So, What's the Point, You Ask . . .

Do you just love banging your head against a wall? That's only one of the provocative questions that other writers and readers, too, have asked me about ANGEL PARK and my obsessive need to write a novel about SCHOOL, as if THAT were worthy of fictional attention. "I just couldn't stop myself," I usually say, and when they go on to ask, "What's the point?"--well, I'll just quote Jonathan Franzen, the Gen-X national fiction darling: "Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money."  Nothing wrong with money, of course, but sometimes the frightening story just needs to be TOLD!

At the same time, I have an enormous issue to reveal in all its glaring cluelessness, that we aren't running schools for kids, but to satisfy "the system." Wrong. Kids need something different. Here's what I say to the media about kids, schools, and . . . my point:

What do kids want out of school, particularly in high school? High school kids want some meaning and purpose, beyond “it’s in the curriculum.” They want what everyone else wants from their work, a sense that it’s useful and that it will make a difference to someone. No one is more attuned than high school students to what they perceive as “busy work.” And they are perfectly tuned lie detectors. They want the truth; they want to know what’s really going on. They want to know what they’re good at, and what they’re going to do with their lives. They want some freedom to explore and, even if they don’t know it yet, some freedom to grow--even some time to interact with their teachers and coaches on a more personal level for the kind of guidance every kid needs. That all implies a much bigger and better mission for high schools than we currently hold, and the opportunity for high school teachers to employ all the creativity and inspiration they can muster to keep kids involved and productive. All of that is going to take a rethinking and reinvention of the system as we currently know it.  (See http://changetheschools.com/ for articles and video that answer the question, "Like what?")

How do you think your novel, Angel Park, can have an effect on an issue this big? My novel can help with the most important first step, which is opening readers’ eyes to a new way of thinking and providing a new perspective not only on school systems but also on how we live our lives. You’re right, this is a big issue, and one of the most important ones we will face this century: How can we create schools that will inspire our students to be productive and happy contributors to their own lives, to our collective way of life and to the world? Isn’t that really the main question?  To that end, I have created a companion website, http://changetheschools.com/, which takes up the issues of Angel Park and provides information about school change.

The theme of my site is “Changing the Schools Can Change the World,” and that’s also the title of my Facebook page (http://Facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools), where educators, parents, students, and others have gathered from numerous nations, including New Zealand, Norway, India, and Ghana to support a broad concept of cultural and school change. In the U.S., we need new national policy, not only to rescue the American Dream, but also to join with other nations to use the power of that dream to inspire and help children all over the world.  The beginning of a better world, of global change, is right here in our schools and how we change our minds about what we want our kids to experience, how we want our society to change, and what we can contribute to the world.  

Critical Mass and the 100th Monkey

Despite massive and myriad attempts on the part of parents, teachers, and students to have some effect on the national (and international) dialogue about "school reform," the powers that be seem deaf to even the most well-reasoned arguments, and those of us who have acted as "voices in the wilderness" certainly feel invisible as well.  It seems obvious to me, and to thousands of others like me, that after thirty years of infighting to change the schools, it’s time we realized that numbers, statistics, and political rhetoric only tell us the symptoms of out-of-date schools: drop-outs, bullying, gangs, parent unrest, a proliferation of alternatives, loud and long debates, and all the rest.

Statistics cannot, by their very nature, get to the heart of the problem.  Schools are not businesses with numerical bottom lines. They are organizations of people that much more resemble families than factories.   When schools are allowed, encouraged, and supported to redesign themselves as collaborative systems that inspire students, teachers, and parents to share and pursue knowledge, then we will have the kind of educational "families" that can nurture each child individually and return FUN, belonging, and excitement to the learning process--for all of us.

Thus, with the dawning of the REAL Age of Aquarius (Hey, those Mayans knew SOMETHING was happening, right?), we're approaching that moment when a critical mass of public opinion will be reached and, like the learning of the hundredth monkey, we will all intuitively know what we have to do:  Create a new paradigm for public education--for every child in the world--that encompasses what we know about the human brain:

Human brains are designed to synthesize multiple factors and functions and to build webs of meaning, not to be forced into narrow, linear, prescribed channels of thought. Like the Worldwide Web, schools must become smarter, faster, lighter, more adaptable, more collaborative, more open-ended, more technologically integrated, and more connected to the global community--a Renaissance of schooling for ALL kids.

Teachers must have time, training, and support to adapt to the new realities:  They will learn to become coaches, facilitators, creators, nurturers, designing projects and interactive experiences that engage students with important content. They will work with parents and their communities to expand "school" beyond classrooms and into cyberspace and real-world environments.  When we catch on to this concept and help teachers unlock their own creativity, just stand back, folks, because a whole universe of untapped energy will be released. 

At the same time, school systems must find ways of downsizing their bureaucracies and of meeting NOT the needs of the adults, but rather the needs of the students:

• Kids want answers to these questions: What am I doing here, how does this relate to me, what can I do with this information, how can I help make the world a better place? 
• Kids need NOT more factoids, but more MEANING: How to make connections among ideas, how to value the importance of information, how to assemble a big picture and do something meaningful with it--a global picture. 
• Kids need connection, a sense of belonging, inspiration, direction--and a way to use their own talents, passions and skills to build a life in the new world that is revealing itself as the new millennium progresses.

Imagine what school must look like to achieve these goals, for EVERY child at every age, and that is the starting point for “school reform”: a deeper level of learning than we have ever experienced before. What we're really talking about is breaking down barriers and false walls and bringing people together in creative, intelligent environments where all members of the community can learn, grow, and thrive. 

Yes, that's right.  This is an entirely NEW VISION of what schools are and what we want them to do.  And the more of us who talk about this new vision and blog about it and share it with our friends, the faster we will all be able to change our minds.  As we take the quantum leap of changing our minds, we will, at last, be able to change the schools in a meaningful way and, in the process, transform the world.  Join in by "liking" ChangeTheSchools on Facebook, or join another group, but, somehow, let YOUR voice be heard!

What Are the Parameters of Your Sandbox?

Did you ever notice that all pre-school teachers, and kindergarten teachers for that matter, have one important trait in common?   They consciously, subconsciously, and unfailingly create the physical environment that will promote the desired behavior from their kids:  Their placemats in a circle so kids will sit in a circle on the floor, a tricycle lane and kiddie cops to make sure trikes stay safely within the lines, books on small tables of four so kids will share pictures with each other, personal cubbyholes so everyone can store their own crayons.  You know what I mean.  So, my question is this:  What behavior did we have in mind when we designed schools (and are still designing schools) in separate little boxes called classrooms with desks in careful rows and silence enforced by the teacher's presence at the front of each room (sometimes actually sitting behind a big desk)?

The answer to that would be, let's see, regimented, silent, listening behavior, uninterrupted by flights of fancy, comments, or other noise; and no moving around; and going from one classroom like this to several others every day on a permanent rotation of 55 minutes each.  I'm only slightly exaggerating and anyone who has ever been to high school will certainly recognize the pattern.  At one high school where I was an administrator, we actually had the teachers all shadow a student for one whole day, following him/her to every class.  The teachers were outraged and dismayed, especially with the boring drivel their colleagues (and they, too) piled on the "general" students.  They all complained that their rear-ends hurt and they were bored out of their minds and how could the kids stand it?

Well, it didn't take us long after that (one year of planning) to change the culture of the entire school, starting with team-taught, cross-disciplinary two-hour blocks for all freshmen, aided by a dedicated computer lab and multimedia systems for freshman teachers, plus personal and team support for each group of ninth graders.  This was around 1990, when the "back-to-basics" movement that has now leached all creativity out of schools, was in its infancy.  The teachers did all the research to select their integrated approach (in an ethnically diverse public high school of 2200) and even talked their colleagues into moving out of their classrooms to make a couple of special freshman pods for the new design.

Despite all the excitement and two years of very successful implementation, when personnel changed and the daily pressure lapsed, "the system" snapped back into place like an overstretched rubber band.  Before long, under new "leadership," the school's reputation waned, the faculty's energy did, too, and it was back to the faceless hordes trudging from classroom to classroom.  For one brief shining moment, we all had (gasp!) FUN; obviously, that could not be sustained over the long haul, right?  A long way of saying that all the collaborative energy was no match for the culture of isolation and disconnection that our traditional approach to school requires:  that one-classroom, one-teacher, delivering- information model.  That assembly-line model where each child goes bumping down the conveyor belt, has information added, and pops out at the end either stamped "Standard" or dropped off the line like so much slag if the child doesn't fit the mold.

Having watched this entire pattern play out over 25 years in public schools as a teacher and school and district administrator, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all those outraged conversations about "the system" heard in every teacher lunchroom and parent meeting were being echoed by other change agents in different fields.   I discovered that artists, architects, writers, scientists, musicians, and other creatives were seeing the same thing, and talking about it:  Here, for example, is the latest commentary by the president of an international architectural firm engaged in school design:  The Classroom Is Obsolete.  In part, he says, "The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution."   From the standpoint of design, we have consistently painted ourselves into a corner, the better to do the "basics" and to prevent our teachers and kids from engaging in collaborative, creative, critical thinking and doing.   Wow, I thought; we are saying exactly the same thing! 

An earlier commentary had enthralled me and prompted me to contact this firm, because nothing makes more sense than, as all pre-school teachers are wont to do, designing the environment to elicit the behavior we want to promote.  Thus, if we want clever, other-directed, creative, smart, articulate kids who grow into creative, productive, entrepreneurial adults--as we all have to be this century--then how must schools look to achieve that effect?  Read all about it (and more) on the international forum DesignShare and, while you are there, marvel, as I did that, in all possible ways, Changing the Schools Can Change the World. 

A Novel Way to Promote Change

As an added note on the post "What Are the Parameters of Your Sandbox?" I was recently notified that the education director of DesignShare had read my novel, Angel Park, and wanted to feature it in the first newsletter for the creative design site.   Wow!  Fast company, I thought, and gladly provided the needed information.  So, here is my novel about school reform and cultural change in the inaugural edition of this prestigious international newsletter:

A Novel Way to Promote Change Agency



In ANGEL PARK, a novel about school reform that centers on the mystery surrounding the death of a school official, the characters’ lives and attitudes are shaped by the buildings that contain them. Despite its attempt at modernity, the school district reveals its real story at the ringing of each bell when “the pressure of all the classroom doors shutting simultaneously” allows students to be “vacuum-sealed into each tiny micro-climate.” Thus, the educational spaces embody and perpetuate the sense of isolation and disconnection that still permeates the traditional school system, despite a century of human progress in the outside world.

The author, Patricia Kokinos, a veteran teacher and school and district administrator in both California and New York, saw these buildings and the fictionalized but true events of the story as a microcosm of the issues of school reform. She offers the unique perspective of fiction to give readers an emotional sense of the forces, both human and societal, that stifle change and the deep beliefs we may have to uproot to make some changes that count. ANGEL PARK is available on Amazon (http://tiny.cc/AngelParkAmz), and more about its awards and reviews can be found on the author’s school reform website, http://changetheschools.com/.

--from the inaugural newsletter for DesignShare, a global forum for innovative school design, http://designshare.com/   See the entire newsletter for October 2011.

A Message from India

"The future is unknowable and cannot be predicted. A child who joins school today will retire in 2065 and can be expected to live up to the age of 85. The challenge for schools is staring us in the face."  These are the words of Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray, a decorated leader of India's school improvement efforts and now CEO of an independent international school in Bangalore.  An online friend of mine who works on school change in Atlanta sent me the link to this message from India, because it states so eloquently why schools in the developing world are moving ahead and schools in America continue to struggle.

For one thing, life in India, the country that completely jumped over the Industrial Age and took up residence in the Information Age without a backward glance, is not about "test scores."  As Gen. Ray states, "There prevails a lot of confused thinking on what is the fundamental purpose of schools."  Indeed.

Gen. Ray believes schools should have a social objective to play a worthwhile part in the progress of the 21st century, with a "new literacy" that includes competencies in "higher purpose and vision, how to be creative, how to think critically, and how to be lifelong learners."   While U.S. schools may say some of these same things, they are not concepts that are valued by a system that prizes test scores above all else.  As Gen. Ray sees it, "Schools should, therefore, look upon themselves as agents of change and not as repositories of knowledge."

Ah, there's the crux of the argument:  What are schools trying to accomplish?  If we are no longer training factory workers for the discipline of standing at conveyor belts for long boring hours, being silent and focused on their narrow tasks, then why are we still running our schools as if that were their purpose?   If we, too, want our students to be creative, to have a sense of purpose and vision, how must we change things to create that outcome?

The person with the best answer to that question is Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford professor who originally advised President Obama on education issues.  She was recently featured in a webinar on Edutopia.org, explaining in great detail why the tests our students take now in NO way prepare them for their own futures.

The challenges today, she says require "motivated and self-reliant citizens and risk-taking entrepreneurs" who have a new set of abilities including solving problems, working in teams, creating, innovating and criticizing, reflecting on and improving performance.  These new expectations, in turn, require a major shift in schools, away from the recall and recognition--simple, low-level abilities--that form the basis of our testing programs. 

Here's an American test question in science:

• What two gases make up most of the Earth's atmosphere?

1.       Hydrogen and oxygen

2.       Hydrogen and nitrogen

3.       Oxygen and carbon dioxide

4.       Oxygen and nitrogen

Contrast this simple, easy to machine-score "standardized test" question with the "rich task" from a state exam in Queensland, Australia:

• Students must identify, explore, and make judgments on a biotechnological process to which there are ethical dimensions. 
• They must choose and explore an area of biotechnology, identify and use laboratory practices, and research frameworks of ethical principles that apply to their issue.
• Students provide a written explanation of technological differences in techniques used and present a deep analysis of the ethical issues involved.
• Further, they must select six real-life people whose views contribute to the issue and plan materials for a conference at which these scientists will speak, based on research of their views.

The Australian exam, and others that Dr. Darling-Hammond cites from England, Singapore, and other countries, obviously involves a wide range of skills, assessing student competencies in such areas as research and analysis, understanding of ethical issues and principles, lab practices, organization and communication, understanding of biological and chemical systems, etc.  That's why it's called a "rich task" and why, as an assessment of AUTHENTIC work, it requires an entirely different mode of teaching--also richer, more in-depth, more purposeful.

Darling-Hammond points out that worldwide school reform makes such assessments part of a "tightly integrated SYSTEM of standards, curriculum, instruction, assessment, and teacher development."  A SYSTEM designed to train teachers as it trains students to think in creative ways:  The goal for the NEW American public education system.  

The Human Brain, Unplugged

 

 Connections, connections, the human brain is all about connections:  Pulling memories out of a storage vault with, what would you say, a zillion gigs of capacity?  Shaping responses to stimuli in a nanosecond.  Putting discrete pieces together into patterns with a glance.  It's already the ultimate quantum computer, and getting more sophisticated by the generation, so it is no wonder that today's kids just aren't going to put up with doing traditional "school work" that is, at best, a conglomeration of isolated knowledge.  Human brains are designed to synthesize a multiplicity of factors and functions and to BUILD webs of meaning.  When are we going to translate that reality into modes of learning that do NOT force children's brains into narrow, linear, carefully circumscribed channels of thought?  The next stage of human development is here, and we're standing flatfooted at the door, arguing about irrelevant details like "test scores" while the world passes us by.  

 

 

If you're not already feeling left behind, especially in the too-tight strictures of the education world, then you probably haven't read A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink's racy paean to Big Picture Thinkers and the need to move beyond Knowledge Workers and into "The Conceptual Age."  I know, in schools, we're still trying to figure out the "Information Age," so somehow we're going to have to both immerse ourselves in technology and simultaneously leapfrog into what's going on right now, and Mr. Pink argues a great and compelling case, backed up by research, readings, and resources we can all use.

 

With the advent of Abundance, Asia, and Automation, Pink says, we're moving into a new era, where RIGHT-brain thinking (he calls it R-directed)--that part of us that schooling tends to pooh-pooh and ignore--is rising into a new prominence.  You know what that's all about, the part of our brain that is simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, contextual, the part that creates a Gestalt of experience and allows us to be "emotionally astute" and "creatively adroit."  Well, how much of that new "success and fulfillment" modality are we stimulating in schools?  That's right, very little to none at all.  Instead we have defined school success as filling in the right bubbles on woefully narrow "standardized tests," an approach that has given us lots of statistics but has held us back from moving to the next stage: A new agreement about the  meaning and purpose of school, a smart policy that articulates a supportive structural WEB around which states, communities, and schools can spin their own designs.

 

As we work piece by piece to achieve that smartbomb of national leadership, we can also work Pink's concepts into our policy discussions and teaching, subversively fulfilling our students'  real needs--and our own as well.  Here are the Six Essential Attributes that Pink discusses at length as markers of the new Conceptual Age:  Design, not only functional but beautiful and engaging.  Story, not only argument but a compelling narrative.  Symphony, not just focus but synthesis, creating a new whole.  Empathy, not just logic but caring and understanding.  Play, creating a balance of work and play for general well-being.  Meaning, not just money but purpose, transcendence and even spiritual fulfillment.  If you're like me, Pink's articulation of what we have always intuited to be true  is enough to make a frustrated teacher or parent cry.  Finally, someone creative enough to give us a framework for a new way of thinking about how we can connect our children to the REAL "real world."

 

What's Deming Got to Do With It?

Wasn't W. Edwards Deming the management guru who transformed the Japanese economy back in the day, showing that nation how to organize for the production of quality products?  Well, yes.  And didn't his ideas foster the whole Total Quality Management development that occurred in the '90s?  Of course.   But his reach went much beyond industry to teach us about SYSTEMS THINKING and show us that the whole must be centered around a powerful vision of learning.  

"Massive training is required to instill the courage to break with tradition," he said.  Courage, yes, that's what we need to break with the rigid patterns that define public education, and to break the stranglehold that piecemeal efforts have on the concept of school reform.  After all, we have had 40 years of "school reform," where almost everything in the ballpark has been in vogue.  Now, let's step back to the conceptual level with school itself and look at ways to change the system . . . .

Deming's ideas spawned an entire generation of systems thinkers, who extrapolated his views into the growing study of organizational change.   Peter Senge, the original Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT, is perhaps the most famous of these, an organizational innovator whose books The Fifth Discipline and Schools That Learn catapulted him to the global stage.

In an article posted on the site of the Society for Organizational Learning (http://tiny.cc/Senge), which he founded, Senge says, "Building learning organizations requires personal transformations or basic shifts in how we think and interact."  The three major roadblocks to this shift are cultural dysfunctions that promote fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness.  Sounds exactly like our traditional school system, doesn't it?

"We continually fragment problems into pieces; yet the challenges we face are . . . systemic," Senge writes.  We also revere competition, which can be fun and inventive, but needs to be balanced with cooperation.  "We think in terms of war and sports analogies . . . when the process of developing leaders may be more like parenting than competing . . . and developing a new culture may be more like gardening than a military campaign," he says.

 

Most importantly, Senge says, "We have grown accustomed to changing only in reaction to outside forces, yet the wellspring of real learning is aspiration, imagination, and experimentation."  He relates this mental state to what we ALL have learned and continue to learn in school:  "Fitting in, being accepted, became more important than being ourselves.  We learned that the way to succeed was to focus on the teachers' questions as opposed to our own."   

These dysfunctions, he believes, are "frozen patterns of thought to be dissolved," for which he proposes a "Galilean Shift" in the way we view our places in the world, as members of a whole community that works in collaborative ways to create a new culture. 

Nowhere is such a new culture more desperately needed than in our schools, where our obsession with test scores, closing the gap, evaluating and punishing teachers, and turning around failing schools is distracting us from the REAL WORK of school change:  Building a new, coherent vision of schooling that can bring EVERY CHILD, EVERY TEACHER, EVERY PARENT, EVERY COMMUNITY into productive and positive work toward a smarter, more inclusive, and more nurturing public education system.

I know, to those school "purists" who believe that school is for academics and all that fuzzy caring-about-the-kids stuff is just so much California "fluff," what I'm saying here is appalling and probably frightening.  If we did that, what would happen to our (gasp!) test scores?!?  Listen guys, if we really want schools that work for KIDS, if we really want "better teachers" and "smarter schools," then we're all going to have to CHANGE OUR MINDS in exactly the ways Senge suggests. 

Now, this kind of change does not have to be scary and certainly not "touchy-feely," so don't despair, all you academic hardliners.  We're mainly talking about a NEW PERSPECTIVE from which to view schoolwork.  Does it really have to be drudgery for everyone involved?  Or can it be a shift of thinking that does things like teach Algebra and Geometry together as a mathematical SYSTEM for problem-solving with scenarios where kids can apply what they're learning and see some use for such abstractions?   Or what about Physics and Chemistry working together to reveal secrets of the physical universe?  Or how about history as a human system with developing THEMES working toward equilibrium?  Well, there are about a million more examples, but you get the idea:  A NEW WAY of engaging kids (AND teachers) in their own learning is our KEY to real change. 

Even more to the point, we need to see EACH INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL as a learning organization where teachers work together to develop new, engaging projects and support each other in their implementation; thus, common ground and collaboration instead of closed classroom doors.  We need a flattening of the hierarchy that is sitting on the heads of teachers and schools, crushing out creativity with statistics and test scores; we won't need all that paper-pushing when we finally repudiate "test scores" as our sacred cow and more highly trained people can escape the dreaded "district office" and go back to the fun of working with kids, teachers, and schools.   There's a RENAISSANCE for schools right there, in that single concept.  We need university education faculties to be headed by people with REAL experience in real schools, and we need them to be out in schools with the fledgling teachers, helping them solve teaching dilemmas in real time.  Again, a whole new concept that would revolutionize teacher training.

But let's take these thoughts a step further:  Deming was a member of the "Greatest Generation" who passed on in 1993, leaving his work to Baby Boomers like Senge.  Now there are Gen-X systems thinkers who have picked up the challenge.  A recent article sent to me by a colleague in Atlanta gives a fresh take on the whole concept of "standards," from a quality management professional--and a parent:  Mike Micklewright says in his piece in Quality Digest (http://tiny.cc/QualityDigest), "Students are taught how to take tests, not how to learn or discover or create or challenge or to gain more knowledge . . . .  School becomes a job and children begin to lose their natural desire to learn."  If we really wanted to focus on students, he asks, shouldn't school quality be judged by "the degree to which students are fulfilled by the educational system to meet their particular and individual needs based on the unique method by which each student learns?" 

Sounds like a good plan to me.  What about you?  We're only a few steps away from a SEA-CHANGE in public thinking about what school can be.  Jump on Facebook with us to help spread the word:

http://facebook.com/ChangeTheSchools