ESPrit de Corps

10 responses so far ↓

• 1 Phil // Jan 16, 2009 at 3:26 pm

  Two things I’ve read about prepping for the 21st Century include: facility with technology (i.e. computers and software of different kinds) and ability to collaborate with people of various cultural backgrounds (i.e. being able to work globally).

• 2 Wes Webb // Jan 16, 2009 at 6:26 pm

  Thanks for starting this Anne!

  Anticipating how the world may evolve over the next century is such difficult business. I feel particularly stymied at this moment of limbo - on the eve of a new president, what with the economy such a question mark.

  I feel compelled to ground myself in some history. What do people do in an economic recession? What dangers and opportunities tend to arise when an economy comes out of recession? I need to do some reading.

  Obama’s Ed Secretary pick Arne Duncan’s pronounced that “Never before has being smart been so cool,” since Obama was elected. I have a lot of hope in this notion.

  Obama won the election because enough people received the information he and McCain put forth (and how the media responded to it) and interpreted that information in such a way that they decided Obama was the better choice.

  At this moment, I feel like the ability to read and synthesize information, to interpret, is a major skill that our young people will need. The gap between what kinds of texts children read in their K-12 education and what they’re asked to read in undergraduate and graduate programs is too great. With so much information out there, and with more and more sophisticated ways of spinning information, I feel like we need to fearlessly radicalize what we ask children to read (whether it be books, performances, television, visual art, etc.) to give them the interpretive skills to manage more sophisticated ideas and problems.

• 3 Linda // Jan 19, 2009 at 1:16 pm

  I am seeing so many of my students struggle with the economic and racial divide. There is an almost impossible chasm between where they want to be in the future and the environments they find themselves in that are not giving them opportunities to break out. Their challenge will be how to rise above the economic and educational barriers to have their voices and needs be truly heard.

• 4 Jack Langerak // Jan 19, 2009 at 5:23 pm

  Something that is already quite a challenge and will probably grow increasingly so for future students is the need to be able to deal with an avalanche of information. We have mega information at our fingertips and we can continue to find even more with simple clicks on our computers. My tiny flash drive can hold more than many libraries. Plus it seems that everyone has an opinion and everyone is publishing them (including all of us participating in this blog). How do we deal with this? The challenge lies in our abilities to discern the good from the bad, the genuine from the phony, the deep from the shallow, etc. Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future suggests that one of the key “minds” to develop for successful navigation of life as time goes on will be the “synthesizing mind,” a mind with the ability to sort, to integrate, to shape, to filter, to test, to assimilate, etc. This will be more than merely a highly prized commodity in the work place; it will be a necessity for understanding what’s going on all around us. It will require “critical thinking” with several meanings for the word critical!

• 5 Linda // Jan 21, 2009 at 6:37 pm

  I am also noticing that while my students in Canarsie need advanced technological skills and more computer time….their addiction to cell phones and blackberries is making it necessary for them to learn social skills as well. They need to learn to sit and talk without text messaging at the same time. They need time and space to learn how to interact socially– how to hold eye contact. They need to learn to differentiate between electronic communication and face-to-face communication.

  They need to be given avenues to explore the similarities and differences between their culture and other world cultures. I took a student to see SLUMDOG recently and she has been talking ever since about how that movie opened up the way she looks at her own situation in Canarsie. How do we open up viewing opportunities like that on a regular basis, to expand their horizons and then help them synthesize and draw parallels?

• 6 Anne Rhodes // Jan 26, 2009 at 5:57 pm

  Well, the portrait we have painted so far of the landscape that young people will face is pretty overwhelming! Lots of change and uncertainty, an “avalanche” of information, coming from many different sources, and much more exposure to different people, ideas, opinions and values.

  Lots of change: Global warming, peak oil, population explosion, food shortages, increased storms – together create an entirely new situation, without precedent, and not reliably predictable. The ways we have “always” done things, and the foundations we have built up in the last century are not necessarily useful now. These unprecedented global challenges and opportunities, are on a scale that humans have never had to face. The rate of change in many realms is far more rapid than in previous generations, leading to more stress, confusion, and a traditionalism backlash.

  So it is not surprising that you have named the “navigation” skills as more necessary than ever. When societies were more homogeneous we could rely on our assumptions and habits – not so any more! Now we need to be more aware of differences, to become more aware of our own values and perspectives, as well as gain navigation skills to sort through it all, analyzing and synthesizing what we are seeing and hearing. These are new, complex problems, and as we try to solve them we cannot be certain what our impact will be. Having information memorized will not be the problem. Finding reliable information and sources will be a challenge. Making sense of the information will be a challenge.

  I was particularly struck with the approach that you were modeling, Wes. You posed the problem (“lots of uncertainty”), and then modeled the required skills for this problem: ability to ask the right questions of the issue or moment, need to get information about precedents in history and relevant comparisons, and ability to interpret information and synthesize a new approach.

  And Linda’s reminder that not all young people are approaching this 21st century reality with the same opportunities available to them. One of the “differences” that I think is going to be most difficult for us to grapple with is Class. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is increasing, both in this country and across the globe. It’s not just about “poverty” or economic disparities; it’s not mainly about money. It’s about different ways of framing the world and our experience in it, different languages and meanings, different values and judgments. Young people in the U.S. will need to grapple with disparities among themselves, and then with disparities between U.S.’ers and the majority of the rest of the world.

• 7 Lori Diamond // Feb 2, 2009 at 9:41 pm

  Anne’s questions is a weighted one, and I agree that class is a great mountain for us all get over, around or on top of in order for us all to understand one another and give the children we teach the best chance of having the opportunity to make choices for themselves. I have found that many children have things, but don’t have language. They lack the ability to create a cohesive sentence which expresses an idea that is their own. So….opportunities to create, draw, dance, since, play music and respond to great works of art, can help build vocabulary. The children I see today have little notion of history. Without knowing the past, how can they make good choices about the future? Schools are set up, by in large, to teach children how to follow directions and do what the teachers says. That is all fine and good, but until when? When do we want children and young adults to think critically about the rules and the ways of the world? This question is huge! I can’t even begin to begin to answer it.
  Should we teach the constitution? Yes.
  Should we teach the literary classics? Yes.
  Should we teach how to write complete sentences? Math? Science? How to question?
  How to find the answers?> Should we always believe what we read on the internet? Should we stop teaching penmenship? How about how to balance a checkbook and to live within our means? Thanks for the question Anne.

• 8 Jack // Feb 4, 2009 at 6:15 pm

  I appreciate Lori’s concerns about what we should or should not teach and how difficult it is to make these decisions. Elliot Eisner suggests that when thinking about these things we should consider that there are actually three distinct curricula. The first of these is what we choose to teach (this is a large collective “we” with the teacher far too frequently left out of the conversation. I digress . . . sorry). The second is all of the stuff that same collective “we” has chosen not to teach. The quandaries Lori identifies are centered on these first two curricula. But the third of these, what Eisner identifies as the “hidden curriculum,” is frequently the most important of all. It’s what the kids are learning from the social conditions, physical environments and organizational structures of their schools. Despite what we may think, the kids actually never stop learning and the hidden curriculum, always in place, is very powerful. Imagine what a kid learns from observing how his principal deals with the cafeteria staff. What are kids learning about the importance of schooling when they look at the building itself? What is being learned when a child realizes that a teacher is only seeing him as a low test score? What about the emphasis on classroom control? Too often, when I come into a school building this hidden curriculum is screaming for attention and no-one is listening.

  I’m reminded of a piece of advice that I know would make a difference in the lives of kids in schools everywhere. It has the benefit of costing nothing and it fits nicely into Eisner’s hidden curriculum. It is offered by Vivian Paley, the noted early childhood educator and writer. She suggests that all teachers need to speak on a personal level to each of their students at least once every two days (“You might not be able to get everyone in on a single day, so you should remember who you didn’t get to today and be sure to do it tomorrow.”). This speaking does not need to take long but should encourage a bit of a conversation (“How’s your older brother?” “I love that outfit, did you put that together?” etc.). The incredible testing pressures on today’s classrooms have significantly reduced the cultivation of friendly teacher/student relationships. But, can you imagine how much more comfortable kids would feel if personal conversations with their teachers became a regular part of their school experience? If this was happening and if, in addition, schools thoughtfully considered the rest of their hidden curriculum, I’m certain that 21st century learning would be a more welcoming enterprise.

• 9 Phil // Feb 9, 2009 at 1:49 pm

  Jack and Lori’s comments bring me to the oft-used phrase “teaching to the whole child,” which I usually interpret as “remembering that children are people, too, with all the wonder and challenges that entails.”

  Maybe 21st Century teaching and learning can return to that most ancient of practices: people establishing connections and relationships that make them feel valued and appreciated.

• 10 Anne Rhodes // Feb 24, 2009 at 12:22 pm

  I would like to focus on one area that came up again and again in the Summer Seminar conversations: Many things changing very rapidly.
  Here are some of the notes from those conversations:
  Speed of change is increasing. We see exponential growth and change in many areas – quickly developing technology, information overload, rapidly growing population, threats to the environment that are escalating. The magnitude of the problems is increasing.
  New situations and issues are presenting themselves and demanding attention, such as new diseases, and viruses spreading globally, or banks failing and taking the economy down with them.
  There is a lot of movement, motion, and change; there are too many choices. The path out of these messes is not clear.

  I am thinking that our young people face a danger (as do we!) of feeling overwhelmed, out of control, of being immobilized by the sheer size and number of problems, or immobilized by fear of what will happen if these problems are not addressed. What do young people need in order to be better prepared to cope?

  I think one of the first things they need is the ability to deal with the unknown. To do that they need to be able to keep one’s equilibrium in a situation that is unfamiliar, complex, challenging. They will need a stable, core sense of self; a center that is secure. And they need to know how to take care of themselves to maintain this.

  What can we do in the classroom that can foster these qualities? What kinds of experiences help foster these strengths? How can we teach to maximize this in young people?

Leave a Response here