New Work. New World.
New Education. The
Three Must Meet.
Tom Peters/09.16.2004
All Slides Available at …
tompeters.com
1. Work Will Never
Be the Same!
108 X 5
vs.
8 X 1*
* 540 vs. 8 (-98.5%)
And Now the Equivalent …
White Collar
Revolution!
“A bureaucrat is an
expensive
microchip.”
Dan Sullivan, consultant and
executive coach
2. Welcome to an
Age of Selfdetermination!
Anne Busquet/ American Express
Not: “Age of the Internet”
“Age of
Customer
Control”
Is:
The control revolution. The
potentially monumental shift in
control from institutions to
individuals made possible by new
technology such as the Internet.
Source: Introduction, The Control Revolution,
Andrew Shapiro
“The Web enables total
transparency. People with
access to relevant information are
beginning to challenge any type of
authority. The stupid, loyal and
humble customer, employee, patient
or citizen is dead.”
Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale,
Funky Business
Message: We are on the
cusp of a “People’s
[customer/ patient/ citizen/ etc.]
Revolution.”
“Hyperlinks subvert
hierarchy!”
The Cluetrain Manifesto
“HR Employee
Self-Service/
ESS”
John Pask/IHRIM
*Business to Employee (IHRIM.link)
“Systems supporting one-toone employee relationships
will add competitive
advantage.” “Employees
expect far more access and
control over their own
information.”
Source: IHRIM.link (2-3.200)
“Managing Benefits:
Let Workers Do It”
Source: Headline, Money & Medicine, New
York Times (12.06.00); cited are specialist
companies such as eBenX and Vivius
of Minneapolis
“Human resource management (HRM) systems
will begin to look more like customer
relationship management (CRM) systems—
where we must know as much about our people
(existing and future) as we do about our
customers.”
“Applications in the future will be much more
personalizable. Every user will have a
customized way of working with their
information. There will be more of a self-learning
and intuitive model than we have today.”
Source: IHRIM Journal (12.2000)
“A seismic shift is underway in
healthcare. The Internet is
delivering vast knowledge and new
choices to consumers – raising their
expectations and, in many cases,
handing them the controls.
[Healthcare] consumers are driving
radical, fundamental change.”
Deloitte Research, “Winning the Loyalty
of the eHealth Consumer”
“We expect consumers to
move into a position of
dominance in the early
years of the new century.”
Dean Coddington, Elizabeth Fischer, Keith
Moore & Richard Clarke, Beyond Managed Care
Corporate Resistance to “It”
“It all goes back to fear of
losing control!”
The Cluetrain Manifesto
How Dare They!
“Surfing the net is new route to
college: But counselors fear
that some students will pick
schools with little guidance”
Headline, p1A, USA Today, 10.03.00
3. We Take
Charge II: Brand You
Rules!
“If there is nothing
very special about
your work, no matter how
hard you apply yourself you
won’t get noticed, and that
increasingly means you won’t
get paid much either.”
Michael Goldhaber, Wired
2010 “Demographics”:
By 2010, full-time
workers will be in the
minority
Source: MIT study (28August2000)
New World of Work
< 1 in 10 F500
#1: Manpower Inc.
Freelancers/I.C.: 16M-25M
Temps: 3M (incl. CEOs & lawyers)
Microbusinesses: 12M-27M
Total: 31M-55M
Source: Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation
Taylorism to
Tailorism: “Free
Agency is the real
new economy!”
Source: Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation
“The fundamental unit of the new economy is not
the corporation, but the individual. Tasks aren’t
assigned and controlled through a stable chain of
command but are carried out autonomously by
e-lancers
independent contractors - who
join together in fluid and temporary networks to
sell goods and services. When the job is done, the
network dissolves and its members become
independent again, circulating through the
economy, seeking the next assignment.”
Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher
Message:
Distinct …
or
Extinct
“You are the
storyteller of your
own life, and you
can create your own
legend or not.”
Isabel Allende
4. EduK80
(Education, K-80)
“My ancestors were
printers in Amsterdam from
1510 or so until 1750, and
during that entire time
they didn’t have to learn
anything new.”
Peter Drucker, Business 2.0 (08.22.00)
“The average knowledge worker
will outlive the average employing
organization. This is the first time
in history that’s happened. … So
the center of gravity of higher
education is shifting from the
education of the young to the
continuing education of adults.”
Peter Drucker, Business 2.0 (08.22.00)
“Knowledge becomes obsolete
incredibly fast. The
continuing professional
education of adults is the
No. 1 industry in the next 30
years … mostly on line.”
Peter Drucker,
Business 2.0 (22August2000)
REQUISITE ATTITUDE2001: “You must realize that
how you invest your human capital matters as much as
how you invest your financial capital. Its rate of return
determines your future options. Take a job for
what it teaches you, not for what it pays.
Instead of a potential employer asking,
‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years?’
you’ll ask, ‘If I invest my mental assets with
you for 5 years, how much will they
appreciate? How much will my portfolio of
career options grow?’ ”
Stan Davis & Christopher Meyer, futureWEALTH
5. Why Does
Business Abhor
Training?
3 Weeks in May
“Training” & Prep: 187
“Work”: 41
(“Other”: 17)
1%
vs.
367%
Divas do it. Violinists do it.
Sprinters do it. Golfers do it.
Pilots do it. Soldiers do it.
Surgeons do it. Cops do it.
Astronauts do it. Why don’t
businesspeople do it
[very much]?
T/D > 1.0
“We”
are not
serious!
Conclusion:
HR Folks: YOU – not
“marketing” - “OWN”
THE “BRAND
PROMISE”!
(If you wish.)
Titles!
Manager
Human Capital
Assets or Manager
Manager HRIS to
Employee Marketing*
*IHRIM.link (2-3.201)
6. Independence
Rules (Redux)!
Beware Lurking HR Types …
One size
NEVER fits all.
One size fits
one. Period.
48 Players =
48 Projects =
48 different success
measures
“Learn not
to be
careful”
Photographer Diane Arbus to her students
(Careful = The sidelines, per Harriet Rubin in The Princessa)
The NAESP …
Attributes of Those Who “Made” the 10th
Grade History Book
– Committed!
– Determined to make a difference!
– Focused!
– Passionate!
– Irrational about their life’s project!
– Ahead of their time / Paradigm busters!
– Impatient! / Action Obsessed
Attributes of Those Who “Made” the 10th Grade
History Book
–Made lots of people mad!
–Flouted the chain of command!
–Creative / Quirky / Peculiar! / Rebels! /
Irreverent!
–Masters of improv / Thrive on chaos
/ Exploit chaos!
Attributes of Those Who “Made” the 10th Grade
History Book
–Forgiveness > Permission
–Bone honest!
–Flawed as the dickens!
– “In touch” with their followers’
aspirations
–Damn good at what they do!
7. Losing the
War to Bismarck
J. D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board
“In our dreams people
yield themselves with
perfect docility to our
molding hands. … The task is simple.
(1915):
We will organize children and teach them in a
perfect way the things their fathers and mothers
are doing in an imperfect way.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
“Schools were designed by Horace Mann, E.I. Thorndike, and
others to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass
Schools are intended to
produce, through the application of
formulas, formulaic human beings
whose behavior can be predicted and
controlled. To a very great extent, schools succeed in
population.
doing this. But in a society that is increasingly fragmented, in
which the only genuinely successful people are independent, selfreliant, and individualistic, the products of school and ‘schooling’
are irrelevant.”
A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto
“My wife and I went to a [kindergarten] parentteacher conference and were informed that our
budding refrigerator artist, Christopher, would be
receiving a grade of Unsatisfactory in art. We
were shocked. How could any child—let alone
our child—receive a poor grade in art at such a
young age? His teacher informed us that he
had refused to color within the lines, which
was a state requirement for demonstrating
‘grade-level motor skills.’ ”
Jordan Ayan, AHA!
“How many artists are there in the room? Would you please raise
your hands. FIRST GRADE: En mass the children leapt from their
seats, arms waving. Every child was an artist. SECOND GRADE:
About half the kids raised their hands, shoulder high, no higher.
The hands were still. THIRD GRADE: At best, 10 kids out of 30
would raise a hand, tentatively, self-consciously. By the time I
reached SIXTH GRADE, no more than one or two kids raised their
hands, and then ever so slightly, betraying a fear of being
Every
school I visited was was participating
in the suppression of creative genius.”
identified by the group as a ‘closet artist.’ The point is:
Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
“The main crisis
in school today
is irrelevance.”
Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation
“Our education system is a
second-rate, factory-style
organization, pumping out
obsolete information in obsolete
ways. [Schools] are simply not
connected to the future of the kids
they’re responsible for.”
Alvin Toffler, Business 2.0 (09.00)
8. In Need of that
“White Collar
Revolution”
J. D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board
“In our dreams people
yield themselves with perfect
docility to our molding hands. …
(1915):
The task is simple. We will organize
children and teach them in a perfect way
the things their fathers and mothers are
doing in an imperfect way.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
Milwaukee: $6,951
per
student. Central
administration: $3,481.
Instruction: $1,647.
A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto (Research reported in Education Update, Fall 1990)
9. An Unnatural
Way to “Learn”
“Every time I pass a
jailhouse or school, I
feel sorry for the
people inside.”
Jimmy Breslin, 07.11.2001, on “summer school”
in NYC [“If they haven’t learned in the winter, what are they
going to remember from days when they should be swimming?”]
“The time bomb in every
classroom is that
students learn
exactly what they
are taught.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
“What [standardized tests]
actually measure is the
tractability of the student,
and this they do quite
accurately. Is it of value to know
who is docile and who is not? You tell
me.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
“Schoolteachers aren’t allowed
to do what they think best for
each student. Harnessed to a
collectivized regimen, they soon give
up thinking seriously about students
as one-of-a-kind individuals,
regardless of what they may wish were
true.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
“The best evidence that our schools are set up to ‘school’
and not be usefully educationally lies in the look of the
Rooms with no
clocks, no telephones, no fax
machines, no stamps, no envelopes,
no maps, no directories, no private
space in which to think, no
conference tables on which to confer.
rooms where we confine kids.
Rooms in which there isn’t any real way to contact the
outside world where life is going on.”
A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto
“It is absurd and anti-life to be compelled
to sit in confinement with people of exactly
the same age and social class. This cuts
children off from the immense diversity of life and the
synergy of variety. … It is absurd and anti-life to move
from cell to cell at the sound of a gong every day of
your natural youth in an institution that allows you no
privacy. … In centuries past, children and adolescents
would spend their time in real work, real charity, real
adventures, and in the search for mentors who might
teach them what they really wanted to learn.”
A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto
“I discovered the brutally simple
motivation behind the
development and imposition of all
systematic instructional programs
and tests – a lack of trust that
teachers can teach and that
children can learn.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
“It is an inescapable reality that
students learn at different rates in
different ways. That creates the
need for a schedule of sensitivity
that only teachers close to the
particular student can devise – not
some theory-driven, central-office,
computer-managed schedule.”
Ted Sizer
Schools’ “Kafka-like rituals”: “enforce sensory
deprivation on classes of children held in
featureless rooms … sort children into rigid
categories by the use of fantastic measures such as
age-grading, or standardized test scores … train
children to drop whatever they are occupied with
and to move as a body from room to room at the
sound of a bell, buzzer, horn, or klaxon … keep
children under constant surveillance, depriving
them of private time and space …
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
Kafka-like rituals (cont.): “assign children
numbers constantly, feigning the ability to
discriminate qualities quantitatively … insist
that every moment of time be filled with lowlevel abstractions … forbid children their own
discoveries, pretending to possess some vital
secret to which children must surrender their
active learning time to acquire.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
“[One factor contributing to widespread
teacher dissatisfaction] is the extremely
shallow nature of intellectual enterprise in
schools. Ideas are broken into fragments
called subjects, subjects into units,
units into sequences, sequences into
lessons, lessons into homework, and all
these prefabricated pieces make a
classroom teacherproof.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
Ted Sizer, on the “logic” of high
schools: “If we spend more
than a day on the Bill of
Rights, we can’t get to
Grover Cleveland before
Valentine’s Day.”
“We interrupt classes with public
address system announcements,
utterly forgetting that Hamlet’s
soliloquy may lose something from
the interjection of information
about where the cheerleaders
should meet after school.”
Ted Sizer
“We parade adolescents before
snippets of time. Any one teacher will
usually see more than 10 students and
often more than 160 in a day. Such a
system denies teachers the
chance to know many students
well, to learn how a particular
student’s mind works.”
Ted Sizer
“The myth is that learning
can be guaranteed if instruction
is delivered systematically,
one small piece at a time, with
frequent tests to ensure
that students and teachers
stay on task.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
“A substantial amount of testimony
exists from highly regarded scientists
like [Nobel laureate] Richard Feynman,
Albert Einstein, and many others, that
scientific discovery is negatively
related to the procedures of
school science classes.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
Messenger: “The mind is a machine, but a virtual
machine. A system of systems. …”
Helen: “Perhaps it isn’t a system at all.”
Messenger: “Oh, but it is. … If you’re a scientist, you
have to start with that assumption.”
Helen: “I suspect that’s why I dropped science at
school as soon as they let me.”
Messenger: “No,
you dropped it, I would
guess, because it was doled out to
you in spoonfuls of distilled
boredom.”
David Lodge, Thinks …
But Are They Being Taught to
Think?
“Students who receive
honor grades in college-level
physics are frequently unable to
solve basic problems encountered
in a form slightly different from the
one in which they have been
formally instructed and tested.”
From MIT & JHU:
Howard Gardner, Unschooled Minds
10. Higgins
Knew!
“Andrew Higgins , who built landing craft in WWII,
He
believed that they only teach you what
you can’t do in engineering school. He
refused to hire graduates of engineering schools.
started off with 20 employees, and by the middle of the
war had 30,000 working for him. He turned out 20,000
landing craft. D.D. Eisenhower told me, ‘Andrew
Higgins won the war for us. He did it without
engineers.’ ”
Stephen Ambrose/Fast Company
11. Doing Stuff
that Matters!
“Education, at best, is
ecstatic.
At its best, its most
unfettered, the moment of learning is a moment
of delight. This essential and obvious truth is
demonstrated for us every day by the baby and
the preschool child. … When joy is absent, the
effectiveness of the learning process falls and
falls until the human being is operating
hesitantly, grudgingly, fearfully.”
George Leonard, Education and Ecstasy [1968]
“Children learn what
makes
sense to them; they learn through
the sense of things they
want to understand.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
Per George Miller:
Children as
“informavores,” who
“eat up new
knowledge.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
“During the first years of
life, youngsters all over
the world master a
breathtaking array of
competences with little
formal tutelage.”
Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind
“The goal of the child is to develop,
and he is intrinsically motivated
toward that goal with an intensity
unequalled in all of creation.
… [Children] appeared immensely pleased,
peaceful and rested after the most
strenuous concentration on tasks they had
freely chosen to do. All destructive
behavior … had disappeared.”
Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori: A Modern Approach
“Her approach to children in the
classroom could be summed up by
one word—respect. She accorded them
the dignity, trust and patience that would
be given to someone embarked on the
most serious of endeavors and who was, at
the same time, endowed with the potential
and desire to achieve his goal. … She was
constantly in a listening state.”
Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori: A Modern Approach
“He cannot stand still; he is
impelled toward conquest. … The
child seeks no assistance in his
work. He must accomplish it by
himself. … The essential thing is
for the task to arouse such an
interest that it engages the
child’s entire personality.”
Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori: A Modern Approach
“ ‘Schooling’ takes place in an environment
controlled by others. … ‘Education’
describes efforts largely selfinitiated for the purpose of taking
charge of your life wisely and living
in a world you understand. The
educated state is a complex tapestry woven
of broad experience, grueling
commitments, and substantial risk taking.”
A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto
“We underrate our brains and our intelligence.
Formal education has become such a
complicated, self-conscious, and over-regulated
activity that learning is widely regarded as
something difficult that the brain would rather
not do. … Such a belief is probably well-founded
if the teachers are referring to their efforts to
keep children moving through the instructional
sequences that are prescribed as ‘learning
activities’ in school. … We are all capable of
huge and unsuspected learning
accomplishments without effort.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
“Each of us has a design
problem to solve: to create
from the raw material around us
the curriculum for a good life. It
isn’t easy, and it isn’t the same
for any two people.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
Mary Foley, homeschooling mother of four, Cape
Cod: “If we are not free to educate our children, liberty
is an illusion. I do not have a curriculum. The state does
not have the power to standardize children. My method
has been successful enough to produce a daughter who
is a member of the National Honor Society and twin sons
who tested in the top one percent on a national
placement test for two consecutive years. The
priorities of our curriculum are daydreaming,
natural and social sciences, self-discipline,
respect of self and others, and making mistakes.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
“I want to give you a yardstick, a gold standard, by
which to measure good schooling. The Shelter Institute
in Bath, Maine, will teach you how to build a three
thousand square-foot, multi-level Cape Cod home in
three weeks’ time, whatever your age. If you stay
another week, it will show you how to make your own
posts and beams; you’ll actually cut them out and set
them up. You’ll learn wiring, plumbing, insulation, the
works. Twenty thousand people have learned to build a
house there for about the cost of one month’s tuition in
public school.”
John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
“The most extraordinary result was the
unanimity and conviction with which boys and
girls—aged 8 to 11—called for a broader
curriculum, with much more science, history,
geography, history, art, craft, woodwork,
electronics, cooking and technology. They
wanted, above all, more work which allowed
them to think for themselves, to
experiment, to engage in
first-hand observation.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
“Learning is
never divorced
from feelings.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
The Learner’s Manifesto
The brain is always learning.
Learning does not require coercion.
Learning must be meaningful.
Learning is incidental.
Learning is collaborative.
The consequences of worthwhile learning
are obvious.
Learning always involves feelings.
Learning must be free of risk.
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
James Coleman, 1974: “Develop
in youth the capabilities for
engaging in intense
concentrated involvement in
an activity.”
Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Barbara Schneider,
Becoming Adult
“What we want to see is
the child in pursuit of
knowledge, and not
knowledge in pursuit of
the child.” —George Bernard Shaw
“While not every child will develop interests as
fascinating as Darwin’s, without the enthusiasm that
leads to intense, concentrated activity, a child will
likely lack the perseverance needed to face the future
successfully. We may not know what jobs will be
available to young people ten years from now. … But
to the extent that teenagers have had experiences
that demand discipline, require the skillful use
of mind and body, and give them a sense of
responsibility and involvement with useful
goals, we might expect the youth of today to be ready
to face the challenges of tomorrow.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Barbara Schneider, Becoming Adult
“Growing up to be a happy adult gets more and
more difficult as occupational roles become
more vague and ephemeral. Young people can
no longer count on a predictable future and
cannot expect that a set of skills learned in
school will be sufficient to ensure a comfortable
career. For this reason, we need to take a
long look at the conditions that prepare
youth for a changing, uncertain future.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Barbara Schneider, Becoming Adult
Gatto’s Lab School
ONE. Independent Study. A day out of
the school building, chasing ONE BIG
IDEA. TWO. Apprenticeship. THREE.
Community Service, a day a week.
FOUR. Team up with parents, yours or
someone else’s, for Family Teamwork
Curriculum. FIVE. Class work.
Jamal Watson, 13, from Children’s Express Quarterly; from John
Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher
Gardner’s MI7: Linguistic,
Logical-mathematical,
Spatial, Musical,
Bodily-kinesthetic,
Interpersonal,
Intrapersonal.
“Actual content may not be the issue at all, since
we are really trying to impart the idea that one
can deal with new areas of knowledge if one
knows how to learn, how to find out about what
is known, and how to abandon old ideas when
they are worn out. This means teaching ways
of developing good questions rather than
memorizing known answers, an idea that
traditional schools simply don’t cotton to at
all, and that traditional testing methods are
unprepared to handle.”
Roger Schank, The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Mind
“Apprenticeships
& Projects” – Howard
Gardner
EBF*
to
EBI**
* Education By Fiat
** Education By Interest
“From the media, we hear these great tearjerker stories
of kids who succeeded despite the odds. But all of our
kids are instead facing the odds of an education
system that is all wrong. The odds are against them
because the system works against them instead of with
them. … I see it every day: kids who people have
dismissed as ‘dumb in math’ or ‘uninterested in
science’ or ‘nonreaders’ doing incredible things in
these exact same areas because they were (finally)
allowed to start with something they were already
interested in. A 9th-grade kid who ‘hates science’ sees a
movie about freezing people, then decides to read a
college biology text on cryogenics, and then gives a
presentation on it that blows your socks off.” —Dennis
Littky, The Big Picture
“When they tell the
story of their project,
they are irresistible to
admissions officers!”
Dennis Littky
“If we are to configure an education for the
world of tomorrow, we need to take the
lessons of the museum and the
relationship of the apprenticeship
extremely seriously. … to think of the
ways in which the strengths of a
museum atmosphere, of
apprenticeship learning, and of
engaging in projects can pervade all
educational environments.”
Howard Gardner, Unschooled Minds
“Questions, questions,
questions. They disturb. They
provoke. They exhilarate. They humiliate.
They make you feel a little bit like you’ve
at least temporarily lost your marbles. So
much so that at times I’m positive that the
ground is shaking and shifting under our
feet. Welcome to Socrates Café.
Christopher Phillips, Socrates Cafe
12. It’s all
About
Questions!
U.C. Ed Dean Walter Karp: “From the first grade
to the twelfth, from one coast to the other,
instruction in America’s classrooms is almost
Answers are
‘right’ and answers are
‘wrong,’ but mostly
answers are short.”
entirely dogmatic.
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
Richard Paul, Director, Center for
Critical Thinking: “We need to
shift the focus of learning from
simply teaching students to have
the ‘right answer,’ to teaching
them the process by which
educated people pursue
right answers.”
Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence
“Actual content may not be the issue at all, since
we are really trying to impart the idea that one
can deal with new areas of knowledge if one
knows how to learn, how to find out about what
is known, and how to abandon old ideas when
they are worn out. This means teaching ways
of developing
good questions rather
than memorizing known answers ,
an idea that traditional schools simply don’t
cotton to at all, and that traditional testing
methods are unprepared to handle.”
Roger Schank, The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Mind
TP/08.2001: The Three Most
Important Letters …
13. Tom’s
Edu3M
Manifesto*
*Manifesto for Education in the 3rd Millennium
Education3M
Learning is a normal state.
Children are learnavores.
Prodigious feats of learning are common as dirt.
[Watch an H.S. QB studying game film.]
We learn at different rates.
We learn in different ways.
Boys and girls learn [very] differently.
In a class of 25, there are 25 different trajectories.
Learning in 40-minutes blocks is bullshit.
Learning for tests is utterly insane.
There are numerous rigorous evaluation schemes,
of which testing is but one—and abnormal, by “real
world” standards.
Education3M
We learn most/fastest/most completely when we
are passionate about what we are learning and it
matters to us. [Salience rules!]
Think EBI/LBI: Education by Interest/Learning by
Internship.
Classrooms are abnormal places.
We need changes of pace. [Japanese recesses between
each class.]
International test scores are not correlated with
hours-per-year in class.
Big classes are slightly problematic. Big schools
suck. Period.
Education3M
“All this”—the right stuff—fits the NWW/New World
of Work hand-in-glove. [NWW = Age of Creativity.]
U.S. schools circa 2001 are a vestige of the
Prussian-Fordist model, more interested in shaping
behavior than stoking the fires of lifelong learning.
Cutting art-music budgets is truly dumb.
Learning is a matter of Intensity of Engagement, not
elapsed time. [Aargh: 11 minutes on the Battle of Gettysburg.]
Teachers need enough space-time-flexibility to get
to know kids as individuals.
Scientific discovery processes and the teaching of
science are utterly at odds. [Exploration vs. spoon-feeding.]
“Reform”3M: Losing
The War Against
Bismarck all Over
Again!
Education3M
Our toughest “learning achievement”—
mastering our native language—does not
require schools, or even competent parents. [It
does require a desperate need-to-know.]
Great teachers are great learners, not impartersof-knowledge.
Great teachers ask great questions—that launch
kids on lifelong quests.
The world is not about “right” & “wrong”
answers; it is about the pursuit of increasingly
sophisticated questions—just ask a ski
instructor or neurosurgeon.
Education3M
Most schools spend most of their time setting
up contexts in which kids learn not to like
particular subjects. [Evidence shows that such antilearning sticks!]
Vigorous exploration is normal … until you are
incarcerated in a school.
“Bite size” education-learning is neither
education nor learning.
Learning takes place rapidly on the cheerleading
squad, the football team, the school newspaper,
the drama club, at the after-class job--just not in
the hyper-structured classroom.
Education3M
The “school reform” “movement” is a giant step …
backwards … embracing the Prussian-Fordist
paradigm with renewed vigor—at exactly the
wrong time.
There are large numbers of superb schools, superb
principals, superb teachers; sadly, they not only fail
to infect the [largely timid] rest, but are ordinarily
supplanted by wusses & wimps.
Alas, the teaching profession does not ordinarily
attract “cool dudes & dudettes.”
Schools of “education” should by and large have
their charters revoked.
Education3M
“Education” must “develop in youth the
capabilities for engaging in intense concentrated
involvement in an activity.” [James Coleman, 1974.]
[Hint: It doesn’t.] [Hint: Understatement.]
Stability is dead; “education” must therefore
“educate” for an unknowable, ambiguous,
changing future; thence, learning to learn &
change is far more important than mastery of a
static body of “facts.” [Was the “War of the
Roses” really over roses? (1) I don’t remember.
(2) Not remembering has not been a handicap.]
Education3M
I never took a speech course.
Hemingway couldn’t spell.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
14. Bringing Out
the Best
My Education: People. (Damn few.)
Mrs. Landers. Mrs. Gaver. Miss
Churchill. Mr.
Chapin. Mr.
Hooper. Prof. Liang. Prof. White.
Capt. Anderson. Gene.
Allen. (Warren.) (Susan.)
They
made me fall in love.
They helped me
figure out who I was.
My “educators’ ” secrets:
Grameen Bank/Bangladesh
“It’s not people who aren’t creditworthy. It’s banks that aren’t
people worthy.”
$2.3B to 2.3M [typical 1st loan: $15.]
98% recovery rate [94% to women!]
1/3rd out of poverty; 1/3rd up to nonpoverty threshold
Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor
“The Grameen loan is
not simply cash. It
becomes a kind of ticket
to self-discovery and
self-exploration.”
Muhammad Yunus
Why Don’t Most Biz Mgrs. Think This Way?
“Coaching is
winning players
over.” *
Phil Jackson
*Not: “planning,” “implementing,” “clear communication,”
“getting the org chart right.”
Insights from 80,000 managers:
“People don’t change much.
“Don’t waste time trying to put in what
was left out.
“Try to draw out what was
left in. “That is hard
enough.”
Source: Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules:
What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
“Teaching is
listening.
Learning is
talking.”
—Message painted on a Met
advisor’s truck by his students (from Dennis Littky, The Big Picture)
“It was much later that I realized Dad’s
secret. He gained respect by giving it. He
talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids
in Spring Valley who shined shoes the
same way he talked and listened to a
bishop or a college president. He
was
seriously interested in who you
were and what you had to say.”
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect
“It is impossible to claim that all good teachers
use similar techniques: some lecture nonstop
and others speak very little; some stay close to
their material and others loose the imagination;
some teach with the carrot and others with the
stick. But in every instance, good teachers
share one trait: a strong sense of personal
identity infuses their work. ‘Dr. A is really
there when he teaches.’ ‘Mr. B has such
enthusiasm for his subject.’ ‘You can tell
that this is really Prof. C’s life.’ ”
Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach
“One student said she could not
describe her good teachers because
they differed so greatly, one from
another. But she could describe her
bad teachers because they were all
the same: ‘Their words float
somewhere in front of their faces, like
the balloon speech in cartoons.’ ”
Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach
Leaders Do Not “Transform People”!
Instead leaders-mentors-teachers (1) provide a
context which is marked by (2) access to a
luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities
(projects) which (3) allow people to fully express
their innate curiosity and (4) engage in a
vigorous discovery voyage by which those
people (5) go to-create places they (and their
mentors-teachers-leaders) had never dreamed
existed. And then the leaders-mentors-teachers
(6) applaud like hell, stage “photo-ops,” and
ring the church bells100 times to commemorate
the bravery of their “followers’ ” explorations!
Explore!*
*Damn It!
Objections
Focus on elite students.
Caricature education “reformers.”
Underrate the # of “good” reformers.
Overrate schools’ & teachers’
capability for fixing themselves.
Underrate communities/ parents/
societal impact (“the schools we
deserve”).