Happy 2018: Demands for our schools
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As much as marketers of education are trying to convince us that learning for the 21st century must include "personalized" learning on devices that use algorithms, instead of smaller classes with highly educated human teachers, we know that is untrue.
Want to know the real "best practices" and educational philosophies? Here are just a few examples from John Dewey's Pedagogic creed.
Does your school district have a pedagogic creed?
Maybe it is time.
1. Dewey: " I believe that this
educational process has two sides - one psychological and one sociological;
and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil
results following..."
My 2018 interpretation: Learning is a person-to-person experience. If we limit human interaction in schools, which we are slowly doing, it will hurt our children. Screen time must be limited in our schools.
2. Dewey: " To prepare him for the future life means
to give him command of himself... If we eliminate the social factor from the child we
are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor
from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass."
My 2018 interpretation: We must make sure our schools meet the needs of our children without technology replacing face-to-face time with peers and teachers. Teachers must be allowed and encouraged to foster a love of learning in each child as an individual, using their professional judgement.
3. Dewey: " I believe that
education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for
future living."
My 2018 interpretation: No one knows what the jobs of the future will be. We shouldn't allow the whims of tech giants to guide education. Google conducted a study and found out the LEAST important skills needed for the future are STEM skills. Read the MOST important skills here.
4. Dewey:" I believe that the
school must represent present life - life as real and vital to the child as
that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the
play-ground."
My 2018 interpretation: Humans develop and learn best from each other. Let the children PLAY, EXPERIMENT, AND DO PROJECTS face-to-face, not virtually.
5. Dewey: " I believe that
education which does not occur through forms of life, forms that are worth
living for their own sake, is always a poor substitute for the genuine
reality and tends to cramp and to deaden."
My 2018 interpretation: Schools must provide real world experiences, including real-life field trips, plays, art, music, cooking classes, sewing classes, wood shop, metal shop, subject-based projects, etc. Use technology, but as a tool of the human mind.
GENUINE REALITY ALWAYS BEATS VIRTUAL REALITY.
6. Dewey: " I believe that the
school, as an institution, should simplify existing social life; should
reduce it, as it were, to an embryonic form. Existing life is so complex
that the child cannot be brought into contact with it without either
confusion or distraction; he is either overwhelmed by multiplicity of
activities which are going on, so that he loses his own power of orderly
reaction, or he is so stimulated by these various activities that his powers
are prematurely called into play and he becomes either unduly specialized or
else disintegrated."
My 2018 interpretation: Especially in today's world of screens, children MUST experience a simplified microcosm of our world, so they can develop the very skills Google found most important in their 2013 study. Schools must teach about the balance of face-to-face time vs. screen time. Schools cannot and should not control screen time at home, but they should in school.
7. Dewey: " I believe that much
of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of
the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place
where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be
learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is
conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these
things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere
preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of
the child and so are not truly educative."
My 2018 interpretation: TOTALLY AGREE. We must return to practicing and valuing creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, experimenting, and building. Focusing on a remote future robs our children of learning to love learning.
8. Dewey: " I believe that we
violate the child's nature and render difficult the best ethical results, by
introducing the child too abruptly to a number of special studies, of
reading, writing, geography, etc., out of relation to this social life."
My 2018 interpretation: We must focus on more than simply skills. Learning isn't a micro-experience. It is about the whole, the big picture.
9. Dewey: " I believe that to
set up any end outside of education, as furnishing its goal and standard, is
to deprive the educational process of much of its meaning and tends to make
us rely upon false and external stimuli in dealing with the child. "
My 2018 interpretation: Life and learning are one in the same. We have an ethical obligation to demand our children are present in actual reality. Learning shouldn't be sets of modules that a child has to get through. I can imagine how Dewey would react to "personalized" learning – the most false and external stimuli education has ever seen.
My 2018 interpretation: We must demand a return to developmental psychology. Learning is an active, not passive, experience. We must utilizes all of children's senses and motor skills as they learn in grades k-12.
And for the teachers out there, this is what your administrators should value. You deserve the utmost respect when you are doing right by our children.
Dewey: " I believe it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective instrument of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task."
"I believe that education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience."
"I believe that the art of thus giving shape to human powers and adapting them to social service, is the supreme art; one calling into its service the best of artists; that no insight, sympathy, tact, executive power is too great for such service."
"I believe that with the growth of psychological science, giving added insight into individual structure and laws of growth; and with growth of social science, adding to our knowledge of the right organization of individuals, all scientific resources can be utilized for the purposes of education."
"I believe that when science and art thus join hands the most commanding motive for human action will be reached; the most genuine springs of human conduct aroused and the best service that human nature is capable of guaranteed."
"I believe, finally, that the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life."
"I believe that every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth."
Yes, thank you, teachers. Do not let the soulless initiatives of these times make you doubt yourself. #TeachRight, #ChildrenBefore$, #HumanTeachersOverVirtual
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