I saved a few articles about education that take a different tack from all the grandiose schemes that are current and was going to write a summary. Then today's Star Tribune had several op-ed pieces that stressed some of the same old, same old ideology: blame the teacher's unions or put the schools under control of mayors.
As usual, I keep reading new stuff that takes time from writing about old stuff I had read. As I went through the list of articles for today's Yahoo! Finance, I was struck by the title "Collapse of the American Empire: Swift, Silent, Certain".
I think our national arrogance ("leader of the free world"), military overreach, and short-term ideological thinking do contribute to the possibility of our soon being surpassed by the likes of China, India, and Brazil.
One thing that can keep us going for a long time is our history of innovation, innovation that is often falling victim to ideology. As long as we run our schools on ideological principles like "No Child Left Behind" and control from larger and more remote political entities, innovation may be stifled.
To get more innovation, we have to educate children for creativity, not passing tests.
I finally finished Eric Booth's "The Music Teaching Artist's Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator". The more I read, the more I understood he was talking about education in general. If we don't engage students in creativity, all the rote learning in the world will only turn out automatons. See "Teaching: putting in or drawing out?"
Then I read three revolutionary articles on education: "Scholar's School Reform U-Turn", "Building a Better Teacher", and "Why you should read Diane Ravitch's new book".
The first is how Diane Ravitch, a respected education historian who was in the first Bush's Department of Education, has changed her mind on some of the conservative standard views on education, including No Child Left Behind. If you want to get some idea of her independence, read her "The Language Police".
The second is a long New York Times Magazine article centered on a charter school founder who learned that teachers aren't being trained in the little things that really matter. The most striking paragraph was:
"When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once."
The third is a short review of Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System". The review gives a good summary of the ferment that is going on in education circles, a ferment that could give us a truly Great American School System.
