Beyond School

I’m off to Bangkok for the Apple Distinguished Educator 2007 Asia Institute in 24 hours, so I’m crazy rushed: sub plans for 3 missed classes, packing, the usual teachery stuff (gradebooks and other banes), prepping a presentation for how 1:1 is working (and sometimes not working?) at our school. (I really look forward, more than anything Apple, to simply re-uniting with International School of Bangkok’s Kim Cofino and Justin Medved to hone our collaborative visions about the 1001 Flat World Tales and Project Global Cooling, plus whatever they’re cooking up that I might support from Korea. I’ve missed these two since seeing them in Shanghai for the Learning 2.0 Conference in September.)

But here are a few things on my mind before I go:

The Wrong Kind of Selflessness

I don’t care how wealthy, “elite” (silly word connoting “more shopping power” in today’s age), and conventionally “well-educated” a student body is. If the emphasis is on GPA, SAT, Advanced Placement overload, and hyper-extra-curricularism for the sake of college application bullets (”I was in student council, Model United Nations, Cheerleading, Basketball, Debate Club, and Future Workaholics of America”), the result is often painfully obvious: all of those extrinsically motivated pursuits are a Faustian Bargain.

What is lost in this mad rush for the killer college app is this: the soul itself.

Okay, I don’t believe in this Iron Age concept. Let’s be modern and call it “the self.” It’s every bit as precious, without the theological baggage. I’m talking about the sense of who you are, of what you want to do, and the path of learning and creating based on those two senses - learning about the world the individual self is called to, and creating a worldview on that basis, and creatively contributing to that world at some point. I’m talking about your freaking life story.

It’s an opportunity cost thing. Our time is finite. 24/7 is a reality we so far haven’t transcended. And if you are being force-fed college application steroids every waking moment - classes in school, schooly extracurricular activities after it, SAT prep night classes after school and on weekends, other tutors and AP prep classes ditto - then what is not being fed, again, is the Most Important Thing: the Self, the Essence of your own genetic thumbprint, the special meat-package of who you are as an individual.

You may gain the Ivy League, but you lose your soul. You lose your voice, your creativity, your sense of wellness, wonder, and self-impelled exploration. Outside of that GPA, there’s not much there there. “Bookful blockheads,” to quote Samuel Johnson, with “heads stuffed full of facts” (to tweak Eliot).

My evidence? Try this: 30 students with MacBooks, most of whom are sincerely committed to a Project Global Cooling, but who are bewilderingly unable to produce a single short film about it, a single podcast, etc, in over three months. Let me translate: they have the money, the wealth, the grades, the intelligence; but when it comes to a simple “create something, play, produce, get fertile”? Nada. Too busy outside of our 40 minute/week activity block with all those Faustian pursuits. And, I suspect, too conditioned by a life of “schooling” to relax and create with that true artist’s acceptance of failed sketches in pursuit of the successful one. Too success-driven (conventionally defined) to be creative. Too fearful of “failure” to create something that doesn’t work. Too over-scheduled to have time to even try. Shocking, really. And sad.

We celebrate one kind of selflessness, and rightfully so; but this is the wrong kind. It’s a selflessness, ironically, born of selfishness - of the desire (probably more parental, institutional, and cultural than anything) to get into a “top” college. What a devil’s conveyor belt we’ve built with our schools. Sell your soul, go to Harvard.

The Wrong Kind of Morality

Other bloggers know that curious fascination that comes while skimming your sitemeter stats for the search terms that bring visitors to your blog. Me? Since posting my “Teaching the F-Bomb” about my AP Lit students’ modern translations of the constant (but more sublime than today’s) cursing in Shakespeare’s King Lear, I’ve gotten a surprising number of hits from people who apparently consider student cursing a moral issue worth researching.

Again, how Iron Age.

Can’t we aim for a modern moral framework here? Instead of expending energy trying to stamp out certain vowel-consonant combinations that do no harm beyond ruffling a few Victorian sensibilities - and I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach the proper times and places for the use of colorful language - can’t we instead focus on student habits that do much more damage? How about:

• the throw-away packaging addiction (bottled water, fast food, etc)
• the consumer habits that support socially immoral practices (like buying diamonds, for example, or Nestle products that rely on child slavery in Africa - aren’t these worse than saying “f&#k” a million times?)
• driving two-ton pollution machines without a thought to reducing their use

I’m so tired of that hackneyed argument that “science without morality is dangerous.” The problem is more located in our morality itself. Whatever culture you’re in, it’s a safe bet that your moral framework comes from some variation of Iron Age goat-herder or nomadic warlord. The moral issues they faced are different from ours. Joseph Campbell said it well:

For a civilization that has sent a man to the moon, it’s absurd to follow moral imperatives written before the invention of the wheel.

Or something like that. I paraphrase.

We’re in dire need of a revised Ten Commandments if we want our species to survive the 21st century at all. Resisting coveting my neighbor’s ass isn’t going to slow global warming or reduce the population explosion. (Actually, if “ass” meant what it means today instead of what it meant in Moses’ time - sorry, King James’ - maybe it would reduce population growth.) (That was a joke.)

But really. We’re educators. The next generation learns from us how to think critically about right and wrong, good and bad. Can’t we think critically about it ourselves? (And if Google brought you here because you’re looking for a way to wash your students’ mouths out with soap, I hope instead you’ll consider a bit of a moral paradigm shift, some soap for your own moral mouthings.)

More on the Edublogs Award Question

Darren Draper has an interesting comment thread about the value of the Edublogs Awards. I’m learning from it, and enjoying the debate. Worth a look. There’s constructive discussion about how the e-b folks can improve this shindig in future years.

Students 2.0 Coming Soon

I have a privileged, behind-the-scenes view of the planning going on for the Students 2.0 edublog launch. These young adults - disguised as mere “students” - are so brilliantly fun, smart, and creative, they intimidate me. And I’m learning a lot as I get to know them. (News flash: they’re smarter than me in a good number of ways.)

Watch out, edublogosphere. They won’t be raising their hands and asking for permission to talk here. Stay tuned for more.

Photos: 96dotsperinch and meeware1