How to Raise Children Who Will Change the World

Is the American Educational System Obsolete?  Yes, answers Tony Wagner, the Education Fellow at Harvard University's Technology and Innovation Center.  Prior to that, Wagner had spent over 10 years at  Harvard's School of Education analyzing the changes that need to happen in education in order to prepare students for the 21st century global economy.

In his new book, Creating Innovators:  The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World,  Wagner studies American innovators and discovers some common patterns in their childhood and education--patterns that, alas, are discouraged by most traditional schools.  Wagner puts forth a case for a radical transformation of the fundamental principles of education, with the emphasis on the following five principles:

1.  Focus on Collaboration and Teamwork, rather than Individual Competition and Achievement
All the most important ideas and issues are just too big for only one person to handle

2.  Take a Cross Disciplinary and Multiple Perspectives Approach
This is kind of the curricular corellary to the point above.  Wagner points out that the Carnegie-unit-based high school structure is now 125 years old and is outdated for today's realities.

3.  Take Risks
Innovation, by its nature, requires experimentation, which means that most time, you are going to fail and/or be wrong.  That is anathama to way traditional school curricula approach most things.

4.  Learning Should be Active, Not Passive
Wagner argues that our current educational systems make students into learning consumers, not learning creators.  How are they suddenly going to turn into creating exciting new ideas and projects if they've been trained to sit back and be spoon fed everything during their education?

5.  Learning Should be Based on Instrinsic Rewards and Passions
Traditional schools are built around motivating students through extrinsic rewards--grades, gold stars, praise from happy teachers and parents, etc.  But innovators are driven by their internal passions, ideas, and motivations.

You can learn more by viewing this TED-style talk by Wagner:



or by reading a recent Forbes article: Creating Innovators:  Why America's Education System is Obsolete;

or, of course, by ordering his book.

Should the Hunger Games Be Banned from Schools--And If So, Why?

Right now my son is taking a class that is discussing arguments for and against banning books.  So it was with more than my usual interest that I read the list released this week by the American Library Association of the 10 books that have received the most requests during 2011 to ban them from schools or public libraries.  Because it is the young teen obsession of the moment, most of the headlines will highlight the inclusion of The Hunger Games series, which came in as #3 among the 326 reported challenges last year.  However, what is more interesting to me is the way The Hunger Games differ from the other books on the list, and what that tells us about our attitudes to young people and literature.

Here is the list of the top 10 books and my abbreviations for the reasons they were challenged.  I will admit up front that I haven't read any of them except The Hunger Games series and the two "oldies but goodies" that have been complained about for years:

1) ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle 
Language; Religion; Sex

2) The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
Sex

3) The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
(see below for reasons)

4) My Mom's Having A Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler Sex

5) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Language; Racism; Religion; Sex

6) Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Sex; Language; Religion

7) Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Insensitivity; Sex; Racism; Religion

8) What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
Sex; Language

9) Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
Drugs; Language; Sex

10) To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Language; Racism

That is, to summarize:
#1 reason for challenge:  Sex (8/10 books)
#2 reason for challenge:  Language--presumably profanity and/or racial/sexual slurs (7/10 books)
#3 reason for challenge:  Religion (4/10 books)
...and then there are a few additional reasons that apply to only one or two books.  This is not to say that they are not important issues (Drugs, Racism, etc.), but they apply to the minority in terms of why the books are sought to be banned.

Now let's look at the reasons why The Hunger Games was banned.  The first reason on the list, which is presumably the most frequently-given cause for concern, was:
Anti-ethnic
Anti-ethnic?  I don't remember ethnicity being an issue at all in the books.  The ALA seems to attribute this to the filming of the movie, since apparently the complaints tended to complain about African Americans being cast in "lighter skinned" roles or vice versa.

The next reason given is Anti-family.  Again, I don't get that at all.  Certainly Katniss' main motivation, at least in the first book, and really throughout the series, is her love for and desire to protect her family.  There are some less idyllic family relationships, but it seems to me that most of the families that we do see are pretty close and good role models.  Perhaps they just don't like that the government is taking these young people from their families?  I don't know what the concern is here.

Reason number three is Insensitivity.  They don't explain exactly what that means.  But I guess a bunch of teenagers killing each other could be classified as Insensitive.  Certainly, sensitivity is not a virtue that is lauded in the books--but, then, it rarely is when one is fighting for one's survival.

Reason number four is Language.  I don't remember much use of profanity or slurs in the books.  I think what offensive language there is would certainly, in my mind, be overshadowed by other concerns.

Reason number five is Occult/Satanic.  Once again, I don't recall anything that would fall into that category.  In fact, the book is almost relentless practical and material; I don't believe there is any discussion of spiritual elements at all (for example, there don't seem to be any priests/minister/religious authorities or churches/temples, etc. in the land of Panem).

Only number six can I really fathom, which is a complaint about Violence.  As I have written here and here, I am concerned about particularly young adolescents being wrapped up in all the violence and missing the political and morale message of the series, which is what I think makes this an excellent triology of books.  I wouldn't ban it, but the excessive violence and mature political themes is why I tend to encourage parents of middle schoolers to delay having their children read the books until they are in high school and are a bit more mature.

So it amazes me that is the last reason given, and that The Hunger Games is the only one of the top 10 would-be banned books of the year that raises the issue of violence.  Rather, it is the issue of Sex, and then Offensive Language, that seems to be causing the more ire among those who want to censor the books in schools and libraries.

Of course, our values in these areas differ from family to family.  For example, I don't use profanity, and my son doesn't use it, and that would be way down on my list of reasons to restrict him from reading a particular book.  I am also personally of the opinion that it is good for students to read about some of these controversial issues, like sex and drugs, as they are coming to grips with making those kinds of decisions in their own lives.  Certainly, I would rather have my son learn by reading about them then experimenting with them in real life!  But that is my philosophy.

However, I will say that for this Banned Book class, each child had to choose a book to read from the comprehensive list of banned books (in agreement with his or her family, of course).  My son wanted to read the most frequently banned book, which was Catcher in the Rye.  That book, of course, was one of the first and still one of the most frequently banned because of...Sex and Language.  But he read it, and his reaction was much the same as my was when I read, long, long ago in high school--it's OK, but I don't know what the big deal is.

Curriculum Resource: Food Rules Animated with Actual Food

Regular readers of this blog know that Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, changed my life.  After reading that book, I dramatically changed what food I bought and where I bought it as part of my ongoing effort to reduce our family's carbon footprint.  I think it is an incredibly important book, and I urge everyone to read it in order to understand why our current food choices are not environmentally sustainable.

Pollan followed up that book and his In Defense of Food book with a guideline for what we SHOULD be eating entitled Food Rules:An Eater's Manual.  This distills his advice about what foods we should be eating, both for our own health and the health of the planet.

Now animators Marija Jacimovic and Benoit Detalle have created a short video of a talk on Food Rules that Michael Pollan gave.  His words are accompanied by a stop animation film using food itself to illustrate his points.....which I think is really kind of great.

So if you haven't read the books, at least start the ball rolling by watching the following video:



Michael Pollan's Food Rules from Marija Jacimovic on Vimeo.


We are talking about these kinds of issues in our Healing Oceans Together environmental group/educational coop.   But the books themselves raise issues that relate to many different disciplines, including biology, physics, chemistry, economics, political science, history.

I see these books relating to the posts I had last week about imagining the future and issues with STEM education.  They raise serious and potentially disasterous questions about our food production system, the breakdown of which could lead to our middle school students' future in competing for food in their own version of a "Hunger Game."  However, Pollan remains optimistic about things we could do differently, and does provide do-able suggestions for making better food choices.  So, as Maria raised in the comments, it does make our middle schoolers aware of potential problems in their future, but gives them reasons to hope and suggestions for things to do to improve the situation.

It is certainly a topic that can make many of these subjects very real to our students.

The Power of Dreams in Education

Why aren't US students going into careers in science, engineering, and math?  That is a question we've been asking as a society ever since I was working professionally in Washington DC in education policy in the 1980s.  There have been many proposed answers to that question, but mostly the blame as been laid on our education system.  Our science and math education isn't rigorous enough, or it isn't concrete enough, or it isn't relevent enough, or it isn't hands-on enough, etc. etc. etc.  So our latest response has been lots of government and private programs to improve education in what is now called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).

While I know science and math are tough disciplines--tough to learn and tough to teach (she says, having just completed teaching a hands-on physics class on light and optics that required lugging multiple sets of things for hands-on experiments to an outside classroom for five weeks)--and that we could definitely improve our science and math education, to my mind, that isn't the biggest problem with our current "brain drain" in STEM careers.  The data I read indicates that most of "the best and the brightest"are choosing to go into fields other than math and science.  That is to say, even if we could wave our magic wands and make our STEM education programs perfect, that isn't going to change the situation if students refuse to go into those programs in the first place.

There are many aspects to why American students aren't studying STEM.  But one of the big ones, according to astrophysicist and science writer/media specialist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is that we, as a nation, have stopped dreaming about a better future and the important role science, math, and engineering have in getting us there.

I could say more, but Tyson himself says it so much better in the short video below, entitled "Why We Stopped Dreaming:"



There is no way I can improve on that.   Except that I would say that it is not just limited to STEM.  I grew up in the Washington DC area, where almost everyone there was employed in what we used to consider "public service."  When I was growing up, working in Congress or the White House, the multiple court systems, the many federal agencies, the military complex built around the Pentagon, the related research institutes, the multiple non-profit public interest groups on all sorts of issues--all of those were honorable professions, and even though people found it a financial sacrifice, in terms of making a lower income than they might have had in private industry, it was worth it because they believed they were making a difference or playing a role in making the world safer, smarter, healthier, and better.

Now, after decades of people bashing "the government," our best and brightest don't want to work there either.  Looking at the nastiness and frustration among our top politicians--the US Congress and White House--it is no wonder that our students don't want a career in politics.  Education is another field where most of the public policy discussion is very negative, constantly highlighting all the perceived failures and rarely lauding the good work done day after day by millions of teachers across our country.

So what is left?  Becoming an athlete, rock or rap star, an actor/actress or, even better/easier, becoming a celebrity through so-called "reality" TV?

This is a tough, tough problem, and I don't know how we are going to solve it as a society.  But I know one thing.  As teachers and as parents, we need to support our students in dreaming again.  And I think it is particularly important in this middle school age--when they are old enough to understand and deal with some of the real substantive problems of our culture, but haven't yet experience so much frustration and inability to make a difference that they become cynical and indifferent.  In our case, it is why we are so heavily invested in a effort called Healing Oceans Together, where the students wrote the following mission statement for their group:

Healing Oceans Together (H2O) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preservation of the seas, raising public awareness about the oceans, and supporting the community through environmental education. Our organization is largely student-driven and is exceedingly resourceful. We are homeschoolers saving the world one step at a time, because we believe that everybody, working together, can make a difference.

I have to end with quoting (yet AGAIN, for those who know me) from one of my favorite books of 2011, Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt.   In this passage from the book, which is set in the 1960s, the junior high science teacher, Mr. Ferris, is talking to a group of incoming students.

 "Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dream. You come to build fantastic castles into the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew that they would walk on another world someday. No one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid from Washington Irving Junior High School would grow up to do".....what? What castle will you build?"

With all our focus in education on test scores and STEM initiatives and funding priorities, we are forgetting to encourage our students to dream big dreams.  And what kind of a life are preparing them for without dreams?  As Langston Hughes said in his poem, Dreams:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.  

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.