Seth Godin's manifesto about changing schools.

"The economy has changed, probably forever.

School hasn't.

School was invented to create a constant stream of compliant factory workers to the growing businesses of the 1900s. It continues to do an excellent job at achieving this goal, but it's not a goal we need to achieve any longer.

In this 30,000 word manifesto, I imagine a different set of goals and start (I hope) a discussion about how we can reach them. One thing is certain: if we keep doing what we've been doing, we're going to keep getting what we've been getting.

Our kids are too important to sacrifice to the status quo."

Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?

Diane Ravitch reports about educational reform in Finland in her New York Review of Books article, "Schools we can envy."

"Pasi Sahlberg (author of the Finnish Lessons book) recognizes that Finland stands outside what he refers to as the “Global Education Reform Movement,” to which he appends the apt acronym “GERM.” GERM, he notes, is a virus that has infected not only the United States, but the United Kingdom, Australia, and many other nations. President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law and President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program are examples of the global education reform movement. Both promote standardized testing as the most reliable measure of success for students, teachers, and schools; privatization in the form of schools being transferred to private management; standardization of curriculum; and test-based accountability such as merit pay for high scores, closing schools with low scores, and firing educators for low scores."

"In contrast, the central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition."

(Thanks to Post Oak School parent Joey Hayles for forwarding this article to me.)

The missing voice

Laura Flores Shaw used to be a school psychologist. She became a Montessori school leader because she wanted to dedicate her life to helping children develop the personal strength and resilience that would make therapy unneeded.

Read her article in the Huffington Post.

"the inside sort of things"

Writer Rick Ackerly tells Maggie's story.
"Maggie awoke one morning at the age of eighteen with the profound fear that after 13 years of school, 'I knew very little about myself and what I wanted in my life.'”

5C's + 1

Not 3 R's anymore?

It used to be we only needed to remember 3 key words. Now life has gotten to be so complex we need to remember twice as many.

5C's + 1.

There's a revolutionary rallying cry!

Of course when it comes to education, we are fighting a huge entropy-maintaining flywheel. Despite a chorus of Voices for Change, there's a huge body of literature attempting to explain why it is so hard to reform schools.

And perhaps the most significant change in conventional schools has been the shift from the 3 R's to High Stakes Testing. Fear is a great motivator. But the lizard brain, center of our fear response, does not lead us to innovative solutions.

Private independent schools are immune from most of the High Stakes Testing requirements, but they are still "teach and test" environments; geared less toward Learning and more toward Knowing. And blind to the impact such a worldview has on the formation of character and personality.

That brings me to Pat Bassett, Executive Director of NAIS, the National Association of Independent Schools. He is a student of education as well as a leader, and he speaks from the bully pulpit: 5C's + 1? What's not to like here?

The Single Best Idea

Steve Denning's latest blog for Forbes: "The single best idea for reforming K-12 education." He doesn't much care for conventional education which he compares to the management system that emerged from the 20th century factory model. He presents an alternative approach and says, by the way, that we don't need to reinvent the wheel. It's already been done.

Montessori in the blogosphere

one more from Steve Denning...

what is it about this moment in time?

Last week it was You Tube. Yesterday Harvard Business Review. Today in Forbes business writer Steve Denning blogs a wake-up call to Bill Gates who has spent $5 billion trying to improve education. "Think Bigger," Denning says.

~

If you read deep enough into his blog, you learn, "Schools practicing this new culture of learning don't have to be invented....the new culture of learning takes place in thousands of Montessori classrooms every day."

Montessori Builds Innovators

Harvard Business Review. blog by Andrew McAfee, author of Enterprise 2.0.

"When I got too old for my Montessori school and went to public school in fourth grade, I felt like I'd been sent to the Gulag. I have to sit in this desk? All day? We're going to divide the day into hour-long chunks and do only one thing during each chunk?"

If you're not making mistakes, try harder

Why wrong is not always bad. (from Education Week)
The privilege of being wrong. (from Seth Godin)
enjoy the fun of failure (from Gretchin Rubin in Harvard Business Review)

The New Culture of Learning

Learning.
Culture of learning.
The new culture of learning.
An example of the new culture of learning.

Montessori is an example of the new culture of learning.

(Steve Denning's blog "Rethink" in Forbes.)

Reason vs Emotions

From Post Oak parent Melissa Cordero:

John,

I love reading about the “deeper talents” that some are just now recognizing the importance of as if revolutionary; and which have been the core of Montessori education for a century!

Enjoy your Spring Break,
Melissa