planetACEC2010
Below is an article I first published in an Australian newsletter back in 2001. I cannot believe how many of the concerns raised in this article remain with us today. I hope you enjoy the first of what will be a series of articles exploring how we grow as a professional community and who we choose to learn from.
Sloppy language, sloppy thinking
Terms like school reform, change, child-centered education, professional development and authentic assessment have become meaningless in an educational climate favoring systems, buildings, ideology and processes over children. Lingo-slinging administrators, politicians eager for the quick fix and educators too beaten down and overwhelmed to take a breath and reflect upon their best practices, have irrevocably devalued the currency of such terms. Textbooks, curriculum software and high-stakes tests deprive students of experience with primary sources.
Too many teachers do not read “real stuff” either. The big ideas of Piaget, Montessori, Dewey, Vygotsky and Papert are ignored or reduced to bumper sticker slogans. To some constructivism is when a teacher pauses to pass out the next worksheet. Balance has become the watchword of educators unwilling or incapable of taking a stand.
Many of our colleagues know that schools are dysfunctional so they search for new words to describe futuristic processes rather than step-up and do the right thing. Medical science has changed constantly over the years yet the practitioners are still called doctors. If the art and science of education are living processes we should expect leadership from teachers, not facilitators or coaches.
We speak of a shift from teaching to learning, but are unwilling to give up the hierarchy of teacher and learner despite the enlightened rhetoric. I’m hard-pressed to see evidence of such a shift in practice. There are just too few examples of coequal learning in current schools.
Have you noticed that learning has become a noun rather than a verb? I have been reading a growing number of articles and advertisements saying things like: “we must increase access to learning,” “the new test measures the learning,” or “teachers must improve their students’ learning.”
Education is still something adults do to children. Perhaps we shouldadmit that verbs like training, teaching, testing, assessing, grouping and administrating describe unnatural and invasive procedures.
Where in the world is educational computing?
As a community of practice, educational computing is at best dysfunctional or at least learning-disabled. Twenty years after microcomputers, a medium with the potential to revolutionize education, entered classrooms the educational computing community continues to focus its energies on the dubious goals of curriculum integration and professional development.
Theoretically these sound like lofty aspirations while in reality they are code words for paralysis and the status quo. We are cursed by an absence of vision and expertise.
In addition to curriculum and professional development, the two unspoken goals of educational computing are fund-raising and shopping.
Despite the rhetoric about preparing kids for the digital age, schools are grossly underfunded and professional educators are continuously distracted from their primary duties to shamelessly suck-up for more hardware. Educational computing conference programs are full of sessions about grant writing and schools of education are compelled to teach grant writing in their educational computing degree programs.
The hype regarding the rate of change spurred by computing causes educators to equate innovation with the purchase of a new software package. Educational computing conferences have become flea-markets rather than incubators of knowledge. It is much easier to buy a new software package than to change the goals, practices and outcomes of schooling - even if the society is demanding such growth.
The mantra of curriculum integration is really a call to limit the enormous potential of computational technology in order to support questionable educational content and pedagogy. Curriculum integration is offered as an alternative to the previously dopey goal of computer literacy instruction. Imagination-impaired educators can now say, “we can teach kids about hanging indents while preparing boring assignments they have no interest in writing rather than the old-fashioned way when we just taught about hanging indents without the exciting context of writing a book report. We’re motivating the kids to learn by connecting tech skills to the curriculum.”
This phenomenon may be more dangerous than the old-fashioned ways in which we use to lie to children in the name of curriculum. Contemporary children live in a computer-rich world in which personal computers and the Internet are natural extensions of their environment. Using these technologies in a dumbed- down way to impose inauthentic learning objectives on children is asking for trouble. They will undoubtedly react badly to the use of their beloved computers as tools of their own oppression. This is especially true when the offending adults have less fluency with the medium than do their students.
Make no mistake; kids can do marvelous things with computers. They may delight and impress us with their abilities. However, the learning potential of children is severely limited by the talents, curiosity, knowledge and expertise of the adults in their care. Most kids do not discover computer science, nor even know what might be within the realm of possibility without access to accomplished adults.
Professional development has become an obsession of schools and for-profit corporations desperate to develop expensive strategies for begging, bribing, cajoling, tricking, enticing, bullying, inspiring and threatening teachers to touch computers. While kids are widely believed to have more natural fluency with computers and the net, there is still much they could learn and be inspired to construct if led by imaginative modern educators. A quick survey of American culture would show that toddlers recognize www before the golden arches and senior citizens represent the fastest growing segment of the Internet-using public.
No after school workshops, technology coordinators, philanthropy or acts of Parliament were required to get Grandma online. She just wanted to talk with her children and grandchildren more regularly [and perhaps check on her prescription drugs].
So, let’s review the evidence Kids get the stuff; seniors get it and folks working in most professional and even blue-collar jobs use computers. The last group of professionals to embrace computers as a useful tool
is teachers. Henry Becker’s research tells us that being a school math teacher is a statistically significant predictor that a person DOES NOT use the Internet. One would hope that workers charged with the development of intellectual capital would embrace the most powerful medium for the development of ideas and creative expression in history.
The current state-of-affairs is the result of low expectations, educational leaders without vision, false prophets/profits and an anti-intellectual society in which powerful ideas are rejected in favor of expediency. All of these problems have to do with expertise. Let’s explore them.
Low Expectations
I often joke that the difference between a novice computer-using educator and an expert is a two-hour workshop. Our expectations for what teachers might actually do with computers are so low that those goals are easily achieved. Well, one would think so. Human nature suggests that the less we expect of others, the less they will actually achieve. The goals of simple word processing, web surfing and strapping kids to a drill and practice program seem hardly beyond the reach of a living-breathing teacher, yet even these modest goals remain elusive. One look at a state or national educational computing conference and you would have to conclude that ‘cutting and pasting’ represents the post-doctoral level of the field. The banality of most conference programs would suggest that the ceiling for learning with and about learning with computers is low indeed.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that we should not expect teachers to use computers in more creative intellectually empowering ways if they are incapable of achieving the most pedestrian of objectives. This line of reasoning misses two fundamental variables - motivation and scarcity of resources. Inspiring teachers by the limitless potential of computers to empower students to learn and express themselves in previously unimaginable ways requires a different manifestation of expertise, leadership, and a community’s desire to embrace the construction what’s new. Experience would suggest that schools excited by the potential to engage more kids in rich learning adventures would challenge teachers to ‘think different’ and provide the support necessary to support such motivation.
The organizations charged with promoting educational computing are often guilty of contributing to the imagination gap by failing to create, sustain, recognize and promote outstanding models of 21st century learning. When I heard Board members of the California Computer-Using Educators (CUE) sharing their horror at the new state mathematics standards in which computer-use is strongly discouraged, I was outraged by their reaction. CUE after all has tens of thousands of members, commands a substantial budget and employs a lobbyist. “How could this be a surprise?” I thought.
I later realized that the problem was much deeper than if they failed to speak-up at a meeting. If that organization had been offered an opportunity to advocate a different policy direction, would they have been able to present models compelling enough to change policy? If not, then we must work harder to close the imagination gap by taking bolder actions and celebrating new ways of teaching and learning with great clarity.
Expecting teachers to support all kids in the use of computers as an intellectual laboratory and vehicle for self-expression requires different kinds of fluency and old- fashioned ideas of creating a rich learning environment. While schools focus on teaching word processing and the use of scroll bars over a 4-year scope and sequence, we forget that the existing technology allows even the youngest kids to produce movies, engineer robots, program video games, build simulations, conduct sophisticated scientific explorations and compose symphonies.
The dirty little secret of educational computing is that it has failed to make a significant impact on learning not because there are too many computers in schools, but rather too few. What good does it do to motivate teachers to think about teaching and learning in new ways if their students get only minutes of computer access per week or if the computers are stored in a bunker down the hall? (My kids in a southern California public school system have not used a school computer in at least six years.)
Scarcity is a major obstacle to use!
How many after school workshops should a teacher attend before they can get a printer ribbon (yes, many schools still need ribbons) or a few extra minutes of time in the computer lab? The ‘one computer classroom’ may have been not only a cute marketing slogan, but perhaps even a useful set of classroom strategies in the mid-eighties when microcomputers were less ubiquitous. However, it now represents a most cynical corporate strategy to maintain the status quo and support the supremacy of externally imposed curriculum at the expense of children.
Equally virulent ideas include the often touted 30/50% rule that suggests we spend 30-50% of our technology budget on professional development and the latest excuse for inaction, total cost of ownership. Spending even one penny of the hardware budget on professional development is a cheap accounting trick. We don’t pay for art teachers out of the crayon budget, not should we pay for teacher education out of the computer budget. This only devalues the importance of computers as instruments for the construction of knowledge and avoids the cold hard truth that the obstacles to successful computer use may have much more to do with issues associated with good teaching than computers themselves. The idea total cost of ownership, (TCO) has been recently introduced into the educational debate. While fiscal responsibility requires schools to plan for all of the costs associated with computing, the high costs presented by TCO advocates are unrealistic and will scare schools away from investing in computing.
The Leadership Abyss
It is not only school leaders who fail to realize, articulate and nurture the potential of digital technology. Elected and self-appointed leaders of the educational computing community appear to be as ineffective. School leaders without personal computer fluency can not possibly understand the power and possibilities of computing. The confluence of the insane demands being made on school administrators and the above mentioned imagination gap is causing an alarming number of school leaders to abdicate their leadership to others. The need for someone to ‘understand this stuff’ and ‘go shopping’ has created a new profession, school computer coordinator. In many districts, excellent educators are removed from the classroom in order to supervise the purchasing, inventory and installation of computer. The boom in the number of technology/computer coordinators is unprecedented and institutionalizes the notion that computers are precious, mysterious and beyond the comprehension of school administrators. (It would be fantastic if great educators could be rewarded for continuing to work with children and create inspirational models of great teaching with computers.)
The increasing complexities caused by the hysterical pace and paranoia regarding school networking has led to an even more dangerous trend than the creation of computer coordinators. Schools anxious to bulldoze their lawns and pull cat-5 cable through their walls are not only hiring seventeen year-olds with Lee Harvey Oswald personalities to manage the process, but are making these non-educators network administrators.
Since qualified networking professionals are a rare commodity, schools can only afford to pay the least experienced candidates. If they do a poor enough job, they may be rewarded by hiring all of their low-skilled friends. In far too many schools the network administrator has consolidated power and holds the entire educational process hostage.
This is especially ironic since many schools require highly qualified computer-using educators to earn administrative credentials before they can be a computer coordinator, yet place unprecedented power in the hands of non-educators. School administrators place unprecedented budgetary discretion, policy-making and curricular influence in the hands of these folks due a different type of perceived technical expertise. This is a worrisome trend that must be slowed. Alternatives may be explored at http://www.stager.org/articles/takingbackthenet1.html
False Prophets/Profits
The low-regard in which our society holds education requires school leaders to seek the wisdom of non-educators. Rather than work hard to realize the dreams of Dewey, Piaget, Papert and Holt, school leaders are forced to memorize the simplistic decontextualized platitudes of ‘experts’ from the business world. In many cases the only accomplishment of these men and women is measured by the wealth they accumulate in the act of selling clichés to those craving simple solutions to complex problems. I am tempted to write an academic paper in which I seamlessly intersperse the accumulated wisdom of Peter Senge, Don Tapscott and Suzanne Somers. There isn’t a dime’s bit of difference in substance (or lack thereof) between Tom Peters, Anthony Roberts or Richard Simmons. None offer constructive advice for making schools better places for kids and teachers to learn. I expect that we will soon be sending school principals to football arenas in which they can channel the spirit of Madeline Hunter.
Like any other industry, educational computing is full of ‘experts.’ Some of us may lead us to a brighter future. Others may just make us feel good or bad for an hour.
We should celebrate the visionaries, like Seymour Papert, who paint bold loving portraits of learning in a digital world as well as the classroom teachers who heroically work miracles every day and have great stories to tell. However, these folks are often marginalized for causing trouble, challenging us to do better, requiring additional resources or for offering complex solutions to timeless dilemmas. (Find books by thoughtful educators here)
Our anti-intellectual culture favors sound bites over powerful ideas and messy problems. As a result, the educational computing literature and conferences promotes different kinds of experts. I often think of these experts as vaudevillians traveling from town-to-town on a modern high-tech chitlin’ circuit. The following is a guide for spotting some latter-day experts. Some may be tricky and combine elements of different species.
The Flaky Futurist
Tell teachers that some day they will have computers in their corneas and suggest that they are on the verge of disintermediation. The strategy is to overwhelm audiences with predictions about the future and invoke inaction due to fear and a lack of specific suggestions for preparing for that future. Many flaky futurists have a decidely 19th- century technology, the workbook, for sale at the end of their presentation.
The Salesman
The salesman is often former president of a tire company, but now CEO of an educational software or hardware company. The notes written by subordinates on their teleprompter reassures them that they are indeed educational visionaries - especially since they sponsored the rental of projectors at this conference.
The Counter
Counters are academics anxious to demonstrate their counting abilities by reviewing tables of data regarding the number of computers in schools and percentage of teachers who do this and that with them.
The Whiner
The whiners enjoy great applause for complaining that the government pays $500 for a toilet seat and yet you can’t afford a district-license for Dipthong Bomber or Gerund Blaster.
The Human Interface Guy
These folks assure the audience that educational software is all crap, except for the stuff their graduate students have been working on for eleven years. All of our educational problems will be solved as soon as they figure out just the right place to place the button on the screen or they receive more NSF funding - whichever comes first.
The Hipster
These folks met actual kids and have spoken with several of them. Now they want us to hear their message.
The Yuckster
These presenters have a million and one Microsoft jokes!
The Populist
The populist is a non-educators who make a big splash by attacking the use of computers in schools by setting up false arguments between funding priorities or by making simplistic arguments that computers retard learning. Their observations are often accurate, yet they lack any sense of a brighter alternative.
The Teacher Basher
With the passing of Al Shanker it is up to Alfred Bork and a handful of governors to entertain a room full of educators by telling them how incompetent he believes them to be.
© 2001 Gary S. Stager
I have found another gem app. Sonicpics is just terrific and I can think of lots of uses for it in the classroom. From the Preps to Secondary students this is a great tool. Again it turns the iPod into a creative tool. Speaking and listening is sometimes hard to fit into the literacy program but this app gives speaking a great place in our program. The ease of use is superb because you can get the file on your computer without cables. It creates an m4v file which is very small.I can see children giving reflective comments about lots of learning they have been doing with the ipods using screenshots. You can share the file to computer, email and Youtube.
Teachers could also create how to’s for using diff apps for their students or set tasks using screen shots and audio.
I’ll be working with this one to get a list of activities created.
I just love it when an app has so many creative possiblities.
Take it on your iPhone and create on the go photo records at conferences or places of interest. It’s a winner!
I have eagerly anticipated Diane Ravitch’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education , for many months. I’ve recommended the book in this blog and at conferences since my copy arrived a few days ago.
I remain excited that a noted education historian is openly criticizing the pandemic of standardized testing, union-busting, teacher-bashing, charter school expansion and heavy-handed policies being driven by political ideologues and corporate profiteers. Diane Ravitch can teach us a lot about school governance, policy and the history of public education. Just don’t expect to learn much about learning from her new book.
Admittedly, I have only skimmed the book, but it is not hard to find evidence that Dr. Ravitch has not left all of her highly conservative views behind. She blames the familiar bogeymen of the religious right for many of the problems in American public education, notably constructivism and whole language with the selective citing of easily refuted research. Her naive understanding of learning theory or learner-centered pedagogy is like that of a teacher education student or mom who just returned home from a “Tea Party” rally.
Ravitch dismisses research conducted by noted scholars Lauren Resnick and Richard Ellmore and seems to present the case that Anthony Alvarado is one of the villains whose embrace of balanced literacy (HARDLY a progressive idea) and “constructivist math” (oooh booga-booga) led to the destruction of public education.
This assertion is not only wrong, but ignores the fact that Dr. Alvarado led many of the pioneering efforts in urban education including the “small schools” movement that resulted in the highly successful Central Park East Schools started by Ravitch’s colleague, Deborah Meier. Calling the reign of San Diego Superintendent and former prosecutor, Alan Bersin “left-wing” is laughable to anyone with the slightest awareness of his heavy-handed leadership style.
Ravitch seems to revere A Nation at Risk as gospel created by divine intervention, not the Reagan administration and caricatures efforts of the 60s and 70s to make classrooms more democratic, creative and child-centered. She remains a proponent of national curricula, a patently absurd solution in search of a problem.
That said, I will read the rest of the book and share my thoughts as warranted. I just felt it was my obligation to warn my friends and colleagues that although I recommend The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, you should read it with a fresh new battery in your BS detector.
If you’ve been in a session with Alan, Jim or me, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the story about the teacher and students at my former school who built a Wikipedia page for a creole colonial plantation home in New Orleans, called the Pitot House. In addition, you may have listened to a podcast we published several months ago, featuring a teacher who also created a page around an area of interest, the Wodaabe. Since then, we have heard from others who are jumping on board with this idea.
I would like to share a video that was developed by Pat Kyle, a teacher in the Washington D.C. Public School System who worked with a group of students on the early stages of a project called Stories from Shaw. These students, with the help of Pat, a local public librarian and others within the community, are working to build up a written history of places in their community for inclusion within Wikipedia. Their first piece, still in progress, was written about Shiloh Baptist Church.
What makes this type of assignment motivating? What pitfalls, if any, do you see? What other skills are students learning during this process? Have you tried this with a group of your own students? If you have thoughts on any of these questions, please share your story.
Building Legacy with Wikipedia from Brian Mull on Vimeo.
This is our second of two episodes with Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Professor of Learning Research, head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Laboratory and BLC10 opening keynoter. In this episode, Mitch discusses the need for schools to find a balance between being open to new ideas and being able to focus again on sound practices. In addition, he and Alan discuss how important it is for teachers to network together as a community to share ideas and inspiration. Finally, Mitch discusses his hopes regarding the future of Scratch development.
For more background on Scratch and the “creative thinking spiral,” click here.
It’s that time of the year again – and a reminder that any parent or guardian may withdraw their child from having to participate in the NAPLAN tests.
2010 NAPLAN tests are due to be conducted between the 11th-14th of May this year (unless a school makes a request to vary the date).
Withdrawal is different to exemption: for an exemption, rather strict conditions apply. For withdrawals, the process is simple (in Victoria at least – as long as the parent or carer is aware of the option which, unfortunately, is a little like the plans for an intergalactic bypass as described in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
Basically, page 11 of the Principal and NAPLAN Coordinator’s Guide 2010 states that:
Withdrawn students
In the event that a parent/carer wishes to withdraw their child from the NAPLAN 2010, signed parental consent using the Student Withdrawal Form (page 24) is required. This form is to be retained by the school.
…and so, for ease or use, attached below is a copy of that page 24 form (which is also available from the VCAA site).
For those interested, apart from my longish entry last year (Cf my blog-post NAPLAN – or the demise of pedagogical principles), the Age has claimed that Victoria has the highest rate of student withdrawals in the nation!
Given the many concerns surrounding the as-yet unknown potential uses of data collected and matched to each child in various computer databases (never mind known uses such as recently reported in the Age), it may be of value to carefully consider how our children are being ‘tagged’.
It seems that about 10% of Victorian students did NOT participate… some as a result of being exempted, others simply due to their parents or carers signing the withdrawal form. And that despite official documents and information to parents making it rather unknown that withdrawing is really that straightforward!
Well done Victoria – though there’s still quite a way to go before it is generally realised that ALL students may be withdrawn by their parents or guardians/carers!
Incidentally, of major concern is the Federal Government’s plan as reported in another Age article: “Ms Gillard also promised the government would introduce identification numbers for all school children, to help track the progress of individual students between different schools, school systems and states”.
ID numbers?!!!?? I suppose that this is a ‘natural progression’ from NAPLAN… and has ALREADY begun: Victorian 10 y.o. now have a VSN [Vic. Student Number] that schools have been required to participate in keying the information for!
Anyhow… here are the forms:
Victoria
PLEASE note that this year, unlike previous years, you’ll need to tick each box to ensure that your child is withdrawn. It seems that they’re making it increasingly confusing!
Tasmania
It seems that Tasmania continues to present the same mis-information on their site: the Tasmanian Department of Education site claims (as of 4th March 2010) that:
In May, all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 across Australia will participate in national tests that will assess their performance in literacy and numeracy.
All students across Australia will be doing the same tests on the same days.
[their emphasis]
This is of course not factually correct, as no student that has been withdrawn, exempted or absent will do so (about 10% in Victoria last year). And, of course, various schools may also have applied for a variation of date as to when to submit the test to students who have not been withdrawn.
What is not clear is (again) WHERE the form to withdraw one’s child is located… so I’ll here assume that the situation is the same as last year from information I received from them (I have not asked for the same again):
“The form is located on the Department of Education staff intranet for government schools, non-government school principals should have a copy of this form at their school. The process is to discuss the withdrawal with the child’s school principal, completed forms are then sent back to Educational Performance Services and the student is formally withdrawn from the testing. [my emphasis]“.
For information only (as the forms appear to alter each year), last year’s form looked like the following:
Queensland
For Queensland, the form needs to be completed before the 30th April:
N.S.W.
NSW does not appear to as yet have the information on their site. It MAY be that the same form is used as last year (as the form itself has no year thereon). At this stage, I therefore simply leave the information as as last year (N.B. that the correct box for withdrawing a student is ‘WITHDRAWN’, not ‘exempt’ – this latter is reserved for a specific category of students):
W.A. & N.T.
N.B. date for withdrawal in NT: 1st April!!!
N.B. date for WA: 4th May(The reason for both WA and NT being together is that the administrative handbook is for both these regions)
In brief: The WA form is further below. For the NT no specified form is required: instead a simple letter from the parent/carer is sufficient. Should you have problems writing such a letter, simply use the one below, inserting the student’s name:
Simple letter suggestion for the Northern Territory:
I quote here from the Administrator’s Handbook available from the WA Department of Education site (page 10) [my emphasis]:
Withdrawn students
Parents or caregivers may withdraw their children from the tests. This is a matter for consideration by individual parents in consultation with the principal. Withdrawals are intended to address issues such as religious beliefs and philosophical objections to testing.
Parent/caregiver withdrawal does not constitute exemption. Withdrawn students will be considered as being absent from the testing.
The principal is responsible for registering all parent/caregiver withdrawals. Western Australian schools use the form available on their state‘s website. In the Northern Territory, letters from the parent/caregiver should be provided to the principal and then forwarded to the Assessment and Reporting Manager by 1 April.
It’s also interesting that should the school not have provided information to parents about the option to withdraw a student, there may even be legal grounds against the person responsible for overlooking such should a parent or carer pass the date by which this would need to be legally completed.
It’s also rather incredible to reflect that some funding for needy students is being tied to participation in NAPLAN!
Form for Western Australia:
SA
I have not been able to locate (as yet) a copy for South Australia.
The South Australian site mentions that the ‘Principals Handbook’ (which contains the information) would be mailed out to schools on the 22nd March, so I presume that all SA schools now have this.
What follows is LAST YEAR’S information, which I presume is basically unchanged:
‘Parents/caregivers may withdraw their child from the NAPLAN tests for philosophical or for personal reasons.[...]
The principal must finalise all student withdrawals by Friday 1 May.’As soon as I receive a copy of the form, I’ll post it here for convenience.
Education historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education for the first President Bush, Diane Ravitch has just published an extraordinary book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. The book should be required reading for every policy-maker, citizen and educator.
The extraordinary reporting found in the book can not help but convince Americans that their public education system is endangered by the politicians, billionaire mischief-makers, foundations and business groups professing to “fix” the “broken” system.
Similar accusations have been leveled before in books by Alfie Kohn, Susan Ohanian, Gerald Bracey, Herb Kohl, Jonathan Kozol, Deborah Meier, Linda Darling-Hammond and others. What makes this book so extraordinary is that it was written by a proponent of many of the reforms Ravitch herself now admits are destroying public education.
That’s right, Dr. Ravitch is the rare scholar/leader who when confronted by the actual application of theory is capable of rethinking her assumptions. Ravitch has also severed ties to many of the conservative think-tanks with whom she no longer shares similar views and has had the courage to expose her change-of-heart and mind publicly in this book and in the spectacular blog, Bridging Differences, she writes with (CMK 2010 guest speaker) Deborah Meier.
Ravitch challenges the current fetishes of merit pay, mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers and standardized testing while also questioning the statistical plausibility of the test score miracles being touted by politicians like Arne Duncan and NYC Mayor Bloomberg. At the same time, Ravitch advocates a national curriculum (albeit a richer one than proposed), an idea I find extremely troublesome. Without sentimentality, Ravitch’s new book is a love letter to public education and the democratic ideals it fosters.
The story of personal transformation late in life is generating an unprecedented level of publicity for a book about education. I am most grateful to Dr. Ravitch for placing these issues at the center of mainstream media debate for the first time. I intend to write something substantive about the book once I have an adequate chance to digest it. In the meantime, I recommend you read the following reviews of the book.
- Little Dead Schoolhouse - Boston Globe 2/28/10
- “Teacher Ken’s” comprehensive review of the book for the Daily Kos - 2/28/10 (highly recommended)
- Business principles won’t work for school reform, former supporter Ravitch says - Washington Post - 2/26/10
- Los Angeles Times review - 2/28/10
- Why You Should Read Diane Ravitch’s New Book - Washington Post - 2/26/10
You might also find these resources useful:
- My review of Ravitch’s book, The Language Police, titled, The End of Textbooks (2003)
- School Wars: Who’s Trying to Control Your Public Schools? by Gary Stager - Good Magazine - 8/2008
- Obama Practices Social Promotion by Gary Stager - Huffington Post - 12/08
- Bill Gates and Eli Broad Go Gangsta by Gary Stager - 2007
- The US Government Now a Subsidiary of Eli Broad (2009)
- My articles about merit pay
- My articles about Arne Duncan
- Charlie Rose Lobotomized by Education Guest by Gary Stager
- The Bridging Differences Blog (the best education writing on the Web) by Ravitch and Deborah Meier
- Susan Ohanian’s web site (must-read daily)
The above titular expansion of the acronym I have increasingly heard used by teachers (retired and active) and other educators…
Once upon a time, Victoria (Australia) had a simple register that provided an easy means for schools to ascertain whether or not a teacher had appropriate qualifications. Actually, there were a number of such registers: one for state schools, another for independent schools, and a third for Catholic schools.
In the 1990s, the then Victorian government considered that the register for state schools was redundant, as the same information was being collected by the Department of Education as part of employment. I’m not sure what happened to the Catholic register.
The independent register remained intact.
The registration bodies were efficient and straightforward for most of teachers: if a person had graduated with an appropriate teaching qualification from a university, it was pretty much a straightforward process of providing copies of the same, paying a processing fee and, subject to no court order effectively prohibiting one from teaching, the qualified individual would remain on the register. After all, one doesn’t suddenly become less qualified with time.
For people that did not have a degree from an Australian university, the registration body provided a means by which to ascertain and determine parity or, in the case where there was no exact equivalent, in consultation and given the needs of various schools, provided a provisional or ‘reduced’ (for ease of this blog entry) registration – reduced in that certain constraints of time or levels or subjects were specified.
A quite sensible system, really.
When that government was voted out, I do not think that anyone could have foreseen the draconian system that was to be introduced in its place.
Orwellian educational doublethink newspeak
Part of the rationale was a twisted thinking that incorrectly claims that teachers wanted such a body: some teachers had been surveyed about whether or not they thought a registration body was an idea they would support. Having previously (or contemporaneously) had the experience of the registration bodies mentioned above, there was of course an overwhelming support for the same. Then what can only be surmised to be extreme left-wing bureaucrats came into the picture.
Firstly, a ‘two-fold’ aspect was being promulgated by the then proposed Victorian Institute of Teaching: on the one hand to ‘promote’ teaching; on the other to ‘regulate’ it. Only here a quick twist came from its organising committee once the legislation had been passed, and a claim that ‘the best way to promote teaching is by regulation’ (I was there at the time of the meeting in which this was spoken, and could not that believe such explicit Orwellian Newspeak Doublethink could be so easily spoken in educational circles!).
added tax with no value
If that was not bad enough, an ANNUAL FEE for registration was now required – effectively an indirect tax collected by the state of Victoria, rather than the Federal government.
At that time, the Federal Government had passed anti-compulsory membership legislation (section 180 of the [Federal] Workplace Relations Act 1996), which allowed for Conscientious Objection to Membership of an Organisation. Unfortunately, the Industrial Relations body considered (without further evidence at that time – something that neither I nor other teachers had the time or money to argue) that the VIT ‘is not a ‘registered organisation of employees’ (given that only teachers employed by schools require to be registered with the VIT, I personally, of course, disagree, and there MAY have been a lost window of opportunity).
retirement
Effectively, and in practice, this has had a number of ramifications. The first is that a number of teachers opted for early retirement rather than have to engage in such nonsense… with unexpected consequences:
In the past, when a school (especially, I suspect, independent schools) had an experienced teacher take leave (whether long service, sick, or visiting interstate or overseas for ’short’ or expended periods), it would be able to call in a relatively recently retired teacher to fill in the gap. This provided part income for the willing teacher, as well as providing the school with a teacher who had experience and was already quite familiar with the tone of the school. Needless to say, this was now an impossible option: a retired teacher living in the same street as I last year described to me the impossibility of doing such without having to begin a process for re-registration with the VIT; other examples of immediate experience also include another recently retired teacher who’s book is used for VCE classes in the subject being in the same situation with regards to the school at which he had previously taught for decades.
teachers – not nurses, architects nor doctors
One of the arguments for the VIT that has been repeated by some of its employees are that it is comparable to the ‘equivalent’ body for architects, nurses or medical doctors. I cannot (nor will I) comment on whether or not there is a need for registration bodies in those professions: they are best situated to make such assessment.
One clear distinction, however, is that unlike in each of those professions where dangerous materials are used, teaching (except in very specific circumstances in some of the sciences) does not. Also, unlike, for example, doctors or psychologists who often work on a one-to-one situations with patients, teachers generally work with healthy groups (classes). And finally and most importantly, unlike those professions, teachers, working as teachers registered with the VIT, are employees of a school (if they were not, they would not need to be registered with the VIT). Therefore, there are rather significant differences.
This does not mean that I do not favour a sensible registration body as described in the opening section of this blog entry.
cart before the horse
Part of the claims of the VIT is the ‘valuing of education’. Frankly, their actions have shown the opposite.
It is not up to the bureaucrats in that body to determine whether or not an Australian University has an adequate teaching degree. Rather, a fundamental respect for the integrity of tertiary institutions needs to be maintained: by all means it is acceptable for the registration body to request of universities curricula outlines for their education degrees and graduate diplomas – but this to enable the body to ascertain parity with someone’s presentation of a foreign ‘equivalent’, NOT to ‘approve’ or not something that the University has already internally approved!
The way it is at the moment, it’s simply a further insult to education in general.
If a person has completed appropriate teaching qualifications, then they have. To have to effectively re-submit to similar criteria to the VIT in their first (and/or second) year of teaching is nonsense and undervalues tertiary education. If a person does not seem to be adequately prepared, then it is certainly the role of supervising teachers (during a teaching round by a student) to so inform the tertiary institution. Similarly, if a course provided by a tertiary institution is not quite sufficient for the expectation of a school, then there needs to be appropriate feedback mechanisms put in place (by the tertiary institution, not the VIT) whereby adequate communication of the type is possible and welcome.
As it is, the VIT tertiary ‘involvement’ is just another insult to education in general, and teachers in particular.
qualified… then less so???
Part of the problem with making inappropriate comparisons with other professions is that what may indeed be appropriate for them (and that’s really for those professions to decide) is taken on by the VIT and ‘adapted’ to teaching. A case in point is the recent (as of last year) further requirement that a teacher undertakes a certain number of hours of ‘professional development’ within a 5-year period.
In other words, what the VIT is effectively stating is that a teacher who is currently qualified (and who may be a very experienced and highly effective teacher) and registered as such will be deemed unqualified five years hence.
This also takes no account of the different needs for different individuals: some, in their early teaching career, may be better focussing on their classes and familiarising themselves with their school; others, in their 30s and 40s (for example), may highly benefit from ‘professional development courses’ (all teachers involve themselves in professional development by the mere fact of teaching!); finally, for those nearing retirement, it may be that their acquired wisdom is best cherished by their peers – and such may in fact be of best value. To require of any group to undertake so-called professional development hours is senseless.
How can a qualified teacher, currently teaching and further developing their teaching by teaching, suddenly be less qualified to teach!?
The VIT’s requirements are becoming oxymoronic.
above the law
A sensitive issue (because of both its destruction on lives and its emotive impact) is whether or not the VIT should be able to require a police profile provided to them.
This is rather quite unacceptable, and moves Victoria ever closer to a closed police state (and inadvertently decreases public view of the profession). Having both my grandfather and a cousin in the police force (the first a former Commissioner of Police in Europe), I am certainly aware of the types of information that can be collected and stored in both formal and informal files.
There is something else at stake here.
IF a court decides that a convicted person is to have a life-long exclusion from some forms of participation (such as teaching), then it is of course for the courts to make that determination (and they should have the power, for some crimes, to so do). However, there is another side to this, and that if a person has been convicted and served their sentence for the same, then the VIT has no business in requesting past records.
The slow increased usage of ‘police checks’ in a whole range of employment is something that is likely to have ramifications for society as a whole that really needs to be carefully held in check.
Of concern is also, of course, the close contact between the VIT and law-makers: it seems that when the VIT wants something that it considers is a good idea (even when it’s terrible), direct access to the Minister’s office, and amendments to the legislation, follows all too quickly.
fine on tax
This year, yet another development has occurred: charging a 43% fee on payments made ‘late’!
As if it’s not insulting enough to have to pay an annual $70, SOME who have paid late are being charged an additional $30 for a computer generated invoice.
To be frank, there’s not much I can add to this…
The requirement to have to pay by December in the year prior to teaching is already not right: for some teachers, it may not be until January or even February whether then know whether or not they’ll have a teaching contract. Additionally, December is normally rather busy with the writing of student reports.
What would be the problem with making March the due date for what is, in any case, an inappropriate registration charge?
only do what you have permission to do
There’s an old joke that goes something like the following:
In the UK, you’re allowed to do it unless a law prevents you from doing so;
In Germany, you’re NOT allowed to do it unless you’re permitted to do so;
In France, you’re allowed to do it even if you’re not permitted;
in Russia, you’re NOT allowed to do it even if you’re permitted to.
It seems that we’re increasingly moving from the UK model to the German, and all too rapidly to the Russian one.
If a person has appropriate tertiary qualifications or experience, a school should be able to employ them to teach. It should be obvious that no school would want to keep someone on staff who is inappropriate.
In terms of teaching, as for most things, the move to ‘permission to do x’ rather than ‘prohibited to do x’ demonstrates how a major shift has occurred since the 1960s: one that radically shifts from the struggles from liberty towards one with an over-riding concern reflecting inherent fear.
register yes, VIT no
Over the years, I have had numerous occasions to discuss various aspects of education with teachers in the State, Catholic and Independent sectors. I have yet to meet a single teacher who supports the VIT. Of the thousands of teachers registered, there probably are quite a few who do… but frankly doubt it’s even a small minority: it’s more likely to be, at most, an insignificant minority.
I look forward to the day when the State Government alters the legislation and makes VIT an option (or simply makes it obsolete). If an option, I’m certain that voting with our feet will quickly show the support the VIT has amongst the teaching profession.
communication
On a personal note, when I received the invoice for registration at the end of last year, I simply (and without noticing the threat of a FINE set at 43% of the invoice amount) left it in my pigeon hole. After all, that is what I have done over the past few years, and something that I look at on my return a few days prior to teaching the ensuing year… except that this year, a FINE was issued for ‘late payment’.
Not everyone who paid in January had to pay that fine, incidentally.
As soon as I received the invoice for the fine, I looked up on the VIT’s website information about how to contact them. Being repeatedly placed in a queue on hold (and not being able to hold, of course, as I have classes to teach), I instead sent them a facsimile (16th Feb). A few days later, not having heard from them, I called, the person I spoke with not having a copy of my facs, I again sent it.
Again no response.
Over a week later (1st March), I again call, and as the person to whom I spoke did not work on that day, and again my letter not being available to the person on the other end of the phone, and with threats from them to suspend my registration (even though I paid the necessary annual amount), I opted to simply pay the fine.
But really – enough is enough, and this will be but my first entry into the public realm to reflect what are (not only my own) frustrations with the VIT’s insulting existence.
I note, of late, that the VIT advertised for a few days for a ‘Communications Officer’. Personally, I remain sceptical as to what this means: one would HOPE that this position will be someone who is willing to LISTEN to what teachers are saying (communication includes, after all, listening). Frankly, however, I rather suspect that the position would have been better titled ‘Propaganda Officer’.
Only time will tell…
I recently discovered this “fantastic” music video while trolling through YouTube (probably instead of working).
It’s a music video by Eddie Murphy, called Whazupwitu? Not only does it include every conceivable music video cliché (clouds, notes floating through the air, spinning, hearts, black and white singer in a colorful world, peace signs, doves, gravity-defying walking, etc…), but the backup singer on the cut is Michael Jackson (in full regalia).
If you can get past the sad clown exclaiming “The elephant is dying” and the 80s “Cameo-style” vocal-effects, something amazing happens at the 1:48 point - right before the Harlem Boys Choir appears (the best cliché of them all). That’s when Michael Jackson realizes that he is Eddie Murphy’s backup singer and decides to mop the heavens with the ostensible star of the production, Mr. Murphy.
Try getting the song out of your head! I dare you!
William Haigwood
www.counterculturecreations.com
“The thing itself is unreachable, but its phenomenon can be apprehended through the structures of thought.”
–Immanuel Kant
“To have a new vision of the future, it has always been necessary to have a new vision of the past.”
–Historian Theodore Zeldin
When I recently wrote and created The Counterculture Tarot I finished a journey: one taken nearly 50 years ago but left forgotten in a box of old news photographs. Among the images were this journey’s beacons, waiting to form a map to the experience of an influential and controversial time, very roughly a decade of the last century referred to simply as The Sixties. Opening this box released a flood of human and historical experiences, revived in photographs not widely seen and, therefore, free of accumulated iconography. Like the Tarot, these photographs told many stories. Some framed experiences of life and death, some of revolution and retribution. Some expressed the triumphs of personal freedom or revealed incipient hints of a dramatic cultural shift yet to come.
I was stunned to discover that many of my photographs fell naturally into the order of the Tarot that for centuries has served to display and interpret through its rich symbolic structure a limitless range of human consequences. The 500-year-old Tarot apalogue, reproduced through the centuries in remarkable card variations, awakened for me a new view of the Sixties and its most significant and original development: the Counterculture.
A few years ago I found a slender pamphlet by Theodore Roszak, entitled Fool’s Cycle/Full Cycle: Reflections on the Great Trumps of the Tarot. Those who recall the Sixties may remember Roszak as the author of The Making of A Counterculture (1969), a book that offered, more than any other of the time, an original cultural analysis of the period’s signature generational revolt and linked its promptings to other Romantic movements of the West. 
Roszak notes in Fool’s Cycle that the Tarot has been surrounded “with congested systems of astrological, numerological, alchemical, and mythological correspondences.” Yet he confesses to an irresistible fascination. “In spite of the occult clutter that I found surrounding the Tarot,” he writes, “the twenty-two great trumps continued to haunt me. The Fool, the Magus, the Hanged Man, the Tower…there clings to such images the peculiar attraction of all great symbol systems.” Roszak, too, links the Tarot with astronomy, alchemy, the I Ching, and the iconography of major religions. “All have acquired over the generations a compelling glamour, a vast rhapsodic resonance, along with a tantalizing elusiveness.” Great symbols, says Roszak, are uniquely commanding presences that seem to say, “Yes, you make our meaning as you go along. But that is because we are the themes on which your life plays its variations.” And he concludes that “in a much deeper sense we are their projections–each of us becoming one of an infinite number of possible readings that give these universal motifs a particular historical enactment.”
Roszak offers his interpretation of the Tarot as a cycle, a vision that he confesses came to him in a dream. “There at the beginning of the cycle was the Fool, giving his non-number–the zero–to the equilibrium line. There, at the center was the card of the Wheel of Fortune acting as pivot point. There, at the bottom of the downward curve was the card of the Devil. There, at the end of the journey was the card of the World. And with this striking configuration came the strong impression that, yes, this was the Fool’s journey, this was the course that consciousness must run in its evolution.” The striking feature of Roszak’s Tarot “cycle” is its movement along the path of a moving point; a concept that Roszak notes appears “uniquely in modern Western mathematics.” It results in the plotting of oscillations against time, “of blending the circular with the linear.” And he notes, “only a culture uniquely gifted (or burdened) with a deep historical sense could recognize that what repeats may also develop.” The cycle, for Roszak, is a circle that “gets somewhere” and therefore has drama, a narrative, a beginning, a middle, and end.
As I sorted through my photographs to plot the historical trajectory of the Counterculture, I recognized that countless oscillations had contributed to its narrative; that all these oscillations had each begun at a particular point and returned to a different one; that they comprised a much larger cycle of nearly imponderable diversities that rumbled into existence with a collective rush and then scattered out again in the wake of ever more oscillating cycles. And in the Tarot I saw symbolic touchstones for these oscillations that converged on events, personalities, ideals, intentions, and conflicts, and that shaped the contours of an era. 
Moreover, I found in my photographs symbolic points of departure for many of these experiences, points that—like the Tarot—responded to the plotting of a path and to the aggregate qualities and events that describe it. In response, I used some of these photographs to create a Tarot deck. And as I weighed the qualities and experiences represented by each new “card,” as I researched and wrote about each image and what it came to represent, I became a pilgrim on a new Fool’s Journey. The journey seemed to follow old trails, but the Tarot’s compelling map illuminated them with new understandings.
To address an apparent contradiction—a narrative journey spread across the otherwise mapless oscillations of so many experiences—is to wrestle with a view of history. The attempt here is to explore the Counterculture as a non-fiction narrative by using the symbolic structure of the Tarot. As people live their lives they seem, at any number of points, to bring these lives together in waves, or—to use Roszak’s term—oscillating cycles—of commonly created momentum. And the mechanism, especially where ideas and experience intersect, may be entirely idiosyncratic. If this is so, one can think of the Sixties, or any other era, as countless people in their own oscillating cycles, their own fool’s journeys, cycling together and apart, swinging in and out of each other’s orbits and, to a degree not commonly acknowledged in most histories, engaged in a quantum expression of experience across time and space. 
Despite our confidence in history to express the flows and trends of human progress, it is really no easier to deconstruct these many moments of experience, these infinite, symbolically described journeys, than it is to measure the speed or location of a subatomic particle. Even as the shadow of zeitgeist gives human history an apparent, if approximate, time and place, history itself—as much literature as social science—is not fully measurable. But this does not mean a story cannot be told.
In describing this work as narrative, I draw on ideas developed by historiographer and critic Hayden White. In 1973 White published Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, a book that called into question claims of fact and objectivity in historical works. The demands of narrative presentation, not the least of which is the use of language, introduced for White a bundle of postmodern challenges to the idea that historic truth is anything but an unattainable teleological vagary. Good histories, in fact, are studied for a glimpse of the times in which they are written at least as much as they are for the subjects they are written about. And while White goes very far to claim that historical narratives are comparable to literary fiction, it is fair to say that, at best, historical fact is provisional. White’s caveat about historical narratives has constructive value. White wrote that, with a need to appear scientific and objective, history “had repressed and denied to itself its greatest source of strength and renewal.” This “greatest source” is the creative process that constantly reframes human experience to both explicate and to understand it. Indeed, White wrote that historical explanation “can be judged solely in terms of the richness of the metaphors which govern its sequence of articulation.” 
Tropes and poetic structures are welcome. Good history, if it mirrors human experience, can’t elude ambiguity or contradiction or the broad range of impacts that batter successive generations, however inchoate or submerged these may be. In fact, compelling historical narrative should make every effort to include them.
White’s metahistory is manifest in many modern historic narratives. Poetry and documentary appear together in a variety of recent historic works. One of my favorites is Theodore Zeldin’s An Intimate History of Humanity (1994). Zeldin structures his unique work as a series of conversations with French women about what seem at first mundane subjects: work, marriage, children, family, friends, money, aging, etc. But these women, who have taken Zeldin into their trust, share deeply personal feelings that Zeldin then frames as historical problems. This approach produces chapters titled “How humans have repeatedly lost hope” and “Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex,” which may seem whimsical until one digs in to find that Zeldin has used his dialogues to explore a vast range of historical influences on interpersonal human relationships. Zeldin quickly makes it clear that it is the emergence of women, the rise of feminism (which he values as a profound historical change) that has provoked a new consideration of how humans feel about each other. It is a subject that Zeldin addresses with an encyclopedic and panoramic explication of history that rests entirely on the investigation of difficult modern emotions. “You will not find history laid out in these pages as it is in museums, with each empire and each period carefully separated,” writes Zeldin in his introduction. “I am writing about what will not lie still, about the past which is alive in people’s minds today…”
The issue of probability is a popular refuge for the divinatory impulse, whether that impulse belongs to an historian or a fortune-teller. Both are tempted to explore the ways that synchronous experience, combined with probable momenta, might offer a map to the future. It is undeniable that trends and inclinations emerge from broad samplings of human cultures and that science has made enormous contributions to the intentional inventories initiated and maintained by the social sciences. And while the existence of a cycle seems to be the first measurable human reality (as described by Mircea Eliade in The Myth of Eternal Return) and one with enormous practical applications (the birth control pill, for instance), it cannot with any certainty predict the future. For all their thoughtful preparation, social scientists know no better than physicists what they really measure. History, while in the words of George Santayana may be something we are doomed to repeat, is also, as Stephen Daedalus describes in James Joyce’s Ulysses, “a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.” The ponderous burden of history lies in the challenge of fleshing out crucial moments of a period’s vibrant self-creation, even while conforming to a shared, skeletal, reality. But rather than being chronicled in static frames of reference, historical events discussed in The Counterculture Tarot, whether iconic or idiosyncratic, coalesce around nodes of human experience.
And what are these nodes of experience? 
In The Counterculture Tarot they are the 78 cards of the Tarot, first reframed with photographs I made during the era and then interpreted through real events aligned with each card’s traditional and reflective symbolism. Thus, we revisit the Counterculture, not as a chronicle of incidents but as an expedition of adventures, or a “trip” in the era’s popular sense of an all-embracing journey with deeper psychological meanings. And our signposts along the way are not the turnings of the years but the full range of Tarot markers of experience that includes The Magician, The Empress, The Lovers, The Hanged Man, The Devil, The Sun, Judgment, and The World. These iconic touchstones play out the Sixties without regard to time. The Lovers card dwells on emerging changes—and choices—in the nature of human relationships. The Hanged Man brings forward experiences of personal suspension derived from drugs or incarceration. The journey begins with a Fool (Neal Cassady perhaps, or is it Abbie Hoffman?). Death arrives in the middle and not at the end, its sacrifice of Vietnam soldiers and civil rights workers a bitter but necessary step toward renewal.
Beyond the 22 most familiar cards of the major arcana (the “Fool’s Cycle” that so intrigues Roszak) there are 56 more cards divided into four suits. These of the minor arcana are as rich as the major cards in offering nodes of experience and I have addressed each of them with much detail (at least as much as that given the major cards and sometimes more). Below four arching umbrellas of experience (that parallel in their ancient and elemental structures the continuums evident in many approaches to inquiry) these cards represent fire, earth, air and water. The four suits also have been interpreted as Jung’s four sensing functions (sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling), or as the four fundamental forces of nature, or as other quaternary structures in philosophy, religion, and science. In The Counterculture Tarot these suits become inspiration (Wands), attachment (Cups), conflict (Swords), and tenacity (Pentacles). The suits address the responsive details of experience: deceit, despair, happiness, security, discontent, ruin, etc. and the actors (pages, knights, queens, and kings) who project them. Through the Wands suit we experience the clash of ideas that inspired the Counterculture. In the Cups suit we examine the attachments and lifestyles that formed new ways of having feelings and relationships. The Swords suit wrestles with the era’s conflicts, the cultural backlash to the Counterculture and its wars in the streets. And the Pentacles describe what remains, the material and spiritual remnants of the era, what was lost and what was kept.
The intricate and ancient structure of the Tarot presents a continuum of existence in which no experience ever ends. 
At points of crucial reflection we interpret the apparent facts of our lives through poetry and metaphor, in the reprise of a popular song, for instance, or a regarded homily, or the characterizations of fantasy and fiction. These points of reflection are animated by the memories of experience that return again and again, in which death comes well before the end and in which everything, including doom, oscillates without permanence. We are in constant search of the thousand joys that are unavailable without the consequent experience of a thousand deaths. As Tarot historian Cynthia Giles states, Tarot cards are “snapshots taken in the imaginal realm” or as depth psychologist Mary Watkins says in Waking Dreams, her study of the phenomenon of the active imagination, “Images inhabit each thought and occupation.” The Tarot is famously a way of looking at the future, as cards are spread and interpretations symbolically posture possible outcomes. Here the Tarot becomes another way of recalling the past, of recognizing how oscillations of recent human history cluster at the nodes of eternal human experience. If these placements seem arbitrary, it is important to remember that the Tarot has accumulated a rich and nearly limitless literature of interpretation at these nodes and that living life with poetic imagination was a regarded Counterculture objective. The Counterculture Tarot is not entirely a history, even as it is laden with facts and primary material drawn from historical and journalistic resources. Rather, it is a kind of “reverse inquiry,” a selective—if still broad—inventory of events that views the Counterculture’s primary, oscillating experiences through the lens of a reactivated psyche. It is a return trip and the cards of the Tarot, reformed anew from recovered photographic fragments of the era, are its signposts.
It’s some concern when both our foreign and prime ministers seem to place more value on the appropriation of an Australian passport than they do on protecting the life and freedom of Australian citizens.
Where the foreign minister claimed that the usage of such Australian passports would not be an ‘act of a friend’, Kevin Rudd is reported to have said that:
When it comes to Australian passport fraud or the use and abuse of Australian passports, this government has an absolutely hard line on defending the integrity of our passport system.
He further added that:
Any state that chooses to do this in relation to Australian passports, frankly, is treating the Australian people, the Australian government and the Australian nation with contempt
As an Australian citizen all too often travelling abroad (‘all too often’, as the so-called ’security’ measures are increasingly becoming a reflection of draconian totalitarian regimes), I’m far more concerned about the apparent lack of ‘hard line’ this government is taking in protecting the integrity of Australian citizens!
Of recent events includes the jailing of Shapelle Corby on what would likely be insufficient evidence in European, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian courts; the state murder of some of the so-called ‘Bali 9′, and further death sentences by yet other countries on Australian citizens. And these acts by nations that Australia still explicitly considers ‘friends’!
Whether or not any of those individuals are guilty of trafficking is only one part of the problem: the issue here is whether the Australian government is concerned more with protecting the integrity of its citizens or, instead, its documents.
A further problem in the case of the Dubai assassination of a known terrorist is that accusations, without evidence, have been publicly pointed or implied by our government: it is as yet unknown who the perpetrators of the killing of the arms smuggler were, and whether or not they had any assistance from any country. Of course Israel is going to be considered in this undertaking: the felon killed is one of its enemies, and Israel has both the capacity and motivation for undertaking this crackdown in its ongoing need to defend itself from individuals and other nations that only seek its destruction.
Frankly, under such duress and under the shadow of an ongoing war, it would have been better had Australia, in my personal view (and one obviously not shared by the ruling political party that is very unlikely to get my future support), be in support of Israel’s actions should it be behind this or other similar actions. In exactly the same way that, I would suggest, it also would have been in support were a struggling Ally nation during WWII ‘misuse’ an Australian document in order to ‘eliminate’ a known felon who has previously used his capacity to potentially kill thousands of civilians.
Nazi passport issued to foreigners
Three-time Olympic skier, Bode Miller of the USA won three medals at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics - a Gold, Silver and Bronze. When added to the two silver medals he earned in the 2002 Winter Olympics, Miller is the most decorated Olympic Alpine skier in United States history. He is also controversial based on legendary media interviews (apology here) and a failure to win any medals during the 2006 Winter Olympics when some predicted he would win five events.
There are countless things I learned over twenty years of working with my friend and mentor Professor Seymour Papert. This week, I remembered that I first learned about Bode Miller from Dr. Papert way back in 2002. Papert had published a newspaper column Bode Miller: World’s Most Creative Skier, for the Bangor Daily News.
This isn’t the first time Papert wrote about skiing in the context of learning. His seminal book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas (1980), features a discussion of how technology has changed skiing.
In the 2002 column, Papert shared his enthusiasm for Bode’s fearless style, unconventional education and sense of independence. Bode Miller’s skiing is offered as a metaphor for the tough choices parents and teachers must make in educating children in the 21st Century. (This column was written near the end of a several year period during which Dr. Papert worked tirelessly to convince the citizens of Maine to provide a laptop computer for every 7th and 8th grader in the state.)
Many aspects of Bode would serve well for practicing the art of seeing the world through a lens focused on learning…
…We want our children to have Bode’s kind of independence. But we don’t want them to fall for lack of mastery of well-tried ways of doing things.
Re-reading this article by my old friend Seymour reminded me of the many characteristics that make him special. First of all, your average MIT professor doesn’t write local newspaper columns in praise of a renegade skier - many may not have heard of Bode Miller, fewer still eight years ago. What struck me is how much Dr. Papert and Bode Miller have in common. They are both driven by a desire to revolutionize their domain through a fearless combination of high-risk and high-reward.
That’s right, MIT Professor Seymour Papert is a bad-ass!
Over the course of his life he has been a South African dissident forced to flee his country due to his anti-Apartheid activities, earned two mathematics Ph.Ds, worked with Jean Piaget, was a co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, inspired Alan Kay to invent what became known as the personal computer, created Logo (with Cynthia Solomon and Wally Feurzig) was a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, led the effort to help Maine be the first state in the world with a laptop computer for every student, has been a leading voice in school reform and was a driving force behind the creation of One Laptop Per Child and their effort to create the “$100 laptop.” Papert began talking about the potential high reward reward for learners if every one of them were to be provided a personal computer with constructive open-ended software more than forty years ago and worked tirelessly to realize that dream across the globe.
- You can learn more about Dr. Papert and his work at this web site.
- Listen to Bode Miller’s remarkable profile and interview from the HBO series, Real Sports.
I was inspired to write this article when an old friend sent me an email saying that “Bode Miller is the Lee Morgan of slalom skiing.” If you don’t get the reference, you’ve got some shedding to do!
Education.au ends today and will be reborn on Monday as part of Education Services Australia. There is a function this afternoon that will include Evan Arthur who was largely responsible for its conception, Professor Lesley Parker, the founding Chair, and Gerry White, the founding CEO, and many others.
Education.au limited came out of the shell which was the Open Learning Technology Corporation in 1997. I was on the board of OLTC in its early days and it’s ironic to consider that some of the original impetus for OLTC being ways to share resources and strategically procure ICTs is still relevant if problematic today.
We have come a long way at education.au since the days that Education Network Australia was being established to provide educators with a rich resource of quality assured on-line materials. Edna has been through several rebirths most importantly being the development of hundreds of vibrant on-line communities of practice culminating in the recent introduction of an educators’ ‘Facebook’ me.edu.au.
In 2002 edna was joined by the career services site myfuture. Myfuture won a national award for best government sponsored website last year, is one of the most visited sites in Australia and has captured interest around the world. We are now well advanced in the ground breaking work to establish the Learning Object Repository Network ‘LORN’ for the VET sector whilst the Australian Learning and Teaching Exchange is perhaps a world’s best in developing and sharing pedagogy in higher education.
Last year we produced a suite of research and policy development papers for DEEWR entitled the Strategic ICT Advisory Service programme. SICTAS followed our national survey of educators use of technology. Work included papers on collaborative learning and teaching; emerging technologies; workforce development and teacher capability; national ICT infrastructure concepts; e-portfolios and; pre-service teacher education. What was remarkable about these papers apart from the quality was the use of global on-line think tanks to enrich the work, facilitate quantitative and qualitative research and to finalise the papers for a fraction of the cost and time of traditional methods. Web 2.0 has arrived!
Exciting work continues on Web 2.0 applications to support school leaders. A virtual world test bed resource with standards and pedagogical components has already attracted a wide range of partners as has a radical proposal to transform pre-service teacher and beginning teacher education and development. On another front the company is well advanced in facilitating the establishment of a fully on-line mentored programme targeting young people who are disengaged from learning. It follows the successful model notschool.net in the UK. Finally we are hopeful that funding will be available soon to develop an indigenous version of myfuture.
Its interesting for me to note that the staff of education.au haven’t reflected a great deal on the past with the closing down of education.au today. They are far more interested in the opportunities that a bigger entity and skill set afforded by Education Services Australia will bring.
In closing, a few words about the national scene. The policy environment is more dynamic than I can recall at any time over the past 30 years. The computers in schools, national curriculum, Skills Australia and VET reform, participation and inclusion targets across all sectors, accountability initiatives, early childhood programmes, the Bradley changes to higher education and the COAG reforms of Commonwealth State financing make up an incredible change agenda. This is all great and should be supported.
What concerns me is firstly the behaviour of state governments and there massive education and training bureaucracies. In my early days at education.au I likened the situation to the 1850’s when Australia was opened up on the back of a huge gold mining funded railway network. However each state decided to have its own rail gauge- creating havoc with inter-state trade. I said that the rail gauge fiasco had many parallels with the state education authorities behaviour in duplicating effort across a multi-billion dollar front of hard and soft infrastructure.
My assessment is that the situation has worsened considerably in the last 3 years and the advent of the ‘National Partnerships’ programme has seriously exacerbated the situation. I challenge anyone to identify any ‘national partnership’ where there is any genuine collaboration across state borders. Also the states continue to develop massive ICT systems that take many years to create at huge cost again duplicating cross border efforts but also locking down and limiting technological options. We constantly receive requests from schools and TAFE’s clandestinely seeking ways around these systems to allow them to use technologies which will advance learner interest and outcomes. This isn’t good enough.
The national policy agenda is rich but implementation has been stymied by a Commonwealth obsession with process. Process, consultation and careful consideration are always important but process may have even killed off crucial development work in standards, copyright and educator capability. Let’s hope not!
Education Services Australia has a broad and exciting brief to work across all education and training sectors. It has a world class resource in its staff, a powerful board and a highly experienced and capable CEO in Susan Mann. All it needs is for the Commonwealth and States to recognise this potential and provide opportunities to show its worth. Doing it once well is still better than doing it poorly 8 times.
I am going to follow my passions of writing, strategic advisory work and the establishment of a truly 21st century learning organisation.
See you around the virtual and real worlds!
Greg Black
This past Friday, during a workshop I was giving in New York City, I was teaching participants how to podcast using Aviary. One of the district trainers noticed that the company is based in NY and not far from where we were that day. Everyone was so thrilled with the tool we were using that we thought it might be a great opportunity to bring someone in from Aviary to talk to us a bit about their product and the background of its development.
Using the support form on their site, we sent a quick email and asked if someone might be able to Skype with us the next day. Within hours, we were contacted by the CEO and Founder of Aviary, Avi Muchnick. He said he would be happy to join us.
Avi and his colleague Michael Galpert joined us the following morning and spent about 20 minutes with us talking about how their fantastic toolset was born. But then, when we were about done, they took the time to talk to the group of teachers in the room and ask them about their thoughts and what features were important to them as educators. They have real interest in the education community and in making their tool a good one for students. I really think that gave the participants a bit of a sense of ownership that they didn’t have prior to the call.
Now, the conversation was great, but during the process, I was able to emphasize an important point that I had been trying to get across during the 3-day workshop. We have the ability to talk to interesting people anywhere in the world. It’s easy, it’s inexpensive and it brings so much more interest into the teaching and learning process.
Click here for a related post about Aviary.
On July 1st and 2nd the Slide2Learn conference is being held at Shepparton High School. 2 days of hands on iPod/iPhone use with classrooms and learning the focus. Admin use of the iPods will also be explored and demonstrated.If you would like to see how others from around Australia are using the iPod touch in the education, how schools are setting up 1:1 iPod and a chance to network with other iPod users then this conference is for you.
I will be going and presenting on literacy and numeracy with the iPods.
Join the preconference ning
Finally our order came in and I can get the class totals to 6 in each class. We have had 4 iPods in each class and it isnt quite enough. 6 is a better number as 4 groups is usually about the limit teachers like to work with in classes of Prep-2s.I sync them, label them and put them into rubber skins that are transluscent so I can read the labels. Each iPod gets a consecutive number. Then they are put into round CD wallets made from wet suit material.
Lastly they will need to be added to the wireless network at school so they can surf the web,send email,twitter, use maps, check the weather etc etc. There will be smiles on Monday from teachers and students.
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