Yes, it's made the rounds for the past several years, but sometimes something speaks to me, gets stuck in the recesses of my brain, pops out unexpectedly and just can't be ignored. This is one of those things. I'm not a Mac devotee (although I know a few people who pray before the alter of Steve Jobs - hello Eileen), but I appreciate what he has done and the reality that his risks, successes and failures have made him (and everything he seems to touch) into what he is (and they are) today.

You may disagree, but I don't believe that everyone can make themselves blaze a new path. Many people need the safety and security of a routine existence, e.g., forty hours a week and a steady paycheck. I not going to pretend that you can lump such people into a single employment category, educational bracket or intellectual ability set. That is ridiculous. While stability seekers aren't confined to any one type of job or work environment, I will say that I don't generally find them in business for themselves -- too much stress from the unknown, from the ups and downs of market conditions. (I do employment research when I'm not training as a Jedi.) They generally don't want passion so much as they need stability and security. I find stability seekers to be some of the best, albeit not the most exciting, employees because they have a highly focused drive to keep their jobs and will stick around for years.

Now, before you start warming up your fingers in anger, please understand that I know and love many people with this personality makeup. Indeed, I don't see it as a personality flaw. It's just a part of who they are. Some have argued that all people are naturally creative and daring at birth and are only made into security seekers through an over emphasis on obedience in the early years (such as in very strict households) and from creativity crushing "there's only one right answer"-based educational systems that systematically eliminate creativity from the learning process. But, I have known little, little kids that were stability seekers from birth. They are normal, bright, happy and loving kids and get along well in life for the most part. And they are kids that absolutely live for their schedule, much to the chagrin of a more relaxed mom and/or dad. These stability seeking kids are very likely to have a mini freaky-freakout if something unexpected (even if it's something they enjoy) is tossed into their day unannounced. 

I find that stability seekers love the word no. I don't mean in a necessarily negative manner, but as in: "No, that won't work," as their first reaction to a new idea. "No, we don't do things that way," when seeing someone try to change something at work. "No, mom cuts my sandwiches into quarters on the diagonal." Once you can convince them of the superiority of your suggestion, (and that may a real job, in and of itself) you'll have a staunch supporter from that moment forward.

Now, back to Mr. Jobs' speech. I agree with him (even after all of the above) about following your passion for a fulfilling and life-consuming vocation. Following your passion will move you into places you can't even imagine, have you doing things you wouldn't have believed possible and get you dropped on your toukus more often than you really want to know. There's no guarantee you'll be happy, no guarantee you'll succeed and no guarantee that you won't change directions later.

Passion requires risk, a willingness to let go of almost everything you're used to, and an openness to - even a courting of - failure. Best of all, passion requires a love of change. Following a passion immediately demands your willingness to be different, to let go of your previous expectations (and anyone else's), and to bypass the norm. When I was in graduate school, all my classmates were lining up internships with solid companies in their hometowns or in their current places of business. I began to follow suit, doing what you do. Internship with SuperMondoInternationalCompany X. Check. Oh, baby, I was going to have it made. As a break from the classroom routine, one of my professors had a couple of previous students come in and talk about their interships in Ireland. One lived in a convent just outside of Dublin and worked with some nuns providing services to the poor. The other lived in a small western coastal village working for a governmental service organization while her husband spent the winter trying to figure out how to get, and keep, a peat fire burning. On a whim, and because we had some extra time left over, our professor also showed a video about a for-profit agency in The Netherlands that night.

Afterwards, during break, all the students sat around and talked about how cool an intership in Ireland would be. Over the following days and weeks, my buddy Eileen and I started thinking, "Seriously, we should do that." Dad Windu, my husband of not yet one year, was less than enthusiastic. Eileen's boyfriend (and now husband) was less than enthusiastic. Our classmates were sure that we would never get jobs afterwards. My academic advisor said I was committing career suicide. My in-laws were quite sure that it would be the death-knell of my marriage. The "yeah but's" had started for everyone except Eileen and me. I don't know why. I still don't know why it never occurred to either of us that we couldn't do this, do it well and reap the rewards afterwards. We never did get to Ireland during our intership, not even to visit, but after a few unexpected turns along the way, we ended up interning in that great little for-profit center in The Netherlands under one of the best supervisors we could ever have asked for. We even ended up working for the center after graduation for a year and a half, simply because we wrote up a consulting proposal one night after saying, "Wouldn't it be great if we could..."

Most of the homeschoolers I know are passion seekers, as are many of their children, although not all. For those of you other passion seekers out there, adult and child alike, don't wait for others to agree.

Act.  Do what you love.  Fail spectacularly a few times.  Try again.

Here are a few screenshots of the models, which I am currently in the process of exploring. Please note that Bloom's Taxonomy is still under construction, but I am already enjoying it nevertheless. I must say, I find 3D models ever so useful, visualisations are a great way to aid understanding. Besides, they can be good old plain fun, and creativity and fun should be a must in learning.

Well, I don't know if it's been exactly a thousand generations, but from time immemorial, parents have taught their children at home, caring for them, teaching them, correcting them and encouraging them. Children learned the basic skills this way. It was not always bucolic, idyllic or easy, but it was normal and it worked well. The instructors weren't certified, credentialed, professional learning specialists. They were parents and they loved their children enough to make sure that they received the education they needed to survive, thrive and be a useful part of society. Often they directed their children to make use of the collective wisdom of their clan, the knowledge of a friend or the ingenuity of a particularly talented person. What they never did is pretend that they couldn't teach and direct the education of their own children, nor did they ignore directing the education of their children by assuming that it was someone else's responsibility.

People from ages past were neither dumber nor more simplistic than people today. Chronological snobbery (the "they had less to know" argument) is simple foolishness. People thousands and thousands of years ago addressed, contemplated and solved essential, elemental issues. We still struggle with variations of them today: transportation; food production and distribution; communication; construction; and preventative health measures. The Ancients developed the wheel and made the connection between seed, soil, water and time to produce their own food. They selectively interbred animals to increase the likelihood of certain desirable traits. Not too shabby. The Minoans invented a system of writing to keep track of daily activities and to facilitate trade. The Egyptians envisioned, planned and constructed marvels of engineering that still stand today, strong and awe-inspiring as ever. The Greeks wrestled with water, pulling it skyward, with Archemedes' screw. The Romans channeled it, via the aqueducts, into their magnificent cities and flushed waste from private and public places, effectively reducing the specter of disease.

For the basics,  they were taught primarily by their family members, relatives and other individuals on an one-to-one basis. In essence, they homeschooled their kids until they were ready to specialize in an advanced field of study or were ready to join the larger labor market. Just like homeschoolers do today. Let's be honest here. Most of what is taught in the K-12 classroom is pretty basic stuff: reading, writing, mathematical manipulation, basic scientific concepts... These are things we should all have learned by the time we start making babies.

Considering the craziness of California's current state of homeschooling legislation, I recommend reading the following essay by Diane Flynn Keith: Be a Homeschool Pirate! Hoist the Jolly Roger!

We hear a lot these days about kids needing higher-order thinking skills, teamwork skills and study skills. As a homeschooling mom of an only child, I used to hear a whole lot about kids needing social skills -- that elusive "socialization" argument. I agree that kids need to think logically, work effectively as part of a team, learn to process information easily, and form working and social relationships with other people not exactly like themselves. What I don't hear much about from educational think tanks, teachers and the average parent on the street is ethical skills. In my opinion, without ethical skills, nothing else matters.

Ethics teach us to think outside of ourselves, outside of our own needs and desires, and outside of what might be easiest, fastest or cheapest. The abilty to think, and then act, ethically allows us to look for the positive and negative impact of our actions on the people and world around us. Such understanding requires us to realize that - sometimes - there are multiple, conflicting options and that sadly the lesser of two evils really might be the best solution. 

Without ethical skills, other skills can even prove a detriment to the individual and socity. A person with excellent higher-order thinking skills but no ethical basis has the makings of a truly fantastic criminal. Teamwork without adequate ethical insight means that poor decisions can simply be performed efficiently and with everyone's assistance, not that the team considered the relative merit and weight of each person's argument or idea. Study skills (commonly meant as: know the material - or appear to know the material - for good grades and high stakes tests) without ethics as the educational backbone ensure that cheating, cribbing notes and plagerism will all maintain their usefulness and popularity for years to come.

Furthermore, ethical behavior has everything to do with social skills training. Learning to "get along" in a group often means learning to keep your head down, to avoid appearing, thinking or acting different from the other people in your group and to not question the group's leader, the group's actions or the group's norms. It has more to do with being a good member than with being a good or useful person. My favorite online dictionary, Merriam-Webster, defines socialize (a transitive verb) as: to make social; especially to fit or train for a social environment. Note that it is defined as a social environment, not necessarily a desirable environment. Even gangs and cults have social rules and mores that must be followed. This can be further emphasized by looking at the intransitive verb, socialization: to participate actively in a social group. Social (if you follow the link) being defined as involving allies or confederates, first definition.

So, in this case, I define the Force as ethical skills and abilities, and it does, indeed, give a Jedi his power.

A secondary school has begun teaching its pupils 'mini-lessons' in a bid to boost learning by catering to small concentration periods.

And pupils at Monkseaton Community High School in Tyneside are apparently increasing their results by half a grade, reports the Times, after taking part in the eight-minute lessons that are interspersed with breaks for educational games.

This seems quite similar techniques that will be very familiar to non-formal educationalists, and would fit quite well with some of the small group work and active learning that seem to have been promising in the Blueprint findings.

Generations of children have been let down by so-called progressive education policies which have taught skills and "empathy" instead of bodies of knowledge, the shadow education secretary, Michael Gove, said yesterday.

A Conservative government would reinstate traditional styles of fact-based lessons, he told teachers at a conference at Brighton College in Sussex yesterday.

Gove condemned "pupil-centred learning" theories that gained currency in the 1960s for "dethroning" the teacher. "This misplaced ideology has let down generations of children," he said. "It is an approach to education that has been called progressive, but in fact is anything but. It privileges temporary relevance over a permanent body of knowledge which should be passed on from generation to generation ... We need to tackle this misplaced ideology wherever it occurs."

The NUT's acting General Secretary isn't impressed:

"All children need both skills and knowledge - there is no contradiction," adding: "Teachers will be appalled at Michael Gove's failure to understand how children learn."

Mr Gove needs to understand the benefits of personalised tuition for the children in the greatest need, said Ms Blower.

Mr Gove's website doesn't yet carry the speech so I'm unable to see how relevant it is to our subject area, but as I'm sure you'll be aware our definition of drug education does include a belief that it ought to try to affect children and young people's knowledge, skills and attitudes.

THE CITATION: Dewey, John (1897) 'My pedagogic creed', The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3 (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80. Also available in the informal education archives, http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm.

The one thing I don't like about this site is how they quantify the thinkers (putting Dewey over Freire), which I don't think is fair.

This site (CLICK HERE) is dedicated to information about thinkers central to the development of the theory and practice of lifelong learning, social action and informal education, which I believe is an essential reform the educational system must undergo in order to stabilize communities' transitions into models of effective sustainability. (synonymous with: self-sufficiency)

He's running a discussion on teaching at a crossroads and has, in my view, made some excellent observations about the challenges facing us all in schooling today. Judging by the comments he has tapped into some key issues. As hard as the comments may seem they have to be named and it's an approach that I believe needs to be encouraged.

This year, we embarked on a learning conversation with school leaders, which is the core approach to delivering our system intent.  We purchased a book called 'How people learn' by Bransford et al, which serves as our  touchstone for continuing dialogue.

As I’ve said in previous posts, it is important that this theory informs our practice.  I don’t think we are going to get anywhere delivering the type of schooling needed in today’s world unless we engage in a serious, rigourous investigation and reflection using contemporary educational literature.

Our literature base is well recognised and respected: Fullan, Eddy, Hargreaves, Sergiovanni, Hill, Caldwell, Timperley, Robinson, Beare and so the list goes on.  These educators approach the business of schooling from a unique theoretical view point with profound implications for practice.

We have to move beyond “I think”, “I know”, “this works for me” as the only basis for informing good practice.  Too often, the approach in my experience has been to maintain the status quo and to avoid the hard issues in creating a relevant schooling experience.

I believe there is an element of anti-intellectualism that exists within the education sector and it is now time to name it and deal with it.  It certainly doesn't imply that the work of teachers and their involvement in the change process is irrelevant. 

In fact, I would argue that never before have we needed greater teacher involvement and active participation in the work of creating knowledge-age schools. However,  participation must be informed by good theory not just personal opinion. 

It is up to each learning community to identify the theoretical framework, which will inform practice and then engage regularly in intelligent and reflective dialogue on the important issues.  This is done by reading, dialogue and exchange. In other words, professional learning at its best.
 

But I cannot escape the feeling that, back in the days before the advent of invasive political, psychological and sociological theorising into every aspect of our lives, we actually didn't do too badly.

The vast majority of mankind's achievements occurred in the times before the long-haired men and short-haired women were, inexplicably, given licence to usurp our common, hard-won knowledge and experience with apparently attractive yet unproven theories of human behaviour and motivation.

Plato. Aristotle. Einstein. Galileo. The builders of the pyramids. James Cook. Brunel. The Roman road and bridge/aqueduct designers and builders.

Just a handful of names that indicate unparalleled achievement despite the lack of all our modern aids to comfortable and easy living.

Maybe some of the above individuals and groups grew up in privileged and indulgent (for their times) circumstances. Maybe they didn't. I don't know. But I do know that, compared with the facilities we have available to us today, the accomplishments of those people and groups were wrested from the world in spite of their lack of our modern amenities - and of which they were, of course, quite unaware. They may, too, have been simply trying, to get as far from Nature as possible in their own ways.

It is self-evident that everything we have enjoyed and continue to enjoy in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries could have been made possible only on the back of the work of previous centuries. We owe an immeasurable debt to our forebears and their achievements in the face of a hostile world.

So why, then, have we been so eager in the last fifty years or so to ignore, even repudiate, the lessons of at least a couple of millenia? Why do we reject the experience of our species and suddenly veer off in totally new, unexplored and unproven directions where the education and socialisation of our children are concerned?

Where did we get these modern theories and methods of education? What possessed us to embrace concepts of human behaviour quite at variance with what we have proved throughout our history to work and yield the best results?

History has shown us that the three R's (Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmetic) have formed the basis from which almost all  great human achievements have sprung.

I am not saying that the old methods of education were always particularly fun or, even, inspiring. As a product of the "old school" (forgive the pun) of education, I can personally vouch for the despair, the mind-numbing boredom and apparent lack of relevance that some school subjects - and some of their teachers - generated in their pupils. Yet I can multiply and divide in my head, construct reasonably coherent sentences in my mother tongue, spell without too many atrocities being committed and, generally speaking, get by in the world without necessary recourse to calculators, computers, spell-check programmes or video/computer games.

Also, I am able - within limits - to ponder and discuss matters as diverse as theology, astrophysics, philosophy, American history, politics, computers, motor mechanics, the history of spaceflight, business management, current affairs around the world, amongst others. Some of this ability stems, of course, from the passage of time and the accumulation of a wealth of experiences, but the seeds of the inclination to learn were sown during my time as a schoolchild undergoing a fairly normal primary and secondary education.

I mention this not because I wish anyone to think of me as a genius - I promise you I am very far from being that. It's just that, in my youth I was inculcated with a desire and respect for knowledge of all kinds and I was schooled by ordinary yet great teachers who understood human nature sufficiently to know how and when to apply the carrot and the stick (in the case of the stick, sometimes literally) to engage my interest, to push my nose to the grindstone and to correct my inbuilt indolence and overall boyish wickedness.

Additionally, I was taught - both at home and at (a non-private) school - to be polite, respectful to my elders and betters (that is, pretty much the whole world) and presentable in my appearance. Shortcomings in these non-curricula matters and failure to achieve what was seen to be my potential in classroom business resulted in various possible sanctions; such sanctions ranged from additional homework, detentions or, worst of all (short of expulsion), corporal punishment in the form of the old-fashioned cane wielded by the Headmaster - a six-foot ex-Oxford rugby and rowing blue with the right arm swing and impact of Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay in my earlier school days) and a distressingly consistent sense of public and private right and wrong. One learned quickly not to indulge in activities likely to engage the Head's interest or subsequent annoyance and if one actually experienced any of the school's sanctions - but most especially stimulation of the gluteus maximus - one was taught shame, just as an added bonus.

Therein lay the secret - one learned. And the lessons were lifelong because failure was linked, directly and immediately, with pain of one sort or another.

I use and enjoy calculators, computers and other similar facilities, of course, because they are useful tools and enhance my life and what I do in many ways. However, I can not only survive but also prosper without them because, as a child, I was given the basic, primary tools of human intercourse - the three R's. Today's youth, by and large, do not have these facilities; instead they have only second or third generation tools which are derivatives and quite dependent upon other esoteric disciplines and technologies, rendering them vulnerable to failure when the power fails or the password is forgotten.

Not for today's youngsters the repetitive chanting of the multiplication tables that forever embedded that knowledge in the heads of their parents. None of the writing and re-writing of words to fix in reluctant memories that "after 'c' the 'e' precedes the 'i'. Oh! No! That is far too old-fashioned and cruel to inflict upon the poor little things. Result: almost an entire generation functionally unable to spell or perform mental arithmetic.

Surely it is crazy that a significant proportion of tertiary education entrants must be first made literate and numerate before being able to learn anything of their chosen speciality? "Tertiary" education, by definition, implicitly means that a certain level of mastery of precursor "Primary" and "Secondary" subjects has been attained. How can it be possible, for example, that a first year university student not only cannot spell and perform the most basic of arithmetical activities but also has to undergo special tuition in how to use a simple calculator?

It is not because kids are any less intelligent than previous generations. It is simply that we, as parents and teachers (I shall eschew the more modern politically correct terminology) have failed our children.

We have failed because we have abdicated our rights and duties to our children. We no longer carry the full moral and legal obligations of, once having brought kids into the world, teaching them the disciplines and morals of our society. We have allowed a self-proclaimed bunch of so-called "experts" to usurp our rights and duties of raising, encouraging and chastising our offspring in the ways that we, as the legal guardians of our own children, see best and according to our abilities. We have permitted ourselves, for reasons of convenience and fear of failure - induced by the experts - to surrender the moral and educational development of our children to complete strangers claiming esoteric knowledge beyond the ken of mere mortals such as you and me.

And now we are reaping the harvest of our negligence and cowardice.

Our kids are very poorly educated - not just in the basics of the three R's but also the subject matter that is dependent upon the acquisition of those basics. The comment about being poorly educated does not necessarily refer to the depth of their knowledge in specific subjects and topics in which they are interested, rather it refers to the breadth of their knowledge and comprehension of matters beyond the immediate scope of those interests. In other words, the extent of general knowledge in school children and undergraduates leaves much to be desired.

Also our kids are ill-disciplined to the point of insolence and bored in the absence of constant external (usually, these days, electronic) stimuli. They are given no self respect as individuals; rather they are encouraged to always think of themselves as "team members", sometimes to the extent where they are expected to learn and explore only as members of a group - group discussions, group role-play, group studying and so on. Individual intellectual activities are not encouraged; even in sport the emphasis tends to be on team activities, with, for example, gymnastics and athletics being relatively poorly encouraged. Individualism and individual effort is viewed and treated with frank suspicion.

Those who indulge in those cosy theories which demand that the education and socialisation of our young should be only according to neat little formulae which rely upon delivery in "fun" and "positive" packaging but do not extend to ensuring actual comprehension and application of what is being taught to real life have missed the point in a big way.

Consider a child at the time of birth.

There is nothing, but nothing, more selfish and self-centred than a new-born baby in the entire Universe. Only its needs and demands are of any importance to itself; beyond itself there is naught of interest, value or importance. From the baby's perspective the rest of the Universe is there only to serve him and his immediate needs. The parents amongst you will understand what I mean.

Society is, however, generally tolerant of such behaviour in the very young. Recognition is given to the fact that the infant is, in fact, helpless and makes allowance for the limited ways in which ones so young can communicate and interact with their environment. Sleepless nights, evilly malodorous nappies and decibel-damaged eardrums are accepted as temporary burdens to be borne on the path to raising a socially adapted - and acceptable - human being.

However, society does not expect or accept such behaviour beyond a very limited point. At some time or other a child has to learn to sit, stand, walk, eat on its own, bathe itself, tie its shoelaces, speak, learn to read and write and so on up to the point where that child is, eventually, independent of others and not only take care of itself but also start contributing to the society in which it was born and raised.

But the world into which the child is born is primarily a physical world wherein lie many physical and non-physical dangers which could harm, maim or even kill its inhabitants. In the initial stages of a child's life the main threats to its well-being are almost all physical - lack of food being, perhaps, the foremost. The child soon learns, for example, that one type of physical discomfort can be readily eased by screaming its head off until its mother extracts a breast and transfers milk into its gullet.

How, though, is an otherwise completely ignorant child, unable to speak or understand speech, to learn, for example, that sharp things bite and hot things burn? One way is to allow the child to touch the hot stove or to play with that rotary saw - left carelessly plugged in and on the floor - and to learn that way, but the lesson could be extreme, even terminal. The first learning experience could well be the last. Not particularly efficient.

 Now one characteristic of the human species is that of passing on the lessons learned by previous generations without necessarily requiring the new generation having to slavishly undergo the very same experiences. Knowledge about what has been found to be safe to approach, handle and eat has often been taught in the form of folklore, fables, traditions and certain religious taboos; the wolf, the snake and the preparation of certain foods are some of the many topics that have had warnings passed down from distant generations to the present.

Other, more immediate, dangers such as the hot stove, the empty electric socket in the wall and knowing how and when to safely cross the road require equally immediate action in order to teach the child that his behaviour is hazardous to himself and/or others. Initially, perhaps, the parent will scold the child - sometimes this is sufficient. However, to reinforce the warning, a scolding - together with a smack - gives the child the associative link that what he is doing is dangerous and could have painful repercussions. The physical aspect of the rebuke is important since the child immediately experiences an unwanted unpleasant physical sensation which, whilst not as painful or dangerous to his well-being as the actual hazard itself, gives him a clear indication that pain is associated with what he is doing, to say nothing of the parental disapproval of his actions - although, let's be quite clear, spoken parental disapproval on its own is just not enough for most children.

A physical admonishment for a physical being in a physical world is the only sure way of ensuring the lesson is learned. The very design of our bodies confirms this: pain is the warning mechanism of our bodies that what we have just done was not, perhaps, the best thing to do if we wish to continue and enjoy our life.

And, because humans are also social animals, similar tactics are required for the correction of other types of mistake. Thus, although being cheeky or rude to a stranger might not, at first glance, appear to merit a smacked bottom, a physical rebuke is not necessarily out of place. One way or another, our social actions result, sooner or later, in physical consequences. Rudeness to a pretty girl is not likely to get you laid; dressing like a slob is not likely to advance your hopes of securing that cushy job you've had your eye on; and giving cheek to a stranger could result in a knuckle sandwich or, if you're really unlucky, having a gun pulled on you.

These are the hard-won lessons garnered by our parents, grandparents and other ancestors way back to the dim past of our origins - and the way they were delivered to each new generation must have been effective since we have, generally speaking, been quite successful in adding to our numbers and improving our lot over the millenia.

So why do we now want to overturn all that accumulated experience of teaching our children? Why do we allow the psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, educational theorists and every other self-important bugger with a couple of letters after his name inflict their plausible and self-interested ideas upon those most vulnerable to the hazards of the world - our children - whilst we ignore the damage being done to our social morals, ethics and cohesion? Why do we permit total strangers outside of our families with who-knows-what agendas to dictate that we cannot physically chastise our children if we think it best? Have we, as a society, lost our minds? Do we understand what it means to deprive a child of unpleasant, even painful, educative experiences and the later effects of that deprivation on the adult?

Where once humans experienced war, natural disaster and individual tragedies and then just got on with life as best they could afterwards, now we require psychological counselling every time we don't get what we want. Didn't get that job? See your shrink to re-build your ego. Got shot at (a very real possibility in South Africa) in the street? Quick! Get some post-traumatic stress counselling! Your pet hamster died of old age? Start a grief counselling discussion group. Disturbed an armed robbery in Shoprite? Never ever shop there again. Better still, never step foot outside your front door again.

Sure, it's great to see kids being childish and having fun. It's one of the joys of being a parent. But another, even greater, parental joy is seeing your child advancing and maturing away from the innocence and dangers of childhood to responsible and socially acceptable adulthood. Part of that process is learning how to be a human being and, like it or not, learning is work - and often hard, painful work, at that - which must be undergone in order for that person to survive and prosper.

 We, particularly in the West, (I count myself as being a Westerner despite being a South African), and those under the influence of the West, have, since the Second World War, begun a process of weakening and debilitating ourselves in mind and spirit; we are handicapping our children - and their children's children - in their ability to face the world as it really is and we are fogging their perceptions of life into believing it to be all soft clouds and pink bunny rabbits.

Are you willing to bet that the Chinese, the Congolese, the Brazilians and a whole bunch of others - including a lot of multinational corporations - are busy burying their heads under their pillows as we are? Not a chance. They're all just waiting until we're good and lost in cloud-cuckoo land so that they can come in and take what they want from us.

Spearpoint.

The study looks at the:

ability of printed normative messages to influence conservation behavior among hotel guests. While prior research has shown that social norms can both guide and spur behavior, there are a number of questions about the generality of the effects, the impact of aligning descriptive and injunctive norms, and the relative impact of normative information about a specific versus general referent group.

In other words can written messages make us not ask for new bath towels when we stay at a hotel.

See also:

• Mailshot triggers reduced drinking among concerned problem drinkers

(via The Research Digest Blog)

Identifying the problem comes before the solution. There can be a number of possible issues at work that must be discerned and then dealt with according to the best wisdom available for each. The student may have had poor teaching prior to entering your class. He may have physiological or psychosomatic issues that need diagnosis and treatment, but I believe these are rarer than statistics might indicate. The student, especially if he is pubescent, may simply have an attitude that needs work. Teachers can definitely help with this, but it takes differing strategies than other issues. And lastly, the student may just not have enough training in reading and be falling behind due to lack of work. This last issue is the one I will deal with here. I will address others as I am able.

First, let’s cover what I don’t think you need:

We don’t need to start thinking that…
…reading is in need of machinery – man is not a machine, and neither is the process of thinking, which is why reading does not need to become a mechanistic endeavor. Many modern approaches seek to quantify reading ability when I believe a good teacher is a much better “measure” of good reading than any “objective” form of quantification.
…”new techniques” will solve reading problems. If anything, usually all that is needed is time, patience, and the few basic strategies one would use to teach a new reader to read.
…there is some magic program that will work wonders. There are great programs (read on) but most of them show a preference for what I just mentioned, giving plenty of time and patience toward proven exercises that teach a student to read fluently and well.
…what we need are specialists. I am not against folks specializing in the knowledge of teaching reading and reading remediation, but the average person can teach a child to read and can, with patience, help a struggling reader gain more ability.

Okay, with the negatives out of way, what do we need to do with a student who is struggling? Reading has three distinct acts, according to Aristotle, though he applied it to all of thinking and I chose to bring it down the level of simply reading:
1. Apprehension of terms – here the student is taught how to form words from symbols that have meaning. The more distinct and unambiguous those terms, the more clearly they will apprehend a thought from the letter symbols.
2. Judgment – this comes when the student begins to put together words into sentences and then judge the idea convey by that sentence’s subject and predicate.
3. Reasoning – finally the student begins combining sentences into a thought process that is comparing various sentences to each other to grasp new ideas.

Many theorists today put these forth in different and distinct terms: decoding, fluency, and comprehension. I believe this is a focus on means rather than the ends of the acts of reading. It is much easier to approach Aristotle’s view of reading and seek to provide the student who is struggling with work in phonics and vocabulary, practice hearing and producing the music of fluently read sentences, and developing the necessary questions reasoning demands.

If your struggling student just cannot sound the letters that make up the words, then he needs to go all the way back to square one and learn phonics or at least greatly sharpen weak skills in such. I will not at this time bite off the big bite of comparing all the many programs available for such. But the point would be that there are a large number of resources to teach phonics in the context of reading. Research bears out the old notion that all language acquisition should be “in context” rather than separated into lists and meaningless drills. One great study is Cantrell, S.C. (1999). Effective teaching and literacy learning: A look inside primary classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 52, 4, 370-378. Cantrell showed the following results between in context and out of context language instruction:

Percentile Score
Stanford 9 Skills taught in context Skills taught out of context
Comprehension 67 41
Word analysis 47 37
Spelling 66 38
Language 76 36

This implies that reading “works” rather than disconnected sentences is going to bear better fruit more consistently. It also brings up questions about a lot of the “efficient” means we use in schools today: vocab lists, spelling lists, word lists, etc. I believe reading complete stories and ideas are much better than “reader basals.” Dare I mention that kids much prefer to read such as well?

Once you have your student able to “decode” or apprehend the terms, you must work on his ability to string those bad boys together into sentences. I cannot overstate the role played here by listening to good reading, and practicing reading by the student. Teacher must read to student well, for manageable stretches, from a variety of sources, most of which are well beyond their ability. The teacher must gently coach the student through his own reading, making him read rightly, no matter how slowly. Most kids will want to rush forward to get done and need someone slowing them down.

But you are not done after hours and hours of getting them to read fluently, you must move ahead, or continue to make them ask questions of their text. I am convinced that many teens have been trained only in the first two acts and then the third gets left behind and they will read a paragraph, look you right in the eye, and say, “I don’t get it.” At this point many teachers mistakenly start trying to fill up the student’s head with information to get them to get it. That is not the problem. The issue has been they don’t know what questions to ask to get the information out of what they were reading. I think Mortimer Adler’s classic, How to Read a Book, is far and away the best work to help with this.

To summarize, a struggling student needs to gain ability in reading words, which then become sentences, and finally thoughts. The best means to these ends is one on one, deliberate, impassioned, patient reading with the student by a teacher who loves to read. I think it really is that simple.

Aside:
Even though I believe a quiet spot by a fire with a strong reader helping coach a weaker one is the best means, many folks will want to find help/resources. The following are some that I know have good reputations:

Hooked on Phonics
Read Naturally
Great Leaps
REWARDS

Give me a heads up if you know of other programs, or if one of these has not been up to its billing.

John Dewey, the educational philosopher, defined learning as "the continual process of discovering insights, inventing new possibilities for action, and observing the consequences leading to new insights" (Dewey 1933). The concept of lifelong learning has been changing traditional views towards education, since it was proposed. During the last decades, most important research organisations (EC, OECD, UNESCO, etc.) have put more and more efforts in lifelong learning research, but none of them have conducted extensive research studies in lifelong learning in higher education.
Longworth (2003) defines Lifelong learning as “the development of human potential through a continuously supportive process which stimulates and empowers individuals to acquire all the knowledge, values, skills and understanding they will require throughout their lifetimes and to apply them with confidence, creativity and enjoyment in all roles, circumstances, and environments” (Longworth 2003).

Now we are ready to suggest a path of instruction that should meet the needs above. In doing so we must see that there are really two phases to this art: teaching the student to read the words (decoding) and teaching them to learn from the words (which is what I would call “reading”). Confusion over these two things can cause trouble. There are really three stages to learning to read: the Dependent stage, when a child needs someone to read to him (and this stage cannot be undervalued or the whole thing dies), the Decoding stage (which should be taught through a strong phonics program that attacks words at the level of phonemes and syllabic reading), and then the Independent stage, where the student is reading for himself.

The means to accomplish this must include the following ideas, usually bound up in some resource that adheres to these concerns:

A. Students are stronger readers when they are pushed early to learn the sounds of letters and phonemes (combinations of letters).

B. Whatever system of phonics you use, it should address the issue of “A” in a manner that locks these basic building blocks of reading thought into the child’s reading habits.

C. All children should be able to read basic books by the end of Kindergarten. We must keep in mind in a dumbed down culture that before Kindergarten was introduced (a 19th century progressivist notion from Prussian theory that pushed the child out of the home earlier than ever before in history) a child entered school able to decode, and was immediately able to learn from reading, rather than what we have now. I will never forget hearing one State Education Director (note that I withhold mention of which state) saying that the goal for the coming 10 years was to get all third grade students able to decode. I just stood there blinking. That is way too late in the game.

D. Every kid must learn to decode by attacking small, easy sentences at first, but it is the passion and drive of the teacher to get them to tasteful literature as soon as possible, or reading will become tasteless to the student. I am meaning by this to attack those who stick kids into books that use such things as, “The cat ate the hat,” or “Dick ran after Jane,” type of content. The banality is obvious to any child, and should be to all adults. Get them in real books with real content as soon as possible.

E. As a child is learning to decode and then read, they must have good reading modeled for them. Teachers should be expert readers, and lovers of reading, and always seeking to draw students up and in. Don’t read at or below the student, read above them. Read the great books to young minds and they will become great minds. Resistance to this point is rampant in our schools and is a major reason why we don’t have many lovers of reading in our students these days.

F. That leads to perhaps my fundamental concern with resource selection. Match your material to your philosophy, not vice versa. If you want early readers who love reading, your material that you use must pursue the same vision. The war between phonics and “whole language” advocates is over; the phonics folks won. But the modern progressivist still has his tenacles in the modern phonics programs. Be aware of these and either modify or cut as needed. Most phonics programs assume a much later reader than I am comfortable with.

G. We must realize that the speed with which our student’s minds come alive to reading dictates when they can begin learning other disciplines. This is a fundamental skill that precludes almost all other written learning. If we move too slowly, we put the student behind in other subjects as well.

H. My final challenge to those who are teaching young minds to read is to resist the modern push toward viewing learning to read as a mechanistic process. Reading is fundamental to thinking, and thinking is a gift to humans from their Creator, and this cannot be reduced to mechanical or numerically empirical steps or data. Reading is a major way in which the mind comes to life, and it is closer to a miracle than a machined product.

My purpose in writing these articles is to spawn discussion. I do believe I am on the edge rather than in the middle of current thinking. I want to hear refutation of my ideas so that I might grow, and so the schools I work with will grow as well. Chime in, share your thoughts, suggest resources. The conversation is worth your time.

You can not write out practicality, because true practicality is an “art.” Let me cite an analogy that many will have experienced. There are literally thousands of books on parenting, and not a one of them can teach anyone how to parent, for parenting (like teaching) is an art, a skill. You can be given advice, tips that have worked for others and you can be sold formulas which are other folk’s attempts to write down their art, but in the end, you have to learn parenting by doing.

I believe teaching is very much the same. So what you are likely to find in the following little blogs on various disciplines are more my own tips and tricks, not anything approaching a formula. But there is one more consideration before I just jump in. To render it plain, I will quote someone else:

“In considering how to conduct the schooling of our young, adults have two problems to solve. One is an engineering problem; the other a metaphysical one. The engineering problem, as all such problems are, is essentially technical. It is the problem of the means by which the young will become learned. It addresses the issues of where and when things will be done, and, of course, how learning is supposed to occur. The problem is not a simple one, and any self-respecting book on schooling must offer some solutions to it.

“But it is important to keep in mind that the engineering of learning is very often puffed up, assigned an importance it does not deserve. As an old saying goes, There are one and twenty ways to sing tribal lays, and all of them are correct. So it is with learning. There is no one who can say that this or that is the best way to know things, to feel things, to see things, to remember things, to apply things, to connect things and that no other will do as well. In fact, to make such a claim is to trivialize learning, to reduce it to a mechanical skill.

“Of course, there are many learnings that are little else but a mechanical skill, and in such cases, there well may be a best way. But to become a different person because of something you have learned – to appropriate an insight, a concept, a vision, so that your world is altered – that is a different matter. For that to happen you need a reason. And this is the metaphysical problem I speak of.”
Fr. The End of Education, by Neil Postman, pp. 3-4.

What Postman is saying is directly applied to this blog – ends (reasons/purpose/vision) trump means in art. So as I work through various aspects of “how to teach” in the coming months, you will see me starting with the ends and then simply suggesting the means, because teaching is an art.

This brief one-page article recently crossed my desk and struck me as summarizing many of the things that we do as teachers that need our constant remembrance. The heart of a teacher can easily be forgotten in the midst of his duties. There are huge numbers of tasks involved in teaching at a small private school. These cannot derail our primary mission just because they have to be done. Our primary calling is that of ministry to our students.

Mr. Nussbaum begins by stating his thesis, that teaching is a ministry in much the same manner as that of Jesus with his disciples. While the Christian school teacher does not have the same authority as a pastor or certainly as Christ, we are in a place of great influence. Our school’s mission statement makes it quite clear that teachers here will be in the ministry of cultivating wisdom and virtue (both of which are completely impossible without the aid of the Holy Spirit).

He moves on in his article to deal with the obligations of the teaching ministry: moving student from knowledge to understanding and thus on to wisdom. Though he does not say as much directly, he mirrors our school’s beliefs that school go beyond the facts to the great unifying Ideas of the world. He mentions the order and discipline of math and science. He admonishes moving beyond basic skills in reading and writing to seeing the spiritual purpose that lies behind human communication.

He uses Paul’s words in Phil. 4:8-9 to properly compel teachers to focus on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful in everything that is taught. He then states clearly the focus of our school’s mission, that wisdom and virtue are cultivated in our students by being embodied in the teacher’s lives. Our greatest lesson prep is the time we spend with our Lord in confession of our sin and seeking all of Him to be in all of us. The teaching life is a path of integrity. If you don’t match your words, you effect no change in your student’s lives. In a society that values transparency and authenticity, we must be transparently and authentically true, good, and beautiful.

It is his last paragraph that seems the most “controversial” to me. It is not that I disagree with it; it is that implementing it is very difficult. Community is a matter of commitment. As a covenant community, our school has the agreement that every student is being raised in a home where at least one parent is a believer active in a local church. Nussbaum translates his thesis into the notion that every Christian teacher is seeking to assist “their students in becoming active in their respective church communities.” Certainly the teacher must not only be active in his own church, but be passionate enough about it so as to be obvious about it with his students. But our students do not make decisions about church attendance by and large; their parent’s do. So as they come into the school they are asked about their church involvement under an honors system of a parent interview. If they say the right things, they are in.

But then the truth comes out: “My parents never take me to church.” Now what is the right and ministry oriented thing for the school to do? Call the pastor? But in our day of large churches, he might not even know them if they are there for every service. Ask others in the school? I am concerned this will be somewhat cloak and dagger. A direct frontal confrontation seems the best, but now we are back at the honor system.

I go back to the careful language that Nussbaum has in place in his article: he uses words such as “model,” “assist,” and “lead.” We must be who we should be and then we have to trust the rest of the community to take their role as seriously as we take ours. Certainly teachers have great opportunity to encourage and guide parents both in regard to their children and in regard to their spiritual pilgrimage. A growing Christian community must be tied into the growing Church and the Bible states to us clearly that growth of the Church is tied to such things as discipline, confrontation, rebuke, suffering, and the like. It is not simply a picnic.

This brings me to a point made in the middle of the article. “Teachers in a Christian school must be ever mindful that they instruct not only through rational explanation of formal subject material but even more powerfully through word, deed, example, and shared experience.” It is impossible to teach just one aspect of a child. At any given moment, both in the classroom, and out in the halls/lunch room/play ground, the school is cultivating either wisdom and virtue or foolishness and vice. There is no choice here – it simply is a law of God’s world. So wise and virtuous teachers purposefully “plan” their lessons both in and outside the classroom by choosing to be who they should be.

It is sheer delight to work in this context when it is working well. It can be a real pain when sin rears its ugly head. Many believe it is the absence of horrible sins that makes for a great Christian school, but I heartily disagree. It is not the absence of sin but the fact that when it occurs it is properly and promptly dealt with that makes us a Christian school. God give us all grace to do our duty. My thanks to Mr. Nussbaum for his reminder of our principle calling: ministry to our students.

For my teachers, I have placed a copy of the article in each of your boxes. For my other blog readers, I have been unable to locate the article online, but I have referenced the citation above.

And in our day of teaching this is rough. On the one hand, you have the teacher's desire to learn, to grow, to spend time in contemplation; to exercise all the skills we are seeking to instill in our students. But then there is the other hand of how much we feel is necessary in our average day. The pace of our lives prevents us from being what we want in our students and this makes our goals that much further away. If the student cannot look into the teacher's life and see a consuming desire to read, to write, to think, to contemplate, to worship, to value truth, goodness, and beauty in actual terms of things done, we will not instill such in them. They will realize the emptiness of our words if our works do not preach louder still.

So a quality school is to be full of quality teachers, and at the heart of quality teaching is being a great learner, which means everything else should be centered around the acts of learning in the teacher's life. And a good lead teacher (head master) will have to lead the other teachers in this regard, and encourage them in such. And the leader will ensure that the school is set up to cultivate such things. We have a lot of work to do. See: I have always said teaching is a very selfish endeavor.

This notion that we are leaders brings on the common discussion of "job vs. calling," which I just don't argue too much any more. I have yet to meet a teacher who viewed their position as a job who fulfilled my notions of teacher. They were a hireling, not the shepherd. As teaching is a vocation, requires a certain manner of life, namely that of leadership. So all that follows in this list of Walker's is the stuff that make leaders in the classroom.

"Many of the most obvious characteristics of teachers whose approaches are associated with high levels of student performance in moderate stress contexts are characteristics to be found in common with contemporayr views of good leadership.
What are those characteristics?
- knowledge and expertise which is readily perceived (by followers);
- a drive to stay 'current' in relevant fields;
- repeatedly articulated (to followers) standards for performance and conduct;
- a 'results' orientation;
- a 'vision' of the process and the end product (and the ability and willingness to describe that vision to followers, often and well);
- a facility for infusing routine activities with meaning;
- a passion for preparation;
- flexibility, especially in design and evaluation;
- humaneness (as perceived by the followers);
- a knack for confronting-without-demeaning;
- the ability to teach (and not merely assign) responsibility;
- constant attention to reinforcement principles (feedback).

It is my hope to comment on many of these. Without either fully agreeing or disagreeing with all of them, I found them to be thought provoking.

Children should be allowed to talk more in class, education experts have argued, despite the traditional view that chatter can be disruptive.

The Cambridge University study also said that a competitive atmosphere in class could be counter-productive.

It questioned the theory that encouraging pupils to compete increases their motivation to learn.

Instead, it argued, tasks should aim to encourage co-operation and group cohesion instead of competitiveness.

This seems significant to me because of the findings from Blueprint, which suggested that a number of the PSHE teachers in the Blueprint secondary schools weren't confident in applying active learning techniques in their classrooms.

Admittedly this research, which is part of the Primary Review, is drawn from evidence in primary schools so there may be different factors at work for pupils in secondary school, though I'm a bit doubtful about that.

I'm afraid that I won't be able to read all 4 of the reports they launched at the end of last week, but I have taken a look at the briefing that lies behind the BBC's story.  Here are the highlights:

• Social interaction and collaborative activity among children in class can provide valuable, complementary and distinctive opportunities for learning and conceptual development. This challenges the traditional view that talk and social interaction among children are irrelevant, if not disruptive to learning.
• Talk and social interaction among children play a key role in children’s social development and learning. Social development influences patterns of interaction, which in turn affect learning, the development of ways of thinking and social development itself.
• The educational value of collaborative learning has been clearly demonstrated, by research from more than one line of enquiry. In particular, encouraging children to pursue joint goals, explain their understanding, express different points of view and attempt to reach consensus through discussion have all been found to help learning and understanding.
• Research on collaborative learning across the arts, science and mathematics supports the view that joint activity among pupils should be an intrinsic and integrated aspect of classroom life.

Here are the details of the where to find the other reports should you have more time than me:

• Research Survey 2/1a: Children's Cognitive Development and Learning

2/1a briefing
2/1a report

• Research Survey 2/1b: Children's Social Development, Peer Interaction and Classroom Learning

2/1b briefing
2/1b report

• Research Survey 5/1: Children in Primary Education: demography, culture, diversity and inclusion

5/1 briefing
5/1 report


• Research Survey 5/2: Learning Needs and Difficulties Among Children of Primary School Age: definition, identification, provision and issues

5/2 briefing
5/2 report

I was quite happy that I made a survey tool to help me collect data. However, in order to introduce it to other academics, I need to discuss the theoretical implications of this. I got feedback from an editor -

"The ability to do these things is indeed amazing. However, it seems there is a total lack of a critical approach to these attributes. The types pf manipulation you are discussing will have broad and complex effects on the nature of research, both quantitative and qualitative in nature. A discussion of these issues might add to the credibility of your assertions."

I doubt that my brain is made of paste when thinking of theoretical implication of this survey instrument. What is a theory?

EVALUATION CRITERIA
1. Significance of Themes
2. Relevance of Themes
3. Clarity of Thematic Focus
4. Relationship to Literature
5. Research Design and Data
6. Data Analysis and Use of Data
7. Use of Theory
8. Critical Qualities
9. Clarity of Conclusions
10. Quality of Communication

It's a very interesting seminar.

I sketched a useful learning flow from the seminar for myself:

where does pedagogy fit into it?

technology -> learning technology -> An optimal use of technology --help?--> innovative design for learning (learning design) --cause--> social learning/collaborative learning --result--> learning experience