Ken Robinson on Education Reform, Animated

Why Kids Can't Sit Still in School

There's a article by a pediatric occupational therapist making the rounds about the way that the normal, sedentary school day contributes to a host of problems including childhood obesity, sensory integration difficulties, lack of core body strength, balance trouble, and learning difficulties.  Parents, not surprisingly, have jumped to the task of finding solutions to the problem the author lays out.

In a follow-up piece, the author addresses those solutions.  Are exercise ball seats or brief exercise breaks throughout the day the answer?  In a word: no.  These quick fixes are cosmetic solutions for a bone-deep problem.  Exercising a minute or two out of every hour is not enough.  Children need to run, roll, spin, swing, and play for hours every day in order to develop normally.  Our schools, unfortunately, don't support that.  Actually, the number and length of recess breaks have done nothing but decrease in the last few years, and the few recesses allowed to our kids are routinely cancelled due to inclement weather and replaced with alternate sitting still activities.

Ask at your local elementary school how many minutes of recess children receive a day.  Ask what happens instead when it rains or when the temperature is below zero.  The answers will not reassure you.  As the article so memorably puts it: when the bum is numb, the brain is dumb.

We can do better.

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The Problem with a Narrow Education

The handful of politicians and business people making decisions about the future of education in our country would like parents to believe that the key to success is laser-like focus on a handful of subjects.  They have declared that in the earliest grades, our children should focus on literacy and math six hours a day, to the exclusion of the arts, the humanities, and science.  In the later grades, these self-styled experts have decided that our children should focus on both literacy and the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (S.T.E.M.) to the continued exclusion of the arts and humanities.  

This laser focus approach does a disservice to our children.  First of all, because we cannot know for sure that S.T.E.M. careers are in fact the jobs of the future.  More importantly, however, because such narrow focus impoverishes education.  

Allow me to illustrate with a story.  My good friend Elizabeth has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry.  During her post-graduate education, Elizabeth was performing research that built on previous studies in organic chemistry.  Unfortunately, the original research published on the specific area of her work was written in German.  In order to succeed in her S.T.E.M. field, Elizabeth needed to understand German so she could read the original papers.

An education with a narrow focus on literacy and S.T.E.M. would not have prepared her for the learning she needed to do later in her life.

Our children need the opportunity to study a broad range of subjects.  Project-based learning is ideal, because it allows for the student to find every type of knowledge and form of expression grounded in the topics they love most.

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Kids Talking About School

Perhaps you've seen the article recently posted on Huffington Post recommending 25 ways to ask your kids about their school day.  The premise is that, if you can somehow ask the right question, your child will share with you all of the things that happened to him during school.  Do you think the author ever considered that maybe kids say "nothing" happened at school because, as far as they are concerned, nothing happened?  

In most traditional classrooms, the child is intended to be a passive recipient, soaking up knowledge poured out by the teacher.  If he's not soaking, he's doing nothing, and it isn't much fun to tell your parent about nothing.

How excited would you be to talk about the time you spent standing in line at the bank, waiting in line at the drive through, or sitting on hold with the utility company?  Maybe the way to get your child to talk about school isn't to ask silly questions.  Maybe the way to get your child to talk about school is for him to actually do something at school.

When your child is engaged in deep learning about topics that truly interest him, he won't be able to help talking about his day.  His interests and the learning, building, and doing he has accomplished around those interests will be on his mind.  He'll want to tell you about the meaningful work he has done..  

You won't be the only one benefiting from that talking, either.  Clear verbal communication is one of the twenty first century skills that leaders in the worlds of business and government agree future workers will need.  Telling you about his interests will help your child strengthen his communication skills.

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But what if he just wants to play Lego Batman all day?

Any interest can lead to real learning.  The key is to dig deeper: past the surface-level consumption of that interest, into the creative space of making and doing.  Maybe his interest is Lego Batman.  Learning visual spatial reasoning, hand-eye coordination, and real-time problem solving by playing the game are good.  However, once he gets past the level of simply playing the game, what else might he do with that interest?

Maybe he'll create a youtube channel to review the game.  Then he'll learn to operate the camera, write the review copy, edit the videos, post the code online, embed the music, and animate the credits.  He'll learn to build an audience, interact with commenters, and network via social media platforms.  All of these things are transferable skills!  When he moves on to a new interest, and he will move on eventually, he can use these skills to support something else.  

There's something your child wants to learn because it's fun.  There's also something your child needs to learn because he is motivated to take his interest deeper.

Jump on over to Lori Pickert's blog to read more on wanting vs. needing to learn.  

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How a Child-Led Education Might Look

Teacher Tom is a preschool teacher, but he paints a beautiful picture of child-led education here.  I'm excited for the future.  I'm eager for my children and yours to be part of this movement!

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Why Kids Need a Hands-On Approach

There are as many learning styles as there are children, but the one constant is that playing is the beginning of true understanding.  A baby playing with sounds learns to form meaningful words.  A child playing with blocks learns balance and proportion.  A cook playing with ingredients learns to create her own recipes.  A carpenter playing in the workshop learns to visually construct before committing his resources.  Our children need to play to understand.  They need to tinker to learn. 

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"How to Create Nonreaders"

Here's a wonderful article about the strategies at work in most classrooms today that kill the love of learning.  Reward programs, grades, tests, isolation, and lack of choice all damage the intrinsic motivation of children to deeply explore their world.  The solution is to go a different direction.  When children choose their own educational goals, work together meaningfully, and assess themselves, they develop autonomy, internal motivation, and real-world learning skills.

There's a better way forward!  Join the child-led, project-driven revolution.

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The Coming Revolution

This piece in The Atlantic speaks about the revolution coming over the horizon in public education.  We know that Common Core, high-stakes testing, deprofessionalizing teaching, and the other "reforms" being pushed by corporate interests are not sustainable.  The author sees the future of education in a dramatic shift, a revolution in public schools.

I am on the side of revolution.  I am on the side of my children.  Let's work together to reform public schools, and let's model a new way forward.  Let's give our children a high-quality, strength-based, child-led education.

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Specifics, Details, and Current Plans

What exactly are we talking about?
Our school will be have a child-led curricula with a project-directed focus.  "Child-led" means students will decide what they learn and when they learn it, both on a month-to-month and on a minute-to-minute basis.  "Project-driven" means that the teacher will provide resources, mentoring, and encouragement for students to delve deeply into their authentic interests. 

Our school will serve students in Kindergarten through fifth grade in a mixed-ages setting.  We plan to rent space from another organization, such as a church, service organization, or community group.

The general schedule for each day will be decided by the lead teacher in collaboration with students, other teachers, and classroom helpers.  The teacher(s) will help students formulate their educational plans and follow through with them, in addition to documenting their progress.  It is intended that each student will be involved in both a large group project and one or more individual projects at most times during the school year.  The daily schedule will reflect that intention.

Our school intends to follow the District 205 calendar.  As such, the school year will be 180 days, and the school day will run 8:15 AM to 3:00 PM.  Due to the flexibility of the child-led approach, however, families will be able to use their discretion in determining how closely their children will adhere to the schedule.  (For example, you may elect to leave school earlier in the afternoon twice a week in order to participate in an extracurricular sport.)

Our tuition will be between $5000 and $6000 a year, with the possibility of tuition discounts for classroom assistance.

Based on preliminary numbers, we will be able to open with a full-time teacher with a minimum enrollment of 14 paid students.  With 14 to 20 students, we will be able to hire one full-time teacher.  With 21 to 30 students we will be able to hire two full-time teachers.  We will be able to hire an additional teacher for every 10 paid students.

FAQ

Why do you even need a school for this?  Why not just homeschool?

Many families, for a variety of reasons, cannot or do not wish to homeschool.  Our school will be a resource for those families.  More importantly, however, certain skills can only be learned through practice interacting with a diverse group of other people: how to lead, how to follow, how to be a good citizen, how to disagree constructively, how to empathize, how to fight fairly, how to rally support to a common cause, how to communicate clearly in the heat of the moment, how to help without taking over, how to mentor, how to teach, and many others.  A mixed-age classroom provides an ideal environment to support children in learning these skills.  

Won't the kids have to learn Common Core at some point?  Isn't starting late going to be a handicap?  

The short answer is "Yes, and no."  Because the school only intends to serve children through fifth grade, students will be exposed to Common Core in junior and senior high.  However, the delay in introducing Common Core will be a benefit, rather than a handicap.  Common Core was created by back-mapping.  What this means is that a small group of people decided on a list of things that a high school senior should know at graduation.  They then divided that list into roughly equal sequential pieces and distributed those pieces backwards across the grades.  You already know from watching your child learn to walk and talk that kids develop at different rates and that development happens in fits and starts, rather than in a steady linear way.  This is a particular concern in the early grades, when children are not developmentally ready for the tasks Common Core requires.  Our students will learn to learn, which will prepare them to learn Common Core starting in junior high.  With a firm grasp of his own learning style, your child will be able to learn Common Core concepts more quickly and without the stress of tackling developmentally inappropriate tasks.

How will kids learn to read, write, and do math?  Don't you need curriculum for those things?
In an environment that supports, celebrates, and encourages learning, children will learn the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy because they are foundational to any interest the children could pursue.  In order to deeply study any subject through a long-term collaborative project, a child will need to count, add, subtract, divide, multiply, think spatially, think sequentially, follow instructions, find resources, research through books, observe carefully, respond through a variety of mediums, study resource materials, communicate verbally, work collaboratively, memorize important facts, and a host of other skills.  This is true whether the project is cupcakes, Legos, dinosaurs, or baby dolls.  For examples of projects and the skills they teach, check out pbhkids.tumblr.com.
However, if a child appears to be struggling in a given discipline, the teacher can certainly mentor the child to come up with a plan for improving her skills in that area.  If agreed on by both the teacher and the child, pre-packaged curriculum could may be part of that plan.

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The Big Idea

It's time to rethink education in the United States. 

It seems that every ten or twenty years there's a new trend in elementary education, but they all seem to be "same song, another verse." Every trend re-works the basic ideas that 1) Schools are factories for math and literacy, 2) Every child needs to learn the same things in the same ways at the same times, and 3) If we could just find the right combination of benchmarks, curriculum, standards, methods, and tests, every student would come out of the school knowing everything "important."

What we need to fix education in America is not another set of standards, and it's not another round of tests.  We need a paradigm shift.  My friends, the purpose of education is not to give the student all the information she'll need to know for the rest of her life. Rather, the purpose of education is to teach the student to learn, so she can continue learning everything she'll need to know for the rest of her life.

How, then, do we teach learning?  It's clear that there are many different learning styles, and each child's way of learning may be unique to him or herself.  It's also clear that pre-packaged curriculum, even if it is excellent at teaching its subject, does not teach the process of learning itself.

To teach learning, we first need to step back and recognize the entire four step process of learning.  Learning is the IDEA:  1. Identify the goal, 2. Decide on steps to reach the goal, 3. Execute the steps, and 4. Assess whether or not the goal has been met.

Maybe you've heard the old saying, "He who cuts his own wood is warmed twice."  The wood cutter is warmed first by swinging the ax and again by burning the wood.  The child who controls every step of the IDEA learns twice.  He learns whatever he's focused on learning, and he also learns how to learn.

Why do children need to control the IDEA?

Twenty years ago, there's no way my parents could have guessed two of their four children would become computer programmers.  We have no idea what the jobs of the future are going to be.  Because we don't know what jobs there will be, we can't predict what knowledge will be important in 20 years.  What we do know is that our children will need to know how to learn whatever they need to know for their future jobs.

Giving children control of their own learning might seem risky.  Ultimately, however, it's the surest path.  In an environment that celebrates, supports, and encourages learning, every child will learn the fundamentals of literacy, math, and social skills.  After all, we call them "fundamentals" because they are at the foundation of every kind of learning.  In an environment that celebrates, supports, and encourages learning, every child will also learn how to set goals, prioritize between good plans, study a subject deeply, problem solve, manage his productivity, and assess his own work.  Those skills will serve him well on any path his future takes.

What's the plan, then?

I propose a school.  A child-led, project-directed elementary school.  Are you interested in joining me?
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