Education Nation

Key Takeaways

Milton Chen, former executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation (Edutopia), argues that American education’s most innovative practices already exist — at the edges of the system — and the task is to bring those “pockets of educational innovation” to the center. When the multiple edges converge and occupy the center, “an Education Nation will be born.”

• Innovation is recombination. Chen’s working definition: “take the best elements of what has been, integrate diverse sources of knowledge and talent, and create a breakthrough that hasn’t been imagined before.” Change agents don’t adopt new practices wholesale — they adapt them to local needs and often improve the imported idea.
• The testing obsession measures the elephant instead of feeding it. “When we want the elephant to grow, we feed the elephant. We don’t weigh the elephant.” Assessment’s primary purpose should be ongoing classroom-level feedback to teachers and learners, not high-stakes ranking. American curricula also try to “jam too many topics” — fifty to sixty science topics a year vs. nine in Japan — at the expense of depth.
• Engagement is the whole game. “If your students are engaged, you can teach them anything. If they’re not engaged, you can be Socrates, and not teach them anything.” Give students choice and voice — connect learning to what they enjoy (arts, sports) — and they work harder.
• The sports analogy is the indictment. We teach athletics through performance, watching others perform, and self-observation (videotape analysis), yet settle for science and history taught through rote memorization. “If we could get half as exercised about scholastics as sports, our schools would rapidly improve.”
• Skate to where the puck is going. Chen’s recurring frame for Project-Based Learning, one-to-one computing (“the digital civil right of every student”), and treating education as an investment rather than a cost. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” (Alan Kay).

Connections

• Project-Based Learning — Chen’s central reform; he argues PBL should supplant the old curriculum, not be implanted within it, and that memorization-based assessment frustrates it (“you perform to what is measured”).
• Multiple Intelligences / Howard Gardner — the intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences are reframed here as twenty-first-century capacities.
• Growth Mindset — “teaching children to appreciate their brains motivates them to learn and expend greater effort.”
• John Dewey — quoted on the “great waste” of children unable to connect in-school and out-of-school experience.

Highlights

• “Students need to learn how to become wise human beings, emotionally and intellectually.”
• “At Edutopia, our job is to produce and disseminate information about the most innovative learning environments, addressing core concepts of project-based learning, cooperative learning, technology integration, comprehensive assessment, and teacher development for implementing these practices.”
• “I strongly believe that education is the single most important job of the human race.”
• “Any good idea is as good as any other good idea, and it doesn’t matter where it comes from.”
• “What would it take to create an Education Nation? It would take greater political will than we have mustered to confront the barriers to modernize our schools. It would take a shift in the cultural values of families and communities. And it would mean bringing to scale the pockets of educational innovation that exist in many schools and other learning environments around the country. For the past several decades, this innovation has been occurring at the edges of our school system and is growing. When these multiple edges converge and move to occupy the center, an Education Nation will be born.”
• “From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school.” — John Dewey, ‘Waste in Education’
• “‘The biggest obstacle to school change is our memories.’ We all think we know what a school is and how a classroom is organized, since we spent eighteen years in them during our formative years. It’s hard to imagine anything else.”
• “If we just allowed children to ask and seek answers to questions they naturally ask, they would lead their own learning into many domains.”
• “George Leonard was a senior editor for Look magazine in the 1960s and reported on topics ranging from brain physiology to schools. A common thread was the untapped reserves of human potential. ‘In 1964,’ he wrote, ‘I spent six months interviewing leading psychologists and brain researchers on the subject of the human potential. They all agreed that most of the innate capability of most people is routinely squandered. It was clear that our mode of education itself was a major cause of this tragic waste.”
• “As human beings, we are meant to love learning.”
• “In the education wars, such as the battle between emphasizing basic skills versus higher-order thinking skills, experts dig in their heels, sharpen their opposing points of view, hone their debating skills, and publish their op-ed pieces. Instead of spinning our wheels in these timeworn debates, it’s time to issue a cease-fire, step back, and think harder. In fact, as in most debates, both sides make good points. Practicing an important ‘twenty first-century skill,’ we need a greater consensus that synthesizes these ‘either/or’ debates into a more inclusive and bigger-picture ‘both-and’ understanding.”
• “If students have a choice and a voice in what and how they learn, they’ll work harder at it. Find what they enjoy doing, such as arts or sports, and connect learning to it.”
• “That’s my definition of how innovation happens: take the best elements of what has been, integrate diverse sources of knowledge and talent, and create a breakthrough that hasn’t been imagined before.”
• “When we want the elephant to grow, we feed the elephant. We don’t weigh the elephant.”
• “The obsession with testing is slowing down an already lumbering educational system, at a time when we need to be speeding up.”
• “Research has found that teaching children to appreciate their brains motivates them to learn and expend greater effort.”
• “American curricula often try to jam too many different topics into each year. For example, American high schools try to teach fifty to sixty science topics per year, as opposed to nine in Japanese schools. To show students how to learn and how to appreciate the growth in their understanding, we need more depth in what we teach them.”
• “If we could get half as exercised about scholastics as sports, our schools would rapidly improve.”
• “Nichols said that parents in America would never stand for htis, for sports to be taught to their children solely through memorizing terms and reading about what athletes do. Sports require performance, watching others perform, and obvserving oneself performing. Sports coaches and athletes routinely make use of videotape analysis of games to improve performance. Yet millions of parents settle for science, mathematics, history, and other subjects taught through rote memorization of definitions from textbooks, while their children never get a chance to actively perform real science or history.”
• “The deep connection between disciplines imply a profound change in professional development as well. I suggest that an estimated 20 percent of teachers’ time should be devoted to collegial interaction devoted to creating new learning strategies. Part of this discussion should focus on the need for storytelling…to explore science more fully: how it works, how it doesn’t work, the nature of science, some of its history, and something about who does it and how it is done. This approach will reduce the content in each of the disciplines, but it is an essential trade-off.”
• “Start by having the youngest students use their hands to make things, such as Lego robots, buildings, and vehicles, learning to apply mathematics and science principles, rather than first serving them an austere diet of abstract rules of arithmetic.”
• “The ultimate role of project-based learning is not to be implanted within a traditional curriculum, but to supplant the old curriculum with a new way of organizing entire courses. This coursewide approach to PBL is still rare and has been frustrated by assessment systems based on memorization of information” (you perform to what is measured.)
• “While it is estimated that there are more than 3,000 career academies operating around the country, they range in quality and rigor. The goal is to combine rigorous academic and technical curricula with workplace internships that work in tandem, integrating learning across the school and workplace. This integration is not easy to achieve with traditional curricula and schedules, as Simon Hauger’s experience reveals, and some workplaces are less prepared to involve high school students. A rigorous academy model requires close communication between high school faculty and employer mentors.”
• “[National Geographic’s] Education Foundation focuses on partnerships with schools and universities and has led to a move to “rebrand” geography education under the banner of “geoliteracy,” defining it as “the ability to reason about the world to make personal, professional, and civic decisions. It is essential for life in today’s complex and inter-connected society.”
• “Children are not merely vessels into which facts are poured one week and then when it comes time for exams, they turn themselves upside down and let the facts run out. Children bring all of themselves, their feelings, and their experiences to the learning.” (Fred Rogers)
• “Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner has documented the “intrapersonal” and “interpersonal” intelligences among the eight “multiple intelligences” that include the verbal, logical-mathematical, musical, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences. He has also reframed the role of these intelligences for twenty-first century thinking and behavior. He describes the “intrapersonal intelligence” as the ability to identify and use one’s feelings and motivations, to have a deep understanding of oneself. The “interpersonal intelligence” is exercised in relationship with others, in having empathy with the feelings of others and working well in groups.”
• “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” (Albert Einstein)
• “What is another of students’ most frequently asked questions? Not ‘How can I become a critical thinker and prepare for the twenty-first-century economy?’ Not ‘Can I go beyond the textbook and look for additional sources to expand my knowledge?’ It’s ‘Will this be on the test?’ Neither teachers nor students want to waste their time on teaching and learning beyond what they’re assessed on. So it’s high time to broaden our view of the nature of assessment and what teaching for understanding is about.”
• “While tests have been used to assess district and school performance, the primary purpose of assessment should be to give ongoing feedback at the classroom level to teachers and learners on how to improve learning.”
• “One-to-one access is now the digital civil right of every student to fully participate in his or her own education.”
• “I like Governor King’s answer to the skeptical question: Why laptops for students? If Maine has funds for computers, why not spend that money instead on roads and bridges, tax incentives for companies, health care, any other pressing priorities in the state budget? In a state where hockey is the closest thing to a state sport, Governor King quoted Wayne Gretzky’s answer to “How did you get to be the best hockey player of all time? You’re not the biggest guy out there, you’re not the fastest.” Gretzky said, “Most players skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be.” With industries such as logging in decline, Angus King saw where Maine’s future could be — in a digital, scientifically literate workforce — and wanted to move Maine there.”
• “Any teacher will tell you, if your students are engaged, you can teach them anything. If they’re not engaged, you can be Socrates, and not teach them anything.”
• “The problem with Americans is we think of education as a cost. But other nations think of it as an investment.” (John Gage)
• “In my 1994 book, ‘The Smart Parent’s Guide to Kid’s TV,’ I quoted a shocking statistic: by the time children graduate high school, they will have spent more time with TV than in the classroom. Do the math: 6 hours a day in school, 31 weeks a year, multiplied by 13 years: 12,000 hours. Back then, kids spent an average of four hours a day watching TV. Four hours a day, over 52 weeks and 13 years amounts to 18,000 hours.”
• “In learning, as in life, time is everything. It’s about time that schools improve how they use it. There should be greater national urgency about improving the hours that K-12 students have during those vital thirteen years. For policymakers concerned about our nation losing its competitive edge, time is running out.”
• “Louv makes the point that some students labeled with [ADHD] may in fact have a form of ‘nature-deficit disorder.’ Students who can’t pay attention in traditional lecture-bound classrooms come alive when they encounter animals, plants, fresh air, and hands-on activity. ‘Nature’s Ritalin,’ says Louv, has a restorative effect on children’s minds and bodies — without the drugs.”
• “Waters has created what she calls a ‘complete seed-to-table’ experience. The curriculum addresses multiple subject areas, including the science of composting and the water cycle, the mathematics of recipes, and the cultural significance of foods. In using their hands, bodies, and minds, students exercise all of their senses and intelligences. They are also practicing a healthier lifestyle.”
• “You can read millions of words about the Civil War. Only standing on the battlefields will you really begin to understand it.” (James McPherson)
• “Whenever the topic of involving parents comes up at conferences, heads nod. Most involved in education — from the school house to the state house — knows that what happens outside of the classroom, especially in the home, can do more to determine a student’s success than anything else, in many cases, more than what schools themselves can contribute.”
• “Can affection ‘cause’ intelligence? Can kind words from a teacher’s or a parent’s heart stimulate a child’s brain? By age three, the preschoolers with greater verbal stimulation had average vocabularies of 1,100 words and IQs of 117. Children who experienced greater verbal punishment had vocabularies of 525 words and IQs of 79.”
• “What students really crave is a pat on the back for learning a difficult concept or a word of encouragement for trying something new. Teachers could use some affection, too. They are underappreciated, underpaid, and under a lot of undeserved pressure.”
• “Research and information retrieval skills have replaced memorization. There are several areas in which all students should be proficient to be successful.”
• “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay)
• “Another principle from innovation research is that those seeking to change don’t adopt new practices wholesale. They adapt them to their local needs and experience and often improve the idea they’re importing. To that end, it’s also important for educators and others in communities to examine their own situations and connect present conditions to future possibilities. So, a complementary strategy engages stakeholders in building future scenarios based on their own experiences and aspirations, addressing local needs and strengths.”
• “The KnowledgeWorks Foundation in Ohio, together with the Institute for the Future, have created a 2020 forecast summarizing in one graphical map six broad and global drivers of change, societal and technological trends related to each driver, and signals of each driver and trend.”