The true purpose of education

Our education system’s mission is not really about preparing grads for a vocation, cultivating well-rounded personalities, or helping individuals gain some sort of self-fulfillment. That's the cover story. The primary mission of education is to prevent - or at least slow - cultural change, thereby keeping society stable - keeping those in power, in power.

When my high-school-honors-student daughter returned from her first semester at the University of Minnesota, she complained that her classes lacked relevance to her intended vocational goals. Well, in so many words anyway. (I think she actually said "Why do I have to take all this crap?") While the U would probably say those "core" courses are there to make sure a student is well-rounded and culturally literate, I suggested to Carrie that this is simply society using education as a means of slowing cultural change by only allowing students who are willing to conform and delay gratification to gain positions of responsibility in society. "You play by our rules and jump through our hoops or you don't play at all." And it works very nicely. thank you. 

I suggested to both my kids that they weigh the advantages and disadvantages of abiding by education's social contract. Play nice and you get a degree and you are qualified for entry level positions of a professional nature. "Yes, you may now be an accountant, a dentist, a teacher, a social worker, etc." In exchange for one's time and independence and obedience, one gets a large degree of safety and security. It's the deal most of us strike and it's not really a bad one. 

Or don't follow the rules, quit or get kicked out of school, and get an early start inventing your own product/service/scheme or business. Or a 9-5 work job that pays the bills and pursue your passion outside of work - fishing or thieving or sculpting or smoking pot or complaining about the rest of society while living in your parents basement. It's the deal that seems to work either really, really well or very, very badly. Bill Gates and the guy with his life in a shopping cart down by the Salvation Army both took a non-academic route.

Graduating from school depends far more on a student's EQ than IQ, if EQ is the ability to conform to societal norms.  And how much of EQ is knowing when to simply shut up, go with the flow, and keep on keeping on? Cramming for AP tests even knowing it's a waste of time in the grand scheme. I believe the current term du jour is "grit." 

____________________

A side rant

I heard the well-intentioned suggestion that educators should use as a guiding statement/principle/motto "All children will learn" rather than "All children can learn."

And I've been thinking about that.

I've always thought the statement "All children can learn" to be simplistic and obvious. All children DO learn by nature since learning is a means to empowerment and it's human nature to want to become more powerful. Now they may not learn what we want to teach or in ways we like to teach, but all humans do learn.

"All children will learn" sounds rather threatening to my ears. (Say it with a German accent and imagine a military officer with riding crop and monocle saying it.) It's also pretty easy to turn the statement snarky by adding "to avoid punishment. Or "to find school irrelevant." Or "to cheat on homework." You get the idea.

How about a more aspirational statement if one feels such a thing is needed for professional motivation? My vote goes to something like "All children will love to learn." That's a statement I can get behind.

BFTP: Minimum wage and education

Warning to anyone under 50: This starts as one of those old fart's "when I was a kid we walked to school uphill both ways" stories. But it does eventually make a point about today's educational system...

I was a beneficiary of minimum wage laws. When I was earning my undergraduate degree from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley from 1972 to 1976, I was also earning about $1.65 to $1.90 an hour as a laundry worker. In addition to taking 12-14 hours of classes, I would work from 2pm to 9pm, six days a week either driving a van that picked up dirty linen from nursing homes up and down the Front Range - or stuffing that laundry in 400 pound capacity washing machines. For a year, I was also the assistant manager of an apartment complex, vacuuming hallways on the weekends, getting my apartment rent-free.

As I remember, my after-tax take home pay 40 years ago was about $75-$85 a week. Not only did my stay-at-home-mother wife and I live on it, we paid my full tuition, books, and fees; paid off the doctor ($600) and hospital ($600) bills for my daughter's Caesarean birth, and even had about $1000 in savings when I graduated.

Yes, we were very frugal. Our apartments were small, uncarpeted, and unair-conditioned. We drove a $400 used car. The only time we saw the inside of a restaurant was when a relative took us out for supper. There were no cell phones, Internet, Netflix, or cable bills. But we did not starve, go naked, or feel deprived - at least that I remember. Why?

• Apartment rent was $80 a month, including utilities.
• Groceries ran about $20 a week.
• Full tuition was $140 a quarter. (Thank you taxpayers of Colorado for subsidizing me.)
• In the 70s a new car was $3000 and new house was $10,000. Gas was $.30 a gallon.
• We had no health insurance, but could afford to pay doctor visits and dentist appointments upfront.
• Seems like chewing gum, candy bars and small bags of potato chips were all about a dime.
• I bought a new b&w 19" TV for $80 and a stereo turntable/receiver-amplifier/speakers for $300 (Big fight over that one, but boy, did Maria Muldaur singing "Midnight at the Oasis" sound good!)

So here is my point: I estimate that the cost of living has gone up by 1000% since my days in college. Today's apartment rents are $800, cars $30,000 and candy bars $1.00. 

Yet the minimum wage is nowhere close to $16.50 or $19.00 an hour. 

I don't think anyone doubts the correlation between poverty and poor performance in schools. And while politicians love to tell stories of "welfare Cadillac mothers," the reality is that most of our parents can be counted among the "working poor" who often work multiple part-time jobs still unable to make ends meet. (Even worse now during the Corona pandemic.)

This is why, that if one truly believes in improving education, one needs to be knowledgeable and active in political issues beyond school. Whether you believe the solution to poverty is a higher minimum wage, fewer welfare "benefits," better job training programs, or something else, believe that poverty needs to be addressed - and work at it politically.

And maybe we'd see more kids be able to put themselves through college again as well.

Image source

Original post 1/18/14

BFTP: 7 ways to sell a creative idea

It’s ironic that even as children are taught the accomplishments of the world’s most innovative minds, their own creativity is being squelched. Jessica Olien, Inside the Box: People Don't Actually Like Creativity, Slate, December 2013.

People don't like creativity - I KNEW it!

In my book, Teaching Outside the Lines, I listed as a Myth 7: 

Everyone wants creative students. Creative people have a long history of making others nervous or upset. From Elvis’s gyrations, Monet’s abstractions, Job’s technologies, to Gandhi’s resistance - innovation is met with resistance. Our students (and teachers) who are truly creative just might rattle our preconceptions and our sense of taste. Genuinely new products just may take some getting used to. Recognize this and remember that not all people celebrate the creative spirit.

Creativity means doing something differently, looking at the world differently, potentially creating winners from losers and losers from winners. Any wonder human nature is a little suspicious. (Gee, we had a 17.5% success rate of killing mammoths using the atal method. Might this new fangled bow and arrow be worse? What do we do about Phlem who is headman because of his atal chucking prowess?)

So how do you get your creative ideas accepted when it seems humans are naturally inclined to like staying securely in their boxes?

1. Call it innovative, not creative. To innovate means "make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products." Create means "bring something into existence." Vgotsky's proximal theory says to learn something new we have to have a connection with the known. Can your creative idea be implemented in baby steps - an extension of the established rather than a whole new deal?
2. Make your supervisor think it is his/her idea. "I think you were mentioning the other day about changing the process we use to ______________." Have you given this any more thought? I personally think it's a good idea and here's a way we might tweak it...." 
3. Stress the functionality, not the newness. Too often we forget the second half of what makes something creative - that it is both original and effective. When pitching the creative solution, stress the problem that will be solved, not the originality.
4. Suggest a trial run and evaluation. Run a pilot of the new method. Get a volunteer. Select a time frame. Then assess. 
5. Build trusting relationships and a track record. The old adage that the best predictor of future performance is past performance holds true in leading innovative and creative approaches to solving problems. When suggesting your idea, it wouldn't hurt to mention how your similar approaches to problem solving worked before. And if you don't have a track record of success, should people be nervous about your ideas?
6. Seek recognition. Many leaders like recognition for their programs, schools, or districts. If an innovative program might lead to a state or national award, use that to sell it. This seems the least genuine reason to do anything creative. I'd hope most of us in education try new things for the sake of improving kids' educational experiences, not for personal glory.
7. Be subversive. Just do it. Ask forgiveness later if needed.

How do you sell a new approach when it means upsetting somebody's routine? 

Original post 12/11/13