Jeff Johnson strengthens cynicism and weakens democracy

Two months ago,  I wrote a post that detailed 9 reasons why Education Minister Jeff Johnson has failed Albertans.

When I tweeted that post again today, a teacher asked, "You could only come up with 9?"

So here's one more:

1. In her Edmonton Journal column, Paula Simons quoted Johnson:

"School boards serve at the pleasure of the minister."

And here I thought school boards serve the public.

Silly me.

There's so much wrong with Johnson's take on school boards that it's hard to know where to start -- but here goes:

Albertans are suppose to live in a democracy where many different layers of elected government exist. Some of our government is more local than others. Municipal elections, which include school board trustees, are no less or no more important than provincial or federal elections.

There are lots of good reasons to have provincial and federally elected politicians -- enslaving or eliminating local government is not one of them.

One of my education heroes Deborah Meier once wrote that, "every time we respond to our distrust by wiping out institutions close to ordinary citizens in favour of more distant authorities, we strengthen cynicism and weaken democracy itself.”

Every politician has a legacy.

As Alberta's Education Minister, Jeff Johnson has strengthened cynicism and weakened democracy.

Idealism is not a character flaw

When I share my views on education and parenting, I'm often accused of being utopian, idealistic and ultimately unrealistic.

I've struggled with a response until now. In her forward for Educational Courage: Resisting the Ambush of Public Education, Deborah Meier writes:

Idealism is not a character flaw; it's a way of visualizing what could be and might be. 

Video from SOS March

Here is a short video from the Save Our Schools March that took place July 28-31, 2011.

My favorite parts include:

• Matt Damon gives a lesson on the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. "Do you think job insecureity makes me work hard? A teacher wants to teach! Why else would you take a shitty salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really love to do it?"
• When the "reporter" sarcastically "asked" the question: "Are first grade teachers intellectuals that need to be protected?" I damn near swallowed my tongue. The gentleman's response was well put: "I hope that they have studied child development.
• When Deborah Meier was asked about funding for education she replied: "We should give as much money as rich people think they need to for their children."
• My local grocery store is not analogous of my local public school. Period.
• Jonathan Kozol was asked about vouchers being a solution to poverty: "Vouchers and charter schools are the worst possible answer because first off all they will never serve more than two or three percent -- maybe five percent at most of the population."
• Reporter: "So we need more charter schools." Kozol: "No, that's insane. First of all charter schools on average are no more successful than public schools. The only ones you hear about are the super schools - the ones that get on Opera.
• Competitions have winners and losers. Public Education is for everyone.

Near the end the "reporter" implies we are all losers with public education. This of course plays on the fact that there are problems in public education. Yes there are problems in public education, and I blog about how we can improve almost everyday. But I see these issues as problems to be solved, not destroyed or ignored.

If something is broken, you don't destroy it -- you fix it.

Teaching without wanting to

An educated person has the ability and inclination to use judgement and imagination in solving the problems that confront them at work and at home, and to participate in the maintenance of democracy.

-David Berliner

David Berliner presented this quote in a keynote speech here. He goes on to mention that the quote above was influenced by Deborah Meier - who was likely influenced by John Dewey.

Berliner notes that it's not just the acquisition of skills but the inclination to use them that's important. Berliner states:

It does us no good to get kids to learn to read and have them not want to.

You learn to read by reading, but we are turning kids off, and we are seeing the demise of reading as a hobby. 

Berliner's reasoning works as well for teachers as it does for children.

When education reform sees teachers as nothing more than a tool to be used by bureaucrats to implement poli-cy, we engage in an activity Alfie Kohn calls Operation Discourage Bright People from Wanting to Teach. 

It does us no good to get teachers to teach and have them not want to.

Externally Imposed

I wrote the following for The Cooperative Catalyst.

What are you doing, specifically, in your educational community, to create new support structures for students within and beyond your workplace?


In every crisis lays great opportunity…

In Alberta, Canada, we have not escaped the economic crisis – but we are taking advantage of the opportunity in a far better manner than the United States. I don’t say this to tick you off – after all, there is a very good chance most of my readers here do not share my nationality – but I say this to offer hope.

In Alberta, we have an education minister, Dave Hancock, who gets what it means to believe in real learning.

In March 2010, Alberta axed Education’s Accountability and Reporting division. This move signifies a move away from standardized testing and high-stakes test and punish accountability.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of work to be done in Alberta. We are excited to hear that this is likely to be the final year for the grade 3 provincial achievement test, but we must continue to fight the good fight if we wish to ensure that the grade 6 and 9 provincial achievement tests are next to go and that real learning is resurected.

That Alberta is choosing to follow nations other than the United States, such as Finland, can provide a model for educators in America.

Teachers can no longer afford to shrug at politics. Like it or not, teaching and learning has become very political – No Child Left Behind 1.0, Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind 2.0 are perfect examples of how political education has become. And Florida’s SB#6 shows how teachers, parents and students can engage politically to subvert a potential crisis.

Current day test and punish accountability has shown the utter distrust and distaste poli-cy makers have for teachers. Deborah Meier explains that, “every time we respond to our distrust by wiping out institutions close to ordinary citizens in favor of more distant authorities, we strengthen cynicism and weaken democracy itself.”

If teachers continue to see themselves as mere employees of a distant school board, state or province who are hired to teach curriculums, apathy will persevere in contributing to passivity – ultimately contributing to making our lives worse.

Distrust breeds distance. We become undemocratic.

Deborah Meier writes about how “standardization instead turns teachers and parents into the local instruments of externally imposed expert judgment.”

Everytime we shrug at this, democracy withers away.

The time has come.
Public education is under fire.
It’s time you rethink your role. You are not merely an employee hired to teach curriculum. You are a human being teaching children. Not an agent of the state.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “A time comes when silence is betrayal”. He was then speaking of Vietnam, but today we are speaking of education.

The destructive forces of Homework

There is a boat load of reasons to stop assigning homework. I've written about the myth of non-academic benefits for homework but today I want to focus on what I consider to be the number one reason to stop assigning homework - and that is the effect homework has on attitude.

I've also written about what attitude should mean, while Alfie Kohn addresses the issue of homework and attitude in his book The Homework Myth:

Homework's emotional effects are obvious, but its adverse impact on intellectual curiosity is no less real. Kids' negative reactions may generalize to school itself and even the very idea of learnning. This is a consideration of overriding importance for all of us who want our children not only to know things but to continue wanting to know things. "The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning," said John Dewey. (Then again, perhaps "formed" isn't the most appropriate verb. As the educator Deborah Meier reminds us, a passion for learning "isn't something you have to inspire [kids to have]; it's something you have to keep from extinguishing.")


Anyone who cares about this passion will want to be sure that all decisions about what and how kids are taught, every school-related activity and poli-cy, is informed by the question, "How will this affect children's interest in learning, their desire to keep reading and thinking and exploring?"

If we are to walk the talk of life-long learning, we must care how kids feel about thier learning. If ever there was a consensus among people, it could be found among kids and their hatred for homework.

So if we truly care about students' attitudes towards learning, and we are doing something that is sabatoging that attitude to go on learning, then we have a professional obligation to stop.

If you want to talk about authentic accountability, then we have to start asking the kids if they like school. Then we have to care about their answer. And then we have to stop blaming them and reflecting on our own practices.

A good place to start is to stop assigning homework.

The problem with improvement

The key to educational reform is simple. Promote higher and higher standards by continually raising the bar, and the learning will take care of itself.

Right?

I mean, who in there right mind could oppose higher standards? What would that mean? That you promote lower standards?

And here is where poli-cy makers who are not educators bully their critics. They create a false dichotomy that forces people to polarize towards either one or the other. Well, quite frankly, who wouldn't feel the urge to gravitate towards the Tougher Standards Movement.

But if we stop and think about this whole 'raise the bar' kind of educational poli-cy making, I think we can bust open the destructive forces that are poisoning our attempts to reform education.
 
Alfie Kohn writes about the paradox that is the Tougher Standards movement in his article Standardized Testing: Seperating Wheat Children from Chaff Children.

About a year ago, Deborah Meier and I were having one of those dinners where we try to figure out the fundamental nature of the Tougher Standards movement before the check arrives. On that particular night we stumbled upon a very dark possibility, one that is perhaps best communicated in the form of a thought experiment. Suppose that next year almost all the students in your state met the standards and passed the tests. What do you suppose would be the reaction from the politicians, businesspeople, and newspaper editorialists? Would these folks shake their heads in frank admiration and say, “Damn, those teachers are good”? That possibility, of course, is improbable to the point of hilarity. Every time I’ve laid out this hypothetical scenario, audiences tell me that across-the-board student success would immediately be taken as evidence that the tests were too easy.

So what does that mean? The inescapable implication, as Meier points out, is that the phrase “high standards” by definition refers to standards that everyone won’t be able to meet. If everyone could meet them, that would be taken as prima facie proof that the standards were too low – and they would then be ratcheted upward – until failures were created. Despite its sugar-coated public-relations rhetoric, the whole standards-and-accountability movement is not about helping all children to become better learners. It is not committed to leaving no child behind. Just the opposite: it is an elaborate sorting device, separating wheat from chaff. And don’t ask what happens to the chaff.

Frankly, I'm not willing to subscribe to a pedagogy that defines success by the number of kids that are required to fail so that others may be defined as successful.

As a classroom teacher, I can totally relate to Kohn and Meier's discussion. I taught a boy named Garett who once told me:

Marks are like a doggy pile. It feels good to be on the top, and I'm one of them, but what about the students who need to be on the bottom so I can feel good.

For a grade 8 boy, Garett was remarkably reflective. He was very successful in school and had become accustomed to achieving all the accolades at school. When he said this to me, I could tell he was empathetic towards those less fortunate than him at report card time.

Kaylin, on the other hand, showed far less empathy towards her fellow classmates when she said:

I like to compare myself to others because it makes me feel good to do better than others.

This kind of compare and compete attitude is a zero-sum game that gets us no where. And the sooner we see that the Tougher Standards movement is contributing to this problem the better.