Reality on a Stick

16 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

1. interesting ! but I myself think it’s better to classified schools as ‘classic schools’ and ‘modern schools’ , some countries like Japan has fundamentally different schools than a country like USA for example… the Japanese ones seem better I believe …

   1. funny on September 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

2. And also, schools always wanna ‘teach’ , while talented kids don’t need teach in some fields , they need to be known ! and that’s it … for example suppose a computer savvy; they wanna learn him what ? I mean in school ? they’ve nothing to say to her\him ! so they keep their own (false) way in teaching him and s\he refuses to re-listen all what s\he learn by him\herself ! imagine someone wanna learn you how to make a weblog in wordpress.com it’s exactly like that …

   2. funny on September 8th, 2007 at 9:35 pm

3. now, i’ve had a couple of drinks but tell me that the above isn’t gibberish. am i going mental?

   3. rob on September 8th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

4. Oh, this was good! As a muscian, I could relate to the story of the dancer in this vid. We do tend to stuff our children into an accedemic setting which is appropriate for less than 50% of them. The presentation of how a university professor sees her/his body as a conveyance for his/her head–so true. I’d forgotten how much I value the TED videos, too. Thanks for the reminder.

   4. museditions on September 9th, 2007 at 12:28 am

5. That was GREAT! Blew me away.
   It is all so true and I really do have to constantly be reminded, I know this, I believe ths and yet I let myself get sucked into the ’system’ measuring my kids’ academic successes.
   I think I need to watch that early each morning before my day starts.
   Looking at the official website, there is a ‘book Sir Ken’ option,
   do you think we could get him for the next JALT event.

   5. Miss Behaving on September 9th, 2007 at 4:36 am

6. Great post, it motivated me actualy to post on the same topic. Really though, I’ve seen it first hand as I’m sure many others have too. Back in high school there use to be so many more opportunities in the arts and it seemed as each year passed, there were less and less. I use to be a music major but I guess somewhere along the line, it sunk in. After hearing person after person tell me that “there are no jobs in that direction” or “so what are you going to do for money”, I guess I finally gave in. I never did great in school and music was where I excelled. Now in college, music seems to have slipped away from me, and again, not doing so great in my classes. Playing music gets me back into a rhythm, it helps me to think.

   6. exhalation on September 9th, 2007 at 5:05 am

7. For a less politically correct version of a similar idea, read an interview with Gatto: Masters of their own souls and here. (More in my delicious links).

   7. Marco Polo on September 9th, 2007 at 5:52 am

8. funny: I’ve been teaching in Japan for about 8 years, and let me tell you, it’s not all peaches and cream;-) I agree that some school systems have a leg up on others, and Japan at least has better funding than you’ll find in many countries, but I’m not sure I’d start handing out awards for a job well done over here. There are educators who get it and others who don’t, but they all work in a system that is built on out-dated and false premises, derived from a set of socio-economic needs that have–for the most part–disappeared. Unfortunately, that’s not so different from what’s happening in most places in the ‘developed’ world.

   Also, I agree with you that a classroom which calls on the teacher to hand material _down_ to the students, without properly considering its relevance in their lives, well that’s just criminal–but it’s what happens in far too many classrooms around the world every day.

   Rob: Watch it again, sober this time. Actually, you don’t have to be sober, just make sure you sober enough to sit still and focus for 20 minutes without passing out;-) Trust me. It’s worth it.

   museditions: Great to see you back. Thanks for the link post to exhalation’s blog. I have a lot of respect for musicians, as proficiency with musical instruments is a talent I have not yet developed. Once I get out of the woods with all the expenses of this year, however, I’ve had my eye on a tenor sax for a couple of years now. (Played alto until junior high).

   Miss Behaving: So glad you liked it. I was hoping you would. I certainly don’t envy you with all the educational worries your litter of kiddy-poos must bring with them. I really don’t know how you do it! As you say, you know that the open and holistic approach to parenting is what they deserve, and yet there’s just so much pressure to keep up with the Tanaka’s here in Japan. I’ve been full of advice for friends with kids in the system until now, but I’m worrried whether I’ll have the fortitude to defy the cram schools and entrance exam geared curriculum in guiding my children to become well-rounded, autonomous learners.

   Exhalation: Welcome to our small but growing community, and congratulations on getting your blog up and going. It’s looking good! I really like the layout. Hope to see you again soon. Keep your chin up at the new university. It’ll be over before you know it and someday you’ll wish you had the opportunity to go back and take it all more seriously…including the music. Go out and create your ideal world around you everyday, but don’t forget why you decided to go there in the first place. I look forward to reading more about your progress:-) End of totally unsolicited advice;-)

   Marco Polo: Thanks as always for the great links. The Gatto links have been fascinating!

   8. realityonastick on September 9th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

9. Wasn’t Rob referring to the comment immediately above his not to Sir Ken’s talk?

   9. Miss Behaving on September 9th, 2007 at 10:46 pm

10. Miss Behaving, youre correct. I was referring to the above comment.
    Steve, I don’t know where youre getting your facts from but I am actually sober nearly half the time now.
    re: “the man” stamping out creativity. a mercenary way to look at it is this, if we are teaching our kids to be little data regurgitation tools then they will be ideal for the life of office based drudgery. being a corporate peon myself, i can attest that the hours i spent staring out the window daydreaming have more than adequately prepared me for the life i now enjoy.
    haha, sorry to be the voice of misery again but i think that creativity isn’t just being stifled in the school. it travels with you right into the workplace for the most part.
    don’t forget that new ideas are, for the most part, either crazy notions or just plain bad. give us more of what we want. it worked last time. let’s just tweak it.
    enough of that though. later dudes.
    oh yeah, steve, ive actually written something to post. when i get round to it….yada yada yada

    10. rob on September 10th, 2007 at 2:10 am

11. An excellent presentation. It felt to me like an update of my hero, John Holt. Sir Ken at 06:15-06:30 could have been reading verbatim from a John Holt book. John’s favorite phrase was “schools train kids to be stupid.”

    11. lifebeyondsixty on September 10th, 2007 at 4:37 am

12. John Holt, yes!! How Children Fail and How Children Learn. That is all you know on earth, and all you need to know (apologies to Keats).

    12. Marco Polo on September 10th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

13. Actually, come to think of it this is depressing: 40 years and no change. It just proves that Gatto was right: the system cannot and will not change because it serves too many vested interests (including our own - oops!).

    13. Marco Polo on September 10th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

14. Rob: Sorry for the mix up. I thought you were talking about the video and I thought you must have had more than a few drinks if he can’t keep up with a 20 min video! Now I get what you said. BTW– I dug your comment about the boredom of school preparing you for the boredom of corporate life!

    Looking forward to your next post:-)

    Miss Behaving: Thanks for clearing that up!

    lifebeyondsixty: Thanks for the reference, I haven’t read any John Holt, I’m afraid, but it sounds right up my alley:-)

    Marco Polo: Thanks for making the Holt books easy to find, two more to sit on my shelf until I can get to them!

    40 years without change is depressing, but I really do feel the winds of change churning right now. So much inspiration, so much evidence of humans reaching out to one another. I think that has been the main problem: that we restrict ‘learning’ to that which happens in a certain kind of institution or in a ‘proper’ classroom. Hogwash!

    14. realityonastick on September 10th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

15. I told Stephen Krashen that I think of him as John Holt with research data. He liked that.

    I haven’t re-read HCL and HCF for quite some time, but I think I have internalized the message. Actually putting the ideas into practice is another question, but . . . .

    In addition to those two classics, John Holt was a very vocal proponent of home schooling back around the early to mid 1970s. It was a radical new idea back then. I don’t know whether his home-schooling newsletter survived him or folded after his death.

    15. lifebeyondsixty on September 11th, 2007 at 9:44 am

16. (These were left behind in the move.)

    lifebeyondsixty // Sep 13th 2007 at 3:24 pm (edit)

    You may have to sign up before you can access this. If so, do it. It will be well worth your time.

    http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-09-09-07.htm
    *

    realityonastick // Sep 14th 2007 at 2:55 am (edit)

    lifebeyondsixty: I had never given home schooling much thought before, but now that number one son is on the way, it’s has emerged as a viable alternative to current education ’systems.’

    Thanks for the irascible professor link, too. Excellent find. I’ll be subscribing to that one for sure.

    The points made about assessments being a whole lot of jargon and not good at doing much more than assessing your ability to be assessed are right on the money.

    Some personal anecdotes…
    My passion for education grew mainly out of a resentment for how (poorly) I was handled by my schools/teachers. I remember thinking, ‘this is a complete waste of time, so I might as well enjoy myself.’ For averachieving children, it can be very frustrating to find out that school is rarely about being challenged and engaged but rather about jumping through hoops. I’m just glad that I didn’t get so turned off that I stopped jumping through the hoops.

    When I arrived at university I was terrifed that I was going to be the least prepared among this ‘elite’ collection of America’s best and brightest. After all, I had basically fudged my way through high school. As it turned out, I was more prepared to succeed, because I had more experience doing as little as possible to get the highest assessment. At the university level and beyond, efficiency is everything.

    Again, thanks for the great links:-)

    16. admin on September 15th, 2007 at 5:30 am