Wild in the Streets (Revisiting the Beginning)
Traversing is coming up on its one year anniversary and in honor of that event, I am going to be reposting some of the first issues, as we have a lot of new readers who were not with us in the beginning. These first posts outline the foundation of the blog and the educational philosophies that guide my work and the work of City of Bridges High School.
This week will be 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. After a week of synthesis, I’ll start in on some other topics, if you have suggestions or questions please let me know!
Here is the list again with the focus of this week in bold:
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.
Democratic Citizenry
I have often wondered what the learning experience in schools would be if we measured success not by standardized test scores, but by the percentage of graduates who went on to participate in all state, local and national elections. Alternatively, what would the experience be if an advanced or A+ school was evaluated by the number of community service and volunteer hours that graduates completed each year. Or the commitment to justice and equity that graduates demonstrated with not just their words, but more importantly, with their actions.
It may be more interesting to invert this wondering and instead share a couple of examples of schools which have centered social justice and democratic participation in their curriculum. In a class that I teach called Utopia in Literature and History, I have been working with my students on the translation of theory into practice. Namely, how do you construct a theory of a more just and equitable community that can flow off of the page and become a viable and sustainable place. One of the most effective ways to build that theory is to explore the examples of successful communities which have managed to succeed in that process. The culmination of this class is the development of theoretical Utopias, which the students will present next month. (I’ll be sure to share some of their ideas with you when the time comes.) In the meantime, here are a couple of examples:
The Pumpkin
I think that most of you know that I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and before that lived in Keene, New Hampshire. Keene is a lovely New England town, with a main street with a rotary around a town square and a main street that is often claimed to be the widest main street in the world. Keene was also home to the annual Pumpkin Fest, which set the record for the most illuminated Jack-o-Lanterns in the world.
The pumpkin is also the state fruit of New Hampshire, and yes, it is a fruit. The designation of state fruit was due to the lobbying efforts of 15 3rd and 4th grade students from the Wells Memorial School in Harrisville. These students learned about the legislative process and, due in some part, to Keene’s pumpkin festival lobbied the state legislature to make it official.
The Board of Directors
One Stone is a learning community in Boise, Idaho. I describe it as a learning community because it is far more than a school. There is a high school that is a part of the organization. In addition, they have after school clubs, student run businesses, teen community service organizations and a professional development program for teachers. All of these facets of their organization are remarkable and are doing work that is 100% worth exploring.
Unsurprisingly, student voice is central to the operations of One Stone. This is true to such an extent that 2/3rds of their Board of Directors is always made up of students. You can see their current Board here. The history of the growth of One Stone is on the same page and is worth a read as well.
The Mess
Democracy is messy and it is often not the most efficient way to make decisions. It requires discussion and hopefully being able to see other people’s perspectives. At City of Bridges, we do our best to create opportunities for young people to participate in the democratic process. We have students who sit on our Board of Directors as full voting members, we have students who sit on all of our operating committees. Our students are part of enrollment, finances, hiring faculty, facilities decisions etc. They bring their opinions and their ideas and through the process of working though the balance of theory and practice they learn about how to make change in their communities. Sometimes we have to backtrack and sometimes our decisions take longer than we might have hoped, but in the end, it is my hope that our graduates will vote, will give back to their communities, and will work for justice and equity. I hope that these practices in their lives are in part (because of course they bring a lot of experiences with them) because of the experiences they had in school.
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.
I am going to keep with the theme of democracy for a slightly tongue in cheek People, Places and Things this week. When I was in high school a friend of mine rented a movie from the local independent video store and we sat down to watch one of the most spectacular films of 1960s. Wild in the Streets was released in 1968 and the movie poster, led with the header “If you’re thirty, you’re through!”
I will spare you the details of the film, although it is well worth a watch if you are willing to roll with the dramatic plot and over the top characters.
The premise of the film, which relates to our conversation above, is that a young senator from California is running on the platform to lower the voting age to 18. He enlists a rock band, Max Frost and the Troopers, to write a campaign song.
The counter culture rock and rollers do write a song for the campaign, but instead of advocating for the voting age to be 18, their song entitled “14 or Fight!” demands a younger voting age.
Unsurprisingly, the voting age is lowered to 14 and the young people take over the government. I won’t spoil what ensues, but if you choose to watch make sure to watch all the way to the end.
See you next week!