Where have all the students 2.0 gone?

Published by Lindsea on October 7, 2008 in Leading. 1 Comment

The answers are simple: Some of them have gone off to college, some have subtly retreated into a period of self growth, some have moved on with their lives.

The fact that teachers consistently remain where students don’t is painfully obvious. It’s natural that students move on and stop caring extrinsically about their grade in English or how to integrate blogging with their classroom. They’re able to blog and find their own life teachers for themselves.

Students come into the edublogosphere and then they leave it just as quickly.

So do students belong in the teacher eat teacher world of the edublogosphere? Can you really trust us to care for long enough?

I challenge you to show me proof. Send me links and email me with students you think are passionate leaders and doers. Students, if you’re reading this, speak up. Use this as your megaphone and tell the edublogosphere how you honestly feel.

Until then, this is an open pulpit waiting for the right voices.

Tragedy of the Student

Published by Lindsea on September 21, 2008 in Learning. 5 Comments

Can a tragedy lead us to a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself? I believe that the nature of tragedy brings us closer to seeing the brightest aspects of the human condition; and instead of one particular “tragic flaw,” the true tragedy occurs when a character attempts to either secure his/her personal dignity, or find lost personal dignity. In searching for dignity, the character inevitably reacts passionately and defensively from the wound of indignity. This process begins the spiraling downfall that eventually leads the character to just self-evaluation and the capability to grow and learn.

When I started my blog, I had a very fuzzy notion of who I really was. I was still finding my way through the blurry masses of interests and activities, trying to find out what I really love and what I wanted to do with my life. I built my blog on the idea of exploration: expressing myself without limits and without a clear idea of what exactly I was expressing. Reading the tragedy of Oedipus recently, I discovered a few parallels in our respective journeys.

One of the major reasons for Oedipus’s fall was his lack of self-awareness. Oedipus, after being told by a drunk man that he wasn’t really his father and mother’s child, didn’t even know who his true family was. He built his identity as the king of Thebes upon a lie; not knowing his mother was his wife, his father a man who insulted him passing the road, and his false parents his true parents. Oedipus had no idea who he was. When he started gaining popularity and respect from conquering the Sphynx, his dignity rose. When he was crowned king of Thebes, his dignity rose. But the dignity was based on false notions of self, and so it was easily threatened when the truth came into question and Oedipus found out who he really was.

With my own stabbingly obvious lack of self-awareness, I write obsessively on my blog and tweet volumes on Twitter. I’ve built my online identity on something that’s transitive and changing. I don’t really think I’ll ever stop changing who I am, and that makes for a wobbly and unfounded online identity. It’s founded on something that will never stop moving, something that’s nonlinear and confusing to all but me. And from this foundation, my dignity rises and I start getting protective of this dignity. I’m more afraid to make mistakes, or conversely, I’m careless and I obfuscate myself to evade responsibility.

When Oedipus’s inflated dignity popped (which it did as soon as he found out he’d slept with his mom and killed his dad), he was left with nothing and yet everything. All of the falsities that he had based his so-called life upon were gone: he was able to look himself in the eye, so to speak, and know himself. He was finally able to hold his children and love them. He could honestly feel sadness and joy. He was able to see the world and himself clearly. Oedipus was enlightened by his tragedy.

The last week of my trip to San Francisco, I was alone in the house I was staying at. It was a gorgeous five-bedroom, four-bathroom house in the Marina, and I was by myself. The last three days of my trip in San Francisco, coming home from another perfect day, I’d sit on the bus and stare out the window and listen to music, knowing that tonight I’d sit alone in my basement, watching C-SPAN and packing my luggage. I felt pathetic. But I also felt strangely liberated; I was finally able to look at myself clearly, see how I’d changed, understand how I was feeling, and be okay with that. At the end of the summer, I could look back and know that put to the test of living and surviving pretty much on my own, I thrived.

Aristotle believes that “the man who has a rational, comprehensive, intellectual perspective on life can attain happiness… is ‘ideal for life’” and that “the man who sees but one side of a matter, and straightway, driven on by his uncontrolled emotions, acts in accordance with that imperfect vision, meets a fate most pitiful and terrible.” Honestly when I first read this, it spurred on some of my own uncontrolled emotions; maybe because I recognized the familiar behavior in myself, did I object to seeing my potential fate spelled out for me.

The familiarity that I felt spurred me to think of why exactly I felt such an affinity with Oedipus. The obvious similarities aren’t there: I’m not a king, and I know who my parents are. Even the reality in which we both inhabit seems to be wildly different: I don’t believe in Greek gods the way he did, and there aren’t any ominous prophecies in my future. Miller explained it best for me; Oedipus, or any tragic hero, is on a latent journey to finding out who they really are. And who better to relate this with than us students who know hardly anything about ourselves, who are learning and discovering?

In high school, we’re just beginning a lengthy process of individuation, and it’s scary and frightening and wonderful all at the same time. Oedipus was a nonentity in that he had no past, no sense of self, and no true personality or foundation. He was a blank slate that the town filled in for him, which gave him a sense of dignity. Teenagers are blank as well, filled in with silly methods of self-assurances that give us seeming dignity. It’s not until we take the first step forward to evaluating ourselves justly do we see life with a rational, comprehensive, intellectual perspective.

Arthur Miller said that tragedy isn’t pessimistic, and I believe he was right. Looking at the tragedies, we see that it’s possible to live through the agonizing pain of finding out who we really are. True dignity won’t exist until we find out who we really are, and embrace that completely (like Oedipus). The confidence in the rock-hard foundation of our self dignity gives us the eyes to see the world clearly and be truly fit for life and learning.

Innovate, or die.

Published by Anthony Chivetta on August 31, 2008 in Teaching. 14 Comments

You cannot ignore this. You cannot ignore us. The revolution has begun and we have tasted the power.

In contrast to the consumer generations before us, my generation is growing up a generation of producers. We are the YouTube/LiveJournal/Facebook generation. Mass media which has long been a one-to-many institution, allowing only the big and wealthy to transmit their messages, is turning into the many-to-many world of the internet and cheep consumer devices.

Whether it is posting videos taken on cell phones to youtube or photos taken on pocket-sized cameras to facebook. our generation expects to be able to broadcast their messages. We expect to be able to create and to share.

And, it is this expectation that makes our generation different. We are no longer content to be consumers of information. That is, we are no longer content to consume an education. To connect with today’s students, you must not only teach them, but encourage them to teach back.

It requires a flat classroom, one where students are first class citizens and are engaged in the activity of learning, not simply an audience.

Project-based learning, one-to-one programs, insert education buzzword of the month here, aren’t enough. The change has to be deeper.

Failure to innovate around this new structure will cause education to take an increasingly marginalized role in the lives of our students.

But, I don’t need to explain this to you, you already know it. So, what’s the wait?

Old

Godspeed.

Think Different

Published by Sean "The Bass Player" on August 7, 2008 in Teaching. 19 Comments

Think Different

 Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Some of you may recognise that as the famous Apple ‘Think Different’ text, others may not, but I guess whether you’ve read it before or have read it for the first time there, we can pretty much all agree that it’s an inspiring piece of text. The thing that surprised me was that when reading through it I realised that all you need to do is change one tiny piece of the text to change the whole context of it.

“We make tools for educate these kinds of people”

In my mind, that’s now one hell of a motto for a better education system.

Let’s face it; the current education system just doesn’t know how to handle these kinds of people. “The round pegs in the square holes,” as Apple refers to them. The system doesn’t understand creativity. It robs all students of their creative consciousness and replaces it with structure, structure, and more structure, only to prepare them for a 9-to-5 job, Monday to Friday, every week of every year for the rest of their lives. Art, Music, Drama… you name it, the current system has a course for it. But that course doesn’t do any form of justice to the many greats that have over hundreds of years created amazing works and done incredible things, demonstrating how beautiful these arts can be. Students aren’t told to let passion drive them forward, or let their inspiration flow and their imagination stop at nothing. They are told to follow the rules, and do whatever it takes to get a ‘pass.’ Where would we be if Bach was told his Brandenburg concertos ‘didn’t quite meet the required standard’? What would have happened if Van Gogh was told his paintings just ‘didn’t make sense’?

It doesn’t stop at the arts. The suppression of creativity is seen in all fields of learning within the current system, giving no room for our real geniuses to shine. And why? Because the system has an obsession with testing, and at the end of the day you can’t test real genius, because you just can’t grade it. Who really has the right to say that a piece of music is an A or B or whatever else? Why should someone sitting in a fancy government office be able to sit there and write the rules that decide whether this piece of writing would make the grade or not? Why can’t the people deciding our futures for us be content with having some classes that have no exams? Classes that are solely there to help stimulate the different skills we all possess, without having to put us under the constant pressure of being bombarded with test after test and grade after grade. Do they see this as ‘non-educational’?

Think Different 2Think of the wealth of talent that is being and has been squandered due to this system. How many people would have become the next great composer if they had been given just that little bit more leeway? How many people would have had the courage to write their own novel, because they wouldn’t have been told they ‘weren’t good enough’? How many people failed to ever recognise their own potential because they were too busy striving for the best grades possible? Only so they could get a ‘good’ job in an office, with a ‘good’ salary.

Don’t get me wrong, we need the people in offices to do the things that keep our public services running and our economy going, but we also need the people who create, invent, and change things. We need the people who “sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written,” because Apple is right; they push the human race forward, and have done for as long as the human race has been around. But they can’t continue to do so if we don’t help them realise they are capable of doing so. They can’t invent the cure for cancer, or compose a great symphony, or write a magnificent piece of literature if our education system tells them exactly how everything should be, and what they should learn, and what they are aiming to do with their lives. Give them the opportunity. Let them decide.

We make the mistake of thinking that the people that do well in school are the ‘smart’ ones, but that isn’t always the case. These people may just be good at retaining information and reciting it back under pressure, or may just be good at problem solving. Our schools teach these kinds of people well, because they know how to deal with them. All you need to do with these people is throw facts and figures at them and tell them they need to know them to pass, and get become qualified to get a good job... which is not even proper learning. There is no regard there for our creative ones, or even the ‘smart’ ones who can probably do so much more given the opportunity. There is no other option, no fork in the road, not even a way to have the best of both worlds. Just one path for everyone to follow, with the same goal in mind—to fit in, and become another round peg in a round hole.

Let me make myself clear right now that this is not a dig at teachers, who do a superb job. What it is, however, is a cry out to the people in suits who decide what we learn and how we learn it to change their philosophy. To realise that some people can achieve more, and that the people who will eventually find the cure for cancer, or create the next breakthrough piece of technology, or discover new planets and galaxies are in our schools. These children/students or whatever you want to call them are waiting on these people to realise and do something to help them on their way to greatness. To give them the opportunity to shine, and achieve things that both us and them can’t even imagine yet.

It really is time for our education system to start ‘Thinking Differently.’

The Bass Player


Photo 1 by nilson

Photo 2 by tim7423

Never stop doing

Published by Anthony Chivetta on June 24, 2008 in Teaching. 12 Comments

Recently, Arthus treated us to the importance of nothing. He wrote:

My favorite thing of all is to do nothing at all. I do nothing all the time: I walk nowhere, I think about nothing, I work on nothing.
...
Doing nothing is the same as doing anything that strikes your fancy, or not. Doing nothing is getting a crazy idea, then forgetting it.

I compare Arthus’s “doing nothing” with the time that I spend thinking and tinkering. Such time is of critical importance to any creative individual; it is when we find new directions for our ideas and explore the breadth of the intellectual realm. The world would be a very boring place if we never allowed ourselves to wander in new directions.

However, one must wander somewhere. I believe that our lives are nothing more than the sum of the actions that we take. If we only wander through the intellectual void that is doing nothing, nothing is all we will be. Life isn’t about meandering through our thoughts, it is about grabbing a thought by the horns and running with it.

guiding

I believe that a fully lived life is without boredom. You should always be doing something: pursuing some new idea, trying or learning something new, working towards some end, building something, never losing momentum.

Every experience we have provides us with new information that we use to make sense of the world around us, expanding our schemata. This understanding of the world, the one that comes from experience, is what separates the knowledgeable from the wise.

Our thoughts are nothing without the actions that make the best of them. Arthus may have started his blog while doing nothing, but he had to do something to make it a success. We must move from thinking to doing. Only nothing has been accomplished by thoughts alone.

So, with all due respect to Arthus’s philosophy of doing nothing, I would challenge you instead to do everything that you can, to live your life fully and never let a moment go to waste. Never be bored, never wonder what to do, just do something. Go write a book, learn how to paint, act in a play, install Linux, write a blog, start a company, study religious texts, learn a new language, volunteer with a new group, connect with an old friend.

If you are not exhausted, you should be asking yourself: what else can I be doing?

It should be the same in our schools: are we giving students the opportunity to do everything in life that they can?

  1. Photo by author, on Flickr
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