If we are to know the elephant, we'll need to make learner motivation the core outcome of public education.

With apologies to American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) who penned the original poem from which I have created this version.  This fable has been attributed to many cultures and places.  Apparently Saxe attributed it to India many years before his time.

With President Obama’s election, the time is ripe for a new dialogue about what the core assumptions of our public policy should be.  So far, it seems that the discourse is dominated by adult voices that seem blind to the world in which our children are living.  What would our system be like if the central tenet of public education was to cultivate and support each person’s motivation to learn and work productively for something they care about?

Five Blind Policymakers and the Elephant

Five wise men of authority
To learning much inclined,
Went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
Might change the others’ minds.

The first approached the Elephant
And happening to climb
Up his broad and sturdy back
At once began to whine:
“21st Century work place skills
and quickly, we’re losing time!”

The second, approached the animal,
Grabbed the beasts long trunk
Felt its strength and utility
And shouted in a funk
“We have no standards
It’s standards m’lads
all else is just plain bunk!”

The third reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What this beast is plainly like
Is mighty clear,” quoth he;
“‘Tis basic skills and discipline,
that’s what kids need, you see!”

The fourth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
It’s about outcomes and experience
And empathy, my good man!

The fifth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “Academics, oh glee,
It’s achievement that gives us hope!”

And so these men of wisdom
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
They all were in the wrong.

So oft in education wars,
The disputants I’ve seen,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about the fate of kids
Not one of them has seen!

Adapted by Steve Jubb (2009)

Recently I observed a ninth grade “Pre-Algebra” class of 18 students in a small high school in Oakland in the one of the lowest income, most crime-ridden parts of town. Three young people were actively engaged in a teacher-led review of a quiz, four more were receiving tutoring in the back of the room from an aide, the other eleven slept, daydreamed, drew in their notebooks, or just sat staring. About two-thirds of the students were young men. Only once did the first-year teacher challenge one of the non-participants to answer a direct question.

“Huh?” the student said, looking up startled.

“(5-3) – 2 = 5-(3-2). True or false?” asked the teacher.

“I don’t know. Um, true? False? One of those.”

“Yes, but which one, Andre [not his real name]?” persisted the teacher.

“It’s false,” said a young woman, the only active participant in the exercise.

“False,” repeated Andre.

“It is? Explain why you think that?” probed the teacher.

“Because she said so,” Andre mumbled, nodding his head towards the young woman.

****
I have observed countless exchanges such as this one in more than 25 years as an educator, including in my own classroom when I started teaching public school in 1986 at De Anza High School, part of the Richmond Unified School District (now West Contra Costa School District). My first assignment included two ninth grade basic math classes (I am credentialed in English). I have been that first-year teacher. (How many of the many critics of public education have ever stood in this young man’s shoes?)

Exchanges like these did not start and won’t end with NCLB, but I believe they have increased as part of the unintended consequences of NCLB. More importantly, they illustrate the complex social, political and economic factors that influence what and how many young people actually learn something meaningful in school. NCLB is simply not the system change that will bring us to the Promised Land (and if you want to know what I think might takes us there, download and listen to our podcasts).

NCLB impact on students…

The net effect for most students, ironically in name of rigor, is more time spent on basic academic skills than higher level competencies, the elimination of more interesting electives and activities, and a dramatic increase in the number of high stakes tests they must take — all of which make school a less enjoyable and challenging place to be. It is now wonder that schools are losing the battle for kids attention and interest to cell phones, internet games, social networking cites, malls, movies, music videos MySpace and YouTube (just to name a few competitors).

Schooling is largely a process of assimilation for most students — it requires them to decide whether to engage, comply, tolerate or resist an educational process that mostly defers relevant learning until a young person’s early twenties. For students and families who cannot afford to move or pay private school tuition (and subject to compulsory education laws) few choices and virtually no pathway to educate themselves as empowered learners.

Many polls and surveys over the last decade have documented high school students’ increasing opinion that their schools don’t expect much of them. For example, a 2007 national survey conducted by the National Governors Association concluded, “A large majority of high school students say their class work is not very difficult, and almost two-thirds say they would work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting.”

And on the teachers who teach them

In California, as with many states, teachers and principals believe, based on years of experience, that much of what NCLB legislated in the name of more rigor for children actually is further “dumbing down” the curriculum. They cite as examples the frequent testing of discreet and unrelated (in the children’s minds) factoids and skills over higher order competencies and habits of mind. Students and teachers alike bemoan the loss of art, music and electives or the continuous fundraising required to keep them in the curriculum. NCLB’s has forced many teachers away from the kinds of teaching strategies that nurture curiosity, engage students deeply, and develop habits of mind and self-directed learning.

In the cold light of its unintended consequences, NCLB’s near religious exhortations about “scientifically-based research” appear cynical at best given the blunt instruments most states use to measure what they think matters. The devil is in how one defines success, especially in an enterprise that is ultimately about who and what a person becomes as a human being and the various learning pathways to get there.

In short, what gets measured gets done —and that’s the problem. What matters to the state has become very narrowly defined as “academic standards” (mastering “basic” skills and declarative knowledge). In the meantime, what matters increasingly to families — especially those with limited access to human and fiscal resources for a robust, personalized education — is becoming more expansive and urgent. Is my child happy in school? Who is my child becoming? Will they be able to lead a productive and healthy life? Will they be able to go to college and get a job?  Will they be good people, neighbors and world citizens?

What happened to equity of outcomes?

A 2005 study of NCLB’s effectiveness by the Northwest Evaluation Association using “scientifically-based research” methodology, NEA concluded (among other things), “Students of other ethnic groups that have shown achievement gaps in the past grow less under NCLB, and may grow less than comparable Anglo students.”

A year later the Harvard Civil Rights Project evaluated NCLB’s impact and concluded that it would fall far short of its stated goals for literacy and Math with serious damage done to the system along the way in part because of unfunded mandates at federal and state levels and test-driven accountability. It added, “These projections become much gloomier when it comes to closing the achievement gaps for disadvantaged minority students who are even more left behind in reading and math proficiency.”

So what do families really want for their children?
Families want vastly different things, according to several studies I reviewed. In short, our cities, our country and our world are becoming more diverse, while the pace of changes in the environment, the economy and society moves exponentially faster. These changes are driving greater demand for personalized education services in the private sector outside of the public school monopoly, while inside government-sponsored education the structure remains inflexible and slow to respond to this demand.

Here is an example of the differences in what families want in their child’s teachers. A recent Hoover Institution study of one district’s choice system concluded:

In particular, in low-income schools where academic resources are scarce, motivated parents are more likely to choose teachers based on their perceived ability to improve academic achievement. On the other hand, in higher-income schools these parents seem to respond to the relative abundance of academic resources by seeking out teachers who also increase student satisfaction. This may reflect a parental preference for their children to enjoy school, or it might reflect parental preferences for teachers who emphasize academic facets that increase student satisfaction but are not captured by standardized test scores, such as critical thinking or curiosity.

This difference in expectations plays out dramatically when one compares the programs offered in highly resourced communities to those offered lower income communities beset by crime, lack of development and neglect. In high-end communities academic skills are base level expectations, but few families think that alone makes for a good education. Under NCLB we are evolving to a two-tier system, one for the privileged and another for everybody else — not at all what was intended.

And about measuring what matters…

I agree with critics who say that K-12 education has become rigidly immune to rigorous scrutiny based on important outcome measures related to its assumptions and practices. Schools of education churn out volumes of education research that K-12 educators find mostly irrelevant and, therefore, ignore. During the nearly 30 years that I have been an educator I have often lamented our persistent focus on activities rather than outcomes — especially when it comes to questions of equity, fairness and justice as evidenced by its results. Having said this, I believe NCLB’s emphasis on “scientifically-based” research is a smoke screen, and, in practice, an effective strategy for privileging the interests of powerful businesses, associations and bureaucratic institutions over the hopes and dreams of ordinary individuals.

The consequence of measuring the wrong things is that it most often leads to doing the wrong things. And, of course, we mostly do measure the wrong things, or, at least, less important things — that’s what families and young people are saying with increasing frequency and vehemence. Many young people and families feel trapped in schools they need for childcare reasons, but in which they have little faith that the institution of schooling really can help them change their own lives for the better.

I believe that the interests of the state and the institutions that populate the education industry and the more than half trillion dollar marketplace it creates — the testing industry, higher education, curriculum and teacher training firms, unions, districts and nonprofit reform organizations of all kinds — have diverged from the interests of individuals seeking economic opportunity, self determination and better lives.

Money, markets, and measurement have their place. They are important tools indeed. We should honor and use them. But they are far short of the deification their apostles’ demand of us, and before which we too readily sink to our knees. Only fools worship their tools. — Dee Hock, Birth of the Chaordic Age

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The things our education system does wrong are mostly done with the best of intentions, I hope. But the truth is, “Education 1.0” grew out of an industrial era worldview and it is a miracle it has done as well as it has — it was not designed with equitable outcomes in mind. I was open minded about NCLB at first because it was the first policy initiative that held schools and districts accountable for closing the achievement gap. It hasn’t and it won’t in its current form. As recent studies have consistently shown, the number of students not finishing high school furnishes strong evidence of massive system inadequacy.

The net effect is that more and more young people—whether they are dropouts or not—increasingly see high school as a waste of their time. At least, that is what high school students are saying. The things they care about, educators don’t really measure: interest, curiosity, motivation and self-determination.

In all fairness, it’s not that we educators don’t want to measure the right thing (at least, most of us do); we just don’t know how to do it efficiently or effectively. Most teachers I know are distressed about the current deficit orientation of teaching and learning under NCLB, and many are considering new careers because they believe that NCLB is forcing them to do all the wrong things even if it is for the right reasons. Very few young teachers view K-12 teaching as a long-term profession today. Between the teacher and student dropouts, the coming budget crisis, the looming teacher shortage, and the growing “hope deficit,” NCLB could the “Silent Spring” of this generation.

A final thought…

I think our language confuses us. We say “we educate children,” but we really don’t. As we assert in our podcasts, “You can teach them but you cannot educate them – the learner must educate herself.” Despite dozens, perhaps hundreds, of studies on the learner motivation, it turns out that it’s the one thing the Education 1.0 does worst, and it’s the thing we must do best. That is why it is at the core of our vision of Education 2.0.

Consider the societal effect of “de-motivating” students. For one thing, it’s expensive:

Each year, about 120,000 students fail to get a diploma by age 20, according to the California Dropout Research Project, which on Wednesday released detailed recommendations for state lawmakers and educators. Each annual wave of dropouts costs the state $46.4 billion over their lifetimes because people without a high school diploma are the most likely to be unemployed, turn to crime, need state-funded medical care, get welfare and pay no taxes.

For another thing, acting as if motivation doesn’t matter is dehumanizing. As popular author Tom Rath writes in his book Strengths:

“Over the past decade, Gallup has surveyed more than 10 million people worldwide on the topic of employee engagement (or how positive and productive people are at work), and only one-third ‘strongly agree’ with the statement: At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.” He argues that workplaces and schools need to focus on discovering building upon people’s strengths rather than their deficits, saying, “You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are.”

Education is ultimately about who and what we become — as individuals, families, communities and global citizens. I wonder if we have the will to seize the moment that our concern over education offers us?

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

I look forward to your responses.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. ~Albert Einstein

I survived schooling with my curiosity intact probably because I found other things to think about most of the time. How do they get the lead inside of pencils? What is acoustic tile made of? The girl in the first row, second seat, I wonder what she is like? When a bird flies, does it feel like swimming? I was an expert daydreamer and took many mental field trips in school, and these sustained my interest despite the endless stream of unrelated and disconnected content that was junior and senior high school.

A handful of inspiring teachers punctuated my 16 years of formal and forgettable education from ages 5 to 21. Ms. Crabs taught me how to read Dr. Seuss in kindergarten. Mr. Mayer inspired an ordinary group of sixth graders to perform Shakespeare. Mr. Sogomonian converted our 8th grade social studies class every Friday into a simulation of the US court system complete with jury trials. Mr. Eberhart made us think about important things and love rigorous class discussions on life, love and literature. Each had an extraordinary impact on me for the relatively short amount of time I spent with them. And there were so few of them.

All shared a common gift: they somehow figured out how to leverage my curiosity and social proclivities — especially my competitiveness and need for approval — to get me to learn what they thought was important to teach. They turned a curriculum of answers into a curriculum of critically important questions that tapped into my curiosity and demanded answers.

To get through rest of my education (sadly, the vast majority of it), I learned the game of schooling, a largely social contest that I experienced as a competition for attention and approval. I wanted to win and be noticed. Mediocre teachers were smart enough to exploit those aspects of my personality to induce me to care about what they were teaching; and I did because I cared about what they thought about me (even if I didn’t care about the content) and I wanted the perks that came with being thought of as “a good student.” But that wasn’t really learning; I was being socialized to accept extrinsic rewards instead of intrinsic ones. I learned that curiosity and true inquiry was a thing that could only be pursued outside of the classroom.

Outside the classroom I was in charge, and there my curiosity blossomed. I educated myself for the most part, taking advantage of the people and places around me, limited as they might have been. In the late 50’s I learned how to catch halibut from the blind couple that fished every day on Southern California’s Balboa pier. In the early sixties I learned leadership and the value of hard work from my high school football coach. In the late sixties I volunteered as an English teacher in Hong Kong and learned how big the world is and how small I was in it. In the seventies I learned how to start and run a business when my pop band published a record. These types of experiences fueled my desire to learn and know.

Effective teachers seem to understand what is really important to each learner. They find what kindles a particular child’s curiosity and then leverage it to unleash and fan the flame of motivation in each individual. They concoct a unique brew of conditions that help each child discover who she is and what she wants to accomplish. However, the holy grail of teaching, I think, is to inspire, provoke and nurture the fire to learn in each child, and I keep wondering what good teachers could do if the learners were driving and the teachers had an entirely different context for learning. And that, of course, is the work that this blog is all about.

Again, in Einstein’s words: The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.

Children are born curious. It is our job, all of us — the families and adults who are responsible for guiding children into adulthood — to ensure that the flame is not extinguished.

It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. ~ Albert Einstein

In my next essay, I’ll take up the costs of distrust and why freedom must be learned and practiced in education.

Exploring YouTube has been a unique experience for an old codger like me. I am fascinated by the education-related material I am finding there created by both adults and youth. Take a look at these links and tell us what you think. Also, share whatever you find right here on our blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnh9q_cQcUE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73CQIM7ogs8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl2Ep3B5seg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic&feature=related

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEFKfXiCbLw&NR=1

We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
– Chief Seattle

Every child is part of a human network. The nature and extent of a child’s network — its structure, interaction and exchanges of non-monetary value between the people in it — shape what learning is possible and predict much about who a child can become. We can help children build better networks for themselves as they learn, but not without radical changes in the way we think about what education is, how it really happens, and the resources it really requires. When young people deeply understand and embrace their interdependence with all things, they take the first step towards creating a new future for themselves, and for all of us.

In our podcasts we propose a new approach to education and why we need it now. In Episode One we started with some observations about children and about adult behavior, things that would need to be incorporated into a new approach. We took a network perspective on how children build and manage networks of people who can support their transition into adulthood. We conclude by foreshadowing the design principles that we explore thoroughly in Episodes Two and Three.

In Episode Four we propose a new architecture, built on the purposes, values, and principles introduced in the first three podcasts. It shifts greater responsibility backed by increased support to families and learners. It proposes new tools to manage education investments and existing resources, both monetary and non-monetary in nature. Most of all it radically transforms the social contract, demanding that we be more honest about the family resource gap and, as a society, commit ourselves to make up the difference with individualized family contracts that leverage the good will and caring of the many people who could play a positive role in children’s lives, but don’t because of bureaucratic and cultural barriers. In Episode Five we offer an approach to putting such a system in place, outlining the domains of work that, unleashing mass energy, creativity, and collaboration, would be needed to make the change.

We are not naïve. We know we propose a preposterously difficult thing – education by direct democracy and a major shift from paternalistic government control (a.k.a., “representative democracy”) towards higher expectations for all, a redefinition of optimal resources, and a shift of power to learners and families. Yet we think there is yearning in this country and in the world for an approach to education that acknowledges that its ultimate outcomes are people — human beings that are curious, creative, productive, ethical and committed to improving conditions for all of humanity.

Even a cursory look at global indicators of quality of life shows that our current mode of living is unsustainable. The gap between haves and have-nots grows wider, and instability and insecurity grow commensurately. However, the old constructs of rich vs. poor, developed vs. underdeveloped, right vs. left, you vs. me — these simplistic ways of seeing things won’t solve our current challenges. We can look to the example of the South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions as an example of a different approach to solving the intractable conflicts of our time, and to healing from the effects of injustice and oppression — an approach that holds at its core the inescapable principle of interdependence. Educator bell hooks sums it up well when she writes:

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

bell hooks

bell hooks’ question is one we are trying to answer. Education seems like a good place to start.

After five years of No Child Left Behind data trends show that its ambitious goals will not be met by 2014. Several well-respected leaders have been saying publicly that the emperor has no clothes, as did recently resigned San Diego City Schools Superintendent Carl Cohn when he said, “I believe there is a place where no child is left behind, where all children achieve grade-level proficiency and there is no achievement gap. It is called heaven.”

What happens when NCLB falls far short of its goals? Will that create a new opportunity to rethink education completely, or will the policy pendulum just swing a little bit back to the left?

The reality is that schooling is losing out to the street, computer games, online networks, cell phones, and iPods in the competition for student interest and motivation. While charter schools have begun to capture significant enrollment in some urban cities (nearly 20% in Oakland where I live), on the whole, charter schools have not proven themselves demonstrably superior in the aggregate. Meanwhile higher education has become unaffordable even for middle class families, and it has a higher drop out rate than high schools.

Working from the inside to redesign a dysfunctional urban district has convinced me that the current system is obsolete — from the way education is measured and managed to the way it’s governed and financed.

The US system of public education emerged at the beginning of the 20th Century and has changed little since then. Despite incremental improvement over the last fifty years, K-12 education has demonstrated that it cannot meet the current demand for highly proficient, ethical and productive global citizens who can learn rapidly and effectively in the face of the high stakes social, economic and political challenges of the 21st century.

Our education system today was designed to complement a traditional social structure within industrial economy, neither of which exist today, an era of global economies, new technologies and dramatic demographic changes. As scholar and researcher Martin Haberman writes: Schools [and districts] are places organized on the bizarre expectation that groups of children and youth of the same age “learn” at roughly the same rate and in the same ways. Schools organized on the basis of age-grades are an American cultural and historic phenomenon that have not only survived but thrived (1/2 trillion dollars per year, 54 million children in 15,000 districts over four hundred years) and will not be transformed simply because their assumptions reflect neither the realities of student growth and socialization nor any research or theory of human development. Schools reflect what America wants not what America needs.

Many Americans do know that we need something different and we need it now — but there is no consensus on what or how. Unfortunately, our education system is representative of the mostly hierarchical public and private institutions that exist today — entities where the principle of organizational and individual self-interest prevails over the principle of caring for individuals and communities and the people they serve.

I think the world is ready for an evolutionary leap in how humans organize themselves to work for the public good and individual freedom. I think education is a good place to start.

Mario enters kindergarten and within the first few months the school tells his parents he is “behind” and “not on grade level.” Mario comes from a working class family of loving parents with very limited resources. Like many children entering school in the NCLB era, Mario is behind before he starts. What’s wrong with this picture?

In early December several news sources published excerpts from The Family: America’s Smallest School written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley of Education Testing Service’s Policy Information Center. The report analyzes the family and home experiences and conditions that impact children’s learning. The study identified four factors that strongly affect student achievement and which together “account for about two-thirds of the large differences among states in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) eighth-grade reading scores.” They are: “single parent families, time spent reading to children, time watching TV, and the frequency of school absences.”

One of the report’s main conclusions is that “the resources available at home — books, magazines, newspapers, a home computer, a quiet place to study — can have a lasting influence on a child’s ability to achieve academically.” Perhaps this is revelatory for ETS, but it shouldn’t be news for any family or teacher with struggling learners. And it is a pinhole view of a much larger landscape of challenges.

We keep studying a fact that we already know, but ignore repeatedly: the family and community resources (money, time, people, learning opportunities and daily conditions) to which learners have access outside of school determine much of what is possible for learners in school. This is why Mario, no matter how hard he works, is statistically likely to fall further behind his more privileged peers the longer he stays in school.

Countless studies have affirmed the positive outcomes for children when families involve themselves actively in their children’s education inside and outside of schools. Yet our system — the social contract for education — has not been able to address the changing nature of families and communities, economic opportunities, and generally higher expectations for learning in the world we now live in.

The real resource gap is not so much about what schools don’t have, but what families and children can’t provide or create for themselves because they lack the time, the knowledge, the resources or the community of support. Our education system today was designed to complement a traditional, two-parent family-based social structure within an industrial economy and homogeneous communities, none of which exist today, an era of global economies, new technologies and dramatic demographic changes. Unless we get beyond the four walls of the classroom and realize that education is happening all the time, we will not see clearly what we need to do to address this challenge.

That is why are proposing — as part of a new social contract for education — to reframe equity as addressing the resource gap for families and individual learners.

To learn more this download Podcast 2 from the right column of our home page.

By Steve Jubb

As a former coach, classroom teacher, mentor, father and grandfather with 40 years immersed in teaching and learning from children and youth, I remain frustrated that the education establishment does not better understand the central role of motivation in learning and why it is critical that we carefully cultivate it. Here are just three of the many reasons, from a global perspective to a pragmatic one.

1. We made a mess of the world and our children will have to do a better job than we did cleaning it up. It will take a lot of people caring enough to do the innovating, problem solving, creative thinking and hard work to turn things around. The messes will get bigger before they get smaller. (Click here to see for yourself.)
2. Many, if not most, of the jobs our children will do in the future haven’t been invented yet. In fact, many will invent their own jobs. (Click here if you didn’t know that. ) How are we preparing them to shape that unpredictable future?
3. We spend billions throwing answers at the heads of students who have asked no questions (or at least not the ones we want to or can answer). A learner’s motivation to learn is the most influential factor in learning efficiency. Yet it is at best an after thought in the public discourse on education policy and spending.

I hear many adults say kids just aren’t motivated to learn in school any more as if it reflected some mutation in their genes or some organic deficiency in their families and communities. But have you ever seen a toddler unmotivated to walk, talk or learn how take all the pots out of your kitchen cabinet? Have you not seen youth bent in rapt concentration over their iPods and iPhones, or networking with their iFriends on Facebook? Now there are some motivated kids!

The problem is that kids just aren’t that motivated to learn in school! Here, click this link and go back for a refresher course. Read my colleague Herb Childress’ “Seventeen Reasons Why Football Is Better Than High School” written a decade ago. (And you won’t ever need to ask me why I played football in high school and college.)

Humans are programmed to learn; it is our evolutionary advantage. Curiosity is innate, located firmly in the physiology of our brain and the hunger for experience that drives human behavior from birth. Learning is what we innately do, and what we do determines whom we become.

As Aristotle is oft quoted to have said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” It follows then that education isn’t only about freedom and curiosity. It is also a process of learning to constraining our natural impulses — learning the rules, procedures and norms that limit freedom but help us be together in the world, and, ironically, help make us more free. As blues guitarist B.B. King said, “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”

A learner learns better when he knows how knowledge is created through disciplined inquiry, experimentation and observation. He has to figure out how to live, love and work within interdependent networks. He has know that he can work hard now for something better later. These constraints make the learner more powerful in the end.

As a learner grows older and pursues her perceived interests and passions, navigating the constraints imposed by other people’s interests and passions, the adults responsible for her learning currently tend to err more frequently on the side of the constraints. It is a reaction to scale, complexity and insecurity, I think, and perhaps to the unintended consequences of our historical choices. Consider the national trend in secondary schools to put two or three thousand middle school or high school aged children in a single physical space, for example. Having done that we have little choice but to deal with crowd control issues and the regulation of behavior as a prerequisite to learning rather than learning self regulation as an integral part of securing real value from the teaching and learning exchange.

Or maybe it is precisely because children are our future that we don’t let them lead the way — we focus more on control and conformity than nurturing the unique spirit and individual creativity that every child possesses because that’s much harder and more costly to do. It requires more and different resources (time, energy, relationships, caring) than we currently are willing to commit to children. Maybe our fear of what society is becoming compels us to exert ever greater control over what young people say, do, learn and think — a pretty fruitless approach I think. Whatever the cause, the longer kids stay in school the more boring and ineffective their learning there becomes.

But our children defy us — and they do become what they repeatedly do, as they get older doing it more and more outside the influence of positive adult communities. We’re better off giving them many more opportunities to do repeatedly the things that add value to their communities, themselves and to others. Guiding learners to participate fully in economic, civic, social and (now) global life in the company of adults is the best teacher of constraints and the best way to develop and maintain the motivation to learn. As author James Baldwin wrote, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

The voices of children and young people are invisible in the debates about No Child Left Behind and the future of education funding and policy. We adults seem so sure that we have their best interests at heart as we debate the merits of managed instruction, charter schools, vouchers, choice and all manner of piecemeal policies. But we miss the point.

Young people need to learn how by building their own networks of people through the exchange of authentic (mostly non-monetary) value. However, we have confined our children — with all the best of intentions — in a system that defers (until a young person’s mid-twenties) the freedoms and responsibilities of adulthood.

How can we expect our children learn only in schools? Modern schools are more often an environment carefully segregated from the experiences of real life — experiences that teach a person how to become an ethical and competent adult because they get to practice, undertaking the task of creating for others, and receiving in return, value for their work and the products of their creative interests. It is no wonder so many have become so passive within the context of school, and so under prepared for the requirements of adult life in a complex world.

Children are people now. They will help us change the world if we let them and expect them to do it.

“Take care of your family first, but then reach out to your neighbor, your block, your city, your country. Everybody wants change, but they want it to come by way of somebody else… If you wait for the government, you’ll wait a long time.”

Actor Edward James Olmos (1947- )

In my family we read National Geographic. We’ve been subscribers for at least three decades. As a child I was deeply attracted to the incredible photos and stories of places I could hardly imagine existed. A yellow bus would take me and my elementary school mates to the library every other week. My first stop was the magazine rack, where I eagerly awaited each new yellow trimmed issue.

I drove by my school again this summer. Edison Elementary has become Nia Educational Charter School. Everything changes.

With that in mind I picked up the most recent National Geographic and read Bill McKibben’s article on carbon dioxide emissions and its effect on global temperatures. I was fascinated by the math and the creative way he used data to help the reader think about possible courses of action. It connected to something that is core to our proposal— the idea that the future is uncertain in part because we can influence it.

In his graph he showed the effects of various CO2 reduction strategies, and the consequences of doing nothing. I imagined that one could portray the gap between what we learn and do now with what we’ll need to know and do in the future to successfully mitigate the consequeces of CO2 emissions.

In conclusion McKibben writes:

In the end, global warming presents the greatest test we humans have yet faced. Are we ready to change, in dramatic and prolonged ways, in order to offer a workable future to subsequent generations and diverse forms of life? If we are, new technologies and new habits offer some promise. But only if we move quickly and decisively–and with a maturity we’ve rarely shown as a society or a species. It’s our coming-of-age moment, and there are no certainties or guarantees. Only a window of possibility, closing fast but still ajar enough to let in some hope.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-10/carbon-crisis/carbon-crisis.html

I wonder how many things we can substitute for “global warming” in that paragraph and still have it ring true?

One of the key questions that we keep hearing from you and others concerns learner autonomy in the social and institutional architecture we are proposing. Parents especially often feel young people have too much autonomy already–they want to know what will guide or constrain an autonomous learner’s choices.

It is interesting that the idea of learner autonomy triggers so much attention while the other constraining principles we have proposed are rarely questioned. So, without writing a master’s thesis on the subject, let me see if I can clarify what we are proposing.

Think of an accomplished adult we know — lets call her Sara. She lives within a network of relationships with people, communities and institutions that she has created for herself. She has a job, a college degree perhaps—she likes hiking and camping, hip hop dance, and spoken word concerts. She has people that she loves and cares about, people that care about her in return. She volunteers as a mentor of a young girl, Carina, who is 11 and struggling in school.

Sara’s only contractual commitment is the only one that pays her money: her job. In every case, other her choices are guided by her goals and her pursuit of value (or meaning, which is another expression of value). Her commitments are voluntary. Her network has a structure that gives her power and access to what she needs–in her case it is a robust network that gives her a lot of choices and opportunities.

What constrains Sara’s choices and guides her behavior? In order to get what she needs or wants, Sara offers value in exchange for the value she receives — value of one kind or another. For example, mentoring Carina satisfies her deeply felt desire to make the world better somehow. Carina gets a powerful role model and advocate (and trips to interesting places) in exchange. Their interactions over time are shaped by these exchanges, creating a powerful relationship–it persists over time and can be accessed as needed. More importantly, the expectations that these two have of one another constrain the choices they make.

When Sara is invited to a party she declines because she has already committed to take Carina to a local dance event. Sara has a relationship with Carina’s teachers and her parents. When Carina thinks about skipping school with friends now, her strong bond with Sara–and the specter of Sara’s disappointment and the other people it would impact (transparency)—gives her strong motivation to make a different choice (internal accountability).

Before there were schools most children participated communities of value and practice to learn and develop. Apprenticeship was the dominant learning paradigm in most communities — learning a trade or how to be an adult by participating in multi-generational communities with rights of passage connected to demonstrations of the learner’s ability to produce value for others and take up the rights and responsibilities of a full community member. When we speak of the learner’s network, think of it as another way to describe a child’s nascent community. Now apply the design principles:

1. AUTONOMY increases the power of the learner
2. OPENNESS increases access to resources available
3. INTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY increases the significance and impact of relationships
4. REAL-WORLD RELEVANCE authentically connects the learner to the real world
5. TRANSPARENCY allows learners to see available resources and evaluate potential exchanges with better information
6. CHOICE allows the learner to select resources aligned to her purpose and learning style

Think about how these principles together shape what a learner might chose or not chose to do with their autonomy.

So what guides or constrains the learner’s autonomy? You know the answer: the same things that guide or constrain yours, with one caveat: children need to be treated as apprentices who need appropriate challenges and supports as they become adults.

I think the most radical thing we are proposing is a new social structure for learning, and ultimately, new approaches to building learning communities that are interconnected and sustainable into adulthood.

Now its your turn–what would your vision be of these design principles in action? What do you believe would or should constrain learner autonomy?