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Here’s a question for anyone interested in education:

Why do we persist in running such inefficient systems of education?  Can anyone show sound evidence that the way most schools are currently structured is the best way to support highly engaged and effective learning?  A detailed and complex school timetable that determines at any given time where students are, what subjects they should be learning, how they should be learning, and with whom they should be learning, certainly looks very efficient from the outside.  Just talk, however, with students who are in such systems and ask them how efficient this system really is.  We all know, even from our own time in rigidly timetabled classrooms, that such a system is really highly inefficient.

So, the question is, why do we continue to run such inefficient systems?  Teachers know they don’t work, students definitely know how mind-numbingly boring they are most of the time, and parents have to try and cope with the fall-out.  There are ways of structuring learning so that every student is highly engaged and successful.  So why aren’t all schools set up this way?

The following study undertaken at Stanford University had some unexpected results that will be of interest to educators:

“In one of the most amazing developmental studies ever conducted, Walter Michel of Stanford created a simple test of the ability of four year old children to control impulses and delay gratification. Children were taken one at a time into a room with a one-way mirror. They were shown a marshmallow. The experimenter told them he had to leave and that they could have the marshmallow right then, but if they waited for the experimenter to return from an errand, they could have two marshmallows. One marshmallow was left on a table in front of them. Some children grabbed the available marshmallow within seconds of the experimenter leaving. Others waited up to twenty minutes for the experimenter to return. In a follow-up study (Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990), children were tested at 18 years of age and comparisons were made between the third of the children who grabbed the marshmallow (the “impulsive”) and the third who delayed gratification in order to receive the enhanced reward (”impulse controlled”). The third of the children who were most impulsive at four years of age scored an average of 524 verbal and 528 math. The impulse controlled students who scored 610 verbal and 652 math! This astounding 210 point total score difference on the SAT was predicted on the basis of a single observation at four years of age! The 210 point difference is as large as the average differences between that of economically advantaged versus disadvantaged children and is larger than the difference between children from families with graduate degrees versus children whose parents did not finish high school! At four years of age gobbling a marshmallow now v. waiting for two later is twice as good a predictor of later SAT scores than is IQ.” (taken from http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/10/stanford_marshm.html)

Another wonderful insight from Montessori:

“One day, the children had gathered themselves, laughing and talking, into a circle about a basin of water containing some floating toys. We had in the school a little boy barely two and a half years old. He had been left outside the circle, alone, and it was easy to see that he was filled with intense curiosity. I watched him from a distance with great interest; he first drew near to the other children and tried to force his way among them, but he was not strong enough to do this, and he then stood looking about him. The expression of thought on his little face was intensely interesting. I wish that I had had a camera so that I might have photographed him. His eye lighted upon a little chair, and evidently he made up his mind to place it behind the group of children and then to climb up on it. He began to move toward the chair, his face illuminated with hope, but at that moment the teacher seized him brutally (or, perhaps, she would have said, gently) in her arms, and lifting him up above the heads of the other children showed him the basin of water, saying, “Come, poor little one, you shall see too!”

Undoubtedly the child, seeing the floating toys, did not experience the joy that he was about to feel through conquering the obstacle with his own force. The sight of those objects could be of no advantage to him, while his intelligent efforts would have developed his inner powers. The teacher hindered the child, in this case, from educating himself, without giving him any compensating good in return. The little fellow had been about to feel himself a conqueror, and he found himself held within two imprisoning arms, impotent. The expression of joy, anxiety, and hope, which had interested me so much faded from his face and left on it the stupid expression of the child who knows that others will act for him.” p.92

I am still very impressed by the wisdom of Maria Montessori.  Her Chapter on Discipline is particularly insightful.  She believes:

THE pedagogical method of observation has for its base the liberty of the child; and liberty is activity.

Discipline must come through liberty. Here is a great principle which is difficult for the followers of common-school methods to understand. How shall one obtain discipline in a class of free children? Certainly in our system, we have a concept of discipline very different from that commonly accepted. If discipline is founded upon liberty, the discipline itself must necessarily be active. We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.

We call an individual disciplined when he is master of himself, and can, therefore, regulate his own conduct when it shall be necessary to follow some rule of life. Such a concept of active discipline is not easy to comprehend or to apply. But certainly it contains a great educational principle, very different from the old-time absolute and undiscussed coercion to immobility.

A special technique is necessary to the teacher who is to lead the child along such a path of discipline, if she is to make it possible for him to continue in this way all his life, advancing indefinitely toward perfect self-mastery. Since the child now learns to move rather than to sit still, he prepares himself not for the school, but for life; for he becomes able, through habit and through practice, to perform easily and correctly the simple acts of social or community life. The discipline to which the child habituates himself here is, in its character, not limited to the school environment but extends to society.

How well do our schools today lead children along the path towards perfect self-mastery?

Maria Montessori was a brilliant and highly talented educator.  Many of her incredibly successful ideas, beliefs and practices about learning are now over 120 years old - and still not well understood by many of today’s educational systems and educators!  Maria was able to take supposedly “learning disabled” children regarded as unteachable, and enable them to pass State examinations in reading and writing.  She believed:

“Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man(sic) who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society”.

Further insight into Maria’s beliefs about learning are provided in this four minute video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=748019594080989064#

The following link will take you to a complete transcript of one of Maria’s books, “The Montessori Method”.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/montessori/method/method.html

On p.27 she notes: “We know only too well the sorry spectacle of the teacher, who in the ordinary schoolroom, must pour certain cut and dried facts into the heads of scholars.  In order to succeed in this barren task, she finds it necessary to discipline her pupils into immobility and to force their attention.”

Sound familiar?

Are you prepared to be regarded as crazy?  It’s not something most of us would aspire to achieve.  It’s much easier to fit in, to accept that “this is the way things are”, and just get on and do what we are supposed to do.  Yet when you look around and see the people who are changing the world, those who are really making a difference, these people are individuals who are prepared to go out on a limb, prepared to sacrifice being accepted and well-liked.  They have a vision of what they want to achieve and will do whatever is needed to realise their vision.  Apple are currently developing technologies that are redefining the way people interact on this planet.  In 1997 they ran a “Think Different” advertising campaign.  The company is presently riding a wave of extraordinary success with their innovative products.  Here’s what their ads stated:

“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 quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.”

Maybe it’s time we had a few more misfits, rebels and troublemakers in education.  It is well past time for systems of education to change and really provide for the learning needs of every single student.  Are you prepared to be a crazy one?

The latest frontier that is being explored is the human brain.  Neuroscientists are constantly making extraordinary discoveries about the phenomenal capacity of the brain.  It’s time for systems of learning to take note of these discoveries and re-imagine and re-design learning environments based on this new knowledge.

DR. JOHN J. MEDINA is a developmental molecular biologist focused on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. He has spent most of his professional life as a private research consultant, working primarily in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries on research related to mental health.

Medina has developed a list of 12 basic rules for enhancing brain development.  His website has a series of excellent videos that explain these rules in detail.  Every effective teacher needs to know these rules and incorporate them into their planning for students’ learning. His website can be accessed at http://www.brainrules.net/the-rules

Maybe this is one reason why education is so difficult to drag into the 21st Century:

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.

Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.

After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done round here.

John Dewey believed that this is what is happening in education.

“The student teacher adjusts his actual methods of teaching, not to the principles
which he is acquiring, but to what he sees succeed and fail in an
empirical way from moment to moment : to what he sees other teachers
doing who are more experienced and successful in keeping order
than he is; and to the injunctions and directions given him by others.
In this way the controlling habits of the teacher finally get fixed with
comparatively little reference to principles in the psychology, logic,
and history of education. In theory, these latter are dominant; in
practice, the moving forces are the devices and methods which are
picked up through blind experimentation ; through examples which
are not rationalized ; through precepts which are more or less arbitrary
and mechanical ; through advice based upon the experience of others.
Here we have the explanation, in considerable part at least, of the
dualism, the unconscious duplicity, which is one of the chief evils of
the teaching profession. There is an enthusiastic devotion to certain
principles of lofty theory in the abstract — principles of self-activity,
self-control, intellectual and moral — and there is a school practice tak-
ing little heed of the official pedagogic creed.”

So how do you see yourself - as a self-determining educator or as one who is teaching as you think the system expects you to teach?

What is one of the most powerful teaching strategies available to teachers? The answer? STORIES. There is no doubt that stories are very powerful ways of engaging an audience. I was at a conference recently and one of the speakers was so boring that listeners were not only looking at their watches to see how much longer they had to endure this tedium, they were shaking them to make sure they were still working! And then he started to tell a story. It was like a powerful lamp being lit to drive away the darkness. Suddenly, I was listening to his every word, following every detail and wondering how the story would conclude. I am sure that you have all had similar experiences. So what is it about stories that makes them so engaging? And how can we use them more effectively in our teaching?

To read more, open the following Newsletter:

The Power of Stories

Is there such a thing as a natural order of learning?  Or is all learning simply a social construction to suit a predetermined end?  I think there is a natural order of learning. It seems, however, to often get lost in the well-intentioned programs to provide structured and comprehensive learning to suit all students.  Adherence to standards, progression points, results, performance data, curriculum outcomes and high stakes testing are all intended to improve learning.  A close analysis of results-driven approaches,however, reveals very disappointing responses to such programs.  This is despite an incredible amount of resources being allocated for their implementation.  Maybe it’s time to rethink our traditional approaches to learning.

The story of Shay, that is linked below, has been floating around cyberspace for some time.  It is a compelling story that reveals keen insights into the human psyche.  I am not sure if it is actual fact or fiction.  This is irrelevant because every teacher will at some stage have seen children behaving in ways similar to the children in this story.  As you read the story, think about ways teachers can possibly tap into the truly natural order of young people.

The Story of Shay