EDUCATED OUT OF CREATIVITY?

I needed a bit of inspiration this week and so I watched a couple of Ted Talks featuring Ken Robinson.  

The first was about how the history of education has come to the current system having been conceived in different financial and cultural circumstances (Robinson).  His animated talk called, "Changing Education Paradigms" showed how the current system is based on a factory model, conceived in a "production line mentality".  I think what he was saying is that that model may have been right for those times, but that times change and it is time for a new model for a new global and changing economy.

Robinson when on to explain who education should be aesthetic, engaging the mind in a manner that is fully present and fully alive (Robinson).  However, in the age of an ADHD epidemic (or as he calls it a "fictitious epidemic), we are medicating to subdue, rather than stimulate minds. This is so sad, given that, as Robinson states, we are living in a time of the greatest stimulation every known.

The second Ted Talk was another featuring Robinson, called "Do Schools Kill Creativity".  I really liked this talk because it highlighted how children begin school with massive creativity and divergent thinking, but then become progressively less able to tap into these internal forces.  

Robinson hypothesized that we are "educating children out of creativity" (Robinson).  Some of the reasons for this trend were lack of acceptance of being wrong or taking chances.  He also noted that teachers need to see the creativity and foster it, rather than forcing the creativity out in favour of meeting standardized guidelines.

My reflection on both Ted Talks lead to more questions (as always!):

How do we teach the curriculum expected while fostering creativity?

How do we undo the knots created in the creative flow in order to inspire divergent thinking?

How do we deal with the benchmarks of standardized testing in order to show that divergent thinking does not come at the cost of the academic achievement that needs to be demonstrated?

RESOURCES:

Robinson, Ken.  (2010).  Changing education paradigms.  Ted Talk.  https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms

Robinson, Ken.  (2006).  Do schools kill creativity?  Ted Talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY MIND MAP

Cindy C. from GDPI811 shared a free mind-map software on her blog site and it looked great.  I was eager to use it. It was was pretty simple to use once I got on to it and far more flexible than other flow charts I have used.  Thanks for the sharable idea Cindy!

https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/513d0e7ddd494325a4d804affdcfb032

I thought it would be a great way for me to start thinking about my personal philosophy and the factors that go into it.  Let the creative juices flow!

FREE TUITION- AN EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY ON THE HORIZON

I just watched the 2016 Michael Moore documentary “Where to Invade Next”.  In this film he compared the US to many countries across the globe on a variety of quality of life subject.  Higher learning was a hot topic within his research and it was perfectly timed with the theme of our GDPI811 topic of the philosophy of education.  This got me thinking about the variation of tuition of higher learning within different countries across the globe.

In the documentary Michael Moore interviewed students from Denmark who shared what they claimed was their country’s philosophy about higher learning.  They described that higher learning had so much value that it was fully funded.  It seemed puzzling to them why it might not be funded, given the importance.  It almost seemed insulting to them that people would be not given access to such a basic right.

The reading “Why we must abolish schools” by Ivan Illich merged with Moore’s documentary.  Illich’s argument was that SCHOOLS were too expensive.  SCHOOLS were ineffective.  SCHOOLS were inequitable.  It was not that he didn’t argue for LEARNING, he just didn’t think that formal learning was all it was cracked up to be and that we just didn’t need all the bricks an mortar to enable LEARNING.    And yet, considering Michael Moore’s documentary, there are countries that believe so strongly in schools that they fund them for all.  Hmmmmm…..

This brings me to my professional context.   I work for a community college. During my 19 years working for this institution, I have worked on many projects that have shown me how important access to education is in order to level the playing field for those who are economically disadvantaged.   I helped hundreds of workers who were laid off in the recession of 2008 to use a program called Second Career to access the financial support needed to rise their skill levels so that they could compete.  While many of these laid off workers did have to make modest investments to their own career path, I am proud to say that most of their needs were considered in these 100% grant programs.  With the philosophical goal access to education, this program was charged with part of the responsibility of raising Ontarian’s skills to a highly competitive level.  These social programs made good long-term business sense and aligned with the philosophy of education very well.  More importantly, it provided a chance at a second career to those who needed it most- the laid off workers of that major recession.

A more recent development that aligns with educational philosophy which draws a little closer to the vision of Denmark as described in Michael Moore’s documentary, is access to education for poor.  In 2016 there was a major announcement to address the issue of access:  Free university and college tuition for those who are from families making less than $50,000 per year.    Even with 19 years of working within this Ministry, I never thought this day would come.  Tuition costs being a barrier no longer!   I think this will be a wonderful experiment to see how this changes Ontario’s skill level, how it will address skills gaps as baby boomers exit the labour force and most importantly, how this could lead to innovation and equalization for the most financially vulnerable.   I am overjoyed.  You can read more about this here:

https://news.ontario.ca/maesd/en/2017/01/ontario-provides-free-tuition-for-eligible-students-in-london.html

I am sure that social programs like tuition grants and Second Career will still leave gaps, but they are creative and innovative starting points.  What I know first hand is that there will be data-driven decisions made to improve these programs.  I hope that philosophical and historical thinking will also be applied to consider how learning and teaching can (and indeed will need to) become more nimble, creative and innovative to meet the demand. 

Remaining questions:

What are other socio-economic factors that will be barriers for the poor and working poor, beyond financial considerations?

How will free tuition and education grants change access for the greater student population?

What will be the new selection criteria if educational spaces become limited?

How can business and industry assist in the educational process?

What can philosophy offer to disadvantaged students, in terms of enhancing the educational process?   How will this improve the lives of the economically disadvantaged?

Resources:

Illich, I. (1970, July 2). Why we must abolish schooling. The New York Review of Books, 15(1), 9–15.

FUEL FOR EMPLOYER-DRIVEN TRAINING

As my thoughts this week turn to the philosophy of education, I reflect upon my professional context.  

The idea of accessibility of education and when and where learning should occur leads me to consider the introduction of employer-driven training/education grants.

In 2015, a new cost-shared program between the provincial and federal governments was launched with the goal of job creation and workforce up-skilling.   The Canada Ontario Job Grant (COJG) is a professional focus of my work, helping employers to consider up-skilling and training options, as well as significant grants to fund the training.  This is a powerful tool for employers, who often cannot justify or afford training for their workers.  

As I think about philosophy of education, I consider how important these grants are because they do not interrupt income in order to further invest in acquiring new skills.  Being able to “earn while you learn” is important for the working poor, who often get stuck in job-ghettos of low skill and accompanying low pay, which is a highly depressing scenario.  This grant can empower those in poverty because they no longer have to choose to work or to get higher skills.

The other point worthy of philosophical reflection relating to the COJG, is the idea of employers becoming the drivers of learning, dictating what should be taught based on what markets demand of them.  When employers drive the learning process, the solutions can be responsive to the actual demands of the labour market and training becomes more “just-in-time”.    I am seeing impressive evidence of large institutions (like mine) being more nimble than ever before, not just in response to COJG but to employer demands, generally.  The COJG is simply another piece of evidence at the need to be responsive, or risk being plowed-over by institutions that can redesign and repackage in response to industry needs and demands.  

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that there is no longer a need for a liberal education.  Institutions continue to cover that territory very well with students who need to learn HOW to learn.  I just see in my professional context how employers demand both timely technical skills and broad-based skills.  I think the COJG can help do both.  Better, yet, it can help employers to become active and engaged partners with institutions of higher learning and vice versa.  Through these partnerships, I think that Ontario can rise to become a highly skilled workforce.  If progress in this direction is not made, then the evidence I see in my professional context would be troubling.  So is the idea that low skill work disappearing.  If workers cannot raise their skills, either through self-funded training, or employer driven training, like the COJG, then poverty and dependence seems the natural result.  This makes me think how important it is to have the messages of grants such as the COJG reach employers of the working poor.

Questions from my professional context naturally arise:

How do we best market the COJG to reach all of the classes of workers and employers?

How can we help employers to choose the best training for their needs when the options are so wide open?

How can employers and trainers/colleges/universities foster collaborations with industry in new an innovative ways?

What can industry and higher learning institutions functionally do to better predict demands in order to be more educationally proactive?  How can we further leverage COJG to do this?

WE MUST ABOLISH SCHOOLING?

I recently read the article:  “Why we must abolish schools written by Ivan Illich in  1970.

Resource:

llich, I. (1970, July 2). Why we must abolish schooling. The New York Review of Books, 15(1), 9–15.

In the article, Illich argues that schools, as institutions of bricks and mortar, are inefficient, inequitable and financially non-feasible.  He further asserts that schooling results in neither successful teaching, nor learning.  This article really got under my skin- I have been thinking it for days! 

His data was compelling about the costs of schools, which got me thinking about the evolution of education and the benefit of 40 years of history and hindsight.   Evidence is not hard to find.  If you look around most school properties these days, you are likely to see at least one or two “portable” classrooms, which are physical reminders of the budget restrictions under which schools tend to operate.   I don’t this serves to punctuate the realities of the financial limitations, not Illich’s argument that schools should be abolished but investments must come with innovation, in order to truly be effective. 

In 2016, the Ontario government committed $1.1 billion dollars to upgrade physical learning spaces, most likely because budget restrictions cannot delay much needed upgrading and maintenance indefinitely.  The goal of this public investment is to create better spaces for, you guessed it, LEARNING!   But appropriate, accessible space is not the only issue, especially when enrolment is a moving target, often showing declines.

In my personal context, I began considering ways in which de-schooling may have already taken place to match with Illich’s recommendations of casual or real life learning.  Cooperative education is one of these innovations.  Being able to lift learning out of the institution and into real workplaces has helped cement learning, without the need for set curriculum.  Many students who don’t remember a thing from geography class, remember their co-op learning in vivid detail.  Another development from higher learning are community projects and field placement, where both the host company and the student derive distinctly different, but mutually beneficial results.    While Illich seemed not to believe in credentials of any type, I feel that he would at least respect that learning is recognized beyond the classroom.

Speaking of learning outside the classroom, I think Illich might also approve of the current trend toward prior learning assessment and recognition as a way to prove competencies over credentials.  In my professional context, I work with clients to develop portfolios, and it is a very effective means to proving to others (and yourself!) the competencies you have acquired through standard and non-standard experiences.  In fact, the post secondary institution in which I work has endorsed “co-curricular records” in order to value both curriculum based learning as well as extracurricular involvement and learning.  In this way, I think Illich’s vision is partially realized with recognition of learning opportunities in and outside of institutional learning.

So many questions remain:

How can Canada provide equal access to education, without overburdening taxpayers?

How can institutions be physically more multi-purpose in order be economically efficient?

What other learning opportunities can business and industry provide as “living classrooms?”

LET'S TALK ABOUT "CONTINUOUS INNOVATION" INSTEAD OF "CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT"

I am beginning to understand the value of both history in education and philosophical perspectives on education.  This is leading me to consider how both play out in my professional context and how my feelings about working within data-driven models.

 Lately, I have been noticing my reaction to funding in data-driven models.   I am finding the concept of “continuous improvement” to be professionally frustrating.  

Don’t get me wrong… I believe in innovation and improvement.  I am just irritated that data is becoming a situation of the tail wagging the dog, instead of the reverse. 

These recent studies in the history and philosophy of education are helping me to better articulate my argument, which is that data is important, but we are so busy trying to achieve data results that we are not really having the level of innovation that we clearly want and need. 

In trying to achieve data results, the approach gets designed only to show these types of improvements.  This often results in doing things that don’t make operational or logical sense in order to see the numbers go in the direct that they need to in order to prove effectiveness.  This translates to feelings of “getting very good at playing the game”… but if the game is a bad game, then why are we trying to get better at it.   In social services,  there are many subjectives.  There are changes at the local community level that might not be considered at the macro level that cannot be addressed when achieving targets and data check points is the only focus.

Continuous improvement, in the context of data, is a total crock.  If data is expected to continuously improve, eventually targets will be hundreds of times their original set point OR you have to hold back good results so as to avoid not going higher than outstanding results in the future.  It is a game no one can win. 

To this point, I was reading a book recently  (Charle Dugig’s “Better, Faster, Smarter”) and there was a very interesting chapter within the book that discussed how some of the worst performing schools in America (the writer’s context) were able to use data to transform their schools into effective centres of education.   Dugig’s message wasn’t about simply having the data, in fact, data by itself was often completely ignored.   What seemed to be the difference was teachers INTERACTING with the data.    The observation from this exercise was that teachers who manually work with classroom data start seeing patterns and become able to devise plans for supplementation that can actually change the data.  Innovation, in this way, becomes not about having access to data, but having professionals who can USE the data to innovate with students, individually and in groups.  

This is where philosophy becomes and history becomes important because it points more toward values and the human factor, not just the data.  What we should be teaching and why we are teaching it has value beyond test scores and success measures.

So, if you want to talk with me about “Continuous Innovation” then, I am all ears.  If you want to discuss “Continuous Improvement” then you need to apply some philosophic and historical perspective to data discussions.  Otherwise, I will simply become good at playing a data-game, rather than focusing on innovation.

I will end with a question….

In what ways can education and social services build compelling arguments using philosophy and history to lead to innovation, beyond data-driven continuous improvement?

OOPS! I ACCIDENTLY READ SOMETHING THAT CONNECTED TO MY BLOG THOUGHTS!

I was reading book review article "Can historians help school reformers?" and somehow I downloaded forty pages of reviews.... 3 authors and 9 books later, I rea didn't answer tlized that I had stumbled upon two themes of my last most posts.  

One of the themes was on about the history of morality in educational history.  My blog post was actually more about biblical history examples than morality, but the idea of of morality and spirituality are common in that they are often neglected in curriculum.  I liked how the authors noted the historical importance of morality and how education is described as a having a key role in moral development. It is interesting to look at the past struggle through modern eyes. 
The other theme that I psychically predicted was education as preparation for the workforce.   The history during the industrial era made sense at the time- having students who could function in the new world of work. To be cliche... the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Because my professional context is the school to work transition, I am finding it personally challenging to help youth to navigate this life stage.  As we look for solutions in the present, it may help us to look back at how education did and did not assist in times of stability and times of uncertainty.
No questions this time... only connections.... accidental as at process may have been.