Mindset Doesn't Beat Structure

Ed-Tech's promise is overstated. I deeply appreciate AJ Juliani and George Couros and other ed-tech gurus. These guys are terrific and I especially love everything by AJ. Will Richardson is a thoughtful, deeply curious social critic and I find him most convincing on a many number of topics. But I'm afraid the former two have too narrow a focus, or more precisely ignore too many broader societal trends that affect the field of education.  Will Richardson himself seems far less sanguine about the possibility for positive change in education and in larger society.

Currently, I'm consulting with a poor, racially and ethnically diverse school district in Michigan. And while I'm convinced that drill and skill teaching model coupled with high stakes testing has led to a school day bereft of learning, I also know that an answer to these problems is more complicated than ed tech/ progressive ed types like me make it out to be. I've been thinking this way for awhile because I'm more convinced than ever that one size fits all teaching isn't the answer, and thus there isn't a one size fits all solution.

I do have some core beliefs about teaching.  Here are some of them:

1. Students should have real choice in the classroom.
2. Students should play the role of expert as much as possible.
3. Active learners are better learners.
4. Understanding schema and importance of scaffolding knowledge is essential.
5. Some facts are necessary. See point #4. One can't build schema without knowing things.
6. Grades work as a short term motivator and long term inhibitor to learning.
7. If not careful, a teacher's default is to talk too much.
8. Tests are only one form of good summative assessment. 
9. Many tests are poor instruments for summative assessment and do little to make learning stick beyond about three weeks.
10. Formative assessment, including student curation via portfolios, should play a prominent role in student assessment.
11. Schools are hampered by a education model that is little changed since the 1890's.

I dearly hold all of these beliefs. I'm also the first to admit that one of the very best teachers I've ever known lectures almost exclusively. He should never change; his lectures are that engaging. His deep kindness and warmth also earn him unwavering student devotion. One size fits all prescriptions for effective teaching are self-evidently not true.

This is also true, most ed-tech gurus I follow are white and a majority are men- (shout out to Alice Keeler, she's terrific and I read her regularly). These white men say very little about teaching in a multicultural society. Before I embraced ed-tech, I was deeply involved in diversity work and served on the executive board of the Philadelphia Multi Cultural Resource Center. These two passions of mine, what we call 21st century ed and multicultural education barely overlap. They should and could but don't.

Edward Albee famously told us to write to find out what we're thinking about. It's a reason why I write these blog posts as on average only about 40-60 people will read posts such as this. Similarly reading and listening help me clarify my thinking and sometimes I find someone who is so amazingly smart, I have a moment of clarity in which my thoughts are simultaneously bot reinforced and reshuffled. This incredible podcast by Benjamin Doxdator caused one such moment for me. He elucidates my struggle in such a deeper and wiser way than I'm capable of saying.  He doesn't offer answers. He asks a whole lot of great questions and offers some deep thinking on difficult issues.

Here's a segment that especially popped in a pointed way:
We also need to talk about how systemic racism and intergenerational poverty – not lack of passions – force too many people to ‘keep getting by’. Mindset doesn’t beat structure. More importantly, the entrepreneurs who ‘write their own rules’ are the very people who have destroyed the economy, increasing the precarity that everyone else faces. -Benjamin Doxdator.