A dialogue about ideas for changing the way we think about school.
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- Founded:
- 2009
Re-educate
Re-educate Logic will not save us: http://stevemiranda.wordpress.com/
stevemiranda.wordpress.com
The School Board is made up of elected citizens. It hires a superintendant, who sets policies for the district. The policies are then handed down to principals, who then tell the teachers.
Aaron Barnett For a far more comprehensible version of everything I just wrote, check the discussion board.
Aaron Barnett Admittedly, finding an appropriate example of the opposite end of the spectrum is a bit of a challenge. There are various rebel and government armies in Africa (Sudan, Congo, Sierra Leone) where people just do what they please. That doesn't work too well for anyone, as far as I can tell. I don't mean to sound like I'm ...using a straw man example here, if anyone has a better macroscopic example, please comment. Actually, please comment if you have anything to say. I'm always interested.
Aaron Barnett To add to all that from another angle, if the problem at hand is in fact hierarchies, then it would seem to follow that a society with a more strongly entrenched hierarchy would be in worse shape, and a weaker hierarchy would be in better shape. Seems logical to me. For an example of the former, we can look across the ...Pacific, at Japan and China. Everyone's metric for what constitutes a successful society is different, but you would be hard pressed, i think, to find a metric by which those two societies are demonstrably more distressed than ours.
Aaron Barnett Finally, the dismissal of hierarchy in the blog seems a little brisk. Although a lot of people hate on it, I remain convinced, as I was in Lit and Philosophy, that there's a lot more to the issue than simply getting told what to do. For one thing, there will always be people who know the deal to a greater extent than ...others. To pretend that they're equal is silly and possibly disastrous, something you can learn in a real hurry in construction if you aren't sure that's the case. The hierarchies may get messed up, but something that gets messed up sometimes isn't intrinsically a problem.
Aaron Barnett I don't think rejecting assessment is the answer. While its possible that I'm biased on the subject, I find it hard to believe the day will come where people aren't assessed on a regular basis in their real lives. I build houses, and I get assessed all the damn time. Its called an inspection. If I just do what I want, ...and I do it in a way that endangers the occupants, then that gets failed. I see that as a good thing. But in construction, as in school, the methods of assessment can be frustrating. There are well written tests, and poorly written ones. I found that the AP tests, which are well written and graded with an exhaustive commitment to fairness, were a pretty accurate assessment of who knew what. A lot of scantron tests I took in HS and community college, not so much.
Aaron Barnett
Dear Mr. Miranda
First of all, I'd like to join the long line of people to congratulate you on the blog out. Predictably, I started out quite the skeptic, but your writing has done a lot to convince me. I still have reservations, but I'd love to see the whole thing in action (Is that a possibility? I have the entire mon...th of December off). I love the Law of Two Feet, especially as it relates to schools.
Nevertheless, I can't help but remain the devil's advocate on a few points. Letter grades came about, in theory, to assess a student's grasp of the material at hand. In a school that offers no grades, how do you reflect a student that leaves his history class thinking that Hitler was really onto something, or that Bush knocked down the towers? Clearly, that's not something that works. Regardless of who's at fault, you can't let that kid go off with any stamp of approval? So what gives?
Kris Brown Finite and Infinite Games. Hell Yes.
Chris Cocklin-ray I would like to post a question. If we are committed to educating our children with public dollars-something I would not argue with-what would the ideal school be? As a teacher I understand the need for some standards but have to admit to frustration in hiring employees who come to me unable to critically solve any pro...blems-and I lay that inability squarely at the feet of the method of assessment we currently use. So, is it charter schools? is it a more engaged system? is it a series of pilot projects?
Re-educate Open Space: http://stevemiranda.wordpress.com/
stevemiranda.wordpress.com
Thinking about Adam’s comment from yesterday about teacher quality: “[S]ome subjects need to be mandated because the compelling and engaging teachers for those subjects are too rare . . .”
Re-educate What would Malcolm do?: http://stevemiranda.wordpress.com/
stevemiranda.wordpress.com
I don’t think we need a better system; I think we need better systems. Malcolm Gladwell makes a compelling argument that the 20th century was about finding the one right answer, but the 21st century is about finding the right answers (plural).
Re-educate Changing society: http://stevemiranda.wordpress.com/
stevemiranda.wordpress.com
“I enjoy reading your blog. I am curious though — my continual question through every post is How do we fix this? and How can we avoid making tons of new problems? School is so embedded in a greater pseudomeritocracy, ...
Re-educate We need you: http://stevemiranda.wordpress.com/
stevemiranda.wordpress.com
Here’s a line I use when talking to people about schools that sounds mean when heard out of context: “Society consists of mediocre people.”
