tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21581572794898668952024-03-20T22:23:44.210-04:00The 21st Century PrincipalThoughts on Education, Literature, Politics, and Philosophy of EducationJohn Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.comBlogger774125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-75119466478043066242023-06-14T23:18:00.004-04:002023-06-14T23:18:33.131-04:00We've Got the Teacher Shortage We Deserve in 2023<p> American school systems are experiencing a teacher shortage so severe that some positions go months and months unfilled due to lack of applicants. This is especially true in some certification areas like math, science, and special education. And, I would add that policymakers can't apply band-aids fast enough to fix this problem, because it is a problem that unfortunately we deserve. </p><p>In the past 30 years, education leaders and policymakers have done more to make teaching so unpalatable, that fewer and fewer people are choosing to become teachers. This is not a problem that we can easily market or buy our way out of, yet we have education leaders and politicians still trying to do just that.</p><p>Has anyone considered that perhaps we should look at what teachers are being asked to do? Maybe the work just stinks.</p><p><br /></p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-53690456538894990632022-12-28T01:00:00.004-05:002022-12-28T01:00:48.731-05:00When Educators Use the Word "Science" and the Need for Critical Thinking<p> "Science can be a language of distance which reduces a being to its working parts; it is language of objects." Robin Wall Kimmerer, <i>Braiding Sweetgrass</i></p><p><b>Educators and education policymakers have discovered a new word "science."</b> Well, it's not new to them, but some educators have figured out that by placing the words "Science of" before whatever topic they wish, somehow transforms that topic into something that is to be heeded and given authority. For example, I remember some state level educators throwing around the words "Science of Change" or "Science of Innovation" at a professional development session pushing some new curriculum scheme the state wanted to be accepted. It's as if by talking about "change" being a "scientific discipline, it should be accepted without question. Never mind that often with change, the important questions are not scientific at all. The questions of value, like "Who is affected by this change?" and "Who gains the most from this change?" are extremely important as well. Change and innovation are too often pushed for their own sake, or for the sake of some career that stands to gain from its implementations. </p><p><b>We need to realize that the placement of the word "Science" before change, or innovation, or, most recently, "Reading" does not make the contents of that field any more legitimate and immune to critique.</b> In fact, we should turn on the critical thinking even more when educators throw around the word science in this manner, because they have done it so often in the past...like at the turn of the 20th century with the term eugenics. At that time, education leaders and policy makers did a great deal of talking about the science of eugenics too, and we all know the ethical issues with that science.</p><p><b>As Kimmerer points out, it is important to understand the effects of imposing the language of science on anything, even reading. </b>It creates a distance between us and that object. It tears it down into working parts pretty well, but in the end, you sometimes don't understand it any more than when you started your "scientific study." Sometimes, an act like reading needs to be understood as a whole too. If we reduce the act of reading too much as some kind of simple skill that can be taught, we actually ignore the fact that reading is really a personal, meaning-making experience too among other things. It is actually a subversive activity too if we let it be.</p><p><b>Educators always need to be skeptical of their colleagues and educational gurus throwing around the word science.</b> It's very appropriate to ask tough questions, even the questions they would like to be out of bounds.</p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-33083986661734582712022-12-18T13:25:00.003-05:002022-12-18T13:25:32.118-05:00Time to Demote Social Media to Super-Market Tabloid Status<p>“<b>Because corporations are not elected, they cannot be voted out, and yet they have become pseudogovernmental by virtue of their wealth, power, and the reach of their technological systems. Their leaders insist that they, and they alone, know what is best for us—from what information we should see to how much privacy we should retain. Increasingly, these companies have placed themselves in the role of determining how we move about in the world, literally and figuratively, and their power to define our reality increasingly extends to the power to decide elections in the US and other nations, taking away our most fundamental rights as citizens to self-determination.</b>" Mar Hicks, "When Did the Fire Start" in <i>Your Computer Is On Fire</i></p><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b>It's time to demote social media's status in our lives.</b></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b>The problem with social media systems like Twitter, is that we have given them too much power over us.</b> They have become "pseudo-governmental," to use the term used by Hicks (2021), which means they become the unelected governors over the information diet we consume. </div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b>Place an autocratic, narcissistic CEO in charge of such companies, which is what we have in Elon Musk, and the real danger is that the social media system becomes at best a polluted information ecosystem flooded with misinformation and nonsense. At worse, the social media system becomes a propaganda mechanism, promoting what a CEO like Musk thinks is best for us. </b>The question then becomes do we really want someone like Musk deciding what information is relevant for us? Do we want him determining what free speech means? I think not. </div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b>We as consumers get to really decide how much value social media has in our lives.</b> Honestly, I think we should not have listened to the techno-utopian hype in the 2000s that promised that social media would foster connections and community. It hasn't. We are more separated and polarized than ever, and social media is the cause. <b>It is time to relegate social media to the same status as the super-market tabloid.</b></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b><br /></b></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmB2Q8rO8J8wlwcugP_EDBJLVUd9WHvt53raqhAi6bdRtaWbaqb9SexjrCoFp-pFtOop5ofa-KKpJ8pUWBH3xqFBkraKeeC_3fNxcuTQQASfGuGDsuIUlst7PhL_DDPZp4cNfEaMWa5cMoi_FL3XMBlv_kQquWZgwWOnP8pAxVZyisFdHyncpGCltk4w/s1646/computeronfire.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1646" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmB2Q8rO8J8wlwcugP_EDBJLVUd9WHvt53raqhAi6bdRtaWbaqb9SexjrCoFp-pFtOop5ofa-KKpJ8pUWBH3xqFBkraKeeC_3fNxcuTQQASfGuGDsuIUlst7PhL_DDPZp4cNfEaMWa5cMoi_FL3XMBlv_kQquWZgwWOnP8pAxVZyisFdHyncpGCltk4w/s320/computeronfire.png" width="249" /></a></div><br /><b><br /></b></div>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-31689319740109258642022-12-18T12:32:00.002-05:002022-12-18T12:32:16.973-05:00Edu-Techno-Utopian Voices Got It Wrong with Remote Learning<p><b>“No matter the problem, it seems, a chorus of techno-utopian voices is always at the ready to offer up 'solutions' that, remarkably enough, typically involve the same strategies (and personnel) as those that helped give rise to the crisis in the first place. We can always code our way out, we are assured. We can make, bootstrap, and science the shit out of this.”</b> Thomas S. Mullaney, "Your Computer Is On Fire"</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0dHtc4zdDaLByHq_NbuQ-u7m1RLvJfr1sBoF4JOO2x0--tFQqSs59gShBhwXQkxUuBTrjj7nFbLQKCRawn5Xuqq5mkPrnRhsbf1-Xf0JH_mXxN0Ph5pUvr7cSikUcC_7p6C_vhXgZkMtFVgZVMkxchQKIcOqVpoFGDjfU8OKLaEjdwYNBOZkitAtVzg/s1646/computeronfire.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1646" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0dHtc4zdDaLByHq_NbuQ-u7m1RLvJfr1sBoF4JOO2x0--tFQqSs59gShBhwXQkxUuBTrjj7nFbLQKCRawn5Xuqq5mkPrnRhsbf1-Xf0JH_mXxN0Ph5pUvr7cSikUcC_7p6C_vhXgZkMtFVgZVMkxchQKIcOqVpoFGDjfU8OKLaEjdwYNBOZkitAtVzg/s320/computeronfire.png" width="249" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b>Interesting thoughts here by Mullaney and some truth.</b> There truly exists “a chorus of techno-utopian voices…ready to offer up ‘solutions’ that…typically involve the same strategies (and personnel) as those helped give rise to the crisis in the first place.” <b>Education has its own “techno-utopian chorus” that sings of tech-solutions to everything that ails us in education too. </b>Educational problems are seen as opportunities to solve with technology. But, as the recent remote learning experiment clearly demonstrated, our educational problems are not always solvable with tech. </div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b>In fact, the application of tech, like in this situation, often amplifies existing problems, and causes a whole set of new problems. </b>For example, in the remote learning experiment, the problem of parental involvement in their children’s education was magnified for those students because parents who were able to assist were either non-existent or not available. The students that remote learning most penalized were these students. There was not a ZOOM technology that could solve this issue because it was a problem before the pandemic, and it was a problem magnified during. A whole set of new problems accompanied the remote learning experiment too. For example, how to effectively provide the services, such as counseling, therapy, and lunch to students who were not physically present, not to mention the issue of missing socialization with peers that works best in physical presence. </div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><b>As Mullaney points out, our first reaction as educators is to try to “code our way out” of the problem, or “science the shit out of it.” </b> Perhaps the problem in education is our recurring turn toward technology for answers. Sure, the tech industry loves that thinking and helps foster it, but we need to think independently. </div></div><br /><p><br /></p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-84568381656601615032022-06-18T13:57:00.006-04:002022-06-18T13:57:53.553-04:00A Dissertation Narrative: What's the Real Purpose for Pursuit of the Doctoral Degree?<p><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Even some college professors in Educational Leadership Departments view everything people do through the lenses of Business and Utilitarian perspectives.</b> I am reminded of this when I recall an event before I completed my doctorate, where one of my professors asked, "What is your dissertation about?" At that time I did not have a title, but told him that I was doing a historical some kind critique of using value-added measures to determine teacher quality. I was not really sure what I was doing anyway. After all, my doctoral experience was a journey of traveling down false paths and backtracking, not a linear journey from A, the beginning to Z destination. I allowed my reading and thinking to guide me. His immediate reaction? "What the hell are you going to do with that?" Obviously his question was well-intended, but it betrays the business-minded cultural underpinnings of an Ed Leadership program. He had in mind a linear process that ultimately would lead to some kind of fulfillment of personal ambition.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The dissertation experience in his eyes should have been about the utilitarian purpose of promoting career and future business prospects, not genuinely trying to add knowledge to the field, following where curiosity leads, or trying to call attention to an educational practice through critique. </b>I am afraid that such thinking as this professor demonstrated is really indicative of how many educational leadership professors think in administration programs. You earn the degree to further your career. Sure, this is part of the reason. In my case, however, as I read and explored and read some more and explored, the ultimate product of the end my dissertation journey was the only possible outcome.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Several years out from graduation, I can really appreciate the experience, and not entirely for its potential to advance career or ambition. </b>For now, through the doctoral process and through the act of wrestling with a dissertation, I know that I think more deeply and critically. My reading has broadened enormously as evidenced by my own library. But most of all, I exist in a field that is in need of individuals willing to live and do the work, but also be willing to ask difficult questions. I don't denigrate those who pursue higher education degrees entirely through professional ambition. That's as good a reason as any. But I also will always value both the journey and the product I produced at the end of the doctoral process. It's existence changed me forever.</span></p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-10365301339009957532022-06-18T12:40:00.001-04:002022-06-18T12:40:48.432-04:00What Really Bothers Politicians and Government Leaders About the Arts and Humanities? It's About Their Power<blockquote><blockquote><p> <b>“Without symbols of art, in all their many manifestations—painting and music, costume and architecture, poetry and sculpture—man would live culturally in a world of the deaf, dumb, and the blind.” Lewis Mumford, <i>Art and Technics</i></b></p></blockquote></blockquote><p><b>Anyone notice how those same individuals who are seeking to disenfranchise voters, enact voting laws to increase the odds that their candidates get elected, and gerrymander voting districts to ensure their party's choices get elected, are the same individuals in our state legislatures trying to remodel education to get rid of subjects such as the arts and humanities, or at least sanitize them of anything they deem a danger to their power and ideology?</b> </p><p><b>The real reason for this is because, as Ruth O'Brien (2010) points out, "The humanities and arts play a central role in the history of democracy..." (p. ix). And that "great educators and nation-builders" of our past "understood how the arts and humanities teach children critical thinking that is necessary for independent action and for intelligent resistance to the power of blind tradition and authority" (p. ix). </b> If your goal is to remain in power no matter what, then anything, including the arts and humanities, which have the ability to instill within students, the ability and desire to question their government and their government leaders' actions, must be discarded. <b>This political revising of these curriculum areas really explains why our state governments, in the hands of mostly men, whose desire is keep that power, are scrupulously attacking our schools and seeking to rewrite arts and humanities curriculums that promote unquestioning, blind acceptance of a version of the country's arts and history that deifies that country's status in the world.</b></p><p><b>These politicians know too well, that it has been through art and the humanities that those who are dissident and think differently, have in the past called attention to those who discriminate and enslave others; who promote their own self-interests above all other human beings; and who declare the environment theirs to dominate and exploit for profit.</b> These subjects and their products have the potential to engage students in the learning process of "imagining the situations of others, a capacity essential for a successful democracy, a necessary cultivation of our "inner eyes" (O'Brien, 2010, p. ix).</p><p><b>Some of our current politicians and state government leaders in their efforts to rewrite school curriculum want to "blind the inner eyes" of our young in order to solidify their power. </b>They are rapidly and stealthily remodeling and revising education. They want a history that allows the inner eyes of children be directed toward only those events that paint an image of our nation as the "City on the Hill" and the "best country in the world," established by God to be a beacon to that world. That's why any historical content that counters this narrative is attacked, and critical theory is so frightening. </p><p><b>In addition, these politicians and government leaders are demanding educators post lists of the literature read in classrooms so that any novels, poems, plays and essays that might contradict this narrative be challenged and discarded. </b>The same would apply for works of art as well. These are desperate attempts by mostly men in our government, trying to preserve a narrative that is more myth than reality. Their own history they are trying to sanitize to their liking would tell them, if they looked closely enough, there will be resistance to their version of life and the world. <b>The nation has already been built, with flaws of course, but deep in our DNA, and in our arts, literature, drama, and humanities, are the seeds of the resistance that will sprout in opposition to this version of America.</b></p><p><b>In the end, despite their efforts to control the arts, history, literature, and music in our schools, these government leaders will ultimately fail.</b> There will always be ways for the inner eyes for students to catch glimpses of the situations of others and alternatives to this smothering and controlling version of education. <b>You can try to fashion a world without thoughtful art, literature, music, historical critique, and create citizens that are "deaf, blind, and dumb" as Mumford points out. However, history shows that in such conditions, that very art and critique thrives and blossoms.</b></p><p>Mumford, L. (2000). <i>Art and technics</i>. Columbia University Press; New York, NY</p><p>O'Brien, R. (2010). "Foreword." <i>Not for profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities</i>. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.</p><p><b><br /></b></p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-1181262326739097222022-06-05T10:18:00.002-04:002022-06-05T10:18:25.513-04:00Educators’ Quixotic Quest for Magic Potions and Elixirs to Make Learning Happen<blockquote><blockquote><p> <b>“In nature, there are no separate events. Nothing happens in isolation—not touching your head, not holding someone else’s hand, not looking at the stars, not breathing—nothing.”</b> Alan Watts, <i>Just So Money, Materialism, and the Ineffable, Intelligent Universe</i></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>There is a great deal of wisdom that educators ignore to their own peril. Alan Watts’ body of work is often ignored because of its heavy emphasis on eastern religions, such as Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and Hinduism. It may be because his thought is too incomprehensible to Western Thought. <b>It also may be because much of what he has to say disrupts our conventional ways of thinking about life and the universe. It does have the power to disrupt some of our thinking as well about education too.</b></p><p>Take the current belief that educators still hold onto that there is a solution out there that can be applied in teaching situations and bring about a desired result. That simple way of thinking has been at the heart of teaching since the turn of the twentieth century, and it seems sound. <b>However, have really gotten any closer to finding the magical cures that will ultimately bring about the learning results we desire?</b></p><p><b>The data says we still struggle to close learning gaps and obtaining the results we desire. Why is that?</b> It is rather simple, but much of the educational establishment stands with their fingers in their ears, like a little child who refuses to hear what they do not wish to hear. They want to continue to pour torrents of energy and effort into the search for the one measure A that can be applied to Student B and get result C.</p><p>I’ve written about this before, here and elsewhere. <b>We are so caught in this quixotic quest for the miracle, we ignore the very wisdom of Eastern religions and what Watt’s so clearly points out: “Nothing happens in isolation.”</b></p><p>So how does this apply to educational thinking? It is rather simple: <b>The search for a single practice or method to produce desired educational results is futile.</b> Education, Teaching, Learning, Classrooms, Schools, Systems, Teachers, Students…are complex, and trying to approach the act of teaching by ignoring CONTEXT is a futile exercise and akin to a searching quixotic quest for magical potions and elixirs to make learning happen.</p><p>But, and I have to add this BUT to this information. But, the educational system and those that inhabit it like this status quo. <b>As long as there hope that a magical method of teaching or learning exists, then snake-oil consultants and professional development pitch-persons have wares to sell. They can stand in the cyber-square of the internet hawking these wares and gobble up tax money galore. One can’t help but question for whose benefit such a system provides.</b></p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-78379900731919446262022-06-04T20:17:00.000-04:002022-06-04T20:17:13.363-04:00Teaching Is a Craft: It Will Never Be a Science<p><b>What if we have got it all wrong as educational professionals, that our enterprise of teaching is not a science, never was a science, and never can be a science?</b> Instead, it is a craft, and we really should see ourselves as crafts-persons, and not as “scientists” tackling the problem of education.</p><p><b>We are still looking for the scientific recipes for teaching and have been searching for over a century now. </b>The same applies to educational leadership, where we have been searching diligently for scientific principles to guide leaders in the field. <b>Instead, in both fields we have had a endless torrent of fads and tactics-of-the-day to try address the same recurring problems and the new problems we face.</b> In the end, we still have not made sure progress in resolving old issues like achievement gaps, student drop outs, and student apathy. Nor have we made any new headway to resolving new issues like increasing student apathy, raging societal inequality, and best-practice technological application. This is due in large part with the paradigms guiding teaching practice and teaching research. We are looking for method A that will definitively bring about result B, only discover each time, method A only sometimes brings about result A. This is because our thinking about environment C and the instructional materials we use aren’t as simple and uninvolved as we thought. Equally true, the students we work with aren’t standardized, which means we can’t really understand them on a macro-level as a hypothetical student; we have to understand them as individuals, as single complex human beings, not manipulable, standardized automatons who respond in predictable ways when certain teaching tactics are applied.</p><p>Hence my argument for teacher as a craftsperson…</p><p><b>It is important that educational craftspersons understand that we can’t direct learning, we can only guide conditions that make it possible. </b>Like the metal craftsperson shaping a piece of steel into a sword, she can only create the conditions where this transformation can happen. Often, some equipment or tool issue or environmental issue intervenes unpredictably; it is then the craftsperson shows his true expertise by looking for an then applying an additional tactic. </p><p><b>In education we rarely engage in these additional steps…we spend too much time in postmortem analysis with assessments scrutinizing what about our tactics failed, when if we had acted like a craftspersons, we would have analyzed the problem in a split second, used our experience, expertise, and knowledge to apply </b><b>a solution while the learning was in progress.</b> </p><p><b>Education is not nor never will be like medicine. </b>Educators would perform much more effectively if they viewed their work as a craft rather than as a practice infused with science applying cures to educational ills.</p><p><b>Richard Sennett writes in <i>The Craftsman</i>, “The corporate system that once organized careers is now a maze of fragmented jobs.” I can’t help but think of education slowly moving into this fragmented direction when it comes to teaching jobs.</b> We’ve may have inadvertently imported this view of the teaching work from business and industry, whose management tenets so powerfully undergird educational leadership. Education once viewed teaching as a viable career…now it has become a stepping stone to other work. That’s why there’s the scramble to leave the classroom. The working conditions sustain this scramble along with the installed business-leadership hierarchy in public education now. In a word, the system no longer wants career teachers. Temporary workers are just fine. We don’t have to pay them as much. There is no long-term benefit plans to support like retirement pensions. This is accomplished by simply creating a front-loaded pay scale that pays people on the front end only marginally less than those who stay in the field 15 or 20 years. <b>Education as a field no longer wants to foster teaching as career. It focuses instead on just getting individuals into the jobs shorterm in order bring about the short-term goals, and I would also add short-sighted goals, of test results.</b></p><p>While reading Richard Sennett’s book <i>The Craftsman</i> another thought came to mind. <b>Business and industry are fond of dictating to education what kinds of workers they need, when they are the ones who caused the massive mismatch between the labor force and their own needs</b>. They wanted an unskilled immigrant labor force in the late nineteenth century to the early to mid twentieth century. They did not want an educated workforce because such workers would demand more pay and be more expensive. <b>They still don’t really care about the educational attainment and training of workers; they are looking to add to their bottom lines and push educators to provide the workers that would add to their profits. </b></p><p>In <i>The Death of Expertise</i>, Tom Nichols describes his experience of become an expert in reading Soviet materials. He states:</p><p>“Another mark of true experts is their acceptance of evaluation and correction by other experts. Every professional group and expert community has watchdogs, boards, accreditors, and certification authorities whose job is to police its own members and to ensure not only that they live up to the standards of their own specialty, but also that their arts are practiced only by people who actually know what they’re doing.” (p. 35)</p><p><b>In education, because of managerial business ideology and discourse, the expertise of the teacher has been disrupted and destroyed by de-professionalizing practices. </b>Education may never recover from these influences.</p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-34675050734150173472021-06-11T11:33:00.001-04:002021-06-11T11:33:06.380-04:00Social Media…Emphasis on MEEEEEdia: Fatal Flaws of the 21st Century Supermarket Tabloid<p><b>Over time I have come to discovery that the flaws in the architecture of all social media platforms are irreparable and can’t be redeemed.</b> As a thoughtful and reflective critic, I have no choice but place social media on the figurative supermarket tabloid rack where the National Enquirer and Weekly World News reside. </p><p>Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—even LinkedIn are all media doomed because of one major fundamental flaw: they presume that the individual should be able to choose the information they encounter and that those same individuals should be able to selfishly screen out the information that makes them uncomfortable and fundamentally question their lives, their beliefs, and even their place in the world. It is really ideas that disturb us, that make us uncomfortable that make us reflective and introspective. Without them, we unquestionably follow doctrine and demagogues, and become entangled in the webs of propaganda spun by authoritarian quacks.</p><p><b>Social media…which should really be spelled….social MEEEEEEEDIA, unfortunately has been responsible for much of polarization and partisan divide that exists in our country.</b> It is a technology that allows individuals to live comfortably in alternative universes and in worlds of alternative facts. It also assumes too much, that those who inhabit their milieus know the difference.</p><p>Neil Postman somewhat prophetically captured this fatal flaw in social media way back in 1988 when he wrote: </p><blockquote><p>“Just as the language itself creates culture in its own image, <b>each new medium of communication re-creates or modifies culture in its image; and it is extreme naïveté to believe that a medium of communication or, indeed, any technology is merely a tool, a way of doing.</b>” Neil Postman, <i>Conscientious Objections</i></p></blockquote><p><b>We were, I was, naive to believe that social media was or ever would be, “Just a tool, a way of connecting.”</b> It has “re-created” and “modified” our culture in its image, which is a culture where my own beliefs, biases, prejudices, and nonsense constantly validated. The “Me” in social media’s architecture has cultivated a society where what I believe is true and everything else and everyone else on on highways to hell. <b>As a tool for connecting individuals with others, social media has failed colossally.</b></p><p><b>It is time to stop calling “social media” simply at “tool” with just a communicative purpose.</b> With its algorithms and architecture, it is designed most exclusively as a propaganda tool (which in my thinking is simply a more harsh but correct characterization of the term “marketing”), and is not just a tool to disseminate information. It shoves only the information its users wish to see, only the most propagandistic ideas into the minds of its users. And, add the fact that one can “pay” to promote your posts, and you have the ability to promote ideas, not because they are beneficial or right or just or worthwhile, but because you have financial means to affect the minds of others.</p><p>One can only take a look at some of my past blog posts and see that I once believe the stories social media sites used to promote themselves as tools for individuals to connect. But I was wrong. Social media platforms are fatally constructed as they are. They are disinformation and malinformation machines and anyone using them now needs to keep all such sites figuratively located on the supermarket tabloid rack next to the National Enquirer when it comes to what you read therein. </p><p><br /></p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-85157945732942111122021-01-30T17:49:00.005-05:002021-01-30T17:49:53.476-05:00Calls to Reopen Schools to Face-to-Face Learning Due to CDC Research Ignores Everything That Research Says<p> When the latest CDC research was release on January 26, 2021 in the JAMA article, "<a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875" target="_blank">Data and Policy to Guide Opening Schools Safely to Limit the Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Infection</a>," calls to Reopen Schools has increased each day. But many of those state governors and politicians as well as others selectively read only a portion of the article that says:</p><blockquote><p>"...there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission."</p></blockquote><p>They read this statement and ignore other parts of the same article which also state that, </p><blockquote><p>"Preventing transmission in school settings will require addressing and reducing levels of transmission in the surrounding communities through policies that interrupt transmission (eg, restrictions on indoor dining at restaurants. In addition, all recommended mitigation measures in schools must continue: requiring universal mask use, increasing physical distance by dedensifying classrooms and common areas, using hybrid attendance models when needed to limit the total number of contacts and prevent crowding, increasing room air ventilation, and expanding screening testing to rapidly identify and isolate asymptomatic individuals. Staff and students should continue to have options for online education, particularly those at increased risk off severe illness or death if infected with SARS-CoV-2."</p></blockquote><p>So, yes there is little evidence of transmission within schools, but there are also some additional measures schools should take to keep that transmission low. They include, according to the CDC:</p><p>1) Limit and restrictions on establishments, such as restaurants and gyms, in the community that do increase transmission rates within the community. (This one is never mentioned by governors who declare we need to get students back in schools.)</p><p>2) Continue to require masks in schools by all individuals.</p><p>3) Dedensify classrooms, cafeterias, and other common areas. This means reducing the number of people in these spaces at one time so that social distance can be practiced.</p><p>4) Use hybrid models of attendance so that the number of students in the buildings and on buses are reduced to allow for distancing.</p><p>5) Increase ventilation in buildings.</p><p>6) Expand rapid testing ability so that asymptomatic individuals can be isolated quickly.</p><p>7) Reduce and postpone school activities such as athletics, assemblies, concerts, and other events that are social gatherings that increase the risk of transmission. </p><p>The use of this article as a political sledgehammer to get schools reopened entirely is clearly underway. Yes, schools can reopen, but it is going to take the courage of our political leaders to make decisions that will perhaps restrict indoor dining and to provide schools with level of funding needed to dedensify education spaces too.</p>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-23669340269475008382021-01-16T13:10:00.002-05:002021-01-16T13:10:32.024-05:00The Need to Be Skeptical and Critical of STEM Education and Business Demands for Certain Kinds of Graduates"...it was in the 1990s that shop class started to become a thing of the past, as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers.'" Matthew B. Crawford, <i>Shop Class as Soulcraft</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div>I recently read Matthew B. Crawford's book <i>Shop Class as Soulcraft</i>, which I highly recommend for all educators. This quote from the beginning of the book captured my attention immediately because the book as a whole outlines an important mindset educators have been neglecting when it comes to thinking about the kinds of graduates we should be producing. <b>The prevailing thinking today is that public education's job is to produce the kinds of workers that business and industry currently demands. To me that is shortsighted and a disservice to our students and society.</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span data-fontfamily="handwritten"><b>The education system has taken on the role of distributing people in the niches needed by business and industry.</b> In the case described by Crawford, when business calls for "knowledge workers," the system reacts and cuts funding of some programs and distributes students into the chosen learning niches of business and industry. The problem with the education system reacting in this manner, is that they place students in niches that might be short-lived due to business and industry's concerns with short-term profits and benefits. </span></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span data-fontfamily="handwritten"><br /></span></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span data-fontfamily="handwritten"><b>Business and industry rarely has only the long-term interests of students and people in general in mind.</b> Hence, the evidence of this is their decisions to move entire production lines overseas or to lay workers off for the sake of short-term stock benefit. Education systems that purely have their students' interests in mind will look with a skeptical eye towards the kinds of workers called for from the private sector. It does not mean that the system ignores them entirely, but educators need to remember that the way business ideology is currently constructed in the United States especially, is more libertarian and tilted toward the idea that what is best for them is what is best for everybody. A quick glance at history immediately dispels this illusion. Maybe instead of shoving students into the STEM niche, we need a broader consideration of their potentials and interests. <b>Niche-learning limits possibilities rather than increases them despite what the pro-business and STEM evangelists would have us believe.</b></span></div></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span data-fontfamily="handwritten"><b><br /></b></span></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span data-fontfamily="handwritten"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span data-fontfamily="handwritten"><b>Educators need to be critical and skeptical of claims made by politicians regarding what kinds of graduates are needed.</b> We can certainly listen, but we also need to remember that they are obligated by current economic and business ideology to look after themselves. Shoving every student into some STEM approach to education or making sure every student can program might not be in some students' best interest. As Matthew Crawford laments in his book, the decline of shop class to produce so-called 21st century workers might not be the best course for our students. We are still going to need shop mechanics, bricklayers, carpenters, and other trades, and there can be great satisfaction in doing this work as a life-long career. We are also going to need writers, artists, musicians. <b>Let's remember that programs like STEM education and other initiatives can place limits on students' futures rather than possibilities.</b></span></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><span data-fontfamily="handwritten"><br /></span></div></span></div>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-78034279256130273532020-07-18T12:19:00.001-04:002020-07-18T12:20:11.241-04:00The Real Reason Why Remote Learning Failed: It's Our Educational and Philosophical Foundations<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Could it be that all this insistence and scrambling to find ways to get students back into our schools during an exploding pandemic is simply our society's unwillingness to let go of the twentieth-century, assembly-line schooling model? </b></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>What if the issues with remote learning is not the technology at all, but symptoms of an educational system that just used that technology to try to apply the assembly-line educational process which only works with a child seated in a classroom with a teacher in front of them and not a child sitting at a computer or with a device at home? </b>(Of course we knew this process does not work for every child either.)</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Take the design of a learning management system.</b> It is an electronically structured class with the teacher at the head and students as subordinates (in most cases, that is how it is used.) It still requires some of the same assembly-line processes to ensure that the student-product is being advanced. Grading is inherent in these systems. Attendance is in there. Often, the activities students are being subjected to are simply e-versions of what they would be doing if they were present in a classroom. <b>In others words, all our technologies, even those we use in remote learning like our learning management systems, testing systems are simply more of the same of what we would do if we had students sitting in classrooms. No wonder we can't see the results we want. It simply is no longer possible.</b></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Then there's all this talk about students "being behind." </b>Peter Green, blogger and writer, asks a very pertinent question here: "Behind what exactly?" (See <a href="http://nteresting%20reminder...all%20this%20talk%20that%20students%20are%20%22behind%22%20due%20to%20not%20being%20able%20to%20physically%20sit%20in%20our%20seats%20in%20our%20schools%20is%20early%20twentieth%20century%20factory%20thinking.%20it%20is%20adherence%20to%20the%20notion%20that%20we%20have%20to%20subject%20students%20to%20an%20assembly%20line%20and%20quality-control%20test%20them%20along%20the%20way%20to%20make%20sure%20they%20are%20being%20produced%20properly.%20now%20they%20can%27t%20always%20be%20in%20our%20presence%2C%20so%20we%27re%20lost.%20our%20factory%20assembly%20line%20pedagogies%20no%20longer%20work.%20our%20testing-quality-control%20systems%20can%27t%20be%20applied%2C%20so%2C%20we%20are%20frantically%20seeking%20ways%20to%20bring%20them%20back%20into%20our%20buildings%20once%20again%20so%20we%20can%20grow%20them%20and%20measure%20them%20once%20again.%20%20%20%20what%20if%20we%20were%20to%20completely%20rethink%20everything/?%20Maybe%20the%20failures%20of%20remote%20learning%20were%20not%20due%20to%20remote%20learning%20itself,%20but%20due%20to%20trying%20to%20apply%20remote%20learning%20in%20factory-model%20ways.%20We%20could%20be%20searching%20for%20entirely%20new%20ways%20to%20educate%20our%20students.%20r" target="_blank">"Everything's Made Up and Nobody's Behind"</a>) <b>He goes on and points out the obvious, that this line or point where students should be is "made up." Also, the whole idea that students should travel down a education-system prescribed path where their progress should be measured is made up too.</b> This is not a natural idea that exists out there. Like the decision to place students in grades, which was a factory-assembly line idea, it is made up. <b>Perhaps what we've really discovered here is not that remote learning doesn't work; perhaps remote learning and this pandemic crisis has made all too clear the foundational and philosophical limitations of our educational systems.</b></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For example, all this talk that students are "behind" due to not being able to physically sit in our seats in our schools is early twentieth century factory thinking. <b>It is adherence to the notion that we have to subject students to an assembly line and quality-control test them along the way to make sure they are being produced properly. Now they can't always be in our presence, so we're lost.</b> <b>Our factory assembly line pedagogies no longer work. </b></div>
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</div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Our testing-quality-control systems can't be applied, so, we are frantically seeking ways to bring them back into our buildings once again so we can grow them and measure them once again.</b> We just might have not really rethought our educational system during this crisis; we've simply tried to apply factory thinking remotely.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What if we were to completely rethink everything? Then what exactly needs to be rethought? Here are some things to chew about:</div>
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</div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Idea That Government Prescribed Standards Are a Must</b>: Standards are assembly-line necessities. Now the first thing an educator is going to say is that you have to have standards. Maybe, but perhaps standards need to be rethought in true remote learning. Maybe instead of being rigid markers of OUR chosen path to progress, they need to entirely personal too. Maybe they need to be flexible and adaptable to student needs and interests. <b>Maybe they need to take some other form other than a rigid mark by which we judge if students are progressing or behind. In the remote world, perhaps having rigid standards will not work.</b></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Idea that Education is a Treatment Students are Subjected to</b>: Education has long had what I call "medical profession envy." We want to be "diagnosers," and "interventionists," and "prescripters." I<b>n that enterprise, we have a frame of mind that sees education as something "we do to students" rather than something they choose to participate in</b>. In that educational thinking, the assembly-line pedagogies still exist no matter how much we talk about personalized and individualized learning. <b>Just maybe, it's time to let go of the "medical profession envy" and all the pedagogical processes and practices that go with it, and rethink what we do. </b>Maybe, start with the natural state of each child, what they know, what they need. and what they want to learn. These ideas aren't new. They just aren't efficient, which is perhaps the last area that needs rethinking.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Idea that Education Must Be Efficient</b>: The idea that education must, above all, be efficient has been a fetish of educational leaders and politicians since our educational administration forefathers uncritically adopted Taylor's "principles" scientific management at the dawn of the twentieth century. Over the course of American education history, we've sacrificed many of our young at the altar of this business principle. <b>When students historically cause inefficiencies in the system, such as refusing to comply, or refusing to learn in the prescribed manner, we've labeled them as deviant, abnormal, and even failures and often tossed them out or placed them in "special programs" to keep the main assembly-line going.</b> <b>The truth is: education and learning can and often is the most inefficient process of all.</b> It does not happen on demand, even when we like to think that the application of this technique or that method will make it happen. We are often left scratching our heads, trying to figure out why that didn't work. <b>In our efforts to push out remote learning, perhaps we still hang on to the notion that it all has to be "efficient" for us, and do not really focus on what would work for each child.</b></div>
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</div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); counter-reset: list-1 0 list-2 0 list-3 0 list-4 0 list-5 0 list-6 0 list-7 0 list-8 0 list-9 0; cursor: text; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Sadly, like many educational practices and notions, it is very possible that "remote learning" will end up on the slag-heap of educational technologies with the likes of open-education and other tried methods that simply would not work given our tenacious grip on current philosophical and educational thinking. </b>In our efforts to make education and educational leadership a practical endeavor instead of a scholarly and philosophical enterprise capable or real critical intellectual examination, it is no wonder that remote learning has been found wanting. <span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.75); font-family: "source serif pro", serif; font-size: 20px;"><b>Just maybe like every pedagogical technology, remote learning works for some and not others. We still search for that "one-way" to educate even though it is as much a myth as it was in the 19th century.</b></span></div>
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John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-55571845987004215882020-02-20T09:03:00.000-05:002020-02-20T18:42:14.332-05:00A Really Helpful Twitter Tip for School Administrators, Teachers, and Anyone ElseSince I joined Twitter in 2008, I've seen it evolve and transform in ways that I liked and in ways I did not. I've also evolved as a Twitter user and social media user in general. But recently, I really took time to examine my Twitter feed, and I really did not like what I was seeing.<br />
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<b>If your feed is perhaps like mine, there were about 8 to 10 people who tweeted so often and prolifically, they dominated my feed.</b> I would scroll down, and see multiple tweets, retweets, and likes from these same people over and over and over again. They were actually preventing me, unless I scrolled through their endless contributions to my feed, from seeing many of the others I follow. It's as if these individuals were "yelling so loudly, they were drowning out all the other voices I've purposely followed.<br />
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<b>What did I do to resolve this issue? It was rather simple actually, I unfollowed these feed dominators. </b>I took some time and examined my timeline and observed these shouters and simply clicked the unfollow button.<br />
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Now, I've begun to see some of the long lost individuals that I followed that had all but disappeared from my timeline. <b>Like a room with a lot of shouters trying to scream ever louder to be heard, I got rid of the "chief-noise-makers." Now, I can once again see many of those who might have something more substantial to say.</b><br />
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<b>Admittedly, I was once one of those shouters myself.</b> I tweeted, retweeted as fast as I could click the Tweet Button. But with time, I've come to some conclusions about Twitter specifically and social media generally: How can anyone hear anything with all the shouting going on that room known as Twitterverse? I also come to realize that by constantly blasting the world with my Tweets, I really wasn't contributing anything substantial to the conversation, as if such conversations are even possible on Twitter. I really did not have that much substantially to say that required such constant clicking.<br />
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<b>Perhaps fundamentally, that's what's wrong with Twitter and other social media. It's more about establishing a "presence" or "being seen" rather than heard, I mean really heard. </b>True conversations happen when you get rid of the shouters, those who dominate the conversation. That's a just enough reason for me to unfollow those bombard my timeline with their tweets, and its reason enough to Tweet seldom but with substance. Maybe, then, we can really and truly connect.John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-66578511784800743032019-11-01T00:20:00.002-04:002019-11-01T00:20:54.882-04:00School Leaders Need to Recognize How Social Media Is Broken<b>Social media is broken. </b>No matter what evangelistic talk you hear from the brotherhood-for-the-advancement-of-social-media, it has some serious problems that educational leaders would do well to examine closely. Often promoted as the media for school leaders to “get their message out,” social media has become a polluted cesspool of misinformation, incivility, and deception. It is a powerful tool for propagandists and marketers who are more interested in promoting themselves, their products rather than the truth. Social media has become irredeemably infected with what Michael Lynch calls “information pollution.”<br />
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Lynch (2019) writes:<br />
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“Information pollution is dumping potentially toxic information onto the media environment. Information can be toxic in different ways, but he most obvious ways are by being false (misinformation), intentionally deceptive and misleading (disinformation), or simply not based on any evidence at all.” (Lynch, 2019, p. 31).</blockquote>
<b>Social media has become the ideal channel for distributing “information pollution.” </b>If has dumped so much toxic misinformation sludge into discourse, we have individuals wandering about our society like zombies, enveloped in cocoons of alternative facts from which they may never escape.<br />
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When information pollution was confined mainly to supermarket tabloids, its reach was limited. Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn has now replaced this tabloid rack as the conduit for the bizarre, the nonsensical. Social media has become the conduit for delivering non-sense to the masses.<br />
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Educational leaders have been encouraged to engage social media. I myself have been guilty of trying to convince them of engaging in using Facebook, Twitter...yet, I am firmly convinced that social media in its present form is a media that too easily pollutes our world with deception and misinformation. School leaders would do well to be skeptical of those who still claim that social media is a valid media.<br />
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So what should be social media’s status with school leaders? It is rather simple...school leaders need to maintain a skepticism and ethos of critique towards it. We need to come to terms with its limitations. <b>Social media is a powerful enabler of misinformation and inauthenticity. It is not the miracle media that will provide opportunities for schools and school districts to better their standing with the public. It is simply a propagandist tool that allows users to manufacture a world in their own image. </b><br />
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<b>Lynch, M. (2019). Know-it-all society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture. Liveright Publications: New York, NY.</b><br />
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<br />John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-13817698039708589142019-10-27T19:16:00.001-04:002019-10-27T19:16:34.335-04:00Social Media: Tool for Manufacturing Ourselves and 'Truth'<b>What is the real issue with social media?</b> Set aside the fact that entities like Facebook are selling our personal data to the highest bidder. Ignore the practice of the perpetual eavesdropping of these companies in our personal lives. <b>What the real issue is with social media is simple: You can't believe anything you see. You can't trust that others are who they say they are. It is a place of fiction and fantasy, distortion and misinformation. It is a place where truth is whatever users determine or think it to be.</b><br />
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The problem at the rotten heart of social media is best described by Margaret Wheatley in <i>Who Do We Choose to Be?</i> She writes:<br />
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"In humans, how we define ourselves determines our perceptions, beliefs, behaviors, values. Social media enables a culture of manufactured identities, where people create any self that ensures their popularity. In the Digital Age, identity has changed from a culturally transmitted sense of self within a group to an individual one, where you can be anything you want." (p. 19)</blockquote>
<b>Any technology that allows one to "manufacture" his or her identity is problematic. </b>While it might be acceptable to "market" oneself, in social media, truth is often the fatality. The worst quality of social media is that it allows individuals to manufacture a version of themselves that is far from who they really are. They can be someone they want to be rather than be authentic.<br />
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<b>If there's one lesson educators need to get about social media, and share with students is this: Social media is not simply a communication media. It is a media of distortion and propaganda.</b> It creates manufactured persons. Educators of all people should be wise enough to see this rather than buying into the hype of what this industry would have us believe.<br />
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Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In aren't simply tools of networking and connection: they are tools for manufacturing identities.John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-73889686326851450582019-10-19T20:41:00.001-04:002019-10-19T20:41:07.789-04:00The Educational Technology Cult Is Alive and Well in the 21st Century<b>Does anyone else notice how "cult-like" ed tech leaders and supporters can be? </b>They constantly proclaim salvation by technology for every educational ailment that we face. Yet, we've been on this "ed-tech binge" since perhaps the mid-1990s with very little to show for it. Why? P<b>erhaps it boils down to a simple fact: whether students learn or not simply depends on the quality of the instructional interactions that teacher has with students during the given instructional time.</b><br />
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Too often, educators have made of "cult of technology" and as social media researcher Siva Vaidhyanathan writes:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">"When we make a cult of technology and welcome its immediate rewards and conveniences into our lives without consideration of the long-term costs, we make fools of ourselves."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>Too often, educators uncritically accept the latest tech evangelist's word regarding the promise of technology.</b> When some other educator comes proclaiming how much this web app changed their lives, their word is uncritically accepted as gospel. I myself have been guilty of that too. The truth is, educational leaders placing their trust in salvation by technology will ultimately be sorely disappointed. We've been traveling that road for over 20 years and there really hasn't been very much substantial change in education.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>Educational technology has become a bit cult-like in some ways.</b> Those pushing technology talk a great deal about relevance in teaching and push tech solutions like that is the only way we can make instruction relevant to students. The truth is, no one really knows what will be relevant in the future, and anyone who claims that they do suffers from a level of arrogance and delusion that is dangerous.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>It is imperative that we demand those making claims about technology, and any other educational panacea, provide support for their claims. </b>We need not accept what they say as truth just because they are skillful TED talkers or excellent at providing keynotes. We need to subject any and all claims to a level of critical scrutiny that unmasks blather for what it is. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Vaidhyanathan, S. (2018). Anti-social media: How Facebook disconnects us and undermines democracy. Oxford University Press: New York, NY.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-77406242328756366812019-10-19T12:56:00.002-04:002019-10-19T12:56:27.157-04:00E-Readers, Ebook Apps and the Technologies of Distraction: Why I Read Paper and Not Digital Books<b>There was time I downloaded e-books with a madness.</b> There was something exciting perhaps about instantaneously getting access to that new title or some older book I was intending to read. I've even blogged about the wonders of ebooks on this blog at some point in the past. <b>Now, I seldom read ebooks and increasingly I sit down with hardback or paperback copies.</b><br />
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<b>I'm not really entirely sure why I've made this transformation. </b>Part of it is perhaps the difficulty with using a device to read. It just seems easier to me to sit down with a book, turn pages, and even underline favorite passages with a pencil. Also, had all the books I recently purchased been ebooks, when I want to refer back to a book, I just go to my office, locate the book, and flip to those quotes or ideas I've underlined. <b>While I know you can do word searches to efficiently track exactly to the passages you want in an ebook, but I read to understand, to engage new ideas and information. I really don't give a damn about efficiency when I read. </b><br />
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<b>Perhaps therein lies the major issue with ebooks: those who manufacture e-readers and devices think I'm interested in efficiently reading a book. </b>But that is simply not true. I am the most inefficient reader there ever was. I hardly read sequentially. I read back and forth and up-and-down. I also read 8 or 10 books at once, which means I am physically surrounded by them throughout the day sometimes. Sitting with an e-reader just don't provide the same experience. Inefficient reading just works for me because my mind isn't the most inefficient machine either.<br />
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Perhaps there's another reason as well. Franklin Foer writes in his book <i>World Without Mind</i>,<br />
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"<span style="background-color: white;">When we read words on paper, we’re removed from the notifications, pings, and other urgencies summoning us away from our thoughts. The page permits us, for a time in our day, to decouple from the machine, to tend to our human core." (p. 230).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">That seems to be the case for me too. <b>Those infernal devices we try to read with also are devices of distraction by architecture.</b> While reading, those notifications and pop-ups pull us away from being lost within the pages. S<b>ure, one can remedy this by turning off notifications, but there's reason why you see so many of us sitting with screens of distraction in the first place...these devices of addiction are designed to disperse our attention and not focus it</b>. It's less possible for me to get distracted from paper pages within in a book. And, if the book is really engaging, the world around me dissolves into irrelevance.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>I occasionally will pull out my Kindle app on my iPad and read a bit, but to be honest, it is just when I need some time-filled, not when I want to seriously engage a book. </b>This is because a hardback or paperback wasn't designed for multitasking, and when seriously reading and wanting to get lost in a text, the last thing I want to do is multitask. Perhaps this fundamentally captures the nature of these devices we all have now: they aren't designed to focus our lives and attention; they are designed to distract us, and that is contrary what it means to read a book.</span><br />
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John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-81918103618685632562019-10-19T12:14:00.002-04:002019-10-19T12:14:24.446-04:00Educational Leaders, Marketing Language, Deception and Integrity: Critical Thinking Instead of Deception<b>Since I began blogging a few years back, I've always eschewed all these offers from companies and individuals for "branded content" to post here.</b> I could have perhaps made much more money from blogging. The pennies one receives from allowing ads alone hardly amount to any kind of income. I'm even embarrassed to admit how little I've made in this area, but not really.<br />
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<b>Accepting offers from companies to post their self-promoting branded content seems to me a violation of sorts.</b> If one expresses one's thoughts honestly and with integrity, by allowing some company to provide a guest post is simply an exchange of that honesty and integrity for money, and that is not something I have done here. As Franklin Foer accurately captures:<br />
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"Advertisers will pay a premium for branded content, because its stands such a good chance of confusing the readers into clicking." (p. 151).<br />
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<b>Foer's words capture an insidious side of the web, educators for some reason fail to acknowledge sometimes.</b> It is often of place where deceiving others is an accepted practice. It's like the old athlete ads on TV where a popular athlete holds up a box of Wheaties and at least gives the impression that he faithfully eats the cereal each morning and it has something to do with his athletic prowess and ability. The web's advertising and these requests for "guest blog posts" are of the same deceptive practices. I<b>t's all a "little lie" but it is told for a greater good is the thought rationale behind these tactics.</b><br />
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<b>I argue that educators and educational leaders who have integrity and principles refuse to engage in these kinds of techno-deceptions. </b>They don't ask prominent other educators to endorse their products nor their persons. They certainly do not engage in deception. Educators are very fond of using the marketing language in every new program that comes along.<br />
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<b>Everyone time some new initiative is undertaken, there's always talk about creating "vision statements" and "empowering stakeholders" and getting "buy-in." But what if that which your selling is just a bad idea, a horrible product, or even a waste of time? </b>Just because you believe what your selling, doesn't automatically assume everyone should. As I've written many times, there's just not enough critical-minded educators who criticize these ideas. That is at the heart of why I could care less whether I make money on this blog, and I am certainly not motivated to post someone's "branded content."<br />
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<b>Accepting branded content or promoting your colleagues latest consulting business may make you money and perhaps keep a friend, but to promote someone else's product or ideas without really having a personal experience with them is just plain wrong. </b>Educators must learn to engage in critique and also be willing to accept critique instead of always being so obsessed with "buy-in" and "vision statements."<br />
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Foer, F. (2017). World without mind: The existential threat of big tech. Penguin; New York, NY.<br />
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<br />John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-75771883912978984002019-10-07T19:35:00.000-04:002019-10-07T19:35:26.183-04:00Beware of All the Education 'Snake-Oil' SalesmenToday, I received another one of those sales-pitch emails from some company using deceptive tactics to promote their products. They made it appear in their email that my failure to complete their survey would have some kind of consequences. I marked their email "Spam" and simply replied:<br />
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"<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I am not sure it is good practices to give potential customers "deadlines." Your email deceptively makes it appear I have to answer. I am not interested in your deadlines nor your products."</span></blockquote>
Their reply was to simply say that they would take me off their mailing list. I can't help but wonder how I ended up on their list in the first place. But, nonetheless, that is a prudent action on their part, because I honestly would never purchase a product from a company that has to resort to deceptive tactics to sell its wares.<br />
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I can't help but wonder how many millions of precious educational dollars are wasted to companies like this who make big promises and deliver nothing. Educational leaders need to realize they do not owe these companies nor their salespeople anything. Maybe the best educational practice in these times is simply to discard and ignore any unsolicited sales pitches.<br />
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<br />John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-68572214087604381902019-08-16T19:55:00.001-04:002019-08-16T19:55:29.525-04:00Why I've Turned Down All These Requests for Paid PostsOver the years I have received many requests for 'paid blog posts' asking me to promote this product or that particular program. I can honestly say I have always turned them down. While I could make money by doing so, I've always posted about those products I have personally used, and about those issues that personally care about.<br />
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While I don't post as often as I once did, what has happened is simple: Life! I have finished my doctorate, and I spend more time reading and exploring into areas beyond my own limits. I still do not allow guest posts, and I certainly do not post about products in order to promote them. There is simply not enough independence of mind among educators today. They follow any Pied Piper who comes along promising some new neat idea or product. I refuse. There's too much conformity among educators. Innovation doesn't happen through conformity; it happens when educators test the limits of what currently exists.John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-58055597996177012772019-06-08T13:39:00.000-04:002019-06-08T13:39:14.660-04:00Next Time Some Ed Guru Starts Spouting About Knowledge and Skills Students Need for the Future: Change the Channel!<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>"The idea that education is best served by standardizing method, content, goals, and evaluation procedures leads to another consequence. It tends to convert education into a race." Elliot Eisner, "Reimagining Schools"</b></span></blockquote>
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<b>The problem with converting education into a "race" it is impossible, without being a fortune teller, where that finish line should be</b>. If we truly want to personalize education, then shouldn't be looking for ways to serve up the same old standards, content, goals, as well as evaluating all students the same way. The idea that one can "personalize" learning should mean focusing on the child and the their finish line, not the finish line that ed gurus, corporations think they should reach. This is why much of the "personalized learning" blather is going to fail like "open education," "multiple-intelligence-based learning," "brain-based learning," and on failed.
We fool ourselves when we have the audacity to predict what students need to know 20 years, 30 years into the future. Growing up in a textile town, many of classmates were told they only need to know how to run looms, sewing machines, etc. Thirty years later, well, you know the story.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9); font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Educators never learn anything new because they have amnesia, they ignore the past.</span>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-81006883429880676782019-05-26T21:19:00.000-04:002019-05-26T14:50:15.901-04:00Indistar: Taking the Creativity Out of School Improvement Through Standardization and Imposed Conformity<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"The problem with conformity in education is that people are not standardized to begin with."</b> Sir Ken Robinson, <i>Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education</i></blockquote>
<b>Let's face it, our public education system is still all about conformity and standardization. </b>We talk a lot of rot about "innovation" and "thinking outside of the box," but in reality, many educators still adhere to the faith that there are a list of single "research-based" indicators that exist somewhere out there that can guide our schools to the promised land. Companies manufacturing educational products know this, and make all kinds of promises that their products will lead us to the "Land of Eternal Achievement." <b>A perfect case in point is a new product that the state of North Carolina has adopted to ensure conformity and standardization of school improvement planning. This product is called Indistar.</b><br />
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<b>When you check out Indistar's web site, it is immediately clear they've got their "marketing shoes on."</b> (Check out their web site here: <a href="http://www.indistar.org/">http://www.indistar.org/</a>). Immediately the promises of educational prosperity hit you square in the face with "Your Leadership Team's Best Friend." It promises that schools can "get better together." Basically, it is school improvement software that promises to help school improvement teams to academic prosperity through helping them implement its "research-based indicators."<br />
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<b>As a principal and educator who has experienced this product for one year, I am afraid it most likely will lead, not to academic prosperity, but ensure that your school conforms to what the makers of Indistar see as an "effective school."</b> This software isn't about empowering schools to find creative solutions to the problems they face; it is about forcing schools to apply a list of "research-based indicators" so that they conform to a single image (Indistar's) of what an effective school should look like.<br />
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<b>It was Fenwick English (2003), educational leader and scholar, who once said, "To reduce such claims (of effective schools) or "school improvement models" based on <i>de-contextualized behaviors</i> [emphasis mine] on a 'research base' which itself has been standardized in 'right truth-seeking methods,' is to resort to hegemonic practices which can <i>only be supported via political enforcement</i> [again, italics mine].</b> In other words, the whole idea that one can create a list of 'de-contextualized behaviors' that will somehow solve all the ills and problems of the schools, can only be supported if it is made mandatory, as North Carolina has done. Its claim of all being 'research-based indicators' is its claim to legitimation, but what is left out of the equation is that all of these 'de-contextualized behaviors' happened in very contextual situations that may or may not be applicable to other schools. Educators would do well to be 'skeptical' of any organization, company or even other educators who throw around the term 'research-based' as support for their product. <b>And, just keep in mind that just because they provide a 20 page bibliography, or larger, and links to research articles, that again does not necessarily translated into an effective product for every school or district. The number of bibliographical entries or research articles does not automatically mean a 'valid technology.' Anyone with an APA manual and Google Scholar can make a bibliography.</b><br />
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<b>Besides its rather ponderous claims of helping schools to "get better together," the reality is that Indistar is just another one of those miracles of marketing. That explains why North Carolina has rushed to force schools across the state to adopt it. </b>The gist of Indistar is rather simple. School improvement teams assess their school against a ponderous list of so-called "research-based" indicators to see if their school measures up to them. If they feel they have met the indicator, they must engage in the massive undertaking of collecting evidence to show they have met the indicator. They submit this evidence online, then a voice from the cloud above reviews their evidence to judge whether that evidence meets the indicator. If the judgement is that they have, they then move to the next indicator. They do this until they have made their way through a hundred or so indicators. <b>Voila, once they have met all the indicators they should have reached the "promised land of academic achievement aplenty."</b> If they find themselves wanting with an indicator, then that indicator becomes a school improvement goal. The school works to make that indicator happen, provides evidence, then they submit that evidence to the cloud judgement seat, and if judged in affirmative, they can move on to the next indicator. That is "school improvement" according to Indistar. <b>What better way for district and even state education administrators to actually "control" the schools under their charge! This is truly a great tool to "manage from a distance!"</b><br />
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<b>The whole problem behind Indistar and products like it, is the faith that there are "prescriptions" out there that will fix any school problem that exists. </b>We've been trying this approach to improving schools for more than the last 30 years, and I dare say we are not any closer to making education as a whole better. In fact, in many ways we've only made it worse. <b>We aren't going to improve education by using software like Indistar to impose what is believed to be a set of "research-based" prescriptions on our schools, because the problems in our schools are very often unique problems that require creativity and innovation, not simple application of what some researchers in the ivory towers of quantitative research have found to be true.</b><br />
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<b>Products like Indistar are not innovative; they are simply high-tech regurgitations of all the prescriptive, management from a distance strategies we've been engaged in for the past 30 years or so.</b><br />
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<b>I have not doubt that the makers of Indistar mean well. I am also aware that, like so many innovative products, it makes claims based on "success stories" and with its slick web site where it markets a Utopian future for those who dare to use its product. </b>Sadly, as a user of this product for a year now, I would say it is more about making sure schools conform to someone else's idea of school improvement rather than giving schools the freedom to be really creative in solving their problems.<br />
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<b>The problem with Indistar and products like it is that schools are not standardized to begin with, so applying a list of so-called research-based prescriptions are not likely to bring the same results in every case, and that is a major problem with this product. </b>The problems we deal with in our schools are very often local contextual issues. We really don't need more software to help us resolve these issues; we need the freedom to approach the unique problems we face in a creative manner.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">English, F. (2003). The postmodern challenge to the theory and practice of educational administration. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Robinson, Ken. (2016). Creative schools: The grassroots revolution that's transforming education. New York: Penguin.</span><br />
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<br />John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-88735823904458453972019-05-11T15:24:00.002-04:002019-05-11T15:24:54.022-04:00Shouldn't Real Leaders Invite Criticism of Their Ideas for Improvement Rather Than Jump to Buy-In?<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6nl0l" data-offset-key="44qi0-0-0">
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<span data-offset-key="44qi0-0-0"><span data-text="true">John Ralston Saul’s book, <em>Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West</em>, captures so well a “postmodern-postructural” idea about Ed Leadership as a field of “expertise” that I’ve been entertaining lately. That idea is how much of the time educational leadership, and even business leadership, silences critics, critique or criticism. <b>In other words, all these guru models of reform talk more about “getting stake-holder buy-in” and “marketing the ideas or reforms” rather than actually inviting Criticism. </b>I think Saul captures the real reason why this is so very well when he writes:</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9ffeo-0-0"><span data-text="true"><b>“Nothing frightens those in authority so much as criticism. Whether democrats or dictators, they are unable to accept that criticism is the most constructive tool available to any society because it is the best way to prevent error”</b> (Saul, 1992, p. 8).</span></span></blockquote>
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<span data-offset-key="38ah6-0-0"><span data-text="true"><b>Education leaders like business leaders often run from and suppress criticism and the critic of their ideas for reform and improvement. </b>They too easily dismiss objections and criticism as simply resistance. Could it not be that such resistance is valid? </span></span><br />
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<span data-offset-key="38ah6-0-0"><span data-text="true"><b>Instead they engage in “stakeholder-buy-in” as if their idea, programs, reforms, projects, etc. are inherently the best approach to solving the problem at hand. Because of this fear of the critic, critique, and criticism, most often evidenced by the silencing of critics, these leaders make the same errors and perpetuate the well-known pendulum swings in education due to the failure to allow critique and criticism of their agendas. </b>As Saul points out, “criticism is the most constructive tool available” because it is the best way to "prevent error.” </span></span><br />
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<span data-offset-key="38ah6-0-0"><span data-text="true"><b>To prevent the massive waste of time and resources that often comes with these faddish waves of reform that hit education, there needs to much more space to allow for criticism. </b>That’s why a critical educational leadership studies needs to be activated.</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="38ah6-0-0"><span data-text="true">Before implementing any new programs, ideas, reforms…why not open a large space for criticism first? <b>Real leaders don’t fear criticism, they invite it.</b></span></span></div>
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Saul’s arguments and prose against an unquestioned faith in Western rationality and reason are important for having intellectual leadership in education.</div>
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Saul, J. R. (1992). <em>Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West</em>. Simon and Schuster: New York, NY.<br />
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John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-14902371297683776932019-04-22T12:34:00.001-04:002019-04-22T12:48:20.736-04:00Pro-Innovation Bias in Education: Any Old Innovation Will Do and Adventures in Educational Fadsurfing<div>
<b>As wave after wave of educational reform has hit our educational shores, one thing becomes very clear: the field of educational leadership and education has what is often called an “pro-innovation bias.” </b>While innovation can obviously be advantageous when it addresses specific problems, having this “pro-innovation bias” often only means there is a great deal of promoting of new programs or new technologies and little serious examination and critique of the possible side effects or unintended consequences of these. If you are the critic who starts asking difficult questions about these potential problems, you are most often accused by those promoting the innovation as anti-progress or pro-status quo. <b>Critical examination of all these new-fangled innovations is stifled immediately by those who simply want their brand of innovation accepted—consequences and side-effects be damned.</b><br />
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In his book, <em>To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism</em>, critic Evgeny Morozov writes:</div>
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“Innovation might be one of the defining buzzwords of our times, but it has not received the critical attention it deserves, and we usually take its goodness for granted, oblivious of how obsession with innovation twists our accounts of the past.” (2013, p. 167)<br />
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<b>Innovation is the educational buzzword of this decade.</b> Everyone is talking of its inevitability and necessity, and have been crowing loudly since the advent of the great technological wonders of the personal computer and hand-held devices.<br />
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<b>There were those Technological-Promo videos plastered all over YouTube warning educators to get on the “Tech-Express” or be left wallowing in irrelevance. </b>There were the “tech-evangelists” pushing salvation through technological innovation. Everyone then and now talk of “innovation” as if any Old innovation will do, just do it. But there lies the problem: as history has pointed out to us, when educators adopt innovation uncritically, the unintended consequences usually take quite some time to overcome.<br />
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<b>Morozov (2013) points to the difficult of innovation's problems by pointing out that most innovations and inventions don’t have consequences, but those that do require significant repairs, maintenance, and resources to keep working. </b>For example, take the use of value-added measures, or VAMs, in education. To maintain VAMs as a viable educational tool, countless hours and resources must be spent on test development and testing. Administrators have to spend hours engaging in rituals of preparation required to make the value-added system function properly. Then there’s the money spent on VAMs themselves and for the use of a company’s algorithms. One of the consequences and side-effects of VAMs is a culture where a child’s test score matters the most. Other innovations like 1:1 schools also require a great deal of maintenance and resources to try to make them work. Budgets are busted in purchasing computers and in the creation of plans of technology-sustainability, as well as technical support systems. VAMs and One-to-One computer initiatives are only two current “innovations” being done to school systems, and both require an immense amount of resources that have grown scarcer since the Great Recession of 2008.<br />
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<b>Even if one of willing to set aside the issues of the resource-intensive nature of innovations and their side-effects, as school systems jump from innovation to innovation, they are engaging in a type of “fadsurfing in the schoolhouse” that was described so aptly by Eileen Shapiro in her book <em>Fadsurfing in the Boardroom: Managing in the Age of Instant Answers</em>. </b>In her book, Shapiro (1995) writes: “Fad surfing is the practice of riding the crest of one the latest management panacea and then paddling out again just in time to ride the next one; always absorbing for managers and lucrative for consultants; frequently disastrous for organizations” (p. xiii). <b>Educational leaders engage in this practice of “riding the crest of the latest educational panacea.”</b><br />
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In my career, I’ve seen too many to count. Early in my career there was block-scheduling, multiple intelligences, CRISS, reading for learning, writing for learning, school-based decision making, tech-prep, Deming’s Total Quality Management, thinking maps, critical thinking, age of accountability and testing, NCLB, ESSA, Ruby Payne, Emotional Intelligence, SEL, Grit, Growth Mindset, Brain-based teaching and learning, inquiry-based teaching, thematic teaching, multiculturalism…and the list is endless just for my 29 years as an educator. Will the current buzzwords such as “coding” and “personalized learning” be added to this heap of innovations?<br />
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<b>My problem isn’t with any of these, for many of them may have merits in a given school or classroom.</b> My problem with this list is what it represents: a search for a panacea that will once and for all resolve our education problems. Shapiro’s (1995) advice to business is apropos here to educators seeking the golden fleece of educational innovation. She reminds leaders,</div>
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<b>“The hard truth is that there are no panaceas. What is new is the sheer number of techniques, some new and some newly repackaged versions of older methods, that are now positioned as panaceas” (p. xvii).</b><br />
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<b>There are no panaceas for all that ails us in education either, no matter how many salespeople knock on our doors trying to sell us their product or their program. Many of the new-fangled products and programs are just repackaged older "innovations." </b>It's time to recognize that "Education is just damn hard work! That’s it." There are no easy paths. What works at one school does not necessarily mean it will work at all at another. There are no programs that will work accross all schools not matter what that consultant says. Our schools exists as complex entities in complex systems within a complex world. To think that if I apply this product, program or method to my school or school district and B will happen is simplistic thinking.<br />
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<b>There are factors that affect education that are outside our control, because schools exist in a world system, a very complex world system. </b>Before the pro-innovation crowd start accusing me of “excuse-making” which is where this conversation usually goes, let me make something clear: Recognizing reality is not excuse making. Recognizing that our schools in this country operate in a very unfair and unequal society where many get the advantages is not making an excuse; it is recognizing a fundamental social problem that impacts what we do no matter what program or innovation we implement. <b>Our schools suffer from inadequate funding in a society that distributes advantage to those who often already have the means to be successful. There is no panacea or bootstrap mentality that is going to fix that problem.</b><br />
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<b>To conclude, I would add that many educational leaders and educators suffer not only from an “pro-innovation bias,” but they also suffer from simplistic thinking and from wearing self-imposed blinders that prevent them from seeing the reality of an increasingly unequal and inequitable society.</b><br />
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Morozov, E. (2013). <i>To save everything click here: The folly of technological solutionism</i>. Public Affairs: New York, NY.<br />
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Shapiro, E. (1995). <i>Fadsurfing in the boardroom: Managing in the age of instant answers</i>. Perseus: Cambridge, MA.<br />
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John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2158157279489866895.post-51325952089964329342019-04-20T12:41:00.001-04:002019-04-20T12:41:28.273-04:00Why Educators Need to Recognize Social Media's Structural Flaws and Algorithmic Radicalization Potential<div><strong>Social media has become a problem.</strong> I was once an avid user of it, and now, after all the political events of the past two to three years, it has become apparent to me that Facebook and Twitter, among other social media products, have done more to divide and foster our uncivil society than anything else. It has effectively led to a polarized American society where it is perfectly acceptable to pass on false information and innuendo as the truth. <strong>In a word, Facebook and Twitter, are nothing more than online supermarket tabloids, and without veering into censorship, I am not entirely convinced that the media can be redeemed. </strong></div>
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<div>In his book, <em>New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future</em>, James Bridle writes:</div>
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<div>“If you’re searching for support for your views online, you will find it. And moreover, you will be fed a constant stream of validation: more and more information, of a more and more extreme and polarizing nature. This is how men’s rights activists graduate to white nationalism, and how disaffected Muslim youths fall towards violent jihadism. This is algorithmic radicalization, and it works in the service of extremists themselves, who know that polarization of society ultimately serves their aims.” (p. 212)</div>
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<div><strong>As Bridle makes clear, social media is designed to provide users with “a constant stream of validation,” and it does this by the algorithms that serve up what the platforms think users might be interested in.</strong> Social media isn’t designed to keep users informed: it is designed to gorge users on the same kinds of content those users usually consume, and it is there we need to acknowledge that this media is not harmless. Any Facebook user, for example, will notice that the social media tosses items into your timeline based on what you have liked and shared in the past. This means that the typical user trains the algorithm to serve up items that align with that user’s interests.</div>
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<div><strong>Our society has a social media problem.</strong> Set aside the addictive behaviors, dangerous threats and bullying for just moment; they are serious enough. Our real problem is that this media pretends to be a way to share news and information. It claims to provide a means for individuals and organizations to promote themselves. The truth is, I’ve come to a certain realization: I can no longer trust much that I read on Facebook of Twitter. I certainly should not give too much credence to it these days.</div>
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<div><strong>I say all this to point out that education leaders need to recognize that social media isn’t the hyped-up communications savior we once thought it was.</strong> It has serious flaws, one of which is its lack of a baloney-detection system. It also is an impossible place to carry on any kind of civil discussion or do anything except promote a divisitory narcissism that only makes us more divided.</div>
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<div><strong>As a school leader we need to educate our students and staffs about this side of social media.</strong> We need to be more retrospect and cautious about our own use and see it for what it is: an electronic tabloid that serves up individualized content to users. Social media is now a problem. It is always going to be a problem as it is currently structured. I certainly do not trust the likes of Mark Zuckerberg to fix these problems, after all, his goal is get more and more using the technology. To do that, Facebook structurally can only provide its customers what they want: self-validating content. <strong>As social media currently exists, it is an “algorithmic radicalization” technology that is incapble in its current form to be otherwise.</strong></div>John Robinson Ed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14155145743617621924noreply@blogger.com0