Shining eyes

This will be my last post of 2009 so I can spend more time with my kids during the holiday season. Thanks to everyone who reads what I write here, and thanks to everyone who has recommended the blog to friends. It really means a lot to me. Thank you.

I’ll close out the year by recommending my favorite TED talk: Benjamin Zander on music and passion. As you watch, imagine what it would take to create schools where every student had “shining eyes.” (If you haven’t seen this, please do yourself a favor and find 20 uninterrupted minutes in the next week or so to watch. It’s just beautiful.)

Happy Holidays,
Steve

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There is no One Right Way

It’s important to remember that there’s no one right way to do this. No school can be everything to everybody. That’s why, even though I’m a proponent of progressive education theory and practice, I don’t believe every single school should adopt progressive values. Put it this way: Lakeside is doing just fine, thank you.

My issue is that the traditional school has been held up as the standard, as The One Right Way. But it’s not. In fact, traditional schools are ignoring the major findings in social science of the past 50 years. Not only does it not work for everyone, I would argue that it doesn’t work for most kids. The classroom scenes in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are funny because they’re true. Alice Cooper built an entire career around one song, with a simple theme: school sucks.

Sir Ken Robinson, in his brilliant TED talk, said, “If you were to visit education, as an alien, and say ‘What’s it for, public education?’  I think you’d have to conclude . . . the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors.” But the world needs artists, too. And electricians. And athletes, entrepreneurs, and stock brokers. That’s where progressive education can fill the void.

My goal—and this is why I quit my last job and why I post to this blog every day—is for parents, when choosing a school for their child, to be able to choose from a set of traditional schools and a set of progressive schools. And, to be able to do it without the implied hierarchy that exists now: mainstream schools vs. “alternative” schools for kids who couldn’t hack it in the mainstream. This has to change. I worked with too many brilliant kids for whom traditional schooling did not work, and whose frustration brought them either to tears or cynicism. Either way, they wasted countless hours of their lives.

But progressive education advocates have science on our side. We have the artists and the entrepreneurs. We have Alice Cooper. How can we possibly fail?

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Market exchanges and social exchanges

A few years ago, researchers Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini collected data on a childcare facility that was having trouble getting parents to pick up their kids on time. So, the facility began enforcing a fine on a per-minute basis to see if that would serve as a deterrent.

It had the opposite effect. Parents began showing up even later to pick up their kids.

That’s because the childcare facility previously had operated under what behavioral economists call “social exchanges.” That is, when parents showed up late there was no financial penalty involved; the parents just felt really guilty. By introducing the fine, that shifted the relationship into what’s called a “market exchange.” Now, parents could rationalize, “Well, I’m running a bit late. But it’s OK, I’ll just pay the fine.”

By using A-B-C-D-E grades schools, operate firmly in the market realm. If a student neglects to do the reading for homework, the student loses points off her grade. If she shows up late for class, her response might be something like, “How many tardies do I have now? How many more can I have until I get detention?”

When I was teaching, I would frequently have students say to me, “OK Mr. Miranda, what’s the minimum I need to get an A?” That’s a relationship that defined by market norms.

But researchers have proven that social exchanges are much more powerful than market exchanges. What if, when a student was late, her teacher said, “We miss you when you’re not here. Your presence is important to us.” And what if, when she neglected to do the reading, her teacher said, “I spent several hours preparing a lesson for you today. When you don’t do the reading, it makes me feel like I wasted my time.”

Or how about this one: “I spent all weekend writing that paper. When you just stamp an “A” on the top without including any other feedback, it makes me feel like I’m not getting the most out of your class.”

These are moments that are potentially very powerful. But in a classroom in which the student-teacher relationship is defined by market norms, they would be the exception rather than the rule.

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Education is a process, not a product

If a school’s focus should be on responsibility and maturity rather than academics, the worst way to do that would be have required classes on Punctuality, Time Management Strategies, and Thank-You Card Writing 101.

Instead, it means acknowledging that school should be about the process and not the product. How students learn is much more important than what they learn. This has always been true, but with the information explosion of the past two decades it’s more true now than ever.

So ask yourself, does the process of traditional schooling nurture curiosity or encourage students to just get the work done? Does it foster integrity or taking the easy way out? Does it help students become self-directed or dependent on others to tell them what to do?

And despite traditional schooling’s focus on academic achievement, it sucks at delivering on it. Everybody knows this. That’s why whenever politicians want to increase their poll numbers, they start talking about “school reform” then stand back and smile at the raucous applause.

If a school’s focus should be on responsibility and maturity rather than academics, there are plenty of ways to achieve that goal. One way would be to ask students what they want to learn. Then, provide them with opportunities to learn it on the condition that they make a certain commitments that respect the time and expertise of the teacher. The school’s job then is not to make sure the student learned the material—it’s her education, after all—but to hold the student accountable for honoring her commitments. That’s one way of defining responsibility: Doing what you said you were going to do, in the manner in which it was meant to be done.

That’s how we can nurture curiosity, foster integrity, and help students become self-directed. That’s honoring learning as a process, not a product.

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De-emphasizing academics, cont.

I wrote yesterday that de-emphasizing academics is the most important, and most difficult to grasp, concept in progressive education. I got plenty of feedback, both in the comments section and in private, that suggested not everyone agrees.

Here’s a confession: last year, I served on the Board of Trustees of the progressive school where I now work. On days when I would drop by the school to visit, it always struck me to see numerous students not engaged in academic classes. In fact, they appeared to be just sitting around. It scared me a little. I had moments when I silently wondered just what I had affiliated myself with.

Now seeing it on a day-to-day basis, it makes total sense. The focus of the school is not academics, it’s responsibility. The goal for graduates is not to pass the WASL, but to become mature. When students are not engaged in an academic class, they’re learning how to manage their own time. They’re learning to be self-directed. A common refrain among students who eventually go on to college is disappointment that their peers seem to be there just to party. That’s to be expected from people who’ve never been given the space to be responsible for themselves, who’ve never been allowed to mature.

The traditional school where I used to teach has a strong focus on academics. As a result, cheating is rampant as students feel pressured to keep their grades up. And just like in any progressive school, there are students who at any given moment are doing nothing. But because the school focus is on academics, they’re required to hide it; so they send text messages from under their desk or grab a “bathroom” pass and walk the halls for 15 minutes. They’re doing the same thing as kids from progressive schools—giving their minds a much-needed rest—but they’re forced to compromise their integrity to meet the expectations of the institution.

Plenty of kids from traditional schools make it out there just fine, with a strong academic education and their integrity intact. But they do it in spite of their schooling, not as a result of it.

And the final irony is this: de-emphasizing academics actually makes students more academically inclined. Those who are forced to learn something tend to dislike it. Those who learn responsibility and maturity see the inherent value in academics, and tend to devour difficult subjects with a sense of purpose.

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What if it’s true?

This sounds like heresy at first glance, but what if it’s true? What if the point of school should have nothing to do with academics?

It’s easy to imagine a young person excelling in math, but living a miserable life because she lacks a moral compass. It’s easy to imagine someone who can write elegant prose, but lacks the self-respect necessary to be in a healthy relationship.

When you ask someone what they want, everyone says the same thing: “Happiness.” Are strong academics really the key to happiness? I don’t think so.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that academics have no value. But, as long as we’re using our imagination, can you picture someone who’s confident, secure, curious, compassionate, and focused being unable to master academics?

If all of this is true, what should be the first focus of our schools?

Of all the things I’ve written in this space, I believe this notion is the most important. It’s also the most difficult one to truly grasp because it goes against every single impulse we’ve internalized about what the word “school” means.

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