Elementary Educator
6 Mar 08 at 11:44 am
Holy Crapola BurellMan - That Rocked!
My students are SOOOOOO reading this post tomorrow! I struggle with this DAILY! The amazing this is no matter where I go its all about ‘what do I need to know’ and not ‘what do I WANT to know’. The inherent desire to learn is rare. ‘Tis the reason it took the likes of Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Franklin, Kepler etc so long to explain our universe. Yet we are still trying to convince the masses of the discoveries.
You want relevance, try avian flue - influenza A H5N1. It has the potential to change civilization as we know it. It is evolution, genetics, immunology, structural biology, epidemiology, ecology, and more in one subject. Simply studying it would teach more science and be more relative than 50% of the science we teach. Ontario [and most] curricula are so caught up in memorizing facts that students, and teachers, miss the process. I cannot help but think this smells of schooliness. Me, a teacher, suggesting others what to learn but I truly hope I’m wrong about H5N1.
Schooliness = curricula with no empowerment.
Learn this - move along, nothing to see here!
The question is: what do we replace it with? How do we train scientists without learning what has come before? Science is a building process. There is A LOT that we teach that isn’t relevant but a crapload remains.
Been a long time Clay, love what you did with the place. Love you to check out scienceclass.ning.com. Very schooli, I know but I’m trying….
Me all squeemish just thinking about posting that URL.
Cioa
James
James
6 Mar 08 at 12:25 pm
You guys have it easy! At our school in order to combat low morale and stagnant pay they have introduced the Fish Philosphy. Which can be summed up as “Work hard, don’t complain, just be happy!” It is mocked by all the teachers, the Principal of course loves it!
Joe
6 Mar 08 at 2:47 pm
(rom my blog post)- BTW, the submit button on beyond school does not SHOW in IE6…Had to try Firefox. Is that a message about schooliness?
Musing on Schooliness…
I love RSS feeds, even though I rant about not having time to read them. Today I ran across Clay Burell’s discussion of schooliness. I smile as I muse.
Is it like girliness? — a term meant to demean , but occasionally value at the same time?
I can sense schooliness, even in myself. Like girliness, I try to avoid it yet do not want to push it away entirely. It has its place. On certain days for certain occasions, in certain moods, girliness is OK. Never my goal, just OK.
Now, schooliness…?
Schooliness actually cares whether the line is quiet in the hallway. Schooliness is made of the film and chicken wire they put inside the safety glass insert in my classroom door to prevent shattering (of ideas, customs, or quiet). It blocks the view of what is REALLY going on inside (inside heads, especially those who can entertain themselves while “education” goes on around them). Schooliness is the translator we apply to technology tools so they are “safe” and comply with AUPs. Schooliness is the substitute we LOVED to see as students because she was so much fun to fool. Schooliness is why they invented NCR paper, then changed it to Acrobat files you have to TYPE into. Schooliness is what prevented me from turning in what I really thought in most essays…until I trusted the anti-schooliness of the teacher. Schooliness is what my liberal arts degree ridiculed. Schooliness is what Congress would use to define Highly Qualified Teachers. Schooliness is the make-up that thinking human beings “touch up” as they leave the faculty room. Schooliness is what makes us wear a watch. Schooliness is what my brightest gifted students so aptly parodied as I chuckled and pretended not to hear. Schooliness is “May I have your attention please,” which should warn, “Turn the speaker off NOW!”
I will enjoy thinking about schooliness for days …especially as I look out a non-school window, across my unfiltered computer, watching a lake with no buses or concrete in sight.
There is a definite exhilaration to leaving schooliness behind.
Candace Hackett Shively’s last blog post..Musing on ?Schooliness?
Candace Hackett Shively
7 Mar 08 at 5:44 am
Here’s my acrostic (laminated and printed in color, of course):
Straight lines for margins and for walking
Chew on this as long as it’s not an idea or gum
Obedience = success
Opine not
Late to class, go the office and get a pass (see you in 10)
SAT: your whole future in four digits or less
Bill Farren’s last blog post..Brute-Force Hammer Time
Bill Farren
7 Mar 08 at 11:32 am
[...] first item worth sharing is an interesting blog post by Clay Burrell entitled “What is Schooliness?” It is pretty lengthy but well worth the read. It will definitely get you questioning why you do [...]
Interesting Reading and Other Stuff to Make You Think « Musings from the Academy
10 Mar 08 at 10:17 am
[...] better bargain involves removing the speed and stress caused by school by removing the schooliness. My observations point to schoolines as a prime source of stress, speed, and wasted learning [...]
Bill Farren on Education for Well-Being: Random Acts of Deceleration | Beyond School
10 Mar 08 at 11:37 pm
[...] about Clay Burell’s definition of “schooliness” and my own thoughts about creativity, motivation, student choice, and academic rigor … [...]
Eric Hoefler’s Journal » Blog Archive » Thinking in Texas
13 Mar 08 at 11:23 pm
[...] of grade eight students is given a place where they can engage as writers and move away from the “schooliness” of traditional class work. When I started, I really did not know what to expect. I had high hopes, [...]
blog of proximal development » Blog Archive » The Embedded Practitioner
20 Mar 08 at 4:50 am
[...] a number of years, and of course has a much longer philosophical history. Whether the approach is schooliness, deschooling or School 2.0, I do not think we are anywhere near in understanding what the future [...]
Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy » Letting Go
30 Mar 08 at 2:50 pm
[...] is quickly tossed aside as “it’s-not-going-to-happen-so-why-bother”. Clay’s unschooliness theme runs through his blog and I’ve stolen his quote many times to say I don’t like school [...]
Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Blog Archive » The End of Religion and the End of School
31 Mar 08 at 2:13 pm
[...] about Clay Burell’s definition of “schooliness” and my own thoughts about creativity, motivation, student choice, and academic rigor … [...]
Sicheii Yazhi » Blog Archive » Thinking in Texas
2 Apr 08 at 10:45 am
AP, SAT, or any standardized tests are “schooly.”
They hinder learning because all students think about is scoring high on those tests, and forget the meaning of true learning.
Joon
5 May 08 at 2:45 pm
[...] just amazing that I am doing this for a class in school. It is just so unschooly. It’s more like [...]
Don’t Forget The Audience » Interacting With A Pro Baller
16 May 08 at 9:03 am
dy/dan » Blog Archive » You See The Problem, Right?
17 May 08 at 1:24 am
Truthiness @ School
27 May 08 at 2:12 pm
Pedagogy in Practice: Teaching Reading: A Reflection and a Way Forward
5 Jun 08 at 6:40 am
[...] I sometimes get this funny picture in my head of me sitting at my desk, with a tiny little Karl, Clay, David, (or whoever happens to have my head spinning today) on one shoulder, and a tiny little [...]
Professional Development Meme | Do U C What I C
19 Jun 08 at 12:27 pm
WatsonCommon: Schooliness is: Open Thread
25 Jun 08 at 7:54 am
[...] them of what to expect from this class. When we are trying to move students away from “schooliness” and do some in-country “unschooling” we are going to hit some rough spots, from [...]
Stress, Ambiguity, and Confusion are Good for You? « Chalkdust101
29 Jun 08 at 10:40 am
Edina Technology CoP: Revenge of the Right Brainers: Daniel Pink at the U of M
3 Jul 08 at 9:03 am
[...] of any teeth for the Tech Coordinator position, and my general rejection of the tragicomedy of schooliness - to bring me to my decision not to sign that Tech Coordinator contract after [...]
“So Off I Flew to Seek a Newer Land” - Notes Beyond Schoolteaching | Beyond School
8 Jul 08 at 10:57 am
[...] of grade eight students is given a place where they can engage as writers and move away from the “schooliness” of traditional class work. When I started, I really did not know what to expect. I had high hopes, [...]
Networked Learner News » Blog Archive » The Embedded Practitioner
20 Jul 08 at 3:53 am
[...] of grade eight students is given a place where they can engage as writers and move away from the “schooliness” of traditional class work. When I started, I really did not know what to expect. I had high hopes, [...]
The Embedded Practitioner | Networked Learner News
22 Jul 08 at 12:32 pm
[...] That’s about it. Though not part of the assignment, my own decision to select “artifacts” from early childhood to all later stages of my life made the assignment much richer. At the end of the ten pieces I wrote over eight weeks (and I decided against publishing the last two here because they seemed sub-par), I’d sketched out a series of memoirs that formed a skeletal autobiography. It’s not every class that affords an opportunity to write your entire life. And this is why, I think, those papers didn’t suffer the fate of most of my college writings, which I’d never dream of inflicting upon general readers. This assignment was different; it didn’t suffer from . . . what’s the word? . . . oh yes: schooliness. [...]
Wrapping Up the “Web Legacies”: Reflection and New Direction | Beyond School
9 Aug 08 at 3:49 am