Building a Bridge
Last week we finished the final of the six components of Progressive Education outlined by Tom Little and Katherine Ellison, in their book Loving Learning: How Progressive Education can Save America’s Schools. This week I’ll share some concluding thoughts and next week I’ll start in on some other topics, if you have suggestions or questions please let me know!
Here is the list again:
1. Attention to children’s emotions as well as their intellects.
2. Reliance on student’s interests to guide their learning.
3. Curtailment or outright bans on testing, grading and ranking.
4. Involvement of students in real world endeavors.
5. The study of topics in an integrated way, from a variety of different disciplines
6. Support for children to develop a sense of social justice and become active participants in American Democracy.
If you are new to Traversing and want to read my initial thoughts on why this list matters to me you can find the first issue here. If you want to hear about Martin Buber and Attention to Children’s Emotions, you can check out the issue, here, or Flow and Personalization here, or Testing and the Panopticon, here or Real World Endeavors here, or Integrated Learning here, or Democratic Citizenry here.
If you find this space to be interesting, amusing, if it is making you think, or you just want to support progressive dialogue around education please consider sharing the newsletter and feel free to leave comments and questions!
Progressive Education
One of the concerns that high school students (and their parents) often have is to question if high school will prepare them for college, or more importantly, for life after high school in whatever form that takes. In my experience this anxiety often stems from a couple of different places. There are the practical concerns, will I have the knowledge, skills and understandings to be able to get a job or succeed in college, will I be able to pay rent, can I navigate unexpected challenges. These are completely legitimate concerns and, practicalities aside, they also often arise from a deeper concern about independence and identity.
This past weekend I spent some time with my parents and during our time together my father repeated a story about his father, who passed away many years ago. My grandfather, said to my father;
“The hardest thing in my life was when my children grew up, became independent and went off to live their own lives, the only thing that would have been harder was if they were not able to do so.”
As a parent, you want your child to be able to do anything that they want and be prepared to open any door that they choose. Therefore, you do your best to offer them support, to provide them with opportunities, to make sure they have food and shelter, to offer advice to help make challenging decisions, etc. The end goal of these efforts is that your child is ready to live their life without you being there to help them along. You want them to be ready to leave the nest.
The thing is, teenagers also want to be ready to leave the nest, once they turn 18 and finish high school. They want to be able to make challenging decisions and support themselves, but the gulf between desire and actualization is vast and terrifying.
Last year I drew three pictures that, in my mind, illustrated the ways in which we can approach that gulf in high school. Instead of recreating them and polishing them, I thought I would share the originals and elaborate on what they mean in relation to this topic.
1
This is how school typically begins, this is true of Kindergarten, but it becomes more of a reality at the start of high school. The far side of the chasm is adulthood and an unknown future, but a future that is yours to discover. The chasm is obscured by a cloud of uncertainty, you don’t know what you need to know or who you want to be or how things work, so you are not sure how to get across to the other side, but you know that it is there. Often it takes a couple of years for the cloud to clear somewhat, but still, many of the things that you need to be ready to cross that chasm are not present.
2
Unfortunately, the end of high school comes, as does the end of childhood. Sometimes young people have built what they need in order to cross the chasm and carry on into their adult lives, and yet sometimes they haven’t and they just have to leap. Most people go on to figure out the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need in order to live the lives that they want, but inevitably there are struggles and challenges that could have been alleviated or at least diminished if their learning community had provided them with a more humane and human centered philosophy.
3
The six components of Progressive Education that we have been exploring this past month and a half provide that more humane and human centered focus that allows young people to build their bridges from childhood to adulthood. Think back to the list that has graced the top of this newsletter each week. In order to be happy and satisfied adults:
We need to attend to our emotions as well as our intellect, check.
We need to be able to identify and then follow our interests and passions, check.
We need to be able to recognize our value for our process, not just our products, check.
We need to be engaged in the world with purpose and meaning, check.
We need to understand the integrated systems that shape the world in which we live, check.
We need to feel like we can make positive change in the world and in our lives, check.
As with many aspects of this conversation, it comes down to an obvious statement. When schools focus on the whole person, instead of just their test scores or on their ability to be productive employees, those students are better positioned to be ready to grow up, become independent, live a life of purpose and leave the nest when the time comes.
Thank you for being with me on this journey over the past weeks, I look forward to what next week will bring.
People, Places and Things
In this section of the newsletter I share people, places and things that have inspired and taught me valuable lessons about rethinking learning.
Since we talked about leaving the nest this week, it seems appropriate to share one of my favorite Pittsburgh naturalist blogs. Kate St. John has been blogging about birds and nature since 2007. You can find her site here. Over the years she has paid special attention to the Peregrine Falcons who nest at a number of sites in and around Pittsburgh. While pairs are nesting and fledging youngsters you can also watch them on the National Aviary’s Live Streams.
The start of the school year can be very busy and I appreciate the opportunity to observe and enjoy the beauty and wonder that surrounds us here in our region.
See you next week!