What is school for? 10 big questions

The subtitle of Seth Godin's rant about education is the important part. Stop Stealing Dreams is the grabber; what is school for?, the lesson. (The book is a free download available here.) I liked the manifesto a lot.

After 35 years in education, I've personally concluded that the very best thing I can do as a teacher is to ask a question or present a problem in a way that is so compelling, so relevant, so urgent, that my "students" are motivated to answer the question or solve the problem for themselves. That's it.

That's what Godin is doing in his manifesto. As the industrial age model of education (creating compliant factory workers) fails an increasingly large number of individuals, Godin asks readers what should be taking its place. And to answer that question, we need to ask "what is school for?"  

How often do educators ask themselves big picture questions that may help clarify and contextualize the day-to-day problems they solve?  Here are ten questions we spend too much time avoiding and too little time discussing:

1. Should education be more than vocational training? If so, can or should schools measure how one's quality of life increases because one is more thoughtful, more skeptical, more creative, and/or more humane?
2. What is right balance between learning content and learning processes? (How much do I want my dentist to know about best established practices and how much do I want her to know how to keep learning new best practices?)
3. At what age should a child be able to determine for himself what is in his best interest to learn? How important is exposure to a broad (and possibly irrelevant) range of experiences, opportunities, or ideas? If a child develops a passion for a topic early in life, should all her learning revolve around that passion?
4. To what extent do we honor individual learning styles and needs? Is learning how to deal with problems (a teacher or topic one dislikes, for example) an important part of education?
5. Should technology be used to support all educational practices or only those which are constructivist-based?
6. Should we insist teachers who are effective without using technology be required to use it? (Yes, I really do think that is a necessary question, as unpleasant as it is for many of us.)
7. Do libraries and librarians have a role in the era of digital information? (Yes, I really do think that is a necessary question, as unpleasant as it is for many of us.)
8. How many of us are less enthusiastic about libraries or technology but are simply excited about alternate ways of learning - and libraries and technology offer means to those ways?
9. What kind school experience do I want my own grand/children* to have? How should that guide me as an educator?
10. How should educational organizations demonstrate their efficacy? If we don't believe in test scores, what do we have to show those who fund us that we are doing good work? 

* The joy of creativity at Grandma's house this weekend 

My professor G. Robert Carlson at the University of Iowa suggested that you only ask a student one question after reading a book: "What did the book make you think about?" Read Godin's book and me know what it made you think about. What are the big questions you struggle with? 

Oh, Section 123 addresses the future of libraries. An excerpt:

The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do coworking and to coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided  by a librarian who understands the  Mesh, a librarian who can bring to bear domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information.

The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user-serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it’s fun. This librarian takes responsibility or blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

The next library is filled with so many Web terminals that there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight—it’s the entire point.  123.The future of the library

Think on it.... 

BFTP: Happy St Patrick's Day

My grandmother on my mother's side was a Brady. Perhaps that's where all the Blarney in me comes from.

Irish Summer, taken by Doug Johnson, July 2006 

Revisiting childhood reads

On the evening before our departure I saw them approaching along one of the great avenues which lead into the plaza from the east.  I advanced to meet them, and telling Sola that I would take the responsibility for Dejah Thoris' safekeeping, I directed her to return to her quarters on some trivial errand.  I liked and trusted Sola, but for some reason I desired to be alone with Dejah Thoris, who represented to me all that I had left behind upon Earth in agreeable and congenial companionship. There seemed bonds of mutual interest between us as powerful as though we had been born under the same roof rather than upon different planets, hurtling through space some forty-eight million miles apart.

That she shared my sentiments in this respect I was positive, for on my approach the look of pitiful hopelessness left her sweet countenance to be replaced by a smile of joyful welcome, as she placed her little right hand upon my left shoulder in true red Martian salute.

"Sarkoja told Sola that you had become a true Thark," she said, "and that I would now see no more of you than of any of the other warriors."

"Sarkoja is a liar of the first magnitude," I replied, "notwithstanding the proud claim of the Tharks to absolute verity."

Dejah Thoris laughed. (from A Princess of Mars)

It's always interesting revisiting favorite books from one's misspent youth. In anticipation of seeing the new John Carter movie, I re-read Edgar Rice Burrough's A Princess of Mars on which the movie is based*. I found it surprisingly more enjoyable that I had guessed I would. While the language is stilted and rather Victorian in tone and style, it's action scenes are suspenseful and frequent.

What kind of junior high kid reads books with complex sentences and vocabulary like countenance, verity, and congenial? Who'd read a book in which the heroine is always referred to by both first and last names (Dejah Thoris)? (Or maybe this the Martian equivilant of Mary Ann or Cathy Jo.) I also remember voluntarily reading Gulliver's Travels, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Three Musketeers.

Every time I re-read a book remembered fondly from childhood, I'm a bit awed by the text I needed to deconstruct. And while I've always like to read, I was never considered "gifted and talented." I suspect my teachers had a stamp made that read "Does not live up to potential" that was passed from grade to grade as I moved through school.

I've worried for a long time about how we use technology to "teach" reading. Reading text online and then taking trivia-based multiple guess questions has to be a passion killer for tons of kids. And I've seen first hand as a librarian how the child who can't decode "cat" in the reading primer, does just fine with "carburetor" in Hot Rod magazine.

Reading instruction would improve with fewer computer programs and more kids reading about what they love. Even Martian princesses.

* Free download in lots of places on the web including Project Gutenberg, Amazon, and GoogleBooks.