Humor
November 06, 2008
October 24, 2008
Sheepwalkers At School
I have previously blogged about Sacred Cows.
Education's Sacred Cows
and
Death To All Sacred Cows
But instead of cows, let's talk about Sheep.
Bēn on holiday ;-)
“ I define sheepwalking as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them brain-dead jobs and enough fear to keep them in line.”
“It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain dead stuff.”
Sheepwalkers are on the rise. Why?
“We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheeplike.”
So where are all these sheepwalkers coming from? Who creates sheepwalkers?
“Training a student to be a sheep is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest way to get a kid through school. So why it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep?”
Obviously, not all schools or teachers are creating sheepwalkers, but there are a lot who are. And sadly, we know it. The educational system likes sheepwalkers. You many not like sheepwalkers, but the system does.
“And graduate school? Because the stakes are higher (opportunity, cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught: to be sheep. Well-educated sheep, of course, but compliant nonetheless.”
Education is full of sheep, sheepwalkers, who spend all their days teaching compliant little sheep themselves. Sheepwalkers, who spend their days defending the status quo.
Bah, bah.
October 23, 2008
October 13, 2008
Education's Sacred Cows
Is there anything wrong with Sacred Cows? Well it depends. Maybe yes and maybe no. We need to question if our Sacred Cows are useful, relevant, and correct for the needs of the educational system. If they have outlived their usefulness then those “cows” need to be questioned. According to the authors of Death To All Sacred Cows: How successful business people put the old rules out to pasture, if education only looks to the past, it is putting itself at risk because schools or districts that, “...only look to the past to guide their futures can be doomed to failure. In a rapidly changing world, anything dated tends to be dangerous.”
“If the world was a stagnant, predictable place, then steadfast rules would be okay. They would guide us and keep everyone honest. But the world in which we live changes constantly.”
Change is the new normal.
“If we don’t question why we do things the way we do, we’ll never be able to do them better. If we resist new approaches, we’ll be stuck with more of the same all the time.”
When was the last time you questioned why you were doing what you were doing?
by TerData
So here is the Education Innovation list of Sacred Cows.
Sacred Cows Of Education
• All students can learn at high levels of achievement
• Teaching takes place at a school
• Teaching takes place in the classroom
• Students should sit at a desk
• Students learn from teachers
• Students need to learn what teachers are teaching
• The government knows what students should know
• The government knows best what teachers need to know
• The best way to measure learning is to give a test
• The best way to show what you know is to take a test
• Books are necessary
• Paper is necessary
• Homework is necessary
• Students should not have cell phones
• Always do what is best for students
• Research based instructional practices
• Data based decision making
• Principals should be “instructional leaders”
• Private schools, charter schools, and home-schools are competition.
• Schools don’t have enough money
• Unions are good for teachers
• Unions are good for students
• Smaller class sizes are better
• Howard Gardner is always right
• Robert Marzano is always right
• The DuFours are always right
• There is nothing you can do about bad teachers
• Standardized test scores matter, and they matter a lot
• Teachers are better when they work as team or a Professional Learning Community
• The more experience a teacher has the better they are at teaching
• Teachers should not be compared to other teachers
• Schools should not be compared to other schools
• Mistakes are bad.
• Parents are always right
• Parents don’t understand
• Put the most resources toward the lowest students
• Technology is not important for learning
Some of these "cows" should stay "sacred" and some of these "cows" need to be put out to pasture.
What Sacred Cows would you add?
September 26, 2008
September 20, 2008
The Big Word Project: The Intersection of Education and the New Approach to Meaning
These words are mine. I bought them. Let me explain. I came across the Big Word Project from one of my favorite blogs Ugly Doggy. It is an interesting idea dreamt up by two creative thinkers in Northern Ireland. Their idea was to let people redefine a word by linking it to a particular website.
I chose Intersection and approach because for me they represent the philosophy of this blog. It is an intersection of many ideas and education. It is also about having a different approach to what we do in education. (Innovation and Education were already taken!) Ugly Doggy conducted an interview with the creators.
Here is one of the interview questions and answers...
Are the words pre-approved (you have a list and what is not there can't be used) and therefore finite? Or ANYTHING that is in a dictionary can go there?
- Lee: Not at all, anything that's a real word can be used. We're using the Oxford English Dictionary as reference. We have about 180,000 words on the site but we're missing loads so feel free to suggest more. We're not including places or names (unless the name is in the dictionary).
This got me thinking about its relation to education. If a word can take on multiple meanings and even take on locations on the world wide web, then what else could a word be connected with? A word could be connected with a picture, a sound, a smell, a country, a person, a movie, a song, a poem. If you think about it, this has some pretty powerful implications for education. We are moving from a "there is one right definition of a word" to a "a word can mean multiple things and those things will be specific to each individual." Word and meaning will take on many more meanings and concepts, and those can be individualized from a country, a culture, a group, or an individual.
One right answer for the question "What does approach mean?" or "What does Intersection mean?" is evaporating into links and tags meaning, unique to every person. This is getting very interesting.
September 12, 2008
Indexed on Education
Another great Indexed post from Jessica Hagy.
August 27, 2008
August 15, 2008
August 06, 2008
Robert Jacobs
Creator and Developer of E.I--EducatationInnovation
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