The real learning experience of school

Scott McLeod poses an interesting question: Are we edubloggers too harsh on our kids' teachers? and cites a number of recent posts that seem to indicate that progressive thinkers/writers about education may be disappointed in their own children's teachers. Audrey Watters at Hack Education reminisces about her son's difficult journey through school. 

My kids, like most, had some superb teachers and some duds. While my daughter seemed to thrive on traditional education, my son did not seem well-served by many of his classes. As a parent (and as an administrator in the school district my son attended), I had to carefully choose if and when to intervene when he was struggling in school.

After a little reflection and considering Scott's question, I'd suggest:

1. One of the toughest but most critical lessons children and young adults have to learn is how to develop real-world coping strategies. As a parent, I understand completely how much we want to keep our children from stress, from boredom, and from any sort of emotional or physical pain. But I also asked myself that if by intervening in my chlldren's problems if I were not depriving them of some necessary experiences in which they could develop the whole-life dispositions of patience, adjustment, subversion, recognition that the world is sometimes unjust, and discrimination of the important and unimportant. Children raised as "hot house flowers" by parents who step in at the first sign of problem may well fall apart when encountering the first college professor or supervisor who is challenging to work for. Self-reliance is a lovely attribute too often acquired through ugly experiences that are hard for a parent to watch.
2. As parent educators we need to carefully discriminate between a bad teacher and a teacher with a different educational methodology/philosophy. Not every teaching method works with every child, but I would argue that all pedagogies meet the needs of some children. A disagreement does not mean the teacher with whom one differs is incompetent. Keeping one's ego in check about always being confident of having the right answers to all things educational is tough.
3. We need to know how to constructively intervene if problems that call for parental intervention do arise. When grandson Paul was not well-served by his school library program, his parents made sure he got to the public library. When my son struggled with a project, I would ask for the instructions and assessment tool so I could provide guidance and "quality control." Good parents use parent-teacher conferences, parent web portals to teacher gradebooks, and class websites to partner with the teacher in assuring their children's learning. And increasingly for many parents, choosing alternative educational experiences for the children might be the best thing to do - enrolling them in a magnet school, a constructivist-based school, an online school or home schooling or just making sure that their children are involved in extra-curricular activities and organizations (Scouts, 4-H, church, etc) that provide meaningful learning opportunities.

My heart goes out to all parents who feel their children are not getting the best educational experience possible, especially those visionary parents who dream of what schools could be. But let's all be careful how go about "improving" our children's schools - and our children's lives.

Image source

The great Al Bell get-together

Unless you grew up in Iowa between 1950 and 1980, go right ahead and skip this entry. I am writing it preserve my memory of a day of personal meaning.

The four and half hour drive to Stuart, Iowa for the Al Bell Film Festival was worth the day. It was as much a trip in time to childhood and early adulthood as it was trip in space.

The LWW and I left at 7AM following highway 169 as it winds from Mankato down through southern Minnesota, past Fort Dodge, Iowa, and right to Interstate 80. Small towns that seem to be shrinking appear every ten or 15 miles. Gently rolling fields of corn and soybeans turning shades of gold were intersected by the green foliage of farmsteads, rivers and small bluffs. Felt like home - about as far away from anything exciting as it is possible to be the world.

The film festival was held at the Saints Center in Stuart, Iowa. This historic church had been torched by vandals only a few years ago but has been lovingly restored and is key player of the White Pole Road's economic development plans for the region. I taught high school in what was then the Stuart-Menlo school district from 1976-78 - my first job out of college. My classroom no longer exists, put out of its misery, I'm sure, by a beneficent god. (I shudder to think what a bad teacher I was!) The two small houses I lived in in the neighboring town of Menlo are still standing, one barely so. The mechanical man on the service station sign in Menlo still waves tirelessly.

Al Bell's daughters Rhea and Becky Bell greeted visitors and entertained us with Q&A sessions after each restored film of the Bell's was shown. The exhibits in the main hall included costumes and memorabilia from Al's travels, a map with push pins indicating where attendees attended school and experienced Al, and opportunities to buy Becky's book and the DVD of the converted Al Bell programs shown that day (see below).

A crowd of about 300 packed the basement to see the four 30 minute films that have been digitized (out of the 30 movies Al produced). The films looked pretty primitive and were awfully corny by today's standards, but they were a gentle reminder of a less complex, less connected time when short programs like these, "travelogeues" sponsored by a community's Lions Club, and National Geographic magazine were the only means rural Iowa kids had of learning much about other cultures. And they generated a lot of laughs along with the groans.

The power of Facebook and its "I Remember Al Bell" group got people interested and involved.

The book is a treat and I am proud that the Blue Skunk got a mention: "Because of people like Doug Johnson who lit the fire on his Blue Skunk blog... I'm about 1/3 through it and it is a pleasure to read. You will need to contact Liz Gilman liz@gilmanmedia.com for ordering information.

The DVD was available of all four programs showed on Sunday. Great fun. Sound like as funds permit, all 30 Al Bell productions will be digitized. Cool! Again, I would contact Liz Gilman about ordering this DVD.

Thanks to everyone who helped put this event on. Here's hoping this will become an annual event! Joing the Facebook fan club. Order the book and DVD. And see you all in Stuart next year!

Original Al Bell post from January 2007. The comments are great!

Photos taken from the I Remember Al Bell Facebook pages.

BFTP: Bullshit Literacy

A Saturday Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post, Sept 7, 2005 with a revision on August 28, 2009

(The bullshitter) does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit

Since we are entering a hot political campaign season, I thought it might be time to revist Bullshit Literacy. Or for those of you with scatological avoidance issues, BS Lit. (I like Bullshit Lit because it rhymes*.) While ASCD, ISTE or AASL won't admit it, Bullshit Lit is the 21st Century Skill set. Embed these crucial skills in your curriculum today!

The Bullshit Literate Student will:

1. Show no social conscience or balance when deliberately distorting factoids, data, or expert opinion in presenting a conclusion.
2. Skillfully use any medium and all persuasive techniques in order to convince others. This includes the ability to use technology to doctor images and edit published text.
3. Consistently, vociferously, and blindly hold to a single point of view, and know that volume, repetition and rhetoric trump reason.
4. Use purposely emotion-laded words so as not to chance reason interfering with judgement.
5. Convincingly fake sincerity and deliver any message with a straight face.
6. Ably disguise personal gain as public good.
7. Take a single incident or news story and follow it to an illogical conclusion.
8. Claim any idea as original.
9. Deny prior knowledge.
10. Create a website, wiki, blog, or podcast. (beginning level). Find a publisher, broadcaster or corporate sponsor for whom the bottom line is the bottom line. (advanced).
11. Never, never, never show doubt.
12. Take no responsibility for consequences that may occur down the road.
13. Use the extreme of any financial projection or estimate.
14. Let the retention of power or position be the deciding factor in all decisions. Doing what's right is for wimps and suckers.
15. Offer apologies in such a way that the wrong-doer looks morally superior.

Other skills the Bullshit Literate need master?

A follow-up post with a link to Art Wolensky's rubric for measuring bullshit literacy attainment.

For Latin readers from http://www.zazzle.com

* I have purposely retained the term bullshit in this set of competencies, acknowledging that it will offend some readers and limit the distribution of this important skill set. However, I cannot think of another, less objectionable term that describes the act of bullshitting, a person who is a bullshitter, or a communication that is bullshit. (No, baloney does not have the gravitas.) I believe that writing "bullsh*t" or just "bull" is disingenuous since the full term pops into the reader's head anyway and simply makes them feel guilty about knowing such words.

I try to use expletives or scatological references only sparingly and purposefully. But in adult conversation they are sometimes necessary, even vital. And during times of stress or excitement, unavoidable.

After having worked some months in construction duirng my college days, I took a job as a stock clerk/delivery person in a large furniture store. My supervisor approached me not long after being hired and said, 'Doug, I don't think you are even aware of it, but did you know you can't say a single sentence without putting a profanity in it?" His comment made me think hard about not whether one uses bad language, but if one can control one's use of it.

A lesson I tried to teach my son the first time I heard him let fly a blue streak.

Thanks for letting me ramble.