| Text by Bill Gates and others To participate in a debate over the future of education and how the US will respond to globalization, we need a common vocabulary. See the speeches below. What should they teach in schools? What should schools teach? What should students learn? |
| Comments by Bill Gates and others Your comments are welcomed... Visit the FILM See JOBS speech Excerpts from books by Dan PINK Education (pinkschool) A Whole New Mind whatpin mind Who is a Free Agent? (Profiles) whatfree |
| READ the responses... What should they teach in schools? 1 2 3 4 5 6 What could a film look like to discuss these issues? |
Some of the texts that are important for understanding the challenges of globalization are Bill Gates Thomas Friedman Pink ================== Speech to a Conference about High Schools, May 2005 By Bill Gates Thank you for that kind introduction. I also want to thank you, Governor Warner, and your fellow governors, for your leadership in hosting this education summit on America’s high schools. It is rare to bring together people with such broad responsibilities and focus their attention on one single issue. But if there is one single issue worth your focused attention – it is the state of America’s high schools. Many of us here have stories about how we came to embrace high schools as an urgent cause. Let me tell you ours. Everything Melinda and I do through our foundation is designed to advance equity. Around the world, we believe we can do the most by investing in health – especially in the poorest countries. Here in America, we believe we can do the most to promote equity through education. A few years ago, when Melinda and I really began to explore opportunities in philanthropy, we heard very compelling stories and statistics about how financial barriers kept minority students from taking their talents to college and making the most of their lives. That led to one of the largest projects of our foundation. We created the Gates Millennium Scholars program to ensure that talent and energy meet with opportunity for thousands of promising minority students who want to go to college. Many of our Scholars come from tough backgrounds, and they could bring you to tears with their hopeful plans for the future. They reinforced our belief that higher education is the best possible path for promoting equality and improving lives here in America. Yet – the more we looked at the data, the more we came to see that there is more than one barrier to college. There’s the barrier of being able to pay for college; and there’s the barrier of being prepared for it. When we looked at the millions of students that our high schools are not preparing for higher education – and we looked at the damaging impact that has on their lives – we came to a painful conclusion: America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded – though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times. Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting – even ruining – the lives of millions of Americans every year. Today, only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citizenship. The other two-thirds, most of them low-income and minority students, are tracked into courses that won’t ever get them ready for college or prepare them for a family-wage job – no matter how well the students learn or the teachers teach. This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the system. In district after district, wealthy white kids are taught Algebra II while low-income minority kids are taught to balance a check book! The first group goes on to college and careers; the second group will struggle to make a living wage. Let’s be clear. Thanks to dedicated teachers and principals around the country, the best-educated kids in the United States are the best-educated kids in the world. We should be proud of that. But only a fraction of our kids are getting the best education. Once we realize that we are keeping low-income and minority kids out of rigorous courses, there can be only two arguments for keeping it that way – either we think they can’t learn, or we think they’re not worth teaching. The first argument is factually wrong; the second is morally wrong. Everyone who understands the importance of education; everyone who believes in equal opportunity; everyone who has been elected to uphold the obligations of public office should be ashamed that we are breaking our promise of a free education for millions of students. For the sake of our young people and everyone who will depend on them – we must stop rationing education in America. I’m not here to pose as an education expert. I head a corporation and a foundation. One I get paid for – the other one costs me. But both jobs give me a perspective on education in America, and both perspectives leave me appalled. When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow. In math and science, our 4th graders are among the top students in the world. By 8th grade, they’re in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates in the industrialized world. Many who graduate do not go onto college. And many who do go on to college are not well-prepared – and end up dropping out. That is one reason why the U.S. college dropout rate is also one of the highest in the industrialized world. The poor performance of our high schools in preparing students for college is a major reason why the United States has now dropped from first to fifth in the percentage of young adults with a college degree. The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor’s degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind. That is the heart of the economic argument for better high schools. It essentially says: “We’d better do something about these kids not getting an education, because it’s hurting us.” But there’s also a moral argument for better high schools, and it says: “We’d better do something about these kids not getting an education, because it’s hurting them.” Today, most jobs that allow you to support a family require some postsecondary education. This could mean a four-year college, a community college, or technical school. Unfortunately, only half of all students who enter high school ever enroll in a postsecondary institution. That means that half of all students starting high school today are unlikely to get a job that allows them to support a family. Students who graduate from high school, but never go on to college, will earn – on average – about twenty-five thousand dollars a year. For a family of five, that’s close to the poverty line. But if you're Hispanic, you earn less. If you’re black, you earn even less – about 14 percent less than a white high school graduate. Those who drop out have it even worse. Only 40 percent have jobs. They are nearly four times more likely to be arrested than their friends who stayed in high school. They are far more likely to have children in their teens. One in four turn to welfare or other kinds of government assistance. Everyone agrees this is tragic. But these are our high schools that keep letting these kids fall through the cracks, and we act as if it can’t be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools; we can redesign them. But first we have to understand that today’s high schools are not the cause of the problem; they are the result. The key problem is political will. Elected officials have not yet done away with the idea underlying the old design. The idea behind the old design was that you could train an adequate workforce by sending only a third of your kids to college – and that the other kids either couldn’t do college work or didn’t need to. The idea behind the new design is that all students can do rigorous work, and – for their sake and ours – they have to. Fortunately, there is mounting evidence that the new design works. The Kansas City, Kansas public school district, where 79 percent of students are minorities and 74 percent live below the poverty line, was struggling with high dropout rates and low test scores when it adopted the school-reform model called First Things First in 1996. This included setting high academic standards for all students, reducing teacher-student ratios, and giving teachers and administrators the responsibility to improve student performance and the resources they needed to do it. The district’s graduation rate has climbed more than 30 percentage points. These are the kind of results you can get when you design high schools to prepare every student for college. At the Met School in Providence, Rhode Island, 70 percent of the students are black or Hispanic. More than 60 percent live below the poverty line. Nearly 40 percent come from families where English is a second language. As part of its special mission, the Met enrolls only students who have dropped out in the past or were in danger of dropping out. Yet, even with this student body, the Met now has the lowest dropout rate and the highest college placement rate of any high school in the state. These are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare every student for college. Two years ago, I visited High Tech High in San Diego. It was conceived in 1998 by a group of San Diego business leaders who became alarmed by the city's shortage of talented high-tech workers. Thirty-five percent of High Tech High students are black or Hispanic. All of them study courses like computer animation and biotechnology in the school's state-of-the-art labs. High Tech High’s scores on statewide academic tests are 15 percent higher than the rest of the district; their SAT scores are an average of 139 points higher. These are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare every student for college. These are not isolated examples. These are schools built on principles that can be applied anywhere – the new three R’s, the basic building blocks of better high schools: The first R is Rigor – making sure all students are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work; The second R is Relevance – making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly relate to their lives and their goals; The third R is Relationships – making sure kids have a number of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to achieve. The three R’s are almost always easier to promote in smaller high schools. The smaller size gives teachers and staff the chance to create an environment where students achieve at a higher level and rarely fall through the cracks. Students in smaller schools are more motivated, have higher attendance rates, feel safer, and graduate and attend college in higher numbers. Yet every governor knows that the success of one school is not an answer to this crisis. You have to be able to make systems of schools work for all students. For this, we believe we need stable and effective governance. We need equitable school choice. We need performance-oriented employment agreements. And we need the capacity to intervene in low-performing schools. Our foundation has invested nearly one billion dollars so far to help redesign the American high school. We are supporting more than fifteen hundred high schools – about half are totally new, and the other half are existing schools that have been redesigned. Four hundred fifty of these schools, both new and redesigned, are already open and operating. Chicago plans to open 100 new schools. New York City is opening 200. Exciting redesign work is under way in Oakland, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Boston. This kind of change is never easy. But I believe there are three steps that governors and CEOs can take that will help build momentum for change in our schools. Number 1. Declare that all students can and should graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citizenship. How would you respond to a ninth grader’s mother who said: “My son is bright. He wants to learn. How come they won’t let him take Algebra?” What would you say? I ask the governors and business leaders here to become the top advocates in your states for the belief that every child should take courses that prepare him for college – because every child can succeed, and every child deserves the chance. The states that have committed to getting all students ready for college have made good progress – but every state must make the same commitment. Number 2. Publish the data that measures our progress toward that goal. The focus on measuring success in the past few years has been important – it has helped us realize the extent of the problem. But we need to know more: What percentage of students are dropping out? What percentage are graduating? What percentage are going on to college? And we need this data broken down by race and income. The idea of tracking low-income and minority kids into dead-end courses is so offensive to our sense of equal opportunity that the only way the practice can survive, is if we hide it. That’s why we need to expose it. If we are forced to confront this injustice, I believe we will end it. Number 3. Turn around failing schools and open new ones. If we believe all kids can learn – and the evidence proves they can –then when the students don’t learn, the school must change. Every state needs a strong intervention strategy to improve struggling schools. This needs to include special teams of experts who are given the power and resources to turn things around. If we can focus on these three steps – high standards for all; public data on our progress; turning around failing schools – we will go a long way toward ensuring that all students have a chance to make the most of their lives. Our philanthropy is driven by the belief that every human being has equal worth. We are constantly asking ourselves where a dollar of funding and an hour of effort can make the biggest impact for equality. We look for strategic entry points – where the inequality is the greatest, has the worst consequences, and offers the best chance for improvement. We have decided that high schools are a crucial intervention point for equality because that’s where children’s paths diverge – some go on to lives of accomplishment and privilege; others to lives of frustration, joblessness, and jail. When I visited High Tech High in San Diego a few years ago, one young student told me that High Tech High was the first school he’d ever gone to where being smart was cool. His neighborhood friends gave him a hard time about that, and he said he wasn’t sure he was going to stay. But then he showed me the work he was doing on a special project involving a submarine. This kid was really bright. It was an incredible experience talking to him – because his life really did hang in the balance. And without teachers who knew him, pushed him, and cared about him, he wouldn’t have had a chance. Think of the difference it will make in his life if he takes that talent to college. Now multiply that by millions. That’s what’s at stake here. If we keep the system as it is, millions of children will never get a chance to fulfill their promise because of their zip code, their skin color, or the income of their parents. That is offensive to our values, and it’s an insult to who we are. Every kid can graduate ready for college. Every kid should have the chance. Let’s redesign our schools to make it happen. Thank you very much.? ============================== Steve Jobs CLICK HERE to get the JOBS speech ============================= Thomas Friedman www.ThomasLFriedman.com When asked to talk about the global justice movement, Thomas Friedman made the following comment "The way to help poor people is not to dress up like a turtle and throwing stones through a McDonald's window. The way to help poor people is to work with countries to create that environment (infrastructure, governance, education, regulatory oversight) to allow them to compete in the flat world. The Seattle movement was inspired by the protectionist labor unions. How we globalize is an important issue and we should talk about it. The question of whether to globalize and going to the streets to stop globalization would be disastrous for the developing world." -- Thomas Friedman on CSPAN TV booknotes ---------------------- Dozens of books have been written about outsourcing. The moving of jobs to cheaper labor in other countries started with maquiladoras in Mexico. The transfer of manufacturing jobs to China has been documented by _______________ in Three Billion Capitalists. Thomas Friedman and Pink have most recently and most vividly given readers vivid descriptions of a new global economy. Comments from an interview with Tim Russert, April 2005 Friedman: Why don't we go to call centers around the world and interview operators to find out how they feel about imitating American operators? It would be something of a mirror. At the time the issue was our standing in the world, why does the world hate us. A certain Democratic presidential hopeful named John Kerry came out with a blast against executives who outsource: Benedict Arnold CEOs. So I decided to go to Bangalore, India, the capital of outsourcing. While I had been sleeping, covering the 9/11 story, I had missed the creation of a global flat economic platform where anyone can plug and play. That's why I call the book “The World Is Flat.” Russert: You were told by Rajiv Rao that the world is a level playing field, and Americans are not ready for it. Friedman: Rajiv Rao, the head of Infosys told me, "The global playing field is being leveled, and you Americans are not ready. You are best when you are challenged, and you are being challenged.” If we don't get our own population up to speed when this tide rises, it's going to wash over us. ... (side comments omitted) (Friedman explains how Y2K led to India's rise) Russert: What sort of challenge is outsourcing? Friedman: The first thing to understand is get the word OUTSOURCING out of your mind. Think of SOURCING. When the world is flat, you can source the work to the most efficient person in the world, either in India or North Dakota or San Francisco. Not everything is going to be outsourced. But there are more and more jobs that can fit into this category. Many jobs are outsourced to the past. The ticket agent at some airports has been replaced with an automatic ticket machine and that job has been outsourced to the past. The cameramen in the TV studio could be replaced by a robot camera. What's really scary is that more and more jobs at the high end will be outsourced to India and they won't be outsourced because of the wage difference. We're not producing enough cutting-edge talented people to feel these jobs in the US. That's the secret of outsourcing. Executives don't want to say this out loud. When they outsource a job, they don't just get a cheaper employee, they get a big boost in productivity. That's a very bad thing. Russert: Executives will say we get a highly skilled, highly motivated, highly disciplined English speaking work force in India or Ireland and why shouldn't we go there? In the inner cities in the US, every other child doesn't graduate from high school. Friedman: Our leading industrial innovator, a guy named Bill Gates, told us that the high school education in America is obsolete. You probably didn't hear that, it might have slipped in between Terry Schiavo and Michael Jackson. This is something we should be talking about. Bill Gates said that this country is not producing enough skilled young people to fill the job vacancies. This is worthy of a national discussion. We need to focus on making more Americans employable and able to be educated for a flat world. Russert: What is the ambition gap? Friedman: The ambition gap is what you alluded to, Tim, There's one entitlement that we have to get rid of: We are NOT entitled to any job we want. I'm sorry to say this, there is no such thing as an American job. Finish your homework because people in India are working for your job. We have to up the ambition level. ========================= Friedman: Young people are waiting for inspiration. Young women are not being inspired to go into science. There is such an analog to the moon shot waiting for our president to seize. A great national project: We need young people to be reenergized about going into science and engineering. It's the moon shot of our generation. It's to make America energy independent. Imagine if our president said, “This is going to be our national goal. I want every young person go into math and science to make their contribution to set the example in the world on hybrid vehicles and alternative energies.” You could energize a whole generation. George Bush could do it. it would be his Richard Nixon to China. Is there anything more important than delinking the connection to oil and Saudi Arabia, which gives money to madrasas, the religious circles? Maybe in a real world, we can't be totally energy independent. But we can reduce our dependence on oil. (omit comments about Iraq) I would be happy if the President would read the book. I would love nothing more than to see the President of the United States taking up the agenda of making America energy independent and its young people economically skilled, empowered and enabled. We don't have three and a half years to wait to maybe get a President who will pick up this agenda. I would love to be George Bush's biggest booster on an agenda to make America strong in a flat world. ===================== excerpts from interview with Jon Stewart The Ambition Gap... “Isn't the gap caused because Indians and Chinese want [success] more than we do? Since we're in our third, fourth, fifth generation of success, doesn't that breed a certain contentment, a certain neutered cat mentality?” -- Jon Stewart ----------------------- More Technology in the Classroom Visit Pat-Harris.com ResolveToHeal.com for the Workshop What can teachers do to reach multiple learning styles? Learning Styles MathForArtists.com Dennis Littky and The Big Picture schools Interview with Margot Adler. All Things Considered, April 25, 2005 · It's hard to imagine a school with no tests, no grades and no classes. But those familiar elements of education are missing at two dozen Big Picture schools in six states, each with no more than 120 students. They emphasize work in the real world, portfolios, oral presentations and intense relationships between students and advisers. Margot Adler visits one of the schools, called The Met, the 10-year-old model for the schools, in Providence, R.I. Students are encouraged to discover their passions, interning two days a week with mentors in the community who relate those passions to the real world. The student might work at a hospital, a bakery, or an architectural firm. School projects are designed by the mentor, the adviser and the student together -- and are presented orally, along with a portfolio, every nine weeks. Vimar Rodriguez, an 11th grader interested in medicine, has a neighborhood pediatrician as a mentor. Dr. Hector Cordero says she knew little when she started interning at his office. "I think she's learning a lot," Cordero says. "I think it is motivating her to go to medical school, which is the most important thing." Rodriguez contrasts her own life with those of her friends at other schools. "They don't know [what college they are going to], if they are going to get financial aid, and here I can look at different opportunities and different choices." The school measures its success in many ways -- standardized achievement scores are higher than those at the three largest Providence high schools -- but parents are most excited by these statistics: Almost every senior gets into college, 80 percent go to college, and five years later, most of those students are still in college or have graduated. The core idea of a school is so embedded in everyone. I had a kid say to me "You're not a real principal." (Charlie Plant, one of six principals) Comments by Dennis Littky, founder of the Met School Students have a hard time adjusting to a school that they don't know. You put 15 students in a room with an advisor, you let kids discover and follow their passions, interning two days a week with mentors in the community who relate those passions to the real world. The students might work in a hospital or an architectural firm. School projects are designed by the student and advisor together and are presented orally in a portfolio every nine weeks. Students meet three days a week with advisors about their projects. Projects are tailored to get academic rigor into the presentation. "We're looking at how do you look at the world scientifically, how do you look at the world mathematically, do you communicate effectively, what are the skills we can get out of this?" Dennis Littky: "Students have been told what to do for nine years. When they enter ninth grade, it's rough. We are saying, Follow your interests and passions, make choices. They are not ready, they don't trust adults." Admisison is by lottery and most students qualify for free lunch. Student scores are higher than the average scores of the three local high school but even so, fewer than half are proficient. Almost every senior gets into college, 80 percent go to college and five years later, almost all are still in college or graduated. Students are followed for ten years. They are welcome to drop in, get some advice, the advisors are there for you. Advisors send letters and care packages to graduates in college. The drop out rate at the Met is 3 percent. There are kids that want a big school where they can be anonymous. It's not perfect. We separate kids from adults in our world. So of course there is this generation gap. It's a struggle to get trained teachers. ========================== Transcribed interviews Web Extra Audio Dennis Littky is co-founder of the Big Picture schools and is director of one of them, The Met Center in Providence, R.I. Hear Littky on: The challenges of creating a school like The Met and in creating rigor in the student's projects. There is no harder job than a new 9th grade advisor. I haven't figured out how to help them have a successful year. You get 9th grade kids who are angry at school, don't trust adults, and have been told what to do for 9 years and we are saying, follow your interests and make choices. They are not ready. We continue to struggle about how to get them involved, give them some structure but not too much structure. We are trying to make them learn to make decisions in life. What do we do in the first 9 weeks. One of our solutions was have them come in for 2 weeks in the summer and start learning the culture. It's easier to do in the summer and there's less pressure for academics. When teachers ask me how to prepare for the first 9 weeks in 9th grade, I tell them, Go bowling to get to know the kid, to get to know their passions. We struggle so much with it that I almost want them in their internships before they start school with us. Once they find their passion and interest and start to work in the internship, the rest takes over. they change. it's not school any more. "I love this doctor's office. I'm going to read about this. I love this Architect's office, I'm going to design this." So until you get the passion, it's too much like school. The second big problem is how to get the rigor and get the rigor ... how do you find mathematics working in a radio station. how do you find the good projects? the reading and writing is easier, but how to go deep in the analytical reasoning is the challenge. How do you do a transcript for colleges? We give our kids narratives, we don't give our kids grades. These are two-page detailed reports about strengths and weaknesses, every 9 weeks for four years. Colleges can't look at that. We put the areas that the colleges want to see, English, History, Math. The transcript can say English and it has the kid's project in there. Admissions officers can see that there are 4 English and 3 science credits and that's how we do it. Our job with narratives is to give kids feedback about how to get better. The job for the transcript is to help colleges know what's going on. The question: How do you make the outside world understand what you do? I believe deep down when you ask people, "What do you remember from chemistry class?" or trigonometry class, they don't have any answers. "Where did you learn to be a writer?" I ask them. "Did you learn it in journalism school, did you learn it from guidelines?" The answer: "No, I really learned when I was working and writing. People were being critical with my writing on the job." In theory, I believe I can get most people to see that we learn when we're involved in something. There is no learning theory that says that lecturing to adolescents is the way to get people to learn. The way to get people to learn is to get them to be motivated and interested. The more you are involved in something, the more you construct knowledge, the more you learn, we know all that. The problem is every human being went through a regular school, so we keep falling back on that model. Critics laughed when they saw we had internships. Then they saw that we had the highest attendance rate in the state. We had the lowest drop-out rate in the state. But they really became believers when they see that every kid got accepted to college. Five years later they're still in college or graduated? Sometimes you need to show those results so that people can accept the method. Every test that the other kids are taking, our kids are taking. We keep pushing ahead and trying to show that this is a way to help kids get educated. We outscored the three largest high schools in mathematics and we don't teach a mathematics course. The kids learn to think like mathematicians, to solve problems and use their minds. The scores are not great, but they are moving up. Colleges are impressed with how articulate and passionate our kids are. Creating Big Picture schools around the U.S., and the difficulty of getting good teachers If you have the right philosophy, every child has a learning plan, you find real work, you find their passion, it works. We put a big emphasis about training the teachers for a year before putting them into schools. If you get the combinations together, it can be a success. It's hard to find adults who are certified to be teachers, who are generalists and want to give up teaching their subject matter to really truly teach kids. As a teacher, you have nothing to protect yourself. There's no textbook to get in the way or to guide you, it's raw. You have to have that relationship with that kid. It's very hard work to do. Our schools vary in how good they are. It's the hardest work in the world because you are dealing with kids' lives, you get so deep with them. Many teachers tell me, "I've taught for seven years, I’ve been a good teacher, but I've never got so close to kids as I have here." When you have 150 kids, you can't get that close. By the way, critics say, "You just have 15 kids." Well, we get the same amount of money per student as the rest of the state gets. It's how you use your money. The ratio in most high schools of adults to kids to around 1 to 15. The classes are 1 to 30 because you have department chairs, you have guidance counselors, there are people around. We do it with the same amount of money that California gives out, which is less than what Rhode Island gives out. 40 percent of our students are Latino, 30 percent are African American, 5 percent Asian. The free lunch population ranges from 60 to 80 percent, 70 percent of the kids have never had anyone in the family go to college. All of our kids are accepted in college about 80 percent go, 75 percent of our kids are still in college or graduated from some program. The national statistics are if you enter college as an African American or Latino, there is less than a 20 percent chance that you will graduate. One of the things we try to do is beat that. How do you get the kids to have such skills and passion that they overcome the barriers that the other 90 percent don't make it? How kids in good schools are losing out too, and why (The Met's accomplishments) What makes me cry daily is when I hear a kid describe how he or she was before, and then how they found their passion and it changed their life. It's really about the environment that we built to help the kid find his passion. That comes from having respect for the kid and giving the kid time to learn. Half of our great work is because the kid got there when the kid grew up and got more mature. We were just patient. But in most cases, the kids never get to, they get stopped before they did something stupid or they weren't interested. By having the faith that the kid will learn and by struggling with that through the years, we can see how far they've come. Our secret is that we have the patience and the belief that anything is possible. Whatever you need to help you get passionate about something is what we do. it's the true belief in the student. Every school says that they respect kids. If you give kids work that is not important, you're not respecting them. I think my frustration with the world is that in many suburban districts where parents move to send their kids and the students come home with their As and Bs, the parents are satisfied, but they never look deeper, so they think those are good schools. They have the highest SAT scores, they have the most kids going to Ivy League colleges. Those kids are losing too. They are not dropping out because they are playing the game. When you ask them, "Have you made any decisions in school? Do you care about anything, are you passionate about anything that goes on during the day besides drama club or football after school?" They're getting the short end. They aren't allowed to get engaged with their work and go deeper. "My kid did well at that school." Yeah, but where could your kid really go if your kid got to work with a doctor in 9th grade, following her around, and really going in depth? The other frustration is kids are dying daily. They are dropping out daily. In some cities, 20 percent graduate high school. Nothing is changed drastically enough. I appreciate the accountability part of No Child Left Behind. There were some school districts that were not clear about standards and the law is helping them focus. The law is not going to help poor kids really achieve. Taking tests is not going to help improve kids. We have to engage them, help them find their passion, we have to respect who they are and where they come from. ======================= PORTFOLIOS (See Gardner's point about how to assess students from Intelligence Reframed) If individuals indeed have different kinds of minds, with varied strengths, interests and strategies, then it is worth considering whether pivotal curricular materials like biology could be taught AND ASSESSED in a variety of ways. NEWFCAT.com www.oocities.org/teachers2teachers/newfcatexpand www.newcityschool.org Becoming a Multiple Intelligences School Thomas R. Hoerr (Principal, St. Louis) Page 27 Keeping a portfolio for each child – a collection of work and artifacts that give a picture of the child’s growth – is a way of capturing progress without using paper and pencil measures. Unless the portfolio is given credence an shared with parents as a report card is, however, it will seen as just a grab gag with little educational significance. At New City the spring Portfolio Night highlights the role of the portfolio. During Portfolio Night parents and children review student artifacts and refletions and put their hands on evidence of student growth. Families come together to celebrate student progress and accomplishments and to talk about areas needing more attention and effort. In short, reviewing portfolios gives parents an opportunity to view their children’s progress in all of the intelligences. IMPORTANT All items in a portfolio should contain a reflection sheet. Completed by students, teachers or both, these forms indicate the particular intelligence an item addresses and why it was chosen for the portfolio. Without a reflection sheet, it is easy for objects to lose their significance over time. Photographs of three dimensional accomplishments as well as audiotapes and videotapes that capture a student’s progress should also be included in each portfolio. ============== From the Writings of Dan Pink Ask, "What do you see?" wait five seconds Then say "What shapes do you see?" wait five seconds Then say "Don't look at the letters." wait five seconds Then say "What do you see between the letters?" Quotes from Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind "A designer gives to the world something it didn't know it was missing." -- Paola Antonelli, curator of design, MOMA "Design is shaping our surroundings to serve our needs and give meaning to our lives." -- John Heskett, Toothpicks and Logos: design in our everyday life. Design is utility enhanced by meaning. Three forces are shaping our world: Asia, automation and abundance. Daniel Pink recommends that we ask three questions about our work: 1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper? 2. Can a computer do it faster? 3. Does my product offer meaning to a customer in an abundant society? 3.3 million white collar jobs in the USA will shift to low-cost countries by 2015. Nations like Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom will see similar job losses. -- quoted in Pink's A WHOLE NEW MIND Friedman suggests that the USA needs to focus on innovation Pink writes about the right brain as the seat of creativity Marshall Thurber talks about "looking for the Positive Deviant." n example of "out of the box" thinking... http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-fsheik01aug01,0,1005154.story Florida soldier wears robes of sheik after connecting with Iraqi villagers By Antonio Castaneda The Associated Press August 1, 2005 QAYYARAH, Iraq · Sheik Horn floats around the room in white robe and headdress, exchanging pleasantries with dozens of village leaders. But he's the only sheik with blond streaks in his mustache -- and the only one who attended country music star Toby Keith's recent concert in Baghdad with fellow U.S. soldiers. Officially, he's Army Staff Sgt. Dale L. Horn of Fort Walton Beach, but to residents of the 37 villages and towns that he patrols, he's known as the "American sheik." Sheiks, or village elders, are known as the real power in rural Iraq. And the 5-foot-6-inch Floridian's ascension to the esteemed position came through dry humor and the military's need to clamp down on rocket attacks. Late last year a full-blown battle between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces had erupted, and U.S. commanders assigned a unit to stop rocket and mortar attacks that regularly hit their base. Horn, who had been trained to operate radars for a field artillery unit, was now thrust into a job that largely hinged on coaxing locals into divulging information about insurgents. Horn, 25, acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Dr. Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Horn's first Humvee patrols. Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk to people about their life and security problems. Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area: he boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months. "They saw that we were interested in them, instead of just taking care of the bases," Horn said. Mohammed, Horn's mentor and known for his dry sense of humor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Horn be named a sheik. The sheiks approved by voice vote, Horn said. Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Horn's spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed. But what may have originally started as a joke among crusty village elders has sprouted into something serious enough for 100 to 200 village leaders to meet with Horn each month to discuss security issues. And Horn doesn't take his responsibilities lightly. He lately has been prodding the Iraqi Education Ministry to pay local teachers, and he closely follows a water pipeline project that he hopes will ensure the steady flow of clean water to his villages. "Ninety percent of the people in my area are shepherds or simple townspeople," said Horn. "They simply want to find a decent job to make enough money to provide food and a stable place for their people to live." To Horn's commanders, his success justifies his unorthodox approach: no rockets have hit their base in the last six months. "He has developed a great relationship with local leaders," said Lt. Col. Bradley Becker, who commands the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment. "They love him. They're not going to let anyone shoot at Sheik Horn," Becker said. Copyright © 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel ----------------------------------------------------------- More Comments about The Double Moon Shot I read more of Friedman's book. He is right and it is scary that people would rather argue with him than set about doing something about what he is telling them. RE: the schools Gates talks about and who are quoted later on. Well, those kind of teacher-student ratios and those kind of teachers may be more than anybody other than Bill Gates can or will pay for. Jon Stewart mentioned the ambition gap. You don't get ambition at school, you get it at home and many here in the U.S. are just not ambitious enough. -- Too many single moms who are too young themselves and are trying to have their own lives, -- too many couples who think that having more stuff is more important than their kids, or perhaps worst of all, -- who think their kids are stuff to be emblems of their success at school, at sports. In some circles it is no longer enough to get your kid into the Ivy League, it has to be early admission. Sorry, I am usually more optimistic than this. Jack Latona The Center for Creating the Future, Inc. 954 768 0899 jack@creatingthefuture.org http://creatingthefuture.org |
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| Assume that we are living in the Double Moon Shot world...where we are working to reduce dependence on petroleum and improving schools. So... why not show a healthy respect for probability and data analysis.. ? Here's a letter that went to Cecil, the clever author of StraightDope who hope to get rid of the penny. I’m a math teacher and I believe one of the negative forces working against "dropping the penny” is fear of probability. Some people have the opinion that if I’m nice and pay an extra two cents, I’m going to be a sucker. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a981009a.html this is the link to your penny article. I wonder if you could revisit the penny issue from the “math-phobia” angle and examine the potential, since more kids are being forced to take more of these “high stakes math tests” that maybe we can put a little humor and “real world” math into the curriculum. Imagine if the entire world took time to look at cash transactions. I think the important “new wave” of students who are studying probability in class (see nctm.org for its focus on data analysis) means that there might be a new crop of kids who might in fact accept the demise of the penny. In truth, the penny will not die, since billions are still around. It just won’t be in the way. Maybe there could be a requirement that if there was a surplus in a week that the surplus would be donated to a charity. (Whoa! Says the mathphobic. That surplus is going to happen every day!) Anyway, thanks for writing. I plan to use your column along with www.RetireThePenny.org, a delightful web site that doesn’t oversell the benefits of the penny’s retirement, and also has a link to a pro-penny web site. It’s nice to see balanced treatment. |
| Big Picture.org Dennis Littky “We are the hope that many educators have nearly lost. When they see our videos, read our literature, or visit our schools, they get a renewed sense of purpose and mission. We restore their faith in the impossible because we are daring to do more than dream the impossible dream…we are making it come true.” – Cally Robyn Wolk, Director of Public Engagement BigPicture.org |
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| It's a double moon shot... |
| Why not teach physics with the Tacoma Narrows bridge? Do a search on the video of "tacoma narrows video"... |
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| If you are looking for a one-paragraph list of "what's the problem, what can we do about it?" here it is: What's the problem? SOURCING: Friedman and others (Prestowitz, Dan Pink) have pointed to the shift of manufacturing jobs to Asia. Jobs can be moved to another state and the impact is just as severe as if the jobs went to China. 1. Hundreds of thousands of factory workers need to be retrained. (funds are needed) 2. Trainers need to reach out to groups and individauls who are reacting from fear (fear of losing power, fear of losing a job, fear of losing control of a group) 3. Friedman has pointed to INNOVATION as our economy's savior -- are you committed to innovating? Do you replace a refrigerator with the most energy-efficient model, or do you save money or use an energy-guzzler? 4. We clean up messes: Remember Marla Ruzicka and CIVICworldwide.org ... wherever there is conflict, innocent victims are caught in the crossfire. To avoid creating new enemies, there is a need for continual refunding of the "campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict" (CIVIC) (funds are needed) 5. EDUCATION: Bill Gates has given voice to research found in Big Picture Schools and other independent private schools such as the Waldorf system. Relevance and Relationships are the other two legs of the education stool that go with Rigor. It is our vote for small schools that makes the Three Rs more likely. It is our time to get into schools as mentors and speakers and volunteers that makes it possible 6. Mentors speak to children. Many students love to watch TV. Let's give them something to watch. Recommend a book that make reading fun for you. Recommend a book that changed the way you looked at the world. Recommend something that you learned OUTSIDE school that you found useful (HYDROPLANING!). What can we do about it? a) raise funds. How about starting with Democracy Bonds? democracybonds.com b) learn more about the double moon shot by listening c) learn more about BigPicture.org schools by visiting their web site and watching the interviews with Dennis Littky. www.WhatShouldStudentsLearn.com click on "GATES" d) reforming the educational system will take funds and time. We will need to spend time as mentors, raise money to build walls inside big schools and create small schools, and build emotional intelligence in our students, especially by Building International Bridges by the Internet www.BuildingInternationalBridges.com e) support smaller schools. If your child is in a school LARGER than 500 students, remember what Dennis Littky says: Every school says that they respect kids. If you give kids work that is not important, you're not respecting them. I think my frustration with the world is that in many suburban districts where parents move to send their kids and the students come home with their As and Bs, the parents are satisfied, but they never look deeper, so they think those are good schools. They have the highest SAT scores, they have the most kids going to Ivy League colleges. Those kids are losing too. They are not dropping out because they are playing the game. When you ask them, "Have you made any decisions in school? Do you care about anything, are you passionate about anything that goes on during the day besides drama club or football after school?" They're getting the short end. They aren't allowed to get engaged with their work and go deeper. "My kid did well at that school." Yeah, but where could your kid really go if your kid got to work with a doctor in 9th grade, following her around, and really going in depth? Yes, there are a lot of web sites to read. This is our continuing education. Action flows from information. If we are committed to a renewed country and a renewed planet, we will take time to turn off the entertainment and focus on the double moon shot. How will we pay for the double moon shot? RETURN TO DemocracyBonds.com Return to the Double Moon Shot.com Go to WhatShouldStudentsLearn.com Dennis Littky and Big Picture Schools Contact another person in another country via YAHOO.com or AIM or MSN messenger... |
| Pink Mind Pink Schools Speech by Bill Gates << this page More Pink Documentary about What Should Students Learn and the Met School |
| Pink Mind Pink Schools Speech by Bill Gates << this page More Pink Documentary about What Should Students Learn and the Met School |
| Pink Mind Pink Schools Speech by Bill Gates << this page More Pink Documentary about What Should Students Learn and the Met School |