Caution: super-long post, aimed in part at protecting many of our children from their own education.
The world of public education is abuzz with talk of improving student achievement. Faced with the disheartening statistics illustrating the decline of the American school system in comparison to other industrialized nations (along with a continuous series of budget cuts, among other issues), many educators are faced with the challenge of maintaining and/or increasing the level of rigor in their classrooms in order to keep up with the demands of a 21st century world - a world which will require its citizens to be able to adapt quickly and work together to solve problems (new and old) and work with technologies that haven't yet been invented.
According to a recent 2010 report by the Partnership for a 21st Century Education entitled, "Up To The Challenge", there are three primary developments which will make it possible to increase student outcomes that match the needs of their postsecondary, business, and civic lives:
1. Consensus that the foundation of academic knowledge required for postsecondary education is virtually the same, with growing recognition that the academic skills, and employablity and technical knowledge and skills, are essential as well;
2. Widespread agreement that lifelong learning and "learning how to learn" are key drivers of success in college, careers, and civic life; and
3. Collaborative efforts in states, districts, and communities to strengthen their collective capacity to deliver results that matter.
To some, this may appear to be a blend of jargon from the education industry and the corporate world, so please pardon me while I translate each one briefly, and then comment on them:
1. Obsessing over academic standards in schools is like training a soccer team whose main goal is being able to move their legs in a way that looks like running. Yes, running is important for soccer, but it's not the only thing.
If I were to list all of the anatomical, neurological, and physiological elements of a running stride in a painstakingly-outlined sequence and then require coaches to test their athletes on these things as a measurement of athletic ability INSTEAD of (or even "in addition to") requiring them to play well, every sports team in the country would be bogged down with needless crap instead of being able to train. Even the teams whose running scores outperformed all the other teams would still suffer in terms of their overall ability to compete on a global level because of the disproportionate amount of time focusing on the fundamentals and not the applications.
Our teachers managed to get us what we needed to get into college without the need for endless bureaucracy. Some of us even feel like we made it, despite many of our teachers. ;)
It's time we trusted the teachers again. The outline of standards is a guide, not a cut-and-dry recipe for academic success. Give your tour guides a chance to make the trip interesting and meaningful.
Let's move on:
2. Learning is a part of life, even after you're done with school, so you'd better be good at it.
It's unfortunate that a love of learning isn't necessarily synonymous with a love of schooling. Perhaps that suggests something about our schools....or about ourselves, perhaps both.
Maybe #2 was self-explanatory. Onward:
3. We all need to work together on things that make a difference.
At its pinnacle, education does more than distribute knowledge. It transforms behavior.
Transformational learning came into the educational landscape in 1978 with the work of Jack Mezirow, who wrote about a different level of learning experience - the kind of learning experiences which produce enough of an impact to create a "paradigm shift" that affects future behaviors.
The connection is almost too simple. If you want to make a difference in the world, you make a difference in another's life...yet education doesn't necessarily promote this level of learning - not in an environment where the measurement and evaluation of foundational learning is prized as the "coin of the realm", while the "immeasurable" task of serving the community and fostering a sense of civic duty and positive contribution is lumped into the category of "community service" and seen as a chore.
Why is transformation such an important goal for learning? It gives purpose to learning, purpose which runs deeper than passing a test and making a grade. Connect that purpose to other forms of learning and you unlock a deep sense of motivation to learn!
Bringing it all back now....since this post is technically a UBBT journal for me also, I want to highlight how the curriculum objectives of the UBBT (and the Live Like a Champion Project) contribute towards the 3 developments suggested by the Partnership for 21st Century Education:
1. The UBBT is flexible in pushing its participants to become well-rounded master teachers. Instructors who haven't opened a book since high school are encouraged to wrap their minds around great thinkers and put their ideas into action creatively, not by copying a step-by-step lab procedure because social change isn't simply a matter of following a recipe. Others who have the knowledge, but have lost the ability to apply themselves enough to jog more than a couple of laps around the track, are tasked with achieving functional mastery - not just the ability to eat, sleep, run, punch, kick, and choke....but to be masterful in doing it! We must unite theory with reality.
2. The UBBT returns its participants to the model of continuous, lifelong improvement and refinement. Gone are the days where we could believe we've "been there, done that" and then parrot orders at the front of the class....that was probably never in line with our ideals to begin with. The master becomes the student once again, because "master teacher", "master practitioner", and "master student" are the same path.
3. UBBT members take their practice "out of the dojo and into the world". While educators might be trapped in the idea that service projects aren't quantifiable (because they've only recently begun to use fancy statistics to track the most elementary levels of subject area knowledge), UBBT students are expected to document 1000 acts of kindness (large or small), mend 3 relationships (talk about socioemotional learning), spend a full day simulating various forms of disability in order to have first-hand experience growing in their sense of empathy for others, and much more - watch what they're planning to do in Alabama next April (have you donated yet?).
What will someone learn from these experiences - will the lessons be consistent?
To the rigid educator, no. The results will be highly subjective, difficult to track, and unable to replicate with any reliable degree of consistency.
To the educational activist, yes it is consistent because all of those unmeasurable activities produce results that matter. Unlock a sense of purpose in a student....watch what they achieve.
You want to improve schools and communities? Have them all do the UBBT.
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