Reforming the Schools: Who is willing to sacrifice for it?

He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self sacrifice.-- Henry Taylor

One of the most common and apparently pleasurable distractions for Americans has long been to jump on bandwagons. Nothing warms the heart and expands the self-regard more than to promote “reform” of one kind or another, especially if you, personally, don’t have to pay much for it.

Commitment is a problem. That sometimes means using up personal resources, time, money, attention, patience, to make things happen. But if you are particularly concerned to promote reform, then you might want to have a way to judge how much a person is willing to stand by you if things get sticky.

You may not ever expect someone to be willing to break the law for the sake of the reform, but you may be surprised, occasionally, at the enthusiasm for this that you encounter. (Gung Ho, we call them.) On the other hand, it’s not to much to ask someone who is willing to bother you with complaints, to put up or shut up: help, or don’t interfere. (Better yet, use The Little Red Hen’s Rule: no help, no bread.)

It is a long-standing American tradition to complain about the public schools. But it is a rare occurrence for anyone employed in them to resign his or her position over an issue of reform. Most are disinclined to personally confront a colleague even when they believe that person’s behavior to be unprofessional to the point of immorality or criminality.

What you need is a checklist, a survey of items ranging in intensity from very to minimally disruptive, which will give you an idea whether you, personally, or your colleagues, are sufficiently committed to change to bring it about.

For such an assessment instrument, see Assessing Role and Commitment


Cordially
--- EGR

Perpetual School Reform: an American Insanity?

Striving to better, oft we mar what's well. -- William Shakespeare, King Lear

Efforts for perpetual reform rests on the belief that all good things are compatible: that ever more of everything desirable is sustainable. Overlooked is the possibility that good things may be competitive: to pursue one may undermine our ability to obtain another. Yet most people can understand that you can't drive fast and at the same time save gas -- the shorter trip in time may not offset the gas wasted in fighting wind resistance. Athletes know that you can't build up for extreme strength and endurance at the same time.

The basic mechanism of perpetual reform is easy to understand. It takes a disregard for history and unending complaint about the present situation proclaimed in newsmedia much more concerned to attract the greatest attention than to report fact.

The costs of the present, since they are with us, look so much worse than the costs of any future alternatives, which, being future costs have the benefit, at least, of not existing, yet.

The benefits of the present, taken for granted and oh! so boring!, look much less attractive than the benefits of some alternative future. And so we blunder into yet another here-today-gone-tomorrow “revolution.”

So it goes with teacher certification efforts. On the one hand we hear much talk about the need to upgrade teacher training. This concern to "improve the quality of teachers" generally comes from those seen as having a “vested interest” in extending and complicating the certification process, e.g. teachers' unions, universities, professors of education and certification organizations. In the scandal mongering that characterizes many editorial columns "vested interest" easily becomes "selfish desire to exploit" therefore something any upright citizen ought to oppose and undo.

Yet this undoing is blindly pursued by school boards who, for example, facing teacher shortages, look for ways to put warm bodies in classrooms. Or, by the legislators who assist the downgrading of teacher preparation by allowing, even recommending, alternative routes into teaching. Seldom, however, do the media suggest that such school boards or legislatures are merely self-serving.

To examine these issues further, see The Dynamics of Teacher Certification: mythologies of competition

Cordially

-- EGR

What is Cheating? By Whose Rules?

All oppression creates a state of war. -- Simone de Beauvoir

Cheating is not playing by the rules. Whose rules?

In 1796 at age 22 Oney Judge, Martha Washington’s personal slave attendant, fled the President’s mansion and traveled to New Hampshire. The Washingtons were angry at her “ingratitude,” because Oney enjoyed privileges in the Washington household that many free whites could not. Oney offered to return on the condition she be granted freedom. Sending agents out to capture her and bring her back, her masters refused her terms. Escaping capture, Oney remained in New Hampshire swearing she would “suffer death rather than return to Slavery.”

Was Oney Judge a cheater? Cheating is not playing by the rules. Whose rules? Were they agreed to by all participants? Were they freely accepted? Or were they imposed on those lacking power to reject them? Clearly, sometimes not playing by the rules, “cheating,” is not merely excusable, but desirable.

But what about kids in schools who cheat on tests? Cheating is not playing by the rules. Whose rules? Were they agreed to by all participants? Were they freely accepted? Or were they imposed on those lacking power to reject them?

“But it’s for their own good!” you say? Who determines this?

In the United States basic schooling is compulsory. What makes it morally different from slavery? This is not meant to be a rhetorical question, but an invitation to reflection.


To examine these issues further, see Preventing Cheating: transforming educational values

-- EGR

Educational Innovation: stuck in the mud!

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty. -- Jean de la Bruyere

Who was it that said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"? It doesn't matter who said it, because there is abundant evidence that it is not true.

Technical innovation presumably pursues efficiency. But efficiency is only one small aspect of total cost reduction. The strength of the competition, the availability of the product, its replaceability, compatibility, and familiarity will beat out novelty, even efficiency, any day.


This is not to deny that the educational potential of much technology is substantial. But whether or not the technology gets incorporated in the curriculum depends on circumstances normally overlooked by, if not beyond reach of, most educators. It is not merely a matter of whether it enhances learning.

To examine these issues further, see Beyond the Textbook? 
Unlikely Changes in the Curriculum 


Cordially,
-- EGR

Do Schools Really Need to Cost So Much?

"As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled." - Victor Hugo

Many communities are wealthy enough not to concern themselves with duplication of services. Public schools, community centers, service organizations, and community colleges offer essentially the same activities - often competing with each other, jealously guarding their own prerogatives to stamp their brand name on offerings to an oversupplied market. High schools offer courses in calculus, astrophysics, or jewelry making, competing with the local community college or community center for the same "customers." The reality is that school systems are expected to do many more things than teaching students subject matter, and these things cost money.

Maybe it's time for someone to speak up and say, "If you want our system to run a farm system for the professional football leagues, then you're going to have to pay extra for it and not expect us to do it under the cover of 'physical education.'"

Perhaps it is time to tell parents that their tax dollars will be used to enhance classroom learning; that if they want to play status games with their neighbors by having their children compete for entrance into "prestige" universities, the local schools are not going to spend money on special AP courses for that purpose.

To examine these issues further, see Cutting Public School Costs . . . Intelligently. Can It Be Done?

Cordially,
-- EGR

Switching Sides -- and taking others along

updated 122618

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
-- Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen (1944)

You’ve been pushing a proposal, but now you’ve reconsidered.

Your priorities have changed. What you thought were benefits turned out to have unacceptable, previously hidden or underestimated costs.

What you thought were unacceptable costs, now seem to be not too bad, after all.

Time to reverse yourself, but not look scatterbrained or hypocritical in the process.

How to do this? Just consider: what someone may call “tact,” another will call “lying.” Same thing, just two ways of looking at it. It's a matter of value priorities. Characterizing an action "tact," prioritizes concern for other peoples' feelings over truth-telling. Calling it "lying," gives higher priority to truth-telling than to concern for peoples' feelings.

Consider another example: what some people may say is “plain truth” or “forthrightness,” others will call “insensitivity” or even “cruelty.” Again, it's a matter of value priorities: openness vs. not upsetting people.

To promote a change of course, you will have to reorder value priorities. You’ll need to know how to commend the values you now avoid even if previously you disparaged them. You’ll need to know how to disparage the things you now want to avoid even if previously you commended them. If you can handle these inversions skillfully, switching sides should be no problem.

But think it through first. Reversing yourself too frequently undercuts your credibility.

For references and to learn how this reversal process works, see see Mechanisms for Policy Reversal

Cordially
--- EGR

Must Conflict Be a Negative Process? Sometimes, it’s all for the better.

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Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. -- William S. Burroughs

Reflective people are often dismayed that the leaders of opposing factions profess the desire for peace, even as they wage war. Union and school board leaders express severe misgivings about closing down the schools as they wrangle themselves, inevitably, it seems, into a strike. To the uninformed eye, this looks like blatant hypocrisy. It is not.

Public expressions of desire are not merely a method of disseminating information. "I sincerely wish to put an end to this conflict" is not meant to inform the public about some leader's state of mind. Rather, it is a move in a negotiation process that may well result in peace. But there is a hidden proviso.

What "I sincerely wish to put an end to this conflict" has to be understood as saying is "I sincerely wish to put an end to this conflict provided that the costs of ending it do not outweigh the benefits of prolonging it." (And all parties generally want to avoid examining who it is that benefits, or who it is that pays the costs for either alternative.)

Wars could be avoided if one side would agree to accept the aggression of the other. School strikes could be avoided if teachers would accept lowered salaries, staff cut-backs, increased class sizes and arbitrary administrative decisions. But wise negotiators understand that every unresisted encroachment on the prerogatives of a group invites additional ones. Conflict cannot long be avoided by capitulation expediently rebaptized as “cooperation.”

To examine this issue further, see The Functions of Conflict in the Context of Schooling

Cordially,

--EGR

Will Technology Make Schooling More Efficient? Or Just Waste Time and Money?

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. -- Stephen Covey

The day-to-day activities in American public schools are particularly open to criticism from both parents and politicians. Curriculum “innovations” come and go as public fervor changes on topics of interest. The computers bought in a burst of school board enthusiasm one year sit underutilized the next because no budget has been provided to keep them apace of changes in technology.

However, to the extent that schools perform what are widely recognized as needed technical functions they can hope to resist political pressures. The promise of educational technology has been the promise of educational decision-making based solely on consideration of pedagogical efficiency: the development of a true Factory of Learning.

But are public schools in their essential character very much like factories? And can teaching be focused only, or even mostly, on widely recognized “productive” outcomes?

To get a perspective on these questions see The Teacher as Technician: Will Technology Improve Schooling? -- EGR

-- EGR

Is Reform Really Needed At Your School?

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
-- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983), The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

Almost anything can be changed into what someone thinks is “better.” But at what cost? And to whom? A lot of school reform has created more problems than it has solved. Workable programs have been sacrificed to the pursuit of something “better.” Usually, those who were enthusiastic about the “better” program are no longer around to help pick up the pieces of school programs they destroyed.

There are some questions you might consider before jumping into school reform. Don’t just do it because someone says it needs to be done. Consider the following questions:

a. Is the so-called reform's goal something nebulous and subject to different interpretations, e.g. "getting an education that will enable a student to compete in the 21st Century?" Whose crystal ball should we consult? Unless this "goal" can be tied down to specific testable goals, forget it. It's political puffery! (Or a sales pitch!)

b. Do you need something new to reach a particular goal? (Or will a modification in a present program likely serve as well?)

c. Someone says a dire situation threatens: you have to do something! But, is the threat imminent? Is it probable? Is it real?

d. Is there agreement among the powerholders in your community that the proposed reform should be implemented?

Unless you can get a substantial number of yes-es to the questions above, you might as well relax. Read a good book. Or go fishing.


To pursue this line of thought see The Need for and Possibilities of Educational Reform

Cordially
-- EGR