"Are You Leading Change or Building a Platform for Change?," by Bruce Dixon

Please enjoy another Educating Modern Learners (EML) article below.

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Co-founder of EML and edtech consultant, Bruce Dixon (@bruceadixon) published an article on EML entitled "Are You Leading Change or Building a Platform for Change" (March 26, 2015).  Within the piece, he reconceptualizes educational environments.  He assures us that school leaders and administrators are not responsible for - and should not take on the task of - implementing educational change unilaterally.  Instead, he argues, a leader must "build a change platform—one that allows anyone to initiate change, recruit confederates, suggest solutions, and launch experiments."

This approach is radically egalitarian.  As Dixon explains, "the essence is that you are letting the team work outside of the normal hierarchy with a direct reporting line to senior leadership for the change effort."  To nurture this fledgling framework, faculty and administrators must be willing to challenge more than just traditional communication networks.  They must also be willing to question the physical environment in which their students learn, the curricula guiding student learning, and the assumptions about learning that we have held dear for over a century and a half.

Is your school ready?

For Dixon's article, please click here.  Please post in the comments section to share your views.

"Why Curriculum Constrains Learning," by Harold Jarche

We in IP believe strongly not only in championing the conditions that allow authentic student-driven learning but also in connecting with like-minded individuals and organizations.  One of these is Educating Modern Learners (EML), an educator's portal created by longtime educator and technological expert Will Richardson (@willrich45) and Bruce Dixon (@bruceadixon), respectively.  This site offers insights into the new learning contexts that teachers, administrators, parents, and students themselves must confront in the 21st century.

International consultant, speaker, and educational "subversive" Harold Jarche (@hjarche) published an article on EML entitled "Why Curriculum Constrains Learning" (April 2, 2015).  Within, he questions one of education's benchmarks.  He posits that "Curriculum is a type of confinement: a confinement of learning experiences. Defined content, isolated classrooms, and fragmented schedules of time, coupled with impersonal testing, are institutional bullying."  Though some may consider Jarche too strident, he encourages all of us - the IP community, Kildonan, parents, students, administrators, and others - to evaluate educational practice using the questions, "Do our students need to know anything? If so, what?" Once we begin to posit answers, we must consider various factors - organic learning environments, educational trajectories (their content, their presence), and others - in order to achieve the results we seek.

For Jarche's article, please click here.  Please post in the comments section to share your views.

Nikhil Goyal: "Why Kids Hate School?" @ TEDxBFS (2012)

At the age of 19, activist and author Nikhil Goyal (@nikhilgoya_l) has accomplished no small amount.  An activist and champion of self-directed learning, Goyal has spoken at Google (@google), MIT (@MIT), Yale (@Yale), Stanford (@Stanford), and the University of Cambridge (@Cambridge_Uni).  He has appeared on various news stations, has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and has even authored the book One Size Does Not Fit All:  A Student's Assessment of School.  In this #TED Talk delivered at the Brooklyn Free School (#TEDxBFS) in 2012, Goyal begins by speaking about the shortcomings of school.  Although he is perhaps too strident and jumps from topic to topic using quotes, he does offer an organic vision of education that considers not only educators, administrators, and parents but also students themselves as its policymakers.

'Education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.'  Let me say that one more time.  'Education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.'  ... Because we have to get over this notion of education prep and move to life prep.  We have to create an educational society where learning is democratized and where kids are natural learners.  Where we're tinkering with the world.  Where they're changing things, they're pushing the human race forward.
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Around the world today we're watching millions of young people that are under the age of twenty-five collectively protest for self-expression, transparency, and the sweet taste of freedom.  What we're doing to them is we're not giving them a voice.  We're not letting them speak out.  We're putting them on the sidelines.  What I like to say about public education is that we have 'the kids table' and we have 'the adults table.'  At the adults table, that's where all the decisions are made.  It's like Thanksgiving; we're separated.  And really, that's how it is.  We need to have one table where we have kids and adults.  What we offer, most importantly, kids, is a fresh perspective.

Thoughts? Please post in the comments section below.

Sudbury Valley School

Sudbury Valley School (@SVS_School), a democratic learning environment located in Framingham, MA, places great value upon student initiative.  Pupils not only decide what and how they learn material, for they also organize their own schedules and participate in the administration of the school.

In the following 2009 documentary, staff member Daniel Greenberg expresses some concern about limited personalization in schools.  He argues that a whiff of independence merely "seduces you into thinking that [that] little bit of freedom, when you're really being manipulated, is the real thing.  And that opens you up to being manipulated your whole life."  I believe that Greenberg would be impressed were he to note the extent to which IP values academic freedom and personal responsibility.

"I don't see any reason to treat children different from other people.  My experience is that they are human beings just like everybody else.  And to view a child - certainly after they become articulate, when they can make some judgment (which is usually about four or five) - to view a child as any less competent to make decisions for themselves than adults...that's ridiculous." - from Daniel Greenberg, Staff Member

A Kindred Pedagogy

Fairhaven School - a democratic school located in a suburb of Washington, D.C. - strives for a similar balance between freedom and responsibility that Kildonan's IP program values.

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