A decade of work in Chicago makes Dewey famous

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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on December 7, 2007 at 11:38am

Thanks, Sylvia,

I just put on reserve at my local library Dennis Littky's The Big Picture: Education Is Everyone's Business. CES and the Reggio Emilia movement I have been aware of for a while.

As you can tell from my other comments posted in this discussion, I am much more inclined to see education reform in the context not of standardization, but of diversification. I'd rather see a kid innovatively placed in a non-school learning environment somewhere in the wider world of industry or commerce where provision is made for engaging her ingenuity and energy and productivity than I would see her in a dull, learn-to-pass-the-standardized-test classroom. It has always been amazing to me to see kids challenge their own limitations in language and math and better their skills when put into the context of accomplishing real-world goals to which they're endeared.

Permalink Reply by Ed Jones on December 7, 2007 at 1:15pm

Wasn't chiding Diane et al, so much as myself.

What I was saying was, if you want Dewey-esque change--that is, one person whose name is synonymous for 100 years with changing the face of education--then that person will be the one who moves us from a 19th century steel-worker labor model to a 21st century knowledge-worker model.

Each of us can (probably should) list a dozen of these coalitions and movements and partnerships. And they're all good!

What's good about them is they are busting up the Teacher-Union-District-EdSchool-State-Feds pyramid. They're empowering building administrators and local school boards to say, look, we don't have to submit to a hodgepodge of textbook publishers and pedagogies, we like the results that these schools over here get, and we think we can replicate it.

The problem is the continued replication. In the end, those networks will draw the funds and the good teachers, the ones who will go beyond the call despite the hardships and the low pay. They will draw larger resources as long as they can somehow add extra value and appear to be more deserving than the lesser school down the road. And the lesser schools down the road (tho they may have been the star 5 years ago) will get the lesser resources.

We call this the scalability problem.

Not every school has to be edgily innovative. What we need is for all schools to together be adaptive enough to give 95% of the kids the basics they need, and still move enough well-prepared students on to college.

We have many examples of quality controlled, innovative success to choose from. Innovation as its done by electrical and aerospace and chemical engineers, health professionals, bio-scientists? financial professionals, accountants, marketing professionals, web development professionals, etc. Quality control as its practiced at Fedex and Amazon and Health Care organizations and many other low-tolerance-for-failure organizations. Some use collective bargaining in their production; none use it in their innovation, training, or leadership.

Dewey-esque change will be the tipping point, when we don't point to even a score of CES and High Tech High networks's but when every school is able to move good people in as needed, move the not-so-good out, train and support on demand, restructure when necessary, and adapt with agility.

Permalink Reply by Ken Messersmith on December 6, 2007 at 8:36am

So, getting back to Dewey. I am not an expert or a philosopher, but my reading is that he believed the school should be controlled by the community and not by the central government. The community should participate in the formulation of the curriculum, the allocation of resources, and students should likewise be involved with the community as they become educated. It seems to me that Ed is saying that our schools have lost the flexibility to adapt to the new needs of the community. Would it be an improvement if we abolished the federal DOE and put the responsibility back on the states?

Permalink Reply by Ed Jones on December 6, 2007 at 10:40am

It doesn't entirely seem so. The states have bureaucracies now probably bigger than the Feds did in Dewey's time. And they are less susceptible to quality control sometimes.

The control should go to the teachers as individuals, negotiating as individuals, but belonging to a world-class knowledge worker professional organizations who give them the intellectual tools to stand their ground.

But the biggest thing is to give them the power of incrementalism. Every other knowledge-worker-professional negotiates on his own. While it seems to be the less powerful way to bargain, in fact it works out better. Why? Same reason XM radio will give you the radio if you just pay $14.95 a month. Its just a little bit here and there; I can afford it.

So, when one person walks in and asks for a 4 percent raise, it seems not much. When 300 or 800 or 2000 walk in on one day and ask for a 2.5% raise, tempers flair. It makes no sense mathematically, but it is human nature.

Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on December 6, 2007 at 12:32pm

Ken,
Some people say the word "community" in their discussions in somewhat the same way the business legalists use the word "corporation." They both become "fictitious" entities that can act as containers for legal, geographical, even philosophical statements with which governmental/organizational activities can be conducted.

In most respects, it is only, as in the case of corporations, for example -- when toys are designed and manufactured, when toys are picked up from manufacturers and delivered to store stockrooms, and when parents put down the advertisements in hand so as to take the toys off holiday decorated shelves and take them home to kids awaiting the appointed time for uncovering them from gift wrappings -- that a chain of people and events, at work within "fictitious" corporations have any connection to reality, albeit a largely artificially created one in this case. Local communities in which schools are sponsored come somewhere in the middle of a somewhat similar chain of real people and events--or they don't. Kids are educated--or they're not--depending on the fundamental authenticity of the various services provided on behalf of kids from distant locations, like Capitol Hill, to the closest location, a kitchen table. Where in this long connection of people at work are the kids best served? I say in all locations. Where are the boundaries of the educational community involved? I say that kids' fortunes are bounded as much by national, even global, activity as they are by the crossroads they may identify as being hometown. It used to be much simpler to flesh out those who make up one's community. Perhaps, community can yet be localized geographically and culturally as it has been in days past, but how long will a kid remain our kid when she's able to belong to a community of learning and practice which is beyond our ken? And will we have the wisdom to know to let go of her belonging to us?

We need leadership which can reframe the discussion of reform in those metaphors which will redefine us as developmental beings in a much wider community of others, each originating in an elsewhere culture of his own, and yet sustain our sense of being at home somewhere on the planet with those we love.

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