Monday, September 15, 2014

The Case for a Dose of Benign Neglect

While reading the "It's About Learning" blog from Bo Adams, an educator at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta, I came across this article from the Deseret News in Utah. Entitled "When Kids Were Breakable," it does far more than, as the title might suggest, look back wistfully to a vanished and idyllic past (a practice for which I generally have extremely limited patience). Instead, it explores the slow but relentless process we have been engaged in as a society for the past 30 or so years; namely, attempting to "bubble wrap" our children and prevent them from experiencing any danger, frustration, or disappointment as they make their way through childhood.

As an increasing anecdotal and quantitative body of evidence suggests, such an attempt is not merely futile, a vain effort at an utterly unrealistic goal. It actually has significant pernicious effects on the children on whom it is practiced, stunting emotional and psychological growth and denying young people the powerful learning experiences (positive and negative) that come from being free to make bad decisions outside adult supervision. The article cites one of the fundamental paradoxes that I believe does so much to fuel the perceived need for (over)protecting our children. "Parents today," the author writes, "operate under the assumption that society is more dangerous than when we were kids, when in fact the opposite is true. Crime rates in the United States are at an all-time low." This incontrovertible fact is constantly undermined by the ubiquitous coverage of the most gruesome and salacious events in the relentless media news cycle. But the statistics speak for themselves and demonstrate a huge drop-off in all categories of major crimes nationwide.

I have come to believe that a healthy dose of benign neglect would do our children a world of good. Bad things can and will happen to children, and a reasonable amount of caution is, of course, essential. But we're beginning to understand that there is a real and lasting cost to harboring the illusion that we can and should shield our children from every possible danger. And a willingness to expand our tolerance for risk and freedom seems a logical reaction against the irrational trend towards over-protection that has been so prominent among our generation of parents.

Friday, August 15, 2014

In Defense of the Humanities

I found this article on the continuing need for the humanities in the 21st Century. by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times to be very insightful. For many educators (perhaps especially those of us who teach in the humanities) it has been distressing to see the broad devaluation of fields such as History, English, and Philosophy in recent years. The focus on generating a return on investment for the huge sums of money involved in attending college (or, for that matter, independent schools) has led many people to adopt an overly-utilitarian view of education. While this phenomenon may be a logical and predictable result of a struggling economy and escalating education costs, it does not, in my mind, capture the value that the humanities add to society as a whole. As Kristof points out, it is only in the marriage of "hard skills" like computer programming with "soft skills" such as philosophical discernment that civilizations flourish. One without the other is insufficient.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Education Week - The Goal of Education is "Becoming"

I recently came across a fascinating article from Education Week magazine that made a seemingly counter-intuitive statement - "the goal of education is not learning." While that line was undoubtedly intended to be provocative, the underlying point in the article is a sound one. "The real goal of education," writes Marc Prensky, its author, "and of school, is becoming—becoming a "good" person and becoming a more capable person than when you started. Learning is nothing but a means of accomplishing that goal, and it is dangerous to confuse the ends with the means."

Prensky goes on to make the case, rightfully, I believe, that "very few educators or parents have learning or scholarship in their hearts as the endgame for their children, except in the sense of their kids' getting good grades. Most of us would prefer our children become the very best people they can be, capable of effective thinking, acting, relating, and accomplishing in whatever field they enjoy and have a passion for." He bemoans the fact that "with the exception of some independent schools," most of modern education focuses on learning (by which he primarily means the mastery of content) above all else. This explains the obsession with testing that measures this mastery. "Our tests," he claims, "—big and small—are an attempt to put numbers around that learning and to rank students in their acquisition of it."

I am proud to number Friends School among those "exceptional" schools that share this focus on becoming. Our Teaching and Learning Paradigm demonstrates our commitment to developing a core set of qualities that include but also transcend factual knowledge.

In his piece, Prensky writes that a truly great education leads students to ask these questions of themselves:

"Who am I becoming? Have I become a better thinker? If so, in what ways? Am I able to do things I couldn't before? What is important to me and why? Can I relate comfortably to individuals, in teams and in virtual communities? Can I accomplish bigger, more sophisticated projects to add to my portfolio? What kind of person have I had to become to achieve these accomplishments? Can I make the world a better place?"

These are very much the kinds of questions we have in mind for our students as they progress through a Friends School education.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

From American Psychological Association Journal - "Results from the highest quality studies ... do not support the view that SS (single sex) schooling provides benefits compared with CE (co-ed) schooling."

In this article, authors Erin Pahlke of Whitman College and Janet Shibley Hyde and Carlie M. Allison of the University of Wisconsin—Madison share the results of their analysis of a wide variety of studies of the impact of single-sex v. co-ed learning environments. Pahlke, et al. concluded that, despite persistent claims to the contrary by advocates of single-sex education, there is no evidence that gender-homogeneous classrooms lead to improved learning outcomes for students.

Given the self-evident limitations inherent in an environment that by its very nature excludes one gender or the other, this lack of demonstrable learning benefits is, it seems to me, particularly problematic for those promoting this educational approach.

The Imperative of and Looming Crisis in Student Engagement

In his article "Getting Our Students to Own Their Educational Experience," Raymond Cirmo, a physics teacher at Connecticut's Cheshire Academy, nicely articulates every teacher's struggle. "There is no getting around the need for knowledge, and as classroom teachers it is our job to make that knowledge available to our students," he writes. "But it is also our responsibility to create an environment in which students will want to gain the knowledge presented in the classroom. And therein lies our greatest challenge."

In considering how we can design the most powerful education for our students, I believe that we must realistically take into account the myriad developments in their lives beyond school. The competition for our students’ time and attention is fiercer than it has ever been. To the already formidable ranks of distractions that all of us faced at this age have been added the proliferation of social media and the many-faceted fruits of ever-evolving technology. Any study of this landscape reveals quite clearly the qualities that young people seek and appreciate in their lives beyond school; experiences that are deeply interactive, that are relevant to their particular interests, that make room for choice and differentiation, that provide avenues for self-expression, that allow for ongoing and escalating mastery and recognition of achievement, that give the opportunity to collaborate with others towards common goals, that offer the chance to make a lasting impact on their world. If “school” continues to consist of the same kind of experiences that traditional education has provided, with remarkably little variation for the past 100-plus years, we run the risk of chronic disengagement. Students - especially motivated and conscientious students - will undoubtedly continue to do what is asked of them, but this compliance should not be mistaken for meaningful engagement. Acquiescence is not a transformational quality. In order to motivate our students to invest themselves fully in their schoolwork, we must offer the same qualities in their educational experiences that they seek and can so easily find in their lives outside of school.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Visiting a Model School for the Future of Education

Having heard a great deal online and at February's NAIS conference about the exciting developments at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta, the Friends School academic leadership team and I visited the school last Thursday. The logistics were tricky for a one-day visit, but it was worth every hassle, as we saw a school that is truly a model for what education can and will be in the years ahead. Many thanks to the folks at MVPS for making us welcome and generously sharing their staff, their classrooms, and their thinking with us.

I can't do justice in this post to all the fantastic work being done at MVPS, but here's a link to their website, which gives a good sampling of the energy, passion, and unity of purpose that we saw everywhere we went on the campus. We came away thoroughly impressed and greatly inspired to act with a similar level of boldness as we continue to evolve our academic program to meet the needs of our students and our world.

One comment in particular has stuck with me in the days since our visit. Bo Adams, the Chief Innovation Officer at MVPS, shared with us a question that has helped to guide the design of their program. "If school is supposed to prepare students for the world, why does what happens in school bear so strikingly little resemblance to the way the world actually works?" Great question, Bo, and one that all of us involved in the ongoing design of education need to energetically engage with.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Here's a great 10-minute video from Professor Tony Wagner of the Harvard School of Education in which he shares the findings from his most recent book Creating Innovators. Wagner has done as much as anyone in the field to explain the shortcomings of the traditional educational model and to provoke thinking about what kinds of change are needed to prepare our students for the world beyond the classroom. Here at Friends, we used his Global Achievement Gap as a starting point for developing the Teaching and Learning at Friends School Paradigm, which has guided our curriculum development, hiring, evaluation and professional development programs over the past five years. As we prepare to build upon the changes that we have made to this point, Creating Innovators and other works that push us to re-imagine this thing we call "school" will be critical catalysts for our purposeful re-invention of the student experience at Friends School.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

More Evidence of the Need to Re-Invent Education

This editorial by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman dates from March of 2013, but its message has only become more timely in the past year. Friedman references the work of Tony Wagner, the Harvard professor and author of several thought-provoking books on education, who believes that one of the primary goals of education (and one that our current system is not designed to achieve) is for students to be "innovation-ready" when they emerge from school. Wagner explores this concept in greater depth in his most recent book Creating Innovators which I highly recommend as a primer on the case for re-designing education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/friedman-need-a-job-invent-it.html?ref=thomaslfriedman

Sunday, February 9, 2014

AP Exams Continue to Evolve - And Run the Risk of Rendering the AP Curriculum Superfluous

This very interesting blog post about the soon-to-be-unveiled changes to the AP U.S. History exam demonstrates the commendable evolution process that AP exams are undergoing, much to the credit of the College Board. These changes do, though, raise an interesting paradox; if AP exams become (as I ardently believe they should) more heavily focused on critical thinking skills and the habits of mind required in the particular academic disciplines, why would it be necessary to have a prescribed, and by definition constricting, AP curriculum? Wouldn't any highly challenging course that developed these skills and habits of mind accomplish the goal of preparing students to succeed on these tests and - far more importantly - indicate their readiness for more advanced study in the field? It speaks well of the College Board that they are willing to evolve their way into such an existential conundrum.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Unshackled from the Golden Handcuffs of AP

Below is a letter to the editor that I wrote in response to Baltimore Sun reporter Liz Bowie's recent investigative series on Advanced Placement courses. Friends School has never offered AP classes, standing firm in our belief that the AP program is simply not the most effective approach to achieving meaningful learning for high school students. Instead, we have provided our students with outstanding, in-depth courses developed by our own teachers, setting them on a path for admission to and success at the finest colleges and universities in the nation and beyond.

Given our historic stand on this issue, I find it heartening that other high schools and colleges are increasingly calling onto question the value of the AP program and the consequences of the restraints that it imposes.

Unshackled from the golden handcuffs of AP [Letter]

8:00 a.m. EST, January 31, 2014

I read The Sun's investigative report on Advanced Placement courses ("Some parents, educators are rethinking role of AP," Jan. 18) with great interest, in part because our school, on principle, has never offered AP classes. Our rationale is simple: We believe the AP program and its heavy weighting toward the memorization and recitation of facts inhibits the development of critical thinking skills and deeper conceptual understanding.

It is heartening to see that the College Board has begun to acknowledge and address this significant pedagogical shortcoming. In a 2011 New York Times article, Trevor Packer, College Board senior vice president, said "the new AP needs to be anchored in a curriculum that focuses on what students need to be able to do with their knowledge." We concur wholeheartedly with this assessment and have acted on this conviction by continually adapting and evolving our curriculum to develop students who are highly engaged creators of their own understanding, rather than passive recipients of a static body of knowledge.

As reporter Liz Bowie noted in the article, over the past decade a growing number of highly regarded public and private high schools have made the decision to drop AP from their curriculum for precisely these reasons. (Anecdotally, I can tell you that when colleagues at other schools learn that we have never offered AP, they often express the wish that this were the case at their own schools.)

One key to further unlocking the "golden handcuffs" by which many schools find themselves bound to the AP lies in disabusing families of the inaccurate notion that the AP is a necessary credential for admission to the most highly selective colleges. Our school's experience is consistent with the comments from Dean Ellen Kim in your article. Johns Hopkins (and, by logical extension, other highly selective universities), "wants applicants to have taken the most challenging course work available to them. … When an applicant's school doesn't offer AP, the student isn't penalized," she said. Like Scarsdale High School Principal Kenneth Bonamo, we have found that, in the absence of the restrictions imposed by AP classes, "(t)eachers have the ability to go more in-depth into topics in the curriculum." And, as with Scarsdale, "(w)e have seen no impact on college placement," as a result of our long-standing decision not to offer these courses.

Indeed, despite choosing not to offer AP courses, the quality and rigor of the experiences that our students have in their upper-level classes prepare them well for taking the AP exams. In recent years, the majority of our students have sat for one or more AP exams, with 93 percent scoring a 3 or higher. Given that our college placement list includes the full complement of the nation's elite universities, we feel that our approach offers a "best of both worlds" scenario, in which our students have an opportunity to reap the benefits of enhanced college acceptance, credit and placement while enjoying the numerous advantages that a truly independent curriculum allows us.

Matthew Micciche, Baltimore

The writer is head of school at Friends School of Baltimore.