Tuesday, May 14, 2013

How to escape education's death valley



Here are my favorite parts:

  • To understand the legislation No Child Left Behind is to understand irony.
  • No Child Left Behind should have been named Many Children Left Behind.
  • In some parts of the country the drop out rate is 60%. In the Native American communities it is 80%.
  • If we could half the drop out rate, some say that it would create a net-gain to the US economy over ten years of nearly a trillion dollars. 
  • Some kids are physical absent from school while others are physically present but have mentally already dropped out.
  • Too often teachers end up labouring and students end up enduring a culture of education that contradicts how human life flourishes.
  • Human beings are naturally different and diverse.
  • We have a very narrow definition of education.
  • The basics are necessary but not sufficient. 
  • Does ADHD exist? Maybe. Is it an epidemic? Probably not.
  • If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget.
  • Too often we mistake childhood for a psychological disorder.
  • Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents. 
  • The arts aren't important just because they increase math scores. They are important because they speak to parts of children's being which are otherwise untouched.
  • Children are natural leaners.
  • It's a real achievement to snuff out a child's natural tendency to be curious.
  • Curiosity is the engine of achievement.
  • There is a popular movement to de-professionalize teachers.
  • Teaching is a creative profession. Teaching properly conceived is not a delivery system.
  • Great teachers mentor, stimulate, engage.
  • People can spend an awful lot of time discussing education without ever discussing learning.
  • You can be engaged in an activity and not really achieving or doing anything.
  • If you are teaching but the students aren't learning, are you really teaching?
  • The dominant culture of education does not concern itself with teaching and learning but with testing.
  • Standardized tests should be diagnostic. 
  • Human life is inherently creative.
  • We create and re-create our lives.
  • Schools have  adopted a culture of standardization but it doesn't have to be that way.
  • It's not just about what's on the test but what's not on the test.
  • We have a lot to learn from Finland.
  • Spending money on teacher professional development is not an expense -- it's an investment.
  • In Finland, they spend six times more every year on teacher professional development than on student assessment and testing.
  • Education policies must empower schools to get the job done -- not departments of education and not individual teachers.
  • Centralizing education with command and control policies is folly.
  • If you remove the discretion of teachers and students and place the power in the hands of distant authorities, education stops working.
  • The best teachers are sailing into a headwind, every single day.
  • Education is not a mechanical system -- it's a human system. It's about people.
  • If we are to save mainstream public education, we are going to need to make it look more like many alternative education programs.
  • If we made public education more like alternative education, we wouldn't need alternative education.
  • Change the environment and you give life a chance.
  • The real challenge for educational leadership is not command and control -- rather, it should be climate control where we create the conditions where real learning and good teaching are most likely to flourish.

2 comments:

  1. Excellent video! Thank you for sharing this.

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  2. thank you for sharing this... im part of the pioneer of Teach for the Philippines launched this year and currently studying about Assessment, Evaluation and Learning, this is really a great help! thanks much!

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