“The future,” H.G. Wells once said, “is a race between education and catastrophe.” In his future world, change was the only constant and our educational system is always in danger of falling behind or becoming irrelevant. That is a truly frightening prospect, but it seems to have generated a rather ominous world-wide 21st century education movement. It is driven by educational futurists, media personalities, and technology providers, all promoting so-called “21st Century Schools.”
Today’s students have grown up in a digital world. Futurists like Don Tapscott play a vital role in alerting us to the coming wave of technological innovation and encouraging educators to integrate IT and social media into the classroom. Indeed, Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams’s new book, Macroeconomics: Rebooting Business and the World (2010) provides valuable lessons about how “mass collaboration” can enliven teaching as well as learning for students. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/don-tapscott/logged-on-to-learn/article1853529/
Yet worshipping at the altar of technology poses its own dangers. In the hands of education’s 21st century zealots, educational change might even threaten the fundamental principles and foundations of our educational tradition. Most ironic of all, making way for the “knowledge-based economy” now seems to thrive on collective amnesia and a complete disregard for the wisdom bequeathed to us by past generations.
New Brunswick’s “21st Century Education” initiative is the most grotesque example of this alarming trend. In late March 2010, the Department of Education officially endorsed the scary concept by posting a much talked-about YouTube video graphically illustrating “The Shift” and exploring its earth-shaking implications. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjJg9NfTXos
The animated NB Education 5 minute-long short is relentless in its pace, technologically obsessed, and openly hostile to educational tradition. Most of what is being taught in schools is dismissed as obsolete. “We must keep pace and stay relevant,” the narrator declares, “to keep kids engaged.”
New Brunswick is not alone in flirting with the educational futurists. Since 2007, British author Sir Ken Robinson has been dazzling educators with his YouTube Talks. He is the undisputed education rock star and his polished video lectures drive home two key messages: modern education is outmoded and schools kill creativity. He pops up everywhere, but most notably in films like We Are the People We’ve Been Waiting For and on TED Talks (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U )
Future schools thinking is widespread in Ontario and now seeping into Nova Scotia. A year ago, the Nova Scotia School Boards Association stated its own 21st Century Schools project. A series of closed door meetings were held with “system partners” to study resources reflecting a distinctly “progressivist” vision for the future. http://www.nssba.ca/new/index.php?cid=23&pid=122
Nova Scotia’s education futurists relied upon imported resource materials. In addition to the New Brunswick video, participants discussed Sir Ken’s videos and films, Scott McLeod’s version of Shift Happens, the American film Race to Nowhere, the CBC Doc Zone show “Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids,” and a New York Times Opinion piece trashing Advanced Placement courses and high-stakes testing.
Who is really driving the future schools agenda? All signs point to a rather fascinating Miramichi school superintendent, William Kierstead. This greying, bespectacled former elementary teacher has emerged as the province’s leading Information Technology in Teaching (ITC) guru. To him, promoting the 21st Century learning agenda is crucial to integrating ICT into classrooms everywhere.
Kierstead is no dreamer. He is an ITC promoter who fashions himself to be on the cutting edge. Computers amaze him and Don Tapscott’s Growing Up Digital (1997) is the source of most of his visionary ideas. Upon closer scrutiny, Kierstead is actually a disciple of American educational progressive John Dewey. In early December, he came out of the closet and posted a hymn of praise to the Dewey as “the father of 21st Century learning.” (See http://instructiveinterference.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/is-everything-old-really-new-again/ )
Dewey (1859-1952) is still recognized as the “Godfather” of North American progressive education. Student-centred learning, focusing on process not content, and resistance to student testing were his mantras. Like most progressives, he rejected teaching subject knowledge and believed that schools should “teach the student, not the subject.”
On the surface, it would seem to be odd that Kierstead and the latter day Deweyites would have latched onto 21st century learning as the new ideology. Given the state of education, one might think that aspiring to higher achievement standards, good literature, student testing and accountability, and closing the education gap were the wave of the future. Some even hope that sound curriculum, good teaching and critical thought might make a comeback.
Not so, according to the educational futurists.
Globalists and IT promoters have a shiny new appeal. Yet such an uncritical acceptance of a technologically-driven school system can be mind numbing. Scratching below the surface, you also tend to find that the futurists are really “romantic progressivists” in disguise.
Beware of the 21st learning zealots. Frightened of a more globalized, competitive, fast-paced future, they want to retreat back into the womb of soft student-centred pedagogy, classroom info-tainment, and nurturing the self-esteem of students. The Internet and social media are the latest gizmos and innovations to be used to “stay relevant” and keep the kids happy in schools.
What’s the “21st Century Schools” movement really all about? Does blind worship of the Internet and the social media threaten our valued educational tradition based upon knowledge from past generations? In what way does swallowing futurism whole contribute to the “divergent thinking” so prized and celebrated by Sir Ken Robinson and his disciples?
Educhatter 
You appear to be issuing a warning to educational conservatives that educational progressives will hijack modern technology to do a Dewey 2.0. That’s interesting because progressives are just as concerned that conservatives like Bill Gates (The Billl and Melinda Gates Foundation) want a spy cam in every classroom and national tests weekly by computer.
I too am distrustful of technology merchants attempting to whipsaw the classroom so that it only works with massive amounts of new technology.
It is quite possible that I-Pads and Kindles will replace text books very soon. Students regularly present their oral presentations now as Power Point, but there is not much that is very sinister in this.
Remember that radio was going to revolutionize education, but it didn’t happen. TV was going to “replace the teacher” and that didn’t happen. The PC would replace the teacher, but they are still here. Virtual education would replace “school buildings” but schools are still here.
You need to rethink your thesis. Technology can create educational innovation but it does not settle the age old traditional vs progressive education debate in favour of either side.
The line between traditional and progressive education is not so graphic anymore, at least since the Dewey chapter. A critical perspective is needed now to frame the relevance of established systems with benefits while coming to grips with constant change. How is it the corporations went so easily from the board room to the school board room to the schools. The contemporary branding of education is still evident in the consumer “capital project school” and the business of education.
We watch while consolidated postmodern structures eat up more and more communities in NS while postulating program delivery for their presence. I suppose burying the past is essential for the proponents of constant change. However, sometimes it is sensible to wait and observe technology rollover until something comes along which is truely helpful.
Just an observation of my own children’s classroom differences going on right now: My child in grade 6 had on her supply list this year, a thumb drive. There are 3 computers in the classroom and the students take turns doing their work on the computers, saving it as they go on the thumb drive and they keep it at school. It never comes home. Their finished essays are handed in to the teacher all neatly typed up. My middle child in grade 9 hand writes all her assignments for some reason. I’m not sure why there is not the same expectation for her finished work as there is for grade 6. Also, the grade 9 did not have this teacher in grade 6 and there was no thumb drive use in class then. My grade 11 child, I’m not sure, I’ll have to ask.
My husband and I talked about the work place and how there is absolutely nothing done in writing by hand. Can you imagine applying for a job with a hand written resumé? Can you remember the last time you read a report at work that was hand written? Anyway, this is just an observation of something going on in real time, as we continue to discuss technology in school.( on-line from our homes, never having met each other…)
Sounds like your local school is struggling to get into the 1980s when it comes to integrating technology into the classroom. That’s a common complaint of parents throughout Nova Scotia and the Maritimes. Most of the classroom computers are, in fact, cast-offs from companies provided free to the school boards.
With IT in schools, the late adopters actually have an advantage. Today SMART boards are the latest rage, simply because teachers can use them without changing much in their instructional routine. Most teachers, as you likely know, are afraid of computers because they can make classroom management a tremendous challenge. Confident, competent teachers welcome them, but others are simply frightened of “losing control.”
I favour the introduction of IT into the classroom. In fact, you will find that I introduced laptops for all students (Grade 7 to 12) at Lower Canada College in 2005. Having said that, technolgy should be our tool — a means to an end, not an end in itself.
The New Brunswick 21st Century Schools agenda is frightening because it shows no respect whatsoever for what has come before. And, yes, the NSSBA has swallowed it whole!
Whales can do that…
This commentary presents a refreshing perspective on technology in education, and 21st Century Schools. It touches on aspects that are normally kept hidden in the dark corners of the public education system, until taken up by progressive educrats. The 21st Century Education agenda does reflect the Dewey-speak philosophy that has hijacked public education and booted out the divergent thinkers who dare to challenge progressivism.
As I have observed, in my journey as an outsider looking in, the divergent thinkers that I have met in the public education system, are few in numbers, but are a god-send to parents who are confronted with solutions offered by the Dewey set as 21st Century Learning. Meanwhile, the parent is scratching his head: how will self-esteem lessons will improve their child’s achievement? Some of the proposed solutions are still based on Dewey-speak. For example in the Globe and Mail article, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams write: “We’re slipping in international standings because almost every school in the country employs an outmoded model of pedagogy. Right now we have “broadcast learning,” with the teacher as expert at the front of the class, and the students as novices in a universal, one-size-fits-all model. “Chalk and talk” classrooms are a jarring disconnect to media-savvy, plugged-in students. In contrast to their life out of school, in the classroom they have no control, no connectivity, no media, no action, no immersion and no networks. ”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/don-tapscott/logged-on-to-learn/article1853529/
It’s rather silly to use technology based on the universal one-sized-fits-all model, employing Dewey-speak, and proceeding to remove all forms of divergent thinking that children have naturally as well as the their creativity.
One example that comes to mind, is a form of divergent thinking that is used often at our schools. From a teacher, ” Several months ago, when our family was dining at a local restaurant, my daughter was given a paper placemat to busy herself with while waiting for the meal. There were illustrations to color, a word search and one particular puzzle to solve showing four images with a question printed above: “Which one of these four things does not fit?” The first image was that of an igloo, the second a snowman, the third showed a man wearing a swimsuit, goggles and flippers while holding a beach ball and the fourth was an illustration of a man wearing a snowsuit with skis. If you look at the bottom of the page, the correct answer to the puzzle is provided, which is the third picture, ostensibly because the swimmer does not fit the theme of things one would see in the winter. My daughter quickly arrived at her solution. “This is easy, Dad- it’s the first picture, the igloo, because it’s the only one not in the shape of a man!” It gives me pause when I contemplate the idea that a computer will score her ACT test one day and penalize that perfectly logical line of thinking, resulting in points taken off for an “incorrect” answer. On the other hand, I can take solace in the fact that, outside of the realm of traditional education, it is a divergent thinker’s world, and that her ability to see the world in different ways and her unorthodox intellect will be very useful to her. ”
http://www.learningdiversity.org/2010/09/divergent-education-by-anthony-westcott/
Divergent thinking in the world of public education is not admired much, and as such kids are penalized for thinking outside of the box. I can attest to this one with my own child. My child always got a big fat 0, for thinking outside the box on questions like the one above, because in the Dewey-speak world there is only Dewey-speak correct answers. I had to teach my child to think in simple terms, to downplay her major strength of divergent thinking, and look for simple patterns that were not at all obvious to her. This had to be taught to her, just like the fundamentals had to be taught to her, but in the world of Dewey-speak fundamentals have been thrown out, in favour of teaching my child how to think without using her strengths that are discounted or no longer matter in a Dewey-speak organization. I learned this fact the hard way, as I climbed the ladder the educrats explain why my child should learn in the same manner as other children, and not in the way that I suggested, to used her strengths to build up her weaknesses. A radical concept to anyone immerse in Dewey-speak, but it is the type of divergent thinking that is occurring in homes, at work and in other places, except in the public education system.
Due to the total immersion of Dewey-speak, the use of technology in all its forms is rather illogical throughout the public education system. One would think, even one who believes in Dewey-speak would see technology as the prefect vehicle for, “higher achievement standards, good literature, student testing and accountability, and closing the education gap were the wave of the future. Some even hope that sound curriculum, good teaching and critical thought might make a comeback. Not so, according to the educational futurists. ” Dewey-speak in operating mode here too.
As I can attest, radical ideas that I brought forth to improve my child’s achievement in school, were met with a frown and resisted, based on Dewey-speak thinking. Even when I was willing to pay the freight, it was still turned down because it would supposedly be an unfair advantage. How does a e-reader with a dictionary or a talking e-pen becomes a no, and cell phones were allow, even though the education value is questionable compare to the solid science behind the e-readers, and other devices that will increase fluency and vocabulary in reading. And for my child, they improve reading comprehension because she no longer has to skip words that she could not sound out, or misunderstand their meaning. In the Dewey-speaking world, it is denied to the child. That knowledge and skill is considered no longer necessary.
And now it appears that they are jumping on the bandwagon of Ken Robinson. From where I am standing, I think the educrats have gotten it all wrong. Ken Robinson should be celebrated in finally introducing questions about the future and direction of education. Dewey-speak is killing the creativity and divergent thinking of our children, and in my eyes this is what Robinson is warning about. Today’s employers need people to think on their feet, and not to become docile workers moving from one job to the next. There is a TED video that made the rounds in the LD chat lines a few years ago, called Do Schools Kill Creativity, by Ken Robinson. Dewey speak does a good job on trying to kill the creativity of LD children, and for that matter other children. Jumping on the technology wagon in the way that it is being done, Dewey-speak will ensure the the poor use of technology, and few education benefits will be derived when the fundamentals are often ignored
http://www.learningdiversity.org/2010/09/divergent-education-by-anthony-westcott/
Do not miss the video at the bottom of the page.
Thanks for this interesting article!
“Must keep pace and stay relevant…to keep kids engaged”. This sort of argument is quite often used to make the case for excessive use of technology in the classroom. I think this type of thinking underestimates kids – I don’t think classrooms need to be filled up with smart boards and computers to keep kids engaged. In fact, I strongly believe that the overuse of technology can serve as a serious barrier to learning.
I do recognize that kids need to be exposed to a certain amount of technology (for writing essays, etc., as mentioned above) since it is here to stay and can indeed be extremely useful. However, when technology takes the place of thinking that the student should be able to do on his/her own, that is a problem. A good example of this is the heavy calculator usage that we see among students entering first-year university. I was quite shocked when, on a basic math skills test (sans calculator), some first year students were unable to add fractions or calculate percentages. These are relatively easy skills but they were so used to punching things in on their calculators, they had no understanding of what they were doing so couldn’t do it without. If they punch in numbers incorrectly and get the wrong answer, they often can’t tell that they got an incorrect answer, because they don’t understand what they’re doing in the first place. Calculators definitely have their place in education but there is way too much reliance on them. I worry that the use of stronger computer software will make things even worse. It is good to teach kids how to use programs but it is even better to teach them how to write the programs in the first place.
I also think that there is a certain amount of overstimulation that comes with too much technology in the classroom. To think, kids need to be able to concentrate. How can they do this when they are constantly being bombarded with pings and flashing lights, etc? I’ve had to tell my students that cell phones, ipods, etc. are not allowed in my classroom because if they bring them into the classroom, they cannot quit checking them and have trouble concentrating on the lecture.
Having said that, I do think technology can be useful as a teaching tool, if used cautiously. Online homework, for instance, can be helpful for extra practice because students can get immediate feedback on lots of problems.
I wonder what the conversation around the horse manure pile sounded like when they replaced the little slate boards with paper and pencils. The probably thought the world was going to hell in a hand bag then too. It did in a way. Paper became one of the hottest commodities and look what happened to the forests. Now we are back to saving paper and trees again, so this part has to be good. I’m not sure why we think we are only truly learning anything of value if lots of paper is involved.
Well, let’s see… The world is now both digital and global, no? Technology-suffused in essentially all aspects of society. A deeply interconnected, hypercompetitive global economy. Individuals and small organizations that are empowered every day to have a voice, to share, to contribute, to reach potentially-large audiences, and make a difference. Multimodal/multimedia texts. Ongoing redefinition of what it means to be information literate. And so on…
And you fault us ’21st century learning’ proponents for wanting schools to be more relevant to the demands of today and tomorrow, not just yesterday?
The trouble is that schools or the public education system doesn’t make good use of the technology today, and the technology of the past. I often find that the technology is often used as a tool to control children’s knowledge, rather than opening up the doors of knowledge. If not there, technology that would help improve the basics and achievement for children, is not being applied at the individual basis, but as a group. One only has to look at the school sites, to see how wanting the sites are or as my child calls it pathetic. From there one can go up the ladder of the public education system, where information is on the need to know basis. I’ve have gotten more general information off the American sites compared to the public education sites.
As I read the article I wondered why the author is so scared of 21st century schools movement when most of the opinion points to most of the 21st Century competencies. I wonder if you are really making a case against media reps and technologist. In that case I agree with you. However, your multiple incorrect facts and over simplification of the New Brunswick school system makes me discredit your knowledge of the issue.
At the very core of this issue is that it’s going to require teachers become better at their use of new technologies to capture the attention of their students who are likely already light years ahead.
Teachers at the core of effective education isn’t going to change with the addition of new tech. toys.
That the fastest growing school in Ontario is the Virtual High School is interesting in that the teachers there use have adapted themselves to their virtual classrooms in a way that they feel allows them more flexibility and to get to know kids who they’d normally not get to know in a regular classroom
Sandy Crux did have a thread up on this once and a link to the Virtual High School
I have a question for you Paul. Do you think that education reform expectations and outreach strategies will have to change with the times too?
I can tell you one thing I think we have seen coming for a while but having been waiting for the log jam to break. The “computer lab” at school and perhaps the entire library with both disappear into the lap top and the I-Pad.
White boards and power point is now the common for teacher and student “direct Instruction”.
The world seems to be changing very rapidly but certain skills cherished by many, cursive writing, spelling (they learn from spell check) calculation etc are giving way to more efficient technologies.
TeachRelevance scares me more than that ill-conceived “21st Century Education” agenda video out of New Brunswick.
It seems that the wisdom of the Ancients is passe in the la la land of education futurists. Even Sir Ken knows that historical and educational amnesia can be debilitating and possibly limit your horizons.
Divergent thinking is not always welcome among the futurists. Have they forgotten that Technology is there for us to master and to put to useful purposes?
Socrates warned us long ago that “An unexamined life is not worth living,” Why does knowing something matter? Again, he reminds us:”The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
We are being inundated with “information.” Where might we look for”wisdom”? Educational futurists ignore it by simple omission. Blinded by digital glare, they are drawn to the chimera of IT like moths.
What is so scary…the fact that you don’t check facts? The fact that you have provided no true alternatives during your rant that in simply quotations. You seem to be the one who is selling something and it is not relevant teaching practice!
Technology is ours to master, Cate. It frightens me when it falls into the hands of zealots like those who gave us automated “voice mail” and seek to turn us into automatons.
I have always believed in empowering students and teaching them a little knowledge along the way. For some bizarre reason, critical thinking goes out the window when people become entranced with the chimera of IT.
Dan Gardner’s new book on the Futurists has deeply influenced my thinking. They are so often wrong, I too wonder why we still pay attention to their forecasts. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s because we’ve lost out moral compass and our intellectual bearings.
My son and I were reading together an interesting book called “The invention of Hugo Cabret”; a book about the systematic construction of an atomaton (technology?) which had a magical message to offer humanity when repaired and in working order, a long and arduous task. The story takes place in a Paris train station where clocks and the accurate measurement of time is of significant importance. So it is with purveyors of constant change embroiled in our current public education system.
The pretext of the work was the early years of french cinima and the inovation of the moving 3rd dimention – that is the illusion of simulated reality.
The atomaton and the eventual train crash which shocks the readers/viewers puts an end to illusions, but education (the alchemist and explorer) turns experience into gold. Hence the tangible book my son and I read, tangible page by page.
Calm down, TeachRelevance.
You seem to assume that questioning “21st Century Schools” ideology makes you a defender of “irrelevance.”
You are, in all likelihood, a Deweyite who worships at the altar of “teaching relevance.” Does that include regular helpings of pablum and showing little respect for the intelligence of schoolchildren?
Teaching SOMETHING worth knowing never goes out of fashion. And if it did, who would know enough to ask the critical questions that make ideologues squirm?
I find it amusing that someone that authors a blog such as yours with so many erroneous statements can even begin to criticize others teaching practice, but that is the mentality of those that do not teach in the public school system, but think that they can consult.
As a scientist we teach students not to assume, as you have done when you proclaimed my worship of the Dewey altar. To be very honest with you, I am not one that believes that technology is not the key to 21st Century teaching. As you can tell I believe that relevance and promoting critical thinking are the ultimate devices that we can give our students to use. Technology is merely a useful tool that adds to the work of our students.
If there is a name for me to genuflect, it would be for Dan Meyer.
I invite in your rebuttal for you to state how you think Education should be shaped. Please refrain from quoting any philosophers, bashing any knights, or insinuating other educators point of view and simply state your view. Also, could you please retract the mistakes in your facts.
Thanks,
TR
To TeachRelevance: Could you tell me what New Brunswick is doing differently than other provinces? Just wondering, from what I have read so far, there is little if any adapting teaching to the individual child and his learning. Big on projects, but really nothing on projects working to improve the individual’s achievement. Unless one thinks talking to another student halfway across the world leads to achievement.
On the New Brunswick’s education site: “The New Brunswick Department of Education supports and encourages provincial, national and international partnerships. By using Information Communication Technology (ICT), our students and teachers can learn anywhere, anytime. Students learn that no matter where a community is globally located, health, safety, jobs, education and the economy are all matters of common concern.
Both students and teachers are enriched as they learn about these issues and grow through information exchanges. Students are exposed to new learning practices. Educators are enriched and professionally developed by the opportunity to network, contact different cultures, and embark on new professional friendships.”
http://www.gnb.ca/0000/as/ip-e.asp
Furthermore, how many homes are connected to the Internet? Home many homes have computers? Just asking, because if a student does not have a computer at home or a laptop and be able to connect at home, how is their learning impacted compared to the students who is connected at home? Did it really improve achievement as the New Brunswick education site states, or did it just move the stats around, to reflect a slight upward movement?
As a parent, a computer and the other tech devices became important tools for my household and my LD child. Tools, but still did not replace other modes of learning, and knowledge. Even a slide ruler today can come in handy, especially for understanding of math concepts.
“The slide rule is an incredible tool that was used for hundreds of years before calculators were invented. It can also be used to find reciprocals, squares, square roots, cubes, cube roots, common logarithms, sines, cosines, tangents and cotangents.”
Read more: How to Use a Slide Rule | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_2121781_use-slide-rule.html#ixzz1BguiYOPK
I would really like the public education system to make good use of computers and high tech devices. However, when deciding what would be best for a school, or even for an individual student, decisions are based on rules, regulations, that are decided by others higher up within the education system, that takes its shape on one-sized-fits-alls approaches with minor variations.
Nancy,
I don’t want to lead you down a path that says that what New Brunswick has done is perfect. What I can tell you is very simple. We are a province that is changing governments, which means that politics will influence education vision. However, one thing that cannot be changed is that we are a very small province with no major urban areas and many very economically challenged rural communities. Since we are not able physically expose our students to issues around the world, we collaborate with these areas to gain a greater perspective. I can only defend it this way. We you rather your child read about life in Finland from a text book, or would you rather they ask their peers from that country critical questions related to common issues that they have. That is why New Brunswick attached itself to 21st Century because it included relevant issues for student. Also, since the world puts so much stalk in OECD and PISA, it only makes sense to align with their competencies.
With regards to computers and internet for households, the previous government made it a priority to create the opportunity for each household in NB to have internet. Whether or not that continues will remain to be seen.
I have no opposition to the introduction of new tech as each piece of it is examined. On the other hand, the tech industry is full of “tech pushers”, unhappy with the pace of change, that seem to be DEMANDING that schools pick up the pace. One Mr Gates is leading the parade.
Do we need to separate learning from communicating? Or is it the same thing? When we communicate we learn something, when we learn something it would have had to be communicated to us somehow, unless we went out into the yard and discovered something for ourselves.Technology is great for communicating and learning, but there are other forms. Let’s use them all!
Just wanted to throw this out there. My son is reviewing for his math exam on YouTube! Just came out of his room where there is a piece of chalk going on a chalkboard and a voice giving a lesson on inverse matrix. Pretty cool.
TeachRevelance, I live in rural Newfoundland and only know too well the political implications. At least you are part of the mainland, and not an island in the North Atlantic. However, education should never be politicized but the reality it is, much to my dismay and chagrin. It is a bloody pain when one has a child that has special needs. and than throw in the Dewey-speak philosophy that underlies most of what is being done in the public education system, the individual child’s learning needs are ignored or worse, a lowering of the bar when it comes to the outliers of the student population.
Technology, has been a God-sent from the beginning concerning my youngest child. It help her to reach her potential, addressed weaknesses directly related to her learning, and it help me sort out the information that a public education system either refuses to inform or to educate parents. I am certainly glad that I did not heed the advice of the public education system, because she can write notes, her handwriting is decent, her grammar is good, and she is a lot better at spelling these days. Things that most education systems do not bother to focus on for regular students, and not just the SE kids.
Technology became my tool, for all the reteaching I was doing at home, plus the tutoring in the early grades to which the school had stated that she did not qualify for tutoring, because she was passing. Throughout the years, there is an amazing amount of help on the Internet, and often adapt it to fit my child’s leaning needs. Software and the different applications that can create a unique program for the one child, but not necessarily a group of children. It sure made the work easier at home, compared to the toil that I had to endure in the early years for SE services in reading and writing. Offering self-esteem lessons, and the other feel-good therapy, without providing a solid foundation on the 3 Rs, is a waste of money and resources.
You stated, “Since we are not able physically expose our students to issues around the world, we collaborate with these areas to gain a greater perspective. I can only defend it this way. We you rather your child read about life in Finland from a text book, or would you rather they ask their peers from that country critical questions related to common issues that they have. That is why New Brunswick attached itself to 21st Century because it included relevant issues for student. Also, since the world puts so much stalk in OECD and PISA, it only makes sense to align with their competencies.”
It is obvious that the global outlook is an important aspect in what makes a good education for a student, to you. Nothing wrong with that, however as a parent I have grown weary and ticked off on the underlying philosophy of looking outward, instead of inward. I believe it is deconstructing the cultures of peoples, to transformed the thinking of the people of the world into one big giant group-think. As my youngest would state, she doesn’t much care about something that is happening 2 thousand miles away in another country, but she does care about what is happening within her community and other parts of Canada. Would it not be better for kids to asked questions to other Canadians? Would it not be more relevant than a person from China or Finland? Finally, OECD and PISA may be important to one who works in the education field, but it is a non-starter for most parents and their children. In fact, it is used as a weapon to keep out reading and writing instruction that is not based on Dewey-speak. Whole language almost destroy my child’s emotional well-being, as well as her potential to be the best. I still believe if Dewey was alive, he would be aghast what has been done in his name, completely ignoring the advancements that have been made in cognitive science, the increase knowledge and the technology. In fact, if he was alive he probably would go back to the drawing board to address the damage that is being done in his name.
Nancy,
I think you are more 21st Century than you realize. after reading this blog post this morning, colleagues of mine and I discussed how special needs children are not accounted for. With that I cannot say that I know where you are coming from but I have taken it into consideration.
With regards to a global community and the OECD, I think that the comments today have overlooked one key item: Curriculum. In grade 6 social studies, students learn about global communities, what better way to learn about Scandinavian culture then to develop a relationship with them. In grade 7 social studies citizenship is the focus, this lends itself to learning about our great country. A similar view can be taken with PISA. This is not test that any 15 year old could be taught, I would admit that they could be educated in the format of the questioning, but since that promotes higher level thinking that should be a good thing.
When my grade 8 class worked with students in Almelo, Netherlands to develop local solutions to climate change and Atlantic Salmon and assisted them with solutions to diking this was way more then a pen pal exchange of how she goings?
Taking on the “21st Century Skills” movement elicits some fascinating reactions. The New Brunswick education futurists are, of course, imitators. So why single them out? Simply because the New Brunswick mutation is an extreme version of what I liken to “education on steroids.” If you doubt me, watch that video again.
Since the appearance of Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap (NY: Basic Books, 2008), the movement has been in full flight. From his perch at Harvard, Wagner wields enormous influence, particularly in the corporate world. THe school system does not need “merely reform, according to Wagner, because it is “completely obsolete.” We need a completely new system committed to teaching “21st century skills” preparing students for lives in this century.
Tony Wagner is in the advance guard and the movement has spawned disciples almost everywhere from Harvard to California to New Brunswick. There are now even “How To” books like Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel’s 21st Learning Skills (SF: Jossey Bass, 2009)
I am not alone in blowing the whistle and trying to unmask the latest educational “panacea.” Our good friend Jay P. Greene was way ahead of us on this file. Since 2008, he’s been calling the movement “21st century nonsense.”
http://jaypgreene.com/2009/09/14/more-21st-century-skills/
It’s nonsense because it denies the past and threatens much that is good about our educational tradition. To say that critical thinking is a “21st century skill” is surely a joke. Teaching skills should never supplant the education of informed, well-grounded, critically aware young people. In the recent past, the “skills-mania” almost destroyed history and social studies in the 1980s, before it was vanquished.
Jay P. Greene has been closely following the “21st Century Skills” movement in the United States, offering his usual trenchant commentaries.
A Book Review of Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap (2008) caught his eye and it adds considerable ammunition to Educhatter’s initial salvo. It was written by Sandra Stotsky and published in a September 2009 issue of The Weekly Standard.
Here is the key passage:
“It is disingenuous to imply that the development of analytical thinking and effective oral and written communication (goals of the lyceum in ancient Greece) are new to the 21st century. American education schools and their satellite networks of professional development providers heavily promoted such “21st-century skills” as critical thinking, problem solving, and small group work throughout the 20th century.
If our teaching corps hasn’t yet been able to figure out how to translate these buzzwords into effective classroom lessons, what does this tell us about the teaching skills of our very expensive standing army of teacher-educators, either to prepare teachers properly in the first place or to get them up to snuff after they’ve failed in the field?…
Evidence-free rhetoric in support of reducing academic content in the schools, diluting academic standards for K-12, and eliminating large-scale academic testing, has found a receptive audience across the country among those who don’t want any form of real accountability. Unfortunately, the valuable skills misidentified as 21st-century skills cannot be taught and assessed without a strong emphasis on academic substance, standards, and objective assessments–as academic researchers know.
Wagner is the latest in a long line of educational pied pipers leading an uncritical and growing mass of school administrators and teachers into a curricular wilderness. And this latest book is just the current manifestation of the goal driving most of our education schools and professional development providers–how to reduce the academic content of the curriculum while claiming to enhance it–this time in the name of closing the “gap,” or providing worker bees for this century’s employers.”
Comment:
I almost wrote “Amen.” Then I remembered that Educhatter’s Blog is designed to promote informed, interactive discussion…a place where divergent opinion is sought and encouraged as long as we steer clear of schoolyard name-calling.
Paul, after I found my son reviewing his math online on YouTube, I told him about this blog and the current topic. I said,” it probably seems pretty funny to you that some adults are talking about whether or not technology in schools is a good thing.” He ‘s 16’ almost 17. His world is surrounded with it. I have to say though, that beyond the technology, critical thinking is a must and we have tried to allow our kids lots of opportunities to deveope that for themselves. As a mother, I have always felt they need that as much for their safety as they need it for success, so from a safety angle, our kids need to be critical thinkers. So, what is the best way to teach it in school? There are too many teachers who teach the kids to just follow instruction. We have one now that allows the kids to learn from thinking for themselves, but it is not a subject area, it is in everything she does.
Again, I love the topic!
1. I wonder if part of the issue today is one of scale:
“The goals of increasing thinking and reasoning ability are old ones for educators. . . . But these goals were part of the high literacy tradition; they did not, by and large, apply to the more recent schools for the masses. Although it is not new to include thinking, problem solving, and reasoning in someone’s school curriculum, it is new to include it in everyone’s curriculum. It is new to take seriously the aspiration of making thinking and problem solving a regular part of a school program for all of the population . . . It is a new challenge to develop educational programs that assume that all individuals, not just an elite, can become competent thinkers.”
– Dr. Lauren Resnick, Cognitive Psychologist, for the National Academy of Sciences, http://bit.ly/9s5fno
2. Also, the global economy and the Internet now make it super easy to move work to wherever it can be done cheapest. So one push behind the ’21st century skills’ movement is because we Americans, for example, have to come up with work for our people that justifies our high standard of living but can’t be done easily by others. Low-level cognitive work can be done easily by many and thus is easily outsourced. Thus the emphasis on higher-order thinking skills for greater numbers of American students than before because that’s what still justifies a Western salary and standard of living…
I can agree with the statement that I am more 21th century than 20th century, but my main objection is how technology and the rapid advancements in high tech have been used to destroy cultures or at the very least downplay the values and traditions of the individual, groups of people, and undermining the old knowledge of the past.
For example, as I have experienced and other parents have too; our children coming home stating that we don’t know anything, only the teacher does. It is kind of hard to hear that from a 7 year old, when a parent is trying to help them with their math homework. It has led to many arguments in homes and in the end, the math homework does not get done. It undermines the concept that is seen as a general truth in society, that parents know what is best for their children, because they know their children. Since entering the high tech age, individualism and independence is scorn, in favour of group activities, collaboration, and new knowledge is supplanted by the old knowledge. Along the way, culture, values, traditions and the knowledge of common sense is lost to the louder voices of the experts.
I would never have anticipated that when my youngest was in grade 1, to have a heated discussion with the school about the math curriculum, and its content. But as I was told, unless I am an expert, that I have no business in criticizing the math curriculum. My job apparently was to help my child to learn the new way of doing math, and not the old way. Parents are no longer seen as being the experts on their own children, and the outside experts become the new purveyors of knowledge. Within the education system of today, as the world has become more complicated with the rapid advancement of technology, the economies, and sheer size of new knowledge being generated, parents and children have become very dependent on an education system. An education system that strives to change parents and their children into like-minded thinking and actions, to enhance the smooth operation of the system, and to limit parents’ input that are not in keeping of the same values of the education system.
The above is just a very small facet of the many different levels in the high-tech age where the experts are striving for an egalitarian society, without the need to provide a firm foundation of knowledge. Within the education system, the firm foundation of knowledge is dependent on how well the education system provides a firm foundation in reading, writing and numeracy. Without the firm foundation on the basics, an egalitarian society becomes a pipe dream, and where the old adage that has plagued mankind for thousands of years, that some are more equal than others. Within the classroom, that is self-evident where the education system’s structure is much the same way as it was 40 years ago, with one exception. Let’s all pretend we are equal, even though it is not the reality. Technology will become the great equalizer for all, because it will help facilitate critical thinking, as the experts would like us to believe. However without a firm foundation in the basics of language, science, and numeracy, critical thinking devolves into group think, collective thoughts being imposed, and allowing the individual to let others do their thinking for them.
“All proponents of thinking skills (critical, creative,…) emphasize the relevance of thinking for many aspects of life, not just those usually associated with “thinking.” For example, the Critical Thinking Community says, “Critical thinking is the art of taking charge of your own mind. Its value is simple: if we can take charge of our own minds, we can take charge of our lives.”
In another page they describe the centrality of thinking, and a common educational problem:
“Critical thinking is not an isolated goal unrelated to other important goals in education. Rather, it is a seminal goal which, done well, simultaneously facilitates a rainbow of other ends. It is best conceived, therefore, as the hub around which all other educational ends cluster. For example, as students learn to think more critically, they become more proficient at historical, scientific, and mathematical thinking. Finally, they develop skills, abilities, and values crucial to success in everyday life. …
Recent research suggests that critical thinking is not typically an intrinsic part of instruction at any level. Students come without training in it, while faculty tend to take it for granted as an automatic by-product of their teaching. Yet without critical thinking systematically designed into instruction, learning is transitory and superficial.”
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/think/critical.htm#critical-thinking
By default, critical thinking has evolved into something where some individuals does the thinking for others in today’s world, and at all the levels of society. Some would call it silo thinking, and the next link discusses it and how technology has influenced silo thinking.
“Over time, what this approach does is to foster a silo-thinking mentality in which people protect their turf by retreating into gobbledygook. Because of this it is increasingly-difficult for the average learner to see the wider relevance of what it is they’re studying, and above all to be aware of the context of the materials they have access to, and how those materials (and indeed the learners themselves) also relate to a wider world, to which they themselves will eventually bring their accumulated knowledge, and affect others, in turn.
One of the reasons given, for teaching and learning inside this reductionist straitjacket with which we’ve lived since the first, seventeenth-century grammar schools, is that there was no other way to do it. We lived in a culture of scarcity. There just wasn’t the technology available to share the intellectual wealth with more than a few, or to cross discipline boundaries without risk. Besides which, in the classroom, the theme-and subject-oriented approach, using agreed standard textbooks, was easier to work with. There were right and wrong answers. So people passed or failed. An approach which tended to fit the student to the system, rather than the system to the student.
This view was fine. Until such a time as the world (that is, technology) might pass it by. As it is now doing. For at least the past two decades, thanks initially to the public media, students have become increasingly aware of the world outside the narrow confines of their curriculum, but have had no easily-accessible means to satisfy their curiosity, itself generated (in the first place) by TV, and then by the fast-advancing technologies of communication and information processing. And virtual reality. And computer games.
As a believer in the view that technology shapes society, I see the dramatically-increasing availability of tools and resources other than that of the school-room (or even of the established information media), generating more questions among learners than either teachers or TV programmers can answer satisfactorily, at the level of each individual.
However, the extraordinary speed with which technology costs have been falling and information-processing capability has been rising, now offer the possibility of additional approaches to the old, top-down, one-size-fits-all, ethnocentric classroom product.”
http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/IEA.html
The author brings a different way of looking at technology, without the need of destroying cultures, values and traditions of individuals and groups of people. “But at a time when information technology and telecommunications are about to enhance and empower the viability of even small communities (with luck even to save many cultures around the world from being wiped out, as so many have been during the last two centuries of colonialism and top-down centralist power-bloc expansion), we are at last going to have the tools to think about diversity in a different way. Not in the old, cookie-cutter, paternalist way that sought to bring the benefits of so-called “Western civilization” to what were deemed to be “under-privileged” groups and communities and cultures, but, instead, to watch in appreciation as they use the technology to benefit themselves in ways they choose, based on their own heritage, and in ways that don’t undermine their own cultural identities. And if they chose ways that seem to go counter to our own values, all we can (and should) do… is try to understand those choices, and learn how best to live with them.
As for the fears (often expressed) of some kind of ‘technological determinism,’ that the technology brings with it certain technology-oriented way of thinking that put a culture at risk (the old argument that it’s becoming a hamburger world), I have seen proof in my own life that this is not necessarily so. ”
I am afraid that the use of technology in the public education system is being used to create the hamburger world in our classrooms, and even if some students are steak or liver, the intent of the system is to ground them into hamburger, where differences are not celebrated or tolerated. It does not have to be this way, and yet it is.
Of interest is a collection of articles on technology and education.
http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/front_tech.htm
Paul, This content v process issue is oftentimes gets cast as a division along the left-right continuum.
People like Bob Davis, George Martell and myself (all of This Magazine is About Schools), that anyone would put on the left, decry the “skills mania” as Bob called it in his book of that name. A later book, J.L. Granatstein’s “Who Killed Canadian History” blames the process skills mania for good bit of the problem.
Educhatter can be intellectually lazy at times. That is why it is handy to have Greg Forster (curator of Jay P. Greene’s Blog) around to keep me on my toes.
Taking up my challenge, he offered this compelling response, clarifying a few of the finer points:
“The same pedagogical research that shows you can’t teach “skills” except by teaching “content” also shows that you can’t teach “knowledge” except by teaching “practice.”
Be careful how you invoke “the ancients.” Socrates – well, okay, the Platonic Socrates, if you want to get technical – certainly draws an extremely sharp contrast between knowledge and wisdom on the one hand, and practice and accomplishment on the other. But Aristotle does not; he thinks you can’t really have either knowledge or wisdom unless you also live a practical life and accomplish things. And it’s no coincidence that Socrates disdains democracy and mostly hangs out with aristocrats, while Aristotle admires the Athenian constitution and argues that the city should exercise as little control as possible over the private lives of its citizens.
Note that when Socrates sharply divides the life of wisdom from the life of accomplishment, he insists that only a tiny minority can ever have the former. And he’s right; beyond a certain minimal level, knowledge simply for its own sake is something of which few are capable and in which few are interested. I happen to be one of them, but I don’t think others should be punished for not sharing my preference.”
Comment:
Clearly, I might have been better advised to invoke the name of Aristotle in making my case. Apparently, I am more Aristotelian than I realized and less purely Socratic than I had previously imagined.
If you have followed this, you can see why a knowledge of the Greeks has shocking relevance in the new millennium. It is more relevant now than centuries ago. And John Dewey might turn out to be just another modernist heretic. ( Smile)
From the SQE Archives is an article just what you are talking about Paul. In “A Bogus Dichotomy” Dr. Hung-Hsi Wu, professor of mathematics at U. Cal Berkely states:
“In mathematics education, this debate takes the form of “basic skills or conceptual understanding.” This bogus dichotomy would seem to arise from a common misconception of mathematics held by a segment of the public and the education community: that the demand for precision and fluency in the execution of basic skills in school mathematics runs counter to the acquisition of conceptual understanding.
“The truth is that in mathematics, skills and understanding are completely intertwined. In most cases, the precision and fluency in the execution of the skills are the requisite vehicles to convey the conceptual understanding. There is not “conceptual understanding” and “problem-solving skill” on the one hand and “basic skills” on the other. Nor can one acquire the former without the latter.”
Click to access dichotomy.pdf
I read an interesting article a few weeks ago, that presents an interesting explanation by Sowell.
“Sowell uses the term “vision” to describe a “sense of how the world works.” In this sense, a vision differs from a theory, which is a more specific description of how specific things work. The vision a person holds may, however, affect the theories the person considers plausible or can come up with. Visions also differ from “values,” which more closely describe how you think things should be.
Sowell argues that the historical fault lines of politics and political ideologies result not so much from differences in values but from differences in visions. In the book, Sowell differentiates between two visions — an unconstrained vision, which believes that human beings are capable of great things and it is society’s institutions that hold them back, as opposed to the constrained vision, which holds human beings as fallible individuals who can do both great and horrible things, and which relies on society’s institutions to create the right incentive structure to get people to do the right things. In Sowell’s view, the unconstrained vision focuses on dispositions (what people feel, what they want to do, what they are capable of) while the constrained vision focuses on incentives (does the incentive structure provide adequate rewards for doing things that help others?). Sowell also notes that the unconstrained vision is generally found more on what is often termed the Left while the constrained vision is often found on the Right, but that this is not a defining characteristic. (Sowell at least makes a superficial attempt to appear neutral in the book, though his sympathies with the constrained vision are not a strain to judge).
In a later book, The Vision of the Anointed, Sowell lets loose his wrath on the unconstrained vision and all the damage it has wrought. Here, he rechristens the constrained vision as the tragic vision and the unconstrained vision as the vision of the anointed. The latter book is more full of current debates, and as such, the application of the paradigm of visions in some of these is not clear. Nonetheless, as Charles Murray points out in his review, Sowell’s basic causal explanation of the distinction has, over the years, become an important tool in understanding the different ideologies and policy views. Sowell’s basic dichotomy was picked up on and further elaborated upon by Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate.”
http://thinkingbeyondcompetition.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/a-conflict-of-visions-in-education/
It strikes me that technology and the use of it in the public education system, is being run along the same type of ideology fault lines.
“In Sowell’s conflict of visions paradigm, progressivism would arise from an unconstrained vision and traditionalism would arise from a constrained vision. Certainly, at a purely phenomenological level, the fault lines align well. Progressives have more rosy and positive beliefs about the abilities of children to construct and discover their own realities, and less respect for the institutions that force children to learn seemingly arbitrary rules to better conform to society. But can Sowell’s theory go beyond accounting for phenomena to explaining why certain groups consistently embrace progressivism? In other words, why do education professors (and many of their students, who go on to teach at schools) promote a romantic, unconstrained vision of a child’s potential to flower through self-discovery?”
What I have observed that the use of technology in the schools, and for what purposes appeared to be following along the same fault lines. Software, sites, and other devices that will help on the basics of any topic, are discouraged at the very least. Or as I have found, there is a very clear policies on who is allowed to freely used them, because it is the type that does not allow a child to construct and discovered their own truth or knowledge. Not only did I meet resistance at the school level, requesting software or the use of devices that would help in basic skills, but I also had to deal with the arguments at the school or the board level, on what I was re-teaching at the home level.
From the Dalai Lama’s facebook page today,
”In spiritual growth, it is important to avoid imbalances between academic or intellectual learning and practical implementation. Otherwise there is a danger that too much intellectualization will kill the more contemplative practices and too much emphasis on practical implementation without study will kill the understanding. There has got to be a balance.”
Yin and Yang truly understood, is quite profound.
Andy Hargreaves really summarizes why there is something of a “reform” movement, misguided as it is, in the USA and nothing much to speak of in Canada.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/928064–canada-s-culture-of-excellence-in-education
I guess when you are #6 in the world and #2 in the western world, the “reform” movement does not have very much wind in its sails. I guess when you are #17 USA or #24 UK, thing need to change.
The only real countries ahead of Canada (as opposed to cities, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore) are Finland and Korea.
In Korea, as Obama pointed out, teachers are reveared and called “nation builders”. Here and in the USA they are ‘teacher bashed’ at every turn by people who hope to profit from privatization.
Nevertheless, none of the successful nations sees ‘privatization’ as part of the reason for success. These nations are successful due to powerful, highly unionized, public school systems.
Doug, Hargreaves have some nerve to call himself a Canadian. At the end of the article, it became apparent he has no idea what Canada is, nor is he a Canadian as he declares.
“Being Canadian is not about occupying the middle ground in everything. It’s also about being cooperative and inclusive and about valuing shared community and public life. It’s not this or that province’s policy that makes Canada such a strong educational performer, but a social fabric that values education and teachers, prizes the public good, and doesn’t abandon the weak in its efforts to become economically stronger.
These are the things that make Canada educationally successful, and that it should cherish and protect compared to poorer PISA performers, like the U.S. (17th) and U.K. (24th). Let’s be content to be Canadian in most things if we must, but Canadians in general — Ontarians, Albertans, British Columbians and Québécois alike — should feel proud to be among the world’s very best in education.”
Hargreaves is a dangerous educrat for the children that are in public schools. At Boston College, among the many other education institutes he worked for, his expertise is
“Emotional geographies and emotional politics of teaching and leading, effects of educational reform on secondary schools and their teachers, relationship between teacher effectiveness and teacher development.” Only another educrat would understand this edubabble.
http://www.bc.edu/schools/lsoe/facultystaff/faculty/hargreaves.html
On the above page, note he is not a Canadian, but a British citizen. Moving onto his personal page, a bit more sense what he does at Boston College. “Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. The mission of the Chair is to promote social justice and connect theory and practice in education. ”
http://www.andyhargreaves.com/
Going back to the article, Hargreaves states, “Both countries have a strong commitment to public schools and only a very modest private sector in education. Both countries have strong social welfare and public health systems with broad safety nets to protect the youngest and most vulnerable members of the population. Last, both nations are characterized by deeper cultures of cooperation and inclusiveness that make them more competitive internationally.”
Broad safety nets to protect the youngest? Did Hargreaves spend much time in Canada as he claims, and if he did he did, he certainly did not stray away from the confines of the high rent district in Toronto where everything does look greener and rosier at any angle.
Dangerous are the educrats who promote the typical edubabble of social justice in our public schools, while ignoring the glaring evidence to the contrary, that the current social justice policies are creating a deep disconnect between what is being portray and practiced in our schools to the reality of the children and the wider community. However, Hargreaves is very good for teachers’ unions, creating new teacher jobs where there was never a need for and probably his books come in handy to come up with reasons why teachers need a raise in their pay rate.
As for his comments on Ontario, “The province is praised for its urgent focus on measurable improvement in literacy and numeracy; its ability to set a clear plan and sign up key stakeholders to commit to it, including teachers; its sophisticated use of achievement data to pinpoint problems in underperformance among certain students or schools; and then its response: to “flood” these schools with resources, technical assistance and support. Bravo, Ontario!”
If schools were truly flooded with resources, technical assistance and support, than why is there Ontario schools who are resource poor compared to the school down the street?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Colin Jagoe and William Kierstead, William Kierstead. William Kierstead said: Interesting post on 21st Century Skills and a swipe at yours truly. Post some comments and set 'em straight? http://tinyurl.com/4mc78cf […]
I know Andy quite well Nancy. We have been on TVO together and on panels at OISE for the media together. He is a world ranked authority and is asked to travel the world giving education advice.
You would be hard pressed to find a higher authority.
BTW he does point out that Ontario and Canada have world regarded outstanding education systems.
Doug his expertise is with teachers, and certainly not children and how they learn. I rather trust the knowledge of a front line teacher that had written a book, than a educrat that makes his bulk living selling Dewey-speak dogma that really does not know every day people. On top of that, what was written in the Star article, sounds more like a mouth piece for the unions, than actual facts of Canada and their education system. Rather ironic for a non-Canadian, working and living in the United States producing books for teachers at the international level. I bet a few Americans question him about this, As for being a higher authority, would you mean his education and his long list of accomplishments? Sounds like the same old dogma, of thou shall not question a person with outstanding credentials and his theories. Much like a parent questioning the school and their policies.
Here is a video of him, praising the Alberta public education system, and comparing it much like the Finland’s model. In both states, at least the children have a firm foundation on the basics, compared to other countries or provinces. Or in other words, my child would never be identified as having learning problems if she received the correct reading instruction in the first place. Just think of it Doug, if she received the correct reading instruction, I would probably not be writing this post, and be one less person that you have to respond to. As for the video, is Hargreaves turning traitor to the centralized public education system concept, that you love and adore?
There is no bigger advocate for Finland than me Nancy as John L. will tell you.
But he is praising Alberta, and Ontario is not even mentioned. Wonder why? Better go on the search engine, and see his slow shift away from big centralized bureaucracies. Who knows his next book might be an indictment on the current public education system and the powerful arms within the system, that are fighting to maintain the status-quo and the political power that goes with it.
Alberta has a good education system, it is just that “choice” has nothing to do with it.
Alberta and BC have been leading Canada for many decades. Not by much but they have the lowest Adult illiteracy rates, some of the lowest poverty rates, etc.
Nancy this anti bureauracy, anti union, anti progressive, anti public stuff is just cliche. There is nothing to it. The world goes on as this ancient critique grows cob webs.
While Alberta teachers and the schools have something that no other province has, where the schools are operated as the schools see fit, and not some educrat from far above. The only provision is that the provincial curriculum must be in place.
As for unions in Alberta, I guess you would be against this one too, that one of the school boards, is asking for no raises with reduced teaching time. I can’t remember which board, but it is a city. Other public sector unions in other parts of Canada will be asked to share the pain, and Toronto will be interesting to see, considering the new mayor and the up and coming provincial election. The public is in no mood to cater to teachers’ unions and other public sector unions in the light of rising taxes, increased fees, high food prices, and shelter costs. And on a side note, when a student is suspended for speaking the truth on what is happening to the high school soccer team, it is time to take a magnifying glass by the public and start noting the details of the public education system in Ontario. The day that a student can be suspended for expressing themselves is an indictment on the current public education system, and where progressive ideology should shift to respecting the individual’s rights in the Charter of Freedom and Rights. But I won’t hold my breath on that one with the current system.
“Alberta has a good education system, it is just that “choice” has nothing to do with it.”
WRONG. Angus McBeath, the former director of the Edmonton Public Board would heartily disagree with you. Without choice, they would never have undertaken the overhaul of their system in the first place.
“Our staff actually like being
part of a system that is well
known for its educational
innovation. They like
operating in a system of choice
and have taken it for granted
that parents have choice and
are our customers.”
Click to access ep_accountabilityinpublicschools_macbeath.pdf
http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/1194
Saying it does not make it true. Alberta and BC had excellent education stats “Long before choice” either as charter or the Edmonton site based management system were even considered.
Alberta’s date has nothing, zer, zip, nada to do with choice.
Alberta date has a lot more to do with its demographics than anything else.
Nobody in the serious education community believes choice at less than 1% of charter schools, has any influence on the education system which was a leader long before the policy. All choice within the Edmonton public school system using ATA teachers is part of the public system (the system I support). I have no problem with them although I also don’t believe they have much to do with a solution either way.
As the Toronto Star points out, they get it, poor test results come from poor schools full of poor kids. Although all provinces have pockets of poverty, including Alberta, they just have less poverty and therefore higher results.
Doug, laying out blanket statements going on it is only about poor kids, the stats still state that kids living at or below poverty level is under 10 % of the population. So which is it, the majority of schools in the Toronto board have low income schools, or that Toronto has more of them. But if that was true than how would one make sense of the latest stats for Toronto, where low income people are moving out of the city of Toronto? You really should get out and visit Canada, even Alberta have their fair share of people living at or below the poverty line, but when shelter is the biggest expense working at $15 a hour at the Tim Hortons, one has to look at the big picture. As for making statements about Alberta’s public education system, when was Ontario or any other province feature in the New York Times, or in Merry old England? But you really should get out of Toronto, and gain some perspective. As for the Toronto Star article, a piece of puff when even the researchers will concede that not all low-income schools are doing badly, because they have good teachers. And there is high income schools that are doing very poorly, compared to their counterparts. As far as I am concern, the union heads are using low income, poor parenting, and whatever excuses to explain poor outcomes. And the other partner in crime, are the teachers’ colleges, ready and able to developed new theories filled with the mumbo-jumbo of edubabble to be used as supporting evidence to explained poor outcomes.
Nancy, you don’t have to be VERY poor. The data in every single board of education in Canada, the USA, UK, Australia and in fact in every juristiction on the planet will show that, the test results are highest for the highest incomes and they slowly go down as the income of the parents in the school goes down. The very poor do the worst of course but the blue collar working class with jobs is next up the list followed by the lower middle class, the upper middle class and finally by the very affluent.
This was true in Grey and Bruce counties where I grew up, Alberta, NL, every province, every state, and every country.
In the UK they call them the League Tables because they so closely resemble the football results.
You can totally change the teaching staff , the curriculum and the pedagogy, the same schools will be on the bottom and on the top every year.
If you took school A which came first in testing last year and school B which came last, and totally switched the entire staff including the principal, school A would be first and school B would be last again next year.
The problem, my friend is totally located in the home based on SES data.
Zero % of the blame can be assigned to the school, the teachers, the school system or the ministry of education except where they fail to assign enough money to the schools most in need.
In reality, curriculum, and the crazy teaching theories being peddled by the teachers’ colleges has been standardized for all schools. All teachers are forced on this pathway, in order to keep their jobs. What is left, that has been addressed in other fields, is the biases and knowledge of teachers, the educrats and the politicians. Throw in the parents, children and the local community, the mixture of the biases and knowledge of all six groups can create a dynamic where decisions are based on purely subjective matter, and not on hard objective data.
As for the current push for more money, because it is SEC factors at play, and ignoring the human element at play within the education structure, and how it impacts decision creates a false premise. And in turn, how it impact decision making for the parents, children and the local community without looking at the human element, creates another false premise. Reducing human beings down to income, social status, health, shelter types, and making extreme generalizations about groups of people, creates a natural progression of biases and subjective thinking of those who are making decisions.
Standardization of curriculum and pedagogy has actually created the dynamics of where low income schools struggle with low achievement, and wealthier schools do not struggled as much. The individuals of the SEC groups, are making their decisions according to their own knowledge base, their wants, and are reacting to other factors being imposed on them as individuals.
As has been my observations, the public education system does a poor job in clear, objective thinking when formulating policy and theories. The progressive Dewey-speak that is in current curriculum, pedagogy, and now in the 21st technology values subjective thinking rather than objective thinking. It places blame on the subject, rather than the actions or non-actions of the public education system. It creates policies and pedagogy that impacts behaviour, where knowledge and hard data is of less value. A natural extension of focusing on behaviour, is the biases that come into play, and the expectation that the lower the income and social status, behaviour is the cause rather than the cognitive needs of the children.
On one side, we have the last 40 years of social science research and the data from across the world.
On the other side we have your opinions and observations. Hmmm
I can’t decide.
Social science is not all what it is quack up to be, considering the current events of today. No one from the social science field predicted the ongoing uprising in Egypt where people are demanding their government and leaders to leave. It is ironic to see the shock, dismay and the puzzled faces on television trying to avoid the reasons why the people are rebelling, especially when the Muslims and Christians are marching together in unison. I wonder what country will be next, just like I wonder what crazy theory will the educrats come up with next, to fixed the problems of the education system? Problems I might add, that are mostly preventable in the education system, but not one educrat, especially those who hail from the teachers’ colleges can see the damage inflicted on the children. But than again, social science fields are more interested in behaviour of human beings, and to be able to conditioned humans to more social creatures of the group think. Not so interested in cold hard data that often tells the stories of outcomes of bad theories and policies. But here is where the social sciences outputs new theories to counteract the cold hard data and outcomes, by shifting numbers in a mysterious potion of facts and fiction to arrive at the quackery they insist is the way to higher achievement.
Hmmmm I thought we were talking about the idea that poverty has a direct relationship with educational success but I find instead that we are talking about the crisis in Egypt.
I’ll stick with the experts and rest my case.
The Canadian Education Association’s magazine Education Canada is now trumpeting the “21st Century Skills” agenda, judging from its most recent issue. Four Deans of Education “Speak Out” in the Current Issue and all are safely on the latest bandwagon.
It’s another example of the uncritical acceptance of the Tony Wagner “21st Century Skills” agenda here in Canada.
Here’s how the feature article begins:
“Calls for students to develop 21st-century competencies are gaining traction among educators and policymakers, driven by a number of factors including research on learning, the ubiquity of information and communications technologies, and globalization in its many forms.”
You can guess where that is heading. For the full story , see:
http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/deans-speak-out
The Deans are totally immersed in the ideology, so much so that no one questions any of the assumptions. The punch line is ominous: Teacher education is now fully engaged in “meeting the demands of the new century.”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/diane-ravitch/ravitch-a-moment-of-national-i.html
The 21st Century Skills movement has just taken a minor hit. A Canadian educator has had the temerity to call into question the new orthodoxy in public education:
http://www.dialogueonline.ca/article-print.php?id=237
Wait a minute!
That’s a commentary first posted here on Educhatter’s Blog! ( We are usually ahead of the curve)