What is education for?

What is education for?

The Village School, formerly a public charter school, is now the Village. We are a learning community of 24 students and four adults, actually several adults. We have chosen to be a learning community that emphasizes freedom, democracy, restorative justice, collective decision making, hands-on learning, and entrepreneurial endeavors to support ourselves.

We were formerly a charter school, a status that required us to give a lot of standardized tests and deliver a standardized curriculum. Our sponsoring district decided not to renew our charter, we believe a mistake, but in the long run a blessing for us all because now we focus on the fundamentals of real education, real learning.

What are these qualities of real learning? Here's what we think:

1. Physical growth and development

2. Emotional growth and development

3. Moral growth and development

4. Intellectual growth and development (not to be confused with academics)

5. Spiritual growth and development

6. Community responsibility and participation

Implied in these five areas are whatRachael Kessler in "The Soul of Education" calls the "seven gateways to the soul in education":

1. Deep Connection
2. Silence
3. Meaning and Purpose
4. Joy and delight
5. Creativity
6. Transcendence
7. Initiation

The current educational system is now as far from these qualities as any endeavor can get. For example, with a standardized education, learners are not encouraged to ask the big questions--What happens when I die; Why do people take their own lives? Is there a God . . . and so on. In fact, young people are not encouraged to ask questions at all. They are forced to learn answers, and not even answers or solutions of their own creation.

In the Village Learning Community, we concern ourselves with these and thousands of other questions, and searchings, and creations, and imaginings, and love, and deep reflection, and compassion, and I could go on.

Why will not the world community awake and yearn for something different in a time when we are on the brink of extinction with Global Warming? Our old ways of doing things--including education--have gotten us into the mess we are in. These old ways will not get us out. Is it that most in the U.S. do not want to face our grim future? Do people simply not want to stop living the lives that they live? They do not want to give up their things, and their cars, and their ease?

What is learning and education if they are not about meaning and purpose--deep meaning, not phony meaning--like take the spelling test and answer the questions at the back of the book.

My hope for this blog is that we will capture this necessary and fundamental revolution, no, transformation in education, and show the path to the miracle of our rebirth. We are done criticizing what exists, what passes for education. We are creating new learning. Join us!

Olivia

It's the Poverty, Stupid

Dedicated to Marcea Frazier

First I need to clarify that the "Stupid" in the title does not refer to Marcea, my good friend and co-teacher at Village School. There's also a child's book, The Stupids, a clever and very funny children's story--a story book, actually, not allowed in the Brave New World of standardized reading curriculum.

No, the "Stupids" I am referring to are those very educational policy and curriculum makers that have brought us No Child Left Behind and standardized curriculum, mechanized reading, and one-size-fits-all basal readers where The Stupids story book doesn't fit (It's the wrong size, because it requires the imagination, which is gigantic), nor do any other children's books fit that don't contain the legislated vocabulary.

A study recently published by Minnesota School Board's Association found that the cause of children's lack of progress in school is poverty. We can continue to require tests, punish teachers and schools for students' lower test scores; we can cancel recess and art and music classes, and require students to take two, three and four math classes, or ten reading classes; we can extend the school year by two or three months; we can take over the schools and privatize education; we can require schools to divert funding to private tutoring corporations. But none of these measures will really help children learn more as long as children live in poverty.

Could it be that George Bush and a host of government leaders want us to spend all our time teaching for tests and tutoring, and designing more reading classes, and ordering more curriculum, and worry about the feds taking over our schools, because they don't want us to figure out the real reason and demand that something be done for the poor? Bush has slashed program after program that has helped poor kids--Head Start, allocations to section housing, frre and reduced lunch, and scores of other programs. We can't pay attention, because we're creating new tests and curriculum to teach to the tests.

But as long as we don't feed kids and make sure they have a place to live, test scores won't improve, kids won't learn. How can you do your homework if you not only don't have a desk, but don't have a floor for the desk to sit on?

It makes sense for us to end poverty. Some may think that poor people deserve it. Poor people don't work hard or whatever. But no child deserves to be poor. It makes sense for us to raise children out of poverty.

How we do that is another story. But can we stop blaming teachers, and schools, and classes that don't pound the basics into kids' heads? Poverty, and the systems and factors that perpetuate poverty, are to blame.

In 2005, 37.5 million people lived below the poverty line. More than 13 million families in 2004 were unable at times to buy the food they needed.

For starters, to bring kids out of poverty, raise the minimum wage, which is a little over $5.00 per hour--that's $10,300 per year. You do the math. Can a family of four afford rent and other costs, as well as healthy food, on this amount?

In New York City in 2005, of the 1.9 million and teens, over half were born into poverty. 16,000 children are homeless. Most of these children have no health insurance.

Can children learn when they are hungry or cold, or tired and afraid.

Teachers and families know that children can't. Children know they can't. They are not Stupid.

Childmachine

Childmachine

This one's for Jeff

I have a proposal. It's a modest one.

My proposal will save the state and taxpayers billions of dollars. My proposal will save parents years of grief and frustration.

Children should be made into machines from the hour of birth. Why invest in twelve or more years of schooling, and a lifetime of parenting? Genetic engineering and nanotechnology have made wonderful advances in altering feelings and behavior by inserting a tiny chip into the brain. The military has invested billions in developing a computer chip that, when inserted into the brain, will block pain and fear, thus allowing a soldier to fight bravely right up until the moment of death. See for more on this exciting invention.

The goal of genetic engineers now is to create a biological computer based on and embedded into DNA that would exceed a million-fold the number and kind of operations, providing users with an unimaginably, one could even say inhumanly, fast and efficient computer.

Scientists and engineers will save us from the current oil crisis. I have absolute faith in their ability to invent something that will turn air into fuel so that we can continue to drive our Sports Utility Humvees. Why can't they turn their attention to those pesky children to make them more useful and efficient, and, well, more standard?

Legislators and taxpayers will rejoice if genetic alterations can be made so as to make children not only into efficient pickle factory workers, or cardboard box folders, but into the very machines that workers operate in those factories--the bottle washers and sorters, and label gluers. All without investing a dollar in teachers or school buildings or books. Property tax will be reduced significantly so people can invest in a third or fourth vehicle, since fuel will now be as free as the air.

Companies themselves will be much relieved. Not only will they no longer need to provide health care for their workers, for there will be an endless, renewable supply of workers given the surplus population, or retirement benefits, because the Childmachine will expire before growing old. Corporations will no longer need to make capital investments to replace machinery.

Parents' lives will be much improved. Their days will proceed much more smoothly, for their children will be much easier to control, and will never display those bothersome traits of contrary points of view or independence of spirit.

One group may be uneasy upon learning of my proposal--the standardized testing companies. Tests will no longer be necessary, for children will be standardized immediately. Each testing company would stand to lose $2.2 billion each year without school children to standardize using the much slower and more inefficient method of yearly testing and drilling for the test.

But the test manufacturers will be relieved to know I have accounted for them in my proposal. They will manufacture the Childmachines, applying the technology that is created by our clever scientists who have no other interest than the good of society.

I can no longer be modest.

My proposal is brilliant. Don't you think so, Jonathan Swift?

I burned QComp

What is Q-Comp, and why would I burn it?
Q-Comp is larger than a Q-Tip, but much smaller than any real educational reform.
Q-Comp stands for "Quality Compensation," one dreamchild of Governor Tim Pawlenty. Its supposed goal for schools and teachers is to provide funds for faculty development. But there are hidden costs.
Village School where I teach is a small charter school, around fifty students. Village School would have received $15,000 from the state if we had applied for and received Q-Comp funding. It sounded like a good idea to me. We can always use more money.
I worked for two weeks straight on the proposal. There was one stipulation that troubled me, but I thought I could work around it--a substantial proportion of the pay awarded for teachers' participation in the program depended on students' progress in academic areas as measured by standardized tests.
At Village School, we despise standardized tests--but that is a subject for another blog posting. It seemed as though a teacher's effectiveness with Q-Comp could be documented with a portfolio of the teacher's work with students. And so I kept at it.
After submitting the proposal, I received comments from the state reviewers. I had left significant sections of explanation out, in particular the section about the areas of academic growth that would be measured, and the norm-referenced standardized tests that would measure that growth. There was no way I could finesse it. As I filled in the charts that included grade level of students and areas of measurement, it became clearer and clearer that a single teacher would get a raise or not depending on, in our case, a small charter school, the test scores of a single student.
Let's call the teacher "Mr. Thompson" and the student "Mary." Mr. Thompson would get a raise if Mary did well on her math test.
There could be lots of reasons Mary might not do well on the test that had nothing to do with Mr. Thompson or his ability as a teacher. She could be absent. She could have a headache. Her boyfriend broke up with her right before the test. She may have known some math, but not the particular problems on the test. The dog ate her test. She developed sudden amnesia. She hated Mr. Thompson and hoped he'd never get another raise the rest of his life.
Too many teachers are already teaching for the tests out of fear that their school will be labeled a failing school--and ultimately taken over by somebody who thinks they can do a better job, a for-profit company, perhaps. How much harder will a teacher work to teach the test if it will mean getting a bigger raise?
Some have said that Pawlenty's Q-Comp plan is not about improving teaching and learning at all, but is a Trojan Horse whose sole purpose is to change teachers' compensation schedules and undermine teacher unions. It's merit pay disguised as a faculty development plan.
Whatever the real goals of Q-Comp are, it became clear to all of us at Village School that it wouldn't work for us.
On one of the first days of school, I and three other students hauled the boxes of paper that were once our Q-Comp proposal out to the woods. We built a small bonfire of twigs and leaves, and one by one dropped the pages into the fire.
As the smoke from the burning pages rose into the sky, we offered up a prayer to protect our children from the insatiable hunger of testing corporations, and the interminable machinations of politicians.
Oops! Just kidding! There were no prayers. It's a school, remember? But there was smoke. And where there's smoke, there's fire. And Pawlenty's hot new plan adding fuel to this fire.