Beyond School

[Update 2: 7 April 2008: I'd like to close the book on this one, though you're of course free to enter and see a couple of bloggers at their most monstrous. Kudos to DM for fighting through to daylight.]

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One for the MiniLegends

[Update: I was out of the loop preparing for my wedding when Australian Al Upton's MiniLegends and Qatar's Jabiz Raisdana got hit by two shockingly reactionary hammers. Since this podcast features Noel Thomas, an Australian high school principal representing all that is most forward-thinking and impressive about Australia's educational system, I'd like to dedicate this podcast to Al, the MiniLegends, and Jabiz. Noel, I can't help but fantasize that you and Al discover each other and join forces. As you say in the podcast, most teachers will never get it. Al is a teacher who has impressed us all for years with how much he does get it. (h/t to John Connell for the miniLegends badge - John, I hope you don't mind me nicking it?)]

Love This Podcast, or I’ll Eat a Bug

As I say in the intro to this podcast, if you don’t find it the most interesting hour of podcasting I’ve ever done, I’ll eat a bug. (And yes, Los Angelenos, that is a quote from the old Cal Worthington used car commercials of the ’80s.) That intro was hard, by the way: I tried about 8 times to summarize why I’m so excited about the things happening in that podcast, but couldn’t, and did the “eat a bug” intro instead. In retrospect, it sounds silly. But I had to get the thing published.

Creative Destruction Abundant

What walls don’t come down in this hour-long talk? Bye-bye edu-caste system, bye-bye geographic and temporal barriers. My guests are from three continents and four levels of school hierarchy:

• High School Principal Noel Thomas, Toorak College, Melbourne, Australia
• High School Principal (and next year’s Director) Rich Boerner, Korea International School, Seoul, South Korea (my employer)
• Librarian Jenny Luca, Toorak College, Melbourne
• Lara H., high school student, Toorak College
• Lindsea Kemp-Wilber, Punahou High School student (and Students 2.o staff writer), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
• and me, high school teacher and tool-guy, Korea International School

(Quicktime free download required)

(right-click and “save target as” here to download enhanced podcast for iTunes)

Table of Contents

If you download to iTunes, you can navigate by these chapter headings:

• Intro: I’ll Eat a Bug
• Audio Snapshots
• Welcome
• Noel Thomas, Toorak College, Melbourne Australia
• Toorak’s Dilemma re: Web Access for Students
• Rich Boerner, Korea Internat’l School, Seoul
• KIS’ Open Web Access for Students
• Factors Favoring Relaxed Filtering at KIS
• Toorak Librarain Jenny Luca: Toorak Change Agent
• Jenny’s Views on the Value of Blogging to Learn
• Toorak and KIS Connect thru Project Global Cooling
• Lindsea Kemp-Wilbur, Intro (Hawaii Student)
• Student Lindsea Teaching the World
• Lara H., Intro (Australia Student)
• Sustainability at Our Specific Schools
• Broader Issues of Connecting Schools for Learning
• Lindsea on Youthnet: Student-Initiated Global Collaboration via Twitter and Wiki
• How Clay in Korea has Known Lindsea in Hawaii for Almost 2 Years
• Getting Teachers to Accept Student-Led Collaborative Projects
• Getting Students to Rise to the Challenge of Laptop Learning
• KIS Student Patrick Nam as Model of Networked Learning
• Noel’s Approach to Keeping Students Responsible Online
• Jenny’s Approach to Pulling Students In
• Clay on the Importance of Same Time-Zone Partner Schools
• Rich on Importance of Collab AT SCHOOL, not home
• Acceptable Use Policy
• Toward an Eastern Hemisphere Schools Network
• Spreading the Word to Students about Youthnet
• Lindsea as Model for Student Imitation
• Lara: PGC Should Be Easy in Australia
• Difficulties with Projects in Korea
• Media Interest in Project Global Cooling
• Clay’s Parting Shot: This Tech is EASY
• Parting Shots
• Closing Comments: Project Global Cooling Growing: Seoul, Hawaii, Australia in, and Beijing, Los Angeles, and Bangkok Nibbling - Add Your School This Year or Next
• (Name Your Bug)

Links Referenced in Podcast:

• Jenny Luca’s Lucacept (Australia)
• Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed
• Project Global Cooling
• Bill Farren’s Education for Well-Being blog
• Lindsea Kemp-Wilbur’s Love and Logic blog
• Chris Watson’s WatsonCommon blog
• Lindsea’s Youthnet post on Students 2.0
• Jabiz Raisdana’s Intrepid Teacher (stay intrepid, Jabiz)
• Jabiz’ Global Issues class blog
• Youthnet Twitter page
• “Natural” Global Collaboration (my networked learning elective class)
• Youthnet Wikispace
• The 1001 Flat World Tales global collaborative writing project
• KIS Sophomore Patrick Nam’s blog and podcast

Recorded on 3 March 2008

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[Fourth in a series: 1. My Intro to Bill: "Beyond 'Did You Know?' - 'Did You Ever Wonder?'"; 2.  "Education for Well-Being"; 3. "The Hidden Curriculum"; 4. "Random Acts of Deceleration".  It's been an honor to have Bill guest-blog here.  We need vision like his.  You can subscribe to Bill's Education for Well-Being site here. -- Clay]

I’d like to give a huge “thank you” to Clay for inviting me to guest post on Beyond-School and for helping promote the concept of education as an instrument of well-being. His desire to do what’s best for students, the planet, and for education in general, inspires.

The Age of Paradox

This from a book I’m currently reading:

“We live in the age of paradox. Our buildings are taller, but our purposes shorter. We have more labor saving devices, but less time for neighbors and friends. We have more money but less fairness; more weapons but less security; more power over nature, but a less-stable nature than ever before. We have more science, research, and intellectual capability than ever, but less common sense and good judgment in our public affairs.” David Orr, Design on the Edge

Ours is also a time of skills—skills that far outstrip purpose. We have the skills to put people on the moon, move whole mountains, create 100,000 different chemicals, and build stealth bombers. I’d like to argue, following Orr’s thinking, that it’s not a lack of skills that will keep us from succeeding. It will be a lack of reflection on the values needed to wisely manage an ever-growing skill set.

Almost exclusively, the educational dialogue today centers around the skills students will need in order to succeed in the 21^st century. Discussions about the values needed for success happen with much less frequency. I’m guessing this has to do with the fact that many consider the teaching of values beyond the purview of educational institutions, especially secular ones. There is some validity to this. Who is to say what values should be taught? So as not to walk onto this slippery slope, I’d like to frame the discussion differently. Instead of arguing about whose values should to be taught, I prefer instead to look at the concept of value itself.

We can study value. By doing so, we will be better able to direct our limited cognitive, material, and emotional resources towards more fruitful ends. Our skills can be put to better use. There is an ever-growing body of information about value that is shattering many ideas that are currently the standard fare in our curricula. Redefining Progress believes “that if policymakers measure what really matters to people—health care, safety, a clean environment, and other indicators of well-being—economic policy would naturally shift towards sustainability.” The burgeoning field of true cost economics allows us to get a better picture of value that goes beyond the incomplete view taught in most classrooms today. “True Cost Economics is currently creating a sizable ruckus in the academic world, and its value as a system of thought is starting to be recognized by the economic establishment.” [Underline added; source: Utne] We currently spend vast amounts of money training people for military service and for jobs associated with the military industrial complex. (M. I. T. has been dubbed the Military Institute of Technology in the popular press.) Vision of Humanity put out an interesting study which looks at the economic value of peace (among other benefits). On their site they state, “Although we have the concept of a war industry and the economics of war, few people would relate to a peace industry and the economics of peace. Yet it is evident that business wishes to invest in areas where there is minimal violence. The economic benefits of peace seem obvious.”

Natural capitalism and the understanding of ecosystem services can also help us better judge value. During his annual Independence Day address to congress, Leonel Fernandez, president of the Dominican Republic, referring to a $2.6 billion deal struck with gold companies giving them mining rights on the tropical island, announced to applause, “This will be the largest investment ever realized in the history of the Dominican Republic.” One wonders though, had the leadership of this fragile island been better educated in the issues of value, would they have struck such an unfavorable deal? It’s easy to look at $2.6 billion as pure gain when no consideration is given to what is lost.

The paradoxes we see today are largely the result of our pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, our ideas about what will make us happy are often wrong. On the positive side, subjective experiences like happiness are starting to be studied scientifically. As this new area of inquiry matures as is given more prominence, schools would be wise to incorporate the findings into procedural and curricular domains. The scientific evidence available to date should have schools questioning the pursuit of high test scores in the name of high-paying jobs. (For more about our poor choices related to happiness, watch this video:

Author Juliet Schor, in her book Born to Buy, notes in a survey of students that, more than half agree that, “when you grow up, the more money you have, the happier you are,” and 62 percent say that, “the only kind of job I want when I grow up is one that gets me a lot of money.” She later goes onto say, “American children are deeply enmeshed in the culture of getting and spending, and they are getting more so. We find that the more enmeshed they are, the more they suffer for it. The more they buy into the commercial and materialist messages, the worse they feel about themselves, the more depressed they are, and the more they are beset by anxiety, headaches, stomachaches, and boredom.”

If educational institutions have as their mission the improvement of lives, then they should consider how they are preparing students to critically deal with the dysfunctional value systems that permeate our lives. If looked at objectively and approached scientifically, we can discuss the pedagogy of values as easily and frequently as we do that of skills.

Bill Farren

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[Bill Farren posts his third weekly installment on Education for Well-Being (the full series: my intro “Beyond ‘Did You Know?’ - A Video for Viral Times: ‘Did You Ever Wonder?’“; Bill’s first guest-post, “Education for Well-Being“; Bill’s second guest-post, “The Hidden Curriculum“; and Seoul sophomore Patrick Nam’s outstanding podcast interview with Bill for Project Global Cooling). Bill has vital things to say about education, and I'm happy to read more of them in this post. An overdue hat-tip to Jeffrey Dungan in the Dominican Republic for connecting Bill and me.-- Clay]

I’d like to preface this post with something unrelated (but way more important)–An Irish toast to Clay and his wife: May you both live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live. Congratulations!

Random Acts of Deceleration

Attempts to decelerate the lives of young people seem to be few and far between. When any significant attempt is made, it is so rare and goes against the grain at such a sharp angle, that it makes national headlines. The New York Times wrote an article about the efforts of principal Paul Richards to address the issue of academic stress at his high school. Mr. Richards states that he is trying to “bring the culture to a healthier place.” For this, according to the article, he has been mocked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno. He has received hate mail from all parts.

While reading Dangerously Irrelevant, I came across this reply to a post about the documentary 2 Million Minutes:

As a senior citizen of a fairly affluent suburb of Boston, I have been shocked at the recent changes taking place in our town’s high school. No homework over vacations; no or little homework over long weekends; no required reading over summers and no publication anywhere of the high school honor roll. However, the super-jocks on all high school sports teams are always written about in the local paper. It’s disgraceful!

Academic achievement has become irrelevant. Our high school principal believes kids already have too much “pressure.” He cites several high school suicides in recent years and blames them on pressure to achieve high grades. [School officials, according to the NYT article, emphasize the suicides were not related to stress.] As a result, our high school has been dumbed down to mediocre, where it will stay until we get rid of our current school committee, superintendent and high school principal - all the while wasting over 50% of the town’s tax revenue on the school system.

Finally, our town’s high school certainly doesn’t appear on U.S. News’ list of the best 100 high schools in the U.S., but 3 towns within 10 miles do, as well as does The Boston Latin School.

(Background: 2 Million Minute’s site asks, “How do most American high school students spend this time? What about students in the rest of the world? How do family, friends and society influence a student’s choices for time allocation? What implications do their choices have on their future and on a country’s economic future?”)

In another random act of deceleration, Harvard Dean Harry Lewis made national headlines when he sent out a letter asking students to slow down, have fun, and reflect on what would truly make them happy in life. It’s disconcerting that students considered paragons of what our educational systems have to offer need to be reminded to have fun and to reflect on what might make them happy in life. That the whole purpose of life can be an afterthought needing a reminder, makes one wonder what happened in the 6 million minutes prior to college. I applaud Dean Lewis for his efforts but at the same time wonder about the system and culture that creates a need for such a letter. Our culture seems to have accepted that stress, unhappiness and distaste for learning is the price worth paying for that ill-defined concept called success.

But I don’t believe we have to enter into such an insolvent arrangement. What is now called hard work and higher standards is too often just an indication of how much suffering students are willing to put up with in dealing with boring, schooly, meaningless lessons in very controlling environments. In the process, we are creating a generation of stressed-out, materialistic and miseducated students, to borrow from the title of Denise Pope’s book.

The 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 opportunities. If we were to remove schooliness and replace it with unschooliness, then well-being and learning would quickly improve for students. Life and work would improve markedly for teachers, parents and administrators as well.

I’m afraid though, what schools often suggest as remedies to stress, burnout, disengagement and “playing the system” (cheating), deal mostly, in very schooly ways, with the symptoms and not the underlying causes. Take cheating for example. Most schools see the student as the source of the problem. In an article about the importance of looking at the context in which students act, Alfie Kohn states, “cheating is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on ‘rigor.’” He goes on to say that, “when students perceive that the ultimate goal of learning is to get good grades, they are more likely to see cheating as an acceptable, justifiable behavior”. Most schools, instead of reflecting on what they are doing to cause cheating, throw out a bunch of schooly solutions like using turnitin.com, giving anti-cheating workshops, all the while creating ever more policies and punishments for cheating. Similarly, health texts for students often deal with the issue of stress by correctly suggesting exercise, eating well, and relaxation techniques, but never question the underlying causes of school-related stress. In these obtuse, unreflective environments, stress and speed are bound to thrive.

So, what would happen if we slowed the treadmill down? Would it all unravel? Would students learn less? Would their lives be diminished?

Clearly, it’s an uphill and often thankless struggle to slow down the lives of students today. The belief that faster, harder, and more, produces better learning, will not go away easily. Whether it produces better lives, both in the present and in the future, is seldom asked. Fortunately, as the NYTimes article suggests, small inroads are being made both in the parent community and in the culture at large to improve mental health and school climate.

(I’d like to thank Clay for birthing ¹, elevating, and expanding the idea of schooliness. Once we are aware of it, start to reflect on it, then act to remove it, schools will become more capable instruments of well-being.)

Thanks for reading,

Bill Farren

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1. I think [↩]

By Bill Farren on teaching

[Clay here: In a wonderful bit of musical blogs, I’m guest-blogging on Wes Fryer’s Speed of Creativity this weekend, while Bill Farren is continuing his guest-blogging stint about his Education for Well-Being.  Read Bill’s first guest-post here, and his Education for Well-Being website as well.  And if you want to involve your classrooms in some exciting projects, see the comments to the first guest-post.  Now, here’s Bill:]

Much of what is learned in schools isn’t the result of a lesson plan. It’s often the result of a lack of planning, lack of ideas, and lack of reflection. Take the building students call school. How was it built? What materials were used? Where did those materials come from? How is it run? Who decided how it should be built? What’s taught inside of it? The answers to these questions form another curriculum that often goes unnoticed. David Orr refers to the architecture of school buildings as a kind of “crystallized pedagogy” with its own “hidden curriculum that teaches as effectively as any course taught in them.”

School, London (source: seir at Flickr)

Let’s take a look at some of the questions above by posing even more.

Did the building’s designers take into consideration its location? Did they work with the advantages and challenges of the site in mind? Or did they use a one-size-fits-all approach? Does the design take advantage of available sunlight to provide lighting, heat and electricity? Are buildings situated and designed in a way that they take advantage of prevailing winds? Is rainfall used for advantage? Is local expertise–the kind that has taught desert dwellers and tropical inhabitants to design effectively over thousands of years–incorporated into the design? Is material local; or has it been shipped from afar at great expense to budget and planet? Depending on the answers to these questions, the unwritten lesson might be one of sustainability, harmony, efficiency, nuance, practicality, mindfulness, consideration for others, long-term thinking, intergenerational justice, and the importance of wellness. Or it might be about short-term thinking, man “conquering” nature, mass production, cheap energy, dismissing “primitive” local culture and proven simplicity in favor of high-tech, “sophisticated” “solutions”. It might be about faulty economics, taught by constructing energy-intensive buildings that are initially believed less expensive to build but prove much more expensive to own and operate over their lifetime. (As this video demonstrates, designing efficiently in terms of systems, has shown to increase first costs by only 1- 5% in many cases, and in others, actually lowers first costs as compared to standard construction processes. Operating costs in terms of energy purchases and maintenance are dramatically reduced for the life of the building. Design and construction makes up only 2% of the total costs of a commercial building over 30 years. The other 98% is from operations, maintenance, finance and employees.)

Who decided how (if) it should be built? As I mention in “Did You Ever Wonder?”, we teach about democracy but we could do better at allowing those in our schools to practice it. Were students or staff asked about what kind of building they needed or wanted? Were parents or neighbors involved? The answers to these questions teach a lot about power, influence, passivity, and expertise.

Does the building make an attempt to connect students with their outside world? Does it bring the outside in? Or are its occupants disconnected physically and mentally by artificial light, artificial climate, artificial sights and sounds, in a classroom dealing with artificial problems? Again, what’s learned depends on the answers to the questions.

What does the formal, intentional curriculum teach? Are students taught how to protect and nurture their environment? Does the school offer a formal curriculum that addresses the challenges we all currently face vis-à-vis living on a planet with a finite biosphere? Are classes such as sustainable architecture, sustainable economics, media literacy, ecology, biomimicry, oceanography or energetics taught? If so, are they mandatory or elective? When these classes are not offered or relegated as electives, what does that tell students about how we value their future? What message do students learn about the value adults place on the environment? What message does it give about our belief in our ability to change?

How is this formal, intentional curriculum taught? Do we teach students to think integratively? Are subjects combined with each other? Do we teach systems thinking, contextualizing what happens in the classroom? Or do we, as David Orr reminds us, promote “failure [which] occurs when minds are taught to think in boxes and not taught to transcend those boxes or to question overly much how they fit with other boxes.” (2004, p. 95)

Do we involve students in real-world problems, using their findings and ideas in real ways? Or do we teach that they should leave the “real thinking” to adults; that they should defer their contributions until they enter the “real world”? Aren’t they in the real world now?

Is furniture purposefully uncomfortable in an attempt to keep those using it awake? Are ideas and questions explored deeply, or are they merely skimmed so as to fulfill mandates? Does the school’s design inspire the mind or merely meet the building code requirements—rules, regulations, and bureaucracy being more important than the spirit or intellect. ?

How is the school run? Are resources like energy, water, and paper used efficiently? Is human capital used efficiently, or is there a lot of busy-work and down time? What is discarded? What is recycled? What is prevented from having to be recycled or discarded? Are doors left open on cold days? Are air conditioned rooms left open? Are lights, fans and air conditioners left on in empty classes? How do the adults in the school respond when they see resources being wasted? Is there an attempt to educate staff and students about ways to lessen waste? If not, what does that teach about the cost of energy, the cost of waste, or the importance of efficiency?

How is security portrayed? Is the glass shatterproof? Are the doors robust enough to withstand a heavy assault? Is the school’s entrance monitored by security cameras and equipped with metal detectors? What does the physical plant teach about security? Does safety come from a fortress-like defense that tries to keep the bad out, or might it come from what’s consciously taught and practiced within? Do we ask students to reflect on how a sustainable and equitable economy, cooperation and efficiency can provide us with security? Do we promote a culture of fear, tragedy and victimization or do we promote one of concern, inquiry and activism?

What is sold or advertised on campus? Are sugary juices, soft-drinks, candy, and other junk food available for purchase? Is it advertised? Are lunches provided by fast-food corporations? (And why is it always fast food? Why not slow food in unhurried, relaxed, healthy environments?) What do the contradictions about what is taught in health class and what appears on the cafeteria menu say about money? About the power of corporations? About power? What does the need for speed when receiving our daily nourishment say about the correct pace of life? How, and more importantly why, do we encourage a frenetic, harried, stressful existence?

The hidden curriculum is a powerful teacher. If we reflect on what is learned and not merely on what is taught, it will have fewer places to hide. What are the hidden curricula you’d like to expose?

Be well,

Bill Farren

“To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.” Jose Ortega y Gassetde

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