technology

Higher Education in the Crosshairs/at a Crossroad

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Let me begin with an assertion that may upset some readers: Most American colleges and universities are glorified vocational institutions whose primary purpose is to prepare people for the work force. Most students understand this and go about ‘building a resumé’ that will earn them a good job.  This is, I think, a devil’s bargain for the vast majority of students.

It’s the rare college student who focuses on the challenge of ‘building a self,’ even though jobs come and go, and one’s inner self is your only sure companion for the rest of their lives.  And while some professors push their students toward personal discovery and intellectual growth, the primary drivers of higher education are jobs and careers: ”Learn to Earn.”

It has always been thus: Harvard, the country’s oldest college, was established in 1636 to train ministers, and Yale was founded in 1701 to serve the same purpose.  

That said, I think that colleges have an obligation to guide their students in directions that are likely to lead to gainful employment, and perhaps to “lives of significance” as well.  Teach ‘the Principles of Management,’ not ‘Stagecoach Maintenance.’   But also expand your students’ horizons and encourage their dreams.  

Universities cannot accurately predict the future or the future job market, and that can have awful consequences for their students.  I encountered this in 1969 when I was teaching English at Virginia State College, in Petersburg, Virginia.  Virginia State (now a university) was and is an HBCU, serving mostly first generation African American students, many of them from challenging economic circumstances.  A Virginia State education and diploma offered a huge opportunity, the chance to join the middle class.

Remember now, 1969 was the dawn of the computer age. You’ve seen photos of large main-frame computers and the armies of key punch operators who punched, collated and then fed cards into the machines. But even then savvy people knew change was coming.  It didn’t take long: The first personal computer was introduced in 1971, and three years later, 1974, the Altair-8800 became commercially available.

I was shocked to discover that some VSC officials were steering students into a major that essentially taught them to be key punch operators, and I learned that that particular major was the college’s most popular. Students were being told that good jobs would await them upon graduation, and they believed it.

Fast forward to 2025, and something similar is happening. While nobody is being taught how to key-punch, thousands of students majored in computer science and other math-related fields because they were told that good jobs would be theirs for the taking. Now they are discovering that to be false. 

The New York Times dug into this recently.  

“Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming.  

“The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary,” Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.

Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer.”

Many others are in her situation; they have degrees and debts, but no job.

How widespread is over-vocationalization, if such a word exists?  In a casual conversation a few weeks ago, a friend told me that his grandniece was majoring in “Golf Course Management” at one of the country’s best programs and that her course work included a summer internship at a nearby golf course.  “Do many colleges offer that major,” I asked?  Yes, he said, dozens do.

He’s right. A casual Google search turns up a surprising number that offer a major in Golf Course Management, Golf Tournament Management, and/or Turf Grass Management.  On the list: Penn State, Ohio State, the University of Nebraska, Florida State, the University of Colorado, the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, New Mexico State, Western Kentucky University, Coastal Carolina University, Mississippi State University, Kansas State University, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and (her school) Eastern Kentucky University. 

A few more institutions, such as Michigan State University, offer a “certificate” after 4 semesters and 54 credits.  Sixteen of these programs are certified by the PGA, professional golf’s governing body. 

Internships are a crucial part of the training; one university insists on an 16-month internship, meaning that students are working away from their university for nearly a year and a half, while presumably paying tuition!

While running a golf course can pay more than $100,000 a year, are there job openings awaiting the 600-800 or so men and women who graduate each year?  The US has about 16,000 golf courses, but 75% of them are public courses, under management by a political entity.   There’s probably not a huge turnover in the public or private arena, which suggests that the vocational training that these men and women have paid for (and will continue to pay for) may not lead to jobs in the field they have immersed themselves in.

What do they do now? Are they prepared to switch careers, from one that didn’t want them to something else?  Has specialization done them wrong?

Colleges and universities have larger and more public problems than what I am describing: President Trump has them in his crosshairs, the supply of 18-year-olds is about to drop dramatically, and, on average, one college closes every week.  

However, I believe what you’ve just read gets at the root of the issue.  Higher education has embraced ‘learn and earn’ as its Golden Rule, with disastrous consequences, including isolation and polarization.  How many of those young people who majored in Golf Tournament Management also  took courses in philosophy or classical music, or computer science for that matter?  How many of those math and computer science majors branched out?  

American Higher Education is failing its students by allowing and encouraging specialization, instead of providing and requiring a broad curriculum, an experience that ‘builds a self,’ to again use Jacques Barzun’s memorable phrase.  

He’s worth quoting at length on the value of a broad liberal arts education.  Professor Barzun begins by asking why one should tackle the classics.

The answer is simple: in order to live in a wider world. Wider than what?  Wider than the one that comes through the routine of our material lives and through the paper and the factual magazines—Psychology Today, House and Garden, Sports Illustrated; wider also than friends’ and neighbors’ plans and gossip; wider especially than one’s business or profession. For nothing is more narrowing than one’s own shop, and it grows ever more so as one bends the mind and energies to succeed. This is particularly true today, when each profession has become a cluster of specialties continually subdividing. A lawyer is not a jurist, he is a tax lawyer, or a dab at trusts and estates. The work itself is a struggle with a mass of jargon, conventions, and numbers that have no meaning outside the specialty. The whole modern world moves among systems and abstractions superimposed on reality, a vast make-believe, though its results are real enough in one’s life if one does not know and follow these ever-shifting rules of the game. 

And then he addresses the consequences of living in the silo of one’s speciality:

The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is pluralistic. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupations may quickly find familiar ground and, as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and goodwill. One is not addressing a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself. Otherwise, with the unstoppable march of specialization, the individual mind is doomed to solitude and the individual heart to drying up. The mechanical devices that supposedly bring us together—television and the press, the telephone and the computer network—do so on a level and in a manner that are anything but nourishing to the spirit. 

The message to students should be crystal clear: do not put yourself into a pigeonhole by specializing. Instead, take courses across the curriculum. Find out who the most interesting professors are and enroll in their classes.  Stretch, because you might discover parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed.   

And, remember, that job that you think you want, that job may not even exist three or four years from now.  Or less, as AI picks up speed.  Before you’re through, you may end up having a dozen or more jobs, and two or three careers.  

The way to prepare for change and uncertainty is to embrace them.

NECESSARY, BUT HARDLY SUFFICIENT

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Banning cellphones in public schools seems to finally be happening in lots of states and school districts, but, unfortunately, the numbers are slippery. One source reports that, as of January 17th, 8 states had passed either bans or restrictions on cellphone use in schools, and another 15 states were considering legislation.  The newspaper Education Week, using a slightly different metric, reports that at least 19 states have laws or policies that ban or restrict use OR recommend that local districts enact their own bans.   Meanwhile, the federal government’s National Center on Education Statistics reports that in 2022 at least 77% of schools had “some sort” of ban in place–whatever that may mean!

The US has over 14,000 public school districts, with about 96,000 schools. We have another 20,000 private schools.  How many actually ban cellphones? No one knows, unfortunately. However, the evidence against cellphones in schools is mounting.  The New York Times covered the issue of violence in detail in December.  

Across the United States, technology centered on cellphones — in the form of text messages, videos and social media — has increasingly fueled and sometimes intensified campus brawls, disrupting schools and derailing learning. The school fight videos then often spark new cycles of student cyberbullying, verbal aggression and violence.

A New York Times review of more than 400 fight videos from schools in California, Georgia, Texas and a dozen other states — as well as interviews with three dozen school leaders, teachers, police officers, pupils, parents and researchers — found a pattern of middle and high school students exploiting phones and social media to arrange, provoke, capture and spread footage of brutal beatings among their peers. In several cases, students later died from the injuries.

That cellphones are damaging the mental health of our children is beyond dispute. As the Columbia University School of Psychiatry reported: 

Smartphones have transformed the way we communicate, learn, and entertain ourselves. However, their omnipresence can lead to compulsive use and a sense of dependency. The constant stream of notifications and updates can create a sense of urgency and a fear of missing out, leading to increased anxiety and stress. Furthermore, the excessive use of smartphones can interfere with sleep, which is crucial for mental health.

Social media platforms, while enabling us to connect with others and share experiences, can also contribute to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. The tendency to compare oneself with others and the desire for validation through likes and comments can lead to a distorted self-image and feelings of worthlessness.

Moreover, studies have shown a correlation between heavy social media use and depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidal ideation.

What changes when cellphones are banned?  As far as I know, the evidence is anecdotal;  here’s a typical story, this one from The American Prospect:  “One Minnesota school discovered, as do many schools with similar policies, that teachers and principals notice positive developments in student behavior. And even students, when prodded, agree that taking cellphones out of the school-day equation has made them more productive, social, and happier overall.


Reliable data doesn’t exist in part because “ban” means one thing here, another there.  Some schools require students to deposit their phones whenever they enter a classroom but allow usage in the halls and lunchrooms.  Others rely on the honor system, and some have full-fledged bans that do not allow cellephones inside school buildings.

Banning cellphones is, in my view, necessary but hardly sufficient.  In fact, it may turn out to be counterproductive unless we change our approach to teaching.  What’s essential are new approaches to instruction that give students more reasons to engage in learning.  

Let me give you one example of teaching differently, a 5th Grade class that is studying US geography.  In normal times, the teacher might hold the students responsible for knowing all 50 state capitals, and perhaps their major cities, rivers, and industries.  That’s largely rote memorization, the ‘drill and kill’ that turns off so many students.

Rote memorization makes no sense at all, because every kid knows that the information is readily available on their cellphones, with a few keystrokes. (The teachers know it too!)

Instead, let’s imagine the teacher saying, “Well, there are 25 students and 50 states, so each of you is responsible for two states.  Let’s figure out how to assign them.  Anybody have a favorite state, perhaps one your grandparents might have lived in, or one you’ve always wanted to visit?”

Once the states are assigned, the teacher might say, “Now what I want you to do is find out–using your cellphone for research, if you wish–the capitals of your two states, why it was chosen as the capital, whether the state has had more than one capital over the years, and so on.  Whatever seems interesting, write it down, learn as much as you can, and be prepared to share what you’ve learned with the rest of us.”

“One of you is going to discover that one of your states has had EIGHT capitals over the years.  A couple of other states–including one of the smallest–have had at least SIX.  Maybe you will be able to tell us why they changed capitals. Was it money, religion, the environment, or what?  Have fun digging.”

“Maybe you can also try to figure out how the capital cities got their names.  For example, the capital of Ohio is Columbus.  How did that happen? Columbus came never within a thousand miles of what’s now Columbus, so why is the capital city named after him?  And, while you’re digging into that, check to see whether other cities are named after Columbus, and when they were named.”

“What I want you to be, kids, is curious.  You have a world of information on those phones you carry, but let’s never forget that information and knowledge are not necessarily the same thing.”

What’s happening here, in the age of cellphone bans, is actually revolutionary, because the students are in the business of creating knowledge, knowledge that they will own and share with others.  

That beats texting and TikTok any day….

“Necessary But Not Sufficient”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Many schools, both public and private, are banning cellphones. Is this a good idea? Let me present three connected points and a (seemingly) logical conclusion:

  1. Nearly all teenagers–95%–are on social media like TikTok, WhatsApp and their counterparts.  One-third of teens admit to using social media “almost constantly.” 
  1. Social media is damaging our kids, according to the U.S. Surgeon General: “The types of use and content children and adolescents are exposed to pose mental health concerns. Children and adolescents who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems including experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. This is concerning as a recent survey showed that teenagers spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media. And when asked about the impact of social media on their body image, 46% of adolescents aged 13-17 said social media makes them feel worse.”  A ‘national mental health emergency’ for children and adolescents was declared by the American Academy of Pediatrics back in 2021. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that “In 2021 and 2022, 21% of adolescents reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety in the past two weeks and 17% reported experiencing symptoms of depression.”  Undoubtedly, matters have only gotten worse, as teens’ use of social media has increased.

How does it hurt our kids? Let me count the ways:

  • Social media exposes young people to “extreme, inappropriate content.” 
  • Social media makes them–especially adolescent girls–feel bad about their bodies.  
  • Social media is a haven for predators. Nearly 6 in 10 girls say they’ve been contacted by strangers online “in ways that make them feel uncomfortable.”
  • Social media can overstimulate the brains in ways similar to addiction, leading to problems sleeping and difficulty paying attention.
  • Time on social media is time that is NOT spent with peers, developing relationships, learning about life’s give-and-take, what Erik Erikson calls ‘identity formation.’
  1. Teenagers access social media on their cellphones, and 95% of teenagers have their own cellphone.  These ubiquitous devices are their portal, their entry point, their lifeline to social media.  Without cellphones, teenagers have extremely limited access to social media.   Cellphones, which are ubiquitous, are the lifeline and portal to social media.

(It’s not just teens, of course.  According to the National Institutes of Health, “Mobile phone adoption in the United States is starting in late childhood and early adolescence; currently, 53% of children have a smartphone by age 11.”)

Ergo: Without cellphones, teenagers won’t be on social media, so cellphones should be banned. Without cellphones, teenagers won’t be taking 100 or more selfies to get the ‘perfect’ photo to post. They won’t be making 10-second videos for TikTok or spending hours watching cats being cute.  If they aren’t on social media, the thinking goes, they will be more social. If they aren’t communicating with a machine, they will engage in genuine personal communication.  

In fact, a growing number of public school districts and private schools have come to that conclusion. They have banned cellphones or developed policies designed to severely limit their use. 

The Washington Post reported in depth on this issue in late August, just as schools were opening.  According to the Post, at least seven of the nation’s 20 largest school districts have banned or severely restricted cell phone use. It’s not just large districts, of course.  The school district on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where I live, requires students to put their phones into pouches when they enter the school building, and they can retrieve them at day’s end.  

Banning phones may be necessary (I think it is), but it is not sufficient, not even close.  What are adults offering in exchange? What’s the rest of this bargain?  Without some other steps, some quid pro quo, this will be perceived by most teens as heavy-handed and punitive, something being done to them against their will, something that makes school even less appealing.

Of course many kids see the ban as punitive, and why wouldn’t they?  When adults try to reassure them by saying, “Trust us. This is for your own good,” that only confirms their suspicions.  This is being done to them–and so they are going to devote a lot of energy to beating the ban.

Unfortunately, schools and the adults who run them are too often reactive, when thoughtful proactive behavior is called for. Instead of simply banning phones, the adults ought to be trying to get young people to want to come to school regularly, not simply ‘to attend school.’  To do that, schools (with or without cellphones) need to be interesting, challenging, and safe. 

Let me suggest four specific steps that should, I believe, accompany the cellphone ban:  

1) Restore the full range of extra-curricular opportunities–because most kids come to school so they can do interesting stuff with their friends!  

2) Homeroom should become an extended period, not just a quick five minutes when attendance is taken. Make daily homeroom a pressure-free time when students–without phones to distract them–can catch up with friends, forge new relationships, finish homework, or even take naps.  “Home” is the operative word here.  For most high school and middle school students, “Homeroom” is the equivalent of the starting blocks in a track meet. They touch base, listen to (or maybe ignore) morning announcements, and, when the bell sounds, dash off to class. In truth, “Homeroom” matters to school administrators only because it gives them a head count, but it’s a meaningless perfunctory exercise for kids.  For them, “Homeroom” is just a room, about as far from actually being a home as one can imagine.

That could change. America’s teenagers desperately need more “Home” in their lives, more opportunities to connect with others, more moments that tell them they matter. The rigidity of today’s high-pressure school schedules makes matters worse, not better. 

The simple—not easy, but simple–fix is to make “Homeroom” more of a HOME, not just another room.  Some teachers will have to be convinced that this new time period is an opportunity for them to expand their own professional repertoire of skills to include their students’ social and emotional growth. The challenge may be to train teachers to listen and not react, in order to allow young people to identify and share their feelings. NewsWeek magazine reports that Tacoma, Washington, schools are doing this, training not only teachers but also parents and school bus drivers.

In each of these new extended Homerooms,  teachers and their students will have to work together to figure out how they want to use this time. Some students may want to finish homework, or sleep, but the teacher could steer the conversation in the direction of “team building.”  

Perhaps one day a week could be set aside for discussion of some interesting questions (“If you could meet one figure from history, who would it be, and why?”), even trivial ones (“What questions would you like to ask Taylor Swift?”). 

Ideally “Homeroom” will turn into a safe space where students can learn to share and will agree that what’s shared there stays there. No bullying allowed.  

3) Expand course offerings to include some college classes and vocational training opportunities. Meet kids where they are, not where you think they should be.  

4) Work harder to make schools safe in three vital ways: physically, emotionally, and intellectually.  Emotional safety means that bullying and cyber-bullying are not tolerated.  Intellectually safe schools celebrate curiosity.  In these schools, adults encourage students to admit when they do not understand or are confused, often by modeling that behavior. Intellectually safe schools don’t treat kids as numbers but as growing and changing individuals.  (And young people who are treated with respect are unlikely to bring their dad’s AK-47 to school.)

Without cellphones as a crutch and given a more stimulating environment, most young people will be inclined to engage with each other. With adult guidance, they can explore new ideas, share curiosities, make plans, and so forth.  They can learn that there is life without cellphones.  

Removing cellphones creates new opportunities and challenges, but that won’t happen if adults simply enforce the ban. That is, banning cellphone in school is NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT.

It’s time for the grownups to grow up and step up!

Improving Public Schools (#14): Ban Cell Phones!

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , , , ,

A simple way to improve public schools would be to institute a complete and total ban of all cell phones and so-called smart watches.  Banning these ubiquitous devices would improve student mental health, reduce cyberbullying, and make schools safer for the most vulnerable students.

As Education Week reported in October, “A growing number of studies have linked children’s use of smartphones and social media to their deteriorating mental health. For instance, a 2023 systematic review of 50 research articles published in the journal BMC Psychology found that screen time was associated with problems in teens’ mental well-being, and that social media was linked to an increased risk of depression in girls.”

Banning cell phones is also supposed to reduce cyberbullying, which is increasingly prevalent among adolescents in schools.  It’s occurring in more than 81% of schools, according to their principals, and it’s getting worse.  In 2010, 37.7% of principals reported NO cyberbullying in their schools–none in close to 40% of our schools–but in 2016 (the most recent data), that ‘Never’ number was cut nearly in half, to 19.1 %. 

What’s not mentioned in the articles I’ve looked at, another elephant in the room, is cheating.  Smartphones and smartwatches make cheating easy as pie. Banning them is a step in the direction of academic integrity.

“Hold on,” some of you may be saying to yourself. “Didn’t I just read that nearly all public schools prohibit students from using cell phones?”

You’re correct: Here’s the most recent data, from the National Center for Education Statistics: “More than three-quarters of schools, 76.9 percent, prohibited non-academic use of cell phones or smartphones during school hours during the 2019-20 school year.”  That’s up nearly 7% from 2010.  

While this sounds impressive, don’t be misled, because the phrase ‘during school hours’ is slushy/squishy at best.  It means that for some unspecified amount of time students were not allowed to use their phones.  What most schools, and the entire state of Florida, have done is institute partial bans, followed by bizarre, almost comical steps, like magnetic pouches outside classroom doors, to enforce their rules.  

What’s not revealed is how much of the day students can use their phones, because it turns out there are loopholes, lots of them: In some schools,  students may use their phones at lunch, in the halls, between classes, in the rest rooms, in study halls, and during extracurricular activities.  Oh, and in their classrooms if the teachers say it’s OK.   

That’s a ban?  

It’s not hard to dig up anecdotal ‘evidence’ from supporters that this policy is working. For example, Brush (CO) School Superintendent Bill Wilson told Education Week, “In between classes, students are talking to students instead of everybody walking with their head down on their phone.” 

But the plural of anecdote is not data, and the data tell a very different story: Cyberbullying actually increases when schools ban cell phones!  Schools that did NOT allow their students to use cell phones had a reportedly higher rate of daily/weekly cyberbullying. 

The incidence nearly doubled!  Partial bans seem to make things worse, not better!

I can imagine the collective mind of teenagers, on learning of the ban, declaring, “So you think that keeping us from using our phones will stop us from being mean?  Good luck with that!”  

What I conclude is that half-hearted, half-way restrictions on cell phones is a half-assed public policy.

What’s required to improve public schools is a complete and total ban.  However,recall that at the top of this essay I wrote ‘simple’ and not ‘easy,’ because it will be very difficult to keep these ubiquitous devices out of schools.

For one thing, the negative step (the ban) must be accompanied by some significant positive steps that will, in time, fill the space now spent on phones.  I would ask educators and policymakers to consider some of my earlier suggested changes, including Extending the Homeroom Period (#7),  Making Stuff (#11), and Serving Your Community (#13).   A longer homeroom period will give students more time to get to know each other, while the real work involved in building things and serving one’s community will provide both personal satisfaction and connections with others that no electronic device can begin to deliver.

(The argument that cellphones are an important educational tool for connecting to the internet does not hold today, because most schools either provide or allow laptop computers.   Banning cellphones and smartwatches will not restrict educational opportunities.)  

The stickiest part will be enforcing a total ban, and here schools might consider embracing step #3,  Practice Democracy.  As everyone who’s spent time in public schools must acknowledge, schools are anti-democratic by nature and design, and that’s what needs to be confronted.  That means telling the truth, by acknowledging openly to students (and the community) that cyberbullying is a real problem, that excessive use of cell phones and social media is harmful, and that some students use the devices to cheat, giving them unfair advantage over their peers.

Then educators must present students with the decision, the fait accompli–no cell phones and no smart watches on campus–and then ask them to help establish both the procedures and the penalties.  

Should the first violation result in a warning, or should the device be confiscated? If confiscated, for how long?  (Apparently many schools now simply take away the phone and give it back at the end of the day.  Day after day….the very definition of toothlessness.)  Should there be escalating penalties for repeated violations?  Should there be a student court, or at least the involvement of students in the judicial process? 

As I said, it won’t be easy, but the rewards of a total ban of smartphones and smartwatches are almost impossible to exaggerate: more open communication, real work, significant connections with others in the school and in the community, and a reduction in bullying.

(Here’s a list of all the steps, so far: Looping;  Play;  Practice Democracy;  Business Cards for Teachers;  Involve Outsiders;  Multiple ‘Talent Nights’;  Extended Homeroom;  Ask the Right Question;  “Education Grand Rounds”;  Looping (revisited);  “Making Stuff”;  Make the School Safe;  Serve Your Community)

But Who Will Design The Robots?

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In one of his always interesting “Disruptions” column in the New York Times, Nick Bilton held forth on how robots are replacing workers at Amazon and elsewhere. These robots, a researcher at Johns Hopkins told Bilton, “will help augment people’s abilities, allowing us to use robots for things humans cannot do.” And, the Hopkins guy adds, we will always “have to have someone who builds the robots.”

Columnist Bilton is upset for the workers who will lose their jobs, but his column is also a wake-up call. I read it as an implicit critique of a narrow curriculum that puts aside just about anything that encourages the imagination in favor of ‘the basics,’ meaning basic reading and basic math.

Stressing the basics is no way to make sure that we will produce people to design, build and operate robots, or create the future in other ways. We need schools that encourage the imagination, that allow and support deep learning, and that fan the sparks of creativity — not stomp out the fires.

EdTech
In the East Bay, new approaches to education are taking shape.

However, a narrow and unimaginative curriculum is not a new phenomenon. Just as armies are supposedly spending their time getting ready to fight the last war, many schools and colleges seem to focus on preparing young people for the day before yesterday — and have been doing so for a long time.

I have some direct experience in this. In the late 1960s, I taught for two years at a historically Black public college, Virginia State, in Petersburg, Virginia. For a privileged young white man from New England, it was a life-changing experience.

One sociological lesson stuck with me. The college stressed vocational training for its students, most of whom were the first in their families to attend college. While some studied to become chefs and barbers, a very popular major involved computers, which at the time were still pretty new. These students were being trained to be key-punch operators! (Ask your parents!!) It didn’t take a wizard to know that, in a very short time, absolutely no one would be able to make a living as a key-punch operator, but that didn’t slow down the training program. Disrupting that assembly line would have required more than foresight; it would have meant sticking one’s neck out and challenging the comfortable status quo –remember, this was Southside Virginia, not a safe place for African-Americans to challenge the system. Easier and safer to prepare students for yesterday than to make waves and risk one’s own career.

I’ve often wondered what happened to those young men and women. I hope they found other work, and other opportunities to learn new skills.

What about today? Not only are we not challenging the status quo of ‘basic education,’ we seem to be cutting to the bone and getting rid of ‘frills’ like the arts. While I am hearing and reading stories about larger classes and fewer ‘non-essential’ programs in lots of places, Texas seems to be leading the way in cutting education (big surprise).

But, wake up, folks. The arts are basic, as this report from Florida demonstrates. Some of you may have seen our piece for the NewsHour on this topic:

So what do we do about a narrow, boring curriculum and the failing schools that generally seem to accompany that approach? It takes courage to challenge the runaway train of the current approach. As the metaphor suggests, standing in front of a train is not a recipe for a long life. The money and the power are with the status quo.

Some corporations are getting involved, although maybe not as a direct challenge. If you watched the Masters Golf tournament, you saw ExxonMobil commercials about improving America’s competitive position in math and science. That company’s foundation has spent millions on math and science education. (I also liked that many of the ads said ‘Support our Teachers,’ a too-rare message these days.)

Better news comes from San Francisco. Some high tech entrepreneurs there are resisting school-as-usual and getting their hands dirty trying to change things. Right now they seem to be involved because they have children of their own, but let’s hope they are intent on helping other people’s children as well. Let’s hope these interesting approaches to schooling become models, not just boutique luxury items for the privileged.

Cursing the darkness never did anybody any good. Let’s celebrate — and copy — those who are lighting candles to show us the way.

Digital Natives, Or Digital Citizens?

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I often hear adults describing today’s young people as ‘digital natives,’ usually with a tone of resignation or acceptance: “They are so far ahead of us, but we can turn to them for help,” is the general message I hear.

My reaction is “Whoa there, Nellie,” because to me that kind of thinking smacks of abdication of adult responsibility. Yes, most young people know more than we adults because the fast-changing world of modern technology is alien to us, wildly different from the one we grew up in. But being a ‘digital native’ is not the same as being a ‘digital citizen.’ Young people have always needed ethical guidance and the security of rules and boundaries. That’s more true now because today’s technologies have unprecedented power to harm, as we have seen in documented cases of cyber-bullying and harassment.

I accept the general truth of what someone called the “Three C’s 1-9-90” rule of thumb, sad and depressing as it is. Only about ONE percent of young people are using today’s technologies to create; NINE percent are curating, collecting and critiquing, while NINETY percent are consuming.

If most youth — 90 percent — are texting, playing Angry Birds and Grand Theft Auto, and linking up on Facebook and Google Circles, then we adults should be ashamed.

Unless, of course, we are equally guilty.

And we are.

I would bet that the education community’s use of technology follows a “Two C’s 10-90” rule: TEN percent to create, and NINETY percent to control. I mean ‘control’ broadly, everything from keeping the school’s master schedule, monitoring attendance and grades, tracking teacher performance, and imparting the knowledge we believe kids need to have.

Natives
Our children may be digital natives, but we still need to channel their efforts.

If an important purpose of school is to help ‘grow adults,’ then the creative use of technology — by adults and young people — must be ramped up dramatically. We need to find ways to move kids out of the 90% and into the 1%.

If, on the other hand, a central purpose of school is to produce willing consumers, well, we’re doing fine.

What about Sal Khan and his burgeoning Khan Academy? Doesn’t his approach blend technology and traditional learning in ways that are to be admired? Yes, of course. However, at least so far most of the energy has been devoted to helping kids master the required curriculum. I think that’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient.

Schools today must provide opportunities for young people to create knowledge out of the swirling clouds of information that surround them 24/7. You went to school because that’s where the knowledge was stored. That was yesterday. Think how different today’s world is. Today’s young people need guidance in sifting through the flood of information and turning it into knowledge. They need to be able to formulate good questions–because computers have all the answers.

(I speak about a lot of these themes at greater length in The Influence of Teachers.)

Here are a few ways to harness technology and foster creativity.

1. Every middle school science class could have its own hand-held air quality monitor (under $200). Students could take air quality measurements three times a day, chart the readings, share the information in real time with every other middle school science class in the city, region or state, and scour the data for consistencies and anomalies. That’s creating knowledge out of the flood of information, and it’s real work, not ‘homework.’

2. Students could use their smart phones’ cameras to map their own neighborhoods, documenting (for example) the number of trash cans on street corners. That information could be plotted and shared city-wide, and the data could be examined for patterns and anomalies. Are there more trash cans in wealthy areas? If so, ask the Mayor, the Department of Sanitation and the City Council for an explanation. Again, students will be turning information into knowledge. I wrote about this a while ago in more detail.

3. Why not measure water quality? A hand-held monitor/tester of Ph costs under $100, and the instrument that tests conductivity (ion levels, which relates to purity) is available for under $100. Turbidity — how cloudy the water is — is important to measure as well, and that can be done with an inexpensive instrument and a formula. Students could also measure the speed of the current and keep track of detritus. Then share all the data with other science classes around the city, region and state. Everyone could dig into the information looking for patterns. If one river’s water seems relatively pure until it passes point X, students could endeavor to find out why.

4. Teams of students with held-held Flip Cameras are invited to participate in our Shared Poetry Project and become producers for our YouTube channel.

If you click on the link above, I suggest you watch example #3, which was created by some middle school students in New Jersey.

Work like this is, well, real work. Students are creating knowledge; they are designing projects and seeing them through from beginning to end. These projects have to meet real-world standards because the results are in public view.

These young people will be learning (or reinforcing) real-world skills that will help them once they move out of school. They’re working together, they are gathering, assimilating and analyzing data, they are learning how to present what they are learning, and so on. This is career-track stuff, 180 degrees different from much of the ‘regurgitation education’ that is the hallmark of too many of our schools.

And here are two final benefits: the time they spend doing projects like these (and there are many more good ideas out there) is time they cannot spend playing games or otherwise consuming technology. And because they are using technology to create and are enjoying the fruits of their labor, they will be, I believe, less likely to use technology’s power negatively. Strong in their own sense of self, they are less likely to feel the need to bully and cyber-bully others.

Technology is not value-free. We have choices to make, folks.

In Qatar: Interview with WISE Chairman, Dr. Abdulla bin Ali Al-Thani

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http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7777134&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=cc6600&fullscreen=1

Dr. Abdulla bin Ali Al-Thani is the Chairman of WISE and Vice President for Education of the Qatar Foundation.  Dr. Abdulla knows the United States well, having gone to graduate school at Colorado State University. I spent a few minutes with this soft-spoken, focused and optimistic leader on the first day of WISE.  He was very clear about his high hopes for the event.

Not on the tape but revealing: When Dr. Abdulla learned that I live in California, his face lit up.  He told me with great excitement about the time he and a cousin rented motorcycles, took a 1-hour driving lesson, and then drove down our Route One from Big Sur down to Santa Barbara.  He told his parents, he confessed, only after the trip had concluded successfully.

Better Late Than Never: Report Back from Day 1 in Qatar

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**We ran into some snafus with live posting, so some of my report backs didn’t make it up.  I think you’ll enjoy them anyway, so here’s one from the first day of the conference.**

About 1000 delegates from more than 120 countries are represented here in Doha, Qatar, at WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education. Plans are to make this an annual event, and it’s backed by the Qatar Foundation and the prestige of Her Royal Highness, Sheika Mozah, the wife of the Emir. She opened the 3-day meeting with a rousing call for innovation in education.

WISEShe reminded us that more than 75 million school-age children are not in school and that nearly 800 million adults cannot read or write. And she sounded a theme that is of profound importance: the education gender gap is wide and growing, because discrimination against women and girls is deeply entrenched.

The need for innovation is clear, because business as usual means accepting severe teacher shortages, funding deficits and low completion rates. Can this conference energize at least some of the participants to work for significant change?

For this stranger,a lesson on arrival had to do with pronunciation of Qatar. I’ve always said ‘ka-TAR’ but they say ‘cotter’, as in cotter pin. The second lesson: This is a new country intent on leaping into the 21st century: Construction cranes everywhere, and what they have already put up is impressive. Google ‘Education City, Qatar’ and see for yourself.

About 50 journalists are here, and the organizers have ‘quarantined’ us at a hotel miles and miles from the meeting hotel, the Ritz. We are downtown, where life happens, and we have a 30-40 minute bus ride morning and night that gives us a chance to see some of Doha. Those ensconced at the Ritz are out on a peninsula, miles from anything else. They do get the famous Ritz chocolate chip cookies, however.

After Sheika Mozah’s speech, we were talked at, about the importance of innovation in education. Why is it that the pedagogy never changes? Does someone believe that’s the best way to communicate?

Off to Qatar for WISE

John Merrow Op-ed, teaching, technology , , , , , , ,

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7648358&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=cc6600&fullscreen=1

I’m headed to the first World Innovation Summit on Education in Doha, Qatar. Hundreds of education innovators, policy makers and experts will be gathering there and I plan on recording video, audio interviews and filling you in on what’s happening there as it unfolds. This week, expect a post a day from me until Thursday, when I return.

To learn more about the WISE conference, visit their website: http://www.wise-qatar.org.