A time of new challenges--and then some

Although my children now are grown and I am no longer either teaching or enrolled as a student, this time of year has always felt like a pivot-point for me.

For most of my life, August has been the time when my family (Mom and Dad were both teachers) and I would shift from a summer of differently-structured time, to plunge back into the challenges of the new school year.

Headed back to school: What should we prepare them for?

My time at the helm of a classroom probably is over, for well or ill. But at this time of year I can't help thinking about the challenges today's teachers and students face. Our picture of the future is continually in motion, but the age-old job of teachers is to prepare their students for it as best they can. That's one of the few things that hasn't changed!

But what should teachers prepare them for?

Our immediate future contains a massive range of possibilities. Technology that seemed remote only a few years ago now is imminent. From personalized medical care based on an individual's genome to advances in brain-computer interface technology, our picture of living, working, and learning in the 21st Century is changing rapidly.

We're beginning to feel the effects of climate change in shifting weather patterns and greater environmental hazards, from more intense storms, more widespread flooding, and hotter, less controllable wildfires.

More intense storms are only one of the environmental hazards kids will increasingly face in the future.

The news tells us the USA has officially recovered from the Great Recession of the last decade--though some of us will never make up the losses. Automation, some aspects of globalization, and a shifting dominance of industries in the economic sector have taken away some jobs and transformed demand for skilled labor.

Learning new skills throughout life to remain employable is a new feature of the employment scene, a trend that isn't likely to change in the future.

Our political and social landscape has been changed by economic and demographic shifts, philosophical polarization, and new social norms about what is and is not acceptable. The so-called "bathroom bills" that have recently targeted transgender students are only one example of the lengths laypersons with no understanding of problems sometimes try to meddle in school affairs.

As if all of that wasn't enough of a challenge for teachers, consider that there is now literally more history to teach than there was several decades ago, and the best pedagogical standards demand the inclusion of a range of ethnic and socio-economic viewpoints, not just "old dead white guys."

New scientific knowledge is developed every year, and a quality science education demands that teaching adjust for newly-discovered facts or risk teaching erroneous information (there's enough of that already).

School breakfast programs provide essential nutrition for millions of kids who otherwise might come to school too distracted by hunger to learn.

Educators also are now expected to accommodate a wider array of needs than they've been asked to do in the past, from feeding kids breakfast and lunch so they can be alert in class, to crafting lessons for differentiated learning and individual learning styles, despite often-overcrowded classrooms due to budget shortfalls.

It all adds up to steeper challenges for teachers and school systems every year. I wish them all the best of success, and good luck.

They're going to need it.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Apple Country Living, for the "back to school" bus-and-kids photo; to CNN, for the photo of the Plaza Towers Elementary School, after a massive tornado hit Moore, OK, in 2013; and to the Eau Claire WI Leader-Telegram for the photo of employment seekers at a local job fair. Many thanks are also due to the Kansas City Chiefs for the photo of a "Wake Up" School Breakfast spread they helped promote for National School Breakfast Week at a local middle school (this photo is from their 2016 project).

Are We on Digital Overload? Can We Protect our Kids?

Many people today watch the expanding role of digital media in our everyday life with—let’s be honest—mostly feelings of fear and dread. They focus wistfully upon things that we are losing or moving away from, in the changing cultural climate: things they value, such as silence, long stretches of uninterrupted time, or the act of reading a physical, bound, made-of-paper book.

And they worry—a lot.

While he's clearly not a young student, this man is juggling many different kinds of inputs. Is he on "overload?" Are our kids?

They worry that our digital gadgets put us on “overload,” and that this goes double for students. They feel that these devices keep kids (and all of us) too over-stimulated, that they load too much of the wrong kind of artificial light into our eyes, and that they keep us too sedentary on our ever-expanding buttocks.

They also live in terror that through social media their children will become entrapped by sexual predators and identity thieves, that they will become addicted to pornography from exposure too young, or that they will become addicted to games.

They worry that in the name of “multi-tasking,” we are doing more and more things superficially, distractedly, and just plain badly.

Online predators are a genuine threat to young Internet users.

Unfortunately, all of these things can and do cause problems. People who have concerns about digital media and the “information” or “services” they can deliver have many very valid points. There are a vast array of downfalls, dangers, and unintended results associated with digital media. And all of those fears/worries go double for the people who run schools. In most parts of the world, educators are operating in loco parentis legally. All sorts of bad results could rain down upon them if they fail to keep the students entrusted to their care safe from such threats.

How do they attempt to protect kids? Usually they clamp down, restrict access, and seek to control as much as possible how and when students use the Internet. They install blocking software, patrol computer labs relentlessly, and the best practitioners also talk seriously and frankly with students about the dangers that can lurk “out there.”

This is perfectly in keeping with a custodial role. But we need to think carefully about what we restrict and how we restrict it—or we can end up impeding the very education we are attempting to enhance.

Take as an example the story told by Susan Einhorn about her daughter and some of her classmates. They were preparing for an exchange-student trip to France. They developed friendships with their French “opposite numbers” through Facebook . . . but they couldn’t communicate with each other via Facebook at school, because the site was blocked.

This single example is hardly definitive, and it in no way diminishes the genuine dangers touched upon here. But it represents a dissenting opinion. As this series continues, I’d like to explore some of the ways that the use of digital media has become controversial, and some of the new and imaginative ways in which it can be used to deepen learning and enhance thinking skills.

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to the University of Phoenix for the "distracted man" illustration, which they ran with an essay about digital distractions. The "online predator" illustration appears to have originated in Latvia(?), but I was unable to track down the artist's name. I first located the (unattributed) image in a post about tips for parents on the "Tech Welkin" blog. 

Respect in the Real World: A Case Study

   
In my last two posts to this blog, I made the argument that we need to replace what I see as a Paradigm of "Control" in our schools with one of "Respect."

The title of this cartoon by Colby Jones is "Tolerance?"

"Fear and loathing cannot coexist with respect, " I wrote.  "I mean mutual respect--that is, everyone in the system respects and genuinely honors the contributions that all parties bring to the table.  But I also, specifically, mean much greater respect for students and their families, and also for teachers."

But it's one thing to ask for respect, or discuss it in the abstract.

It can be quite another in practice, especially when you are being asked to respect someone from another culture who is doing, saying, or wearing something you don't understand.

I received an example of this via email, just yesterday. It came from a person who often sends me emails that might generously be described as "culturally insensitive."  This one very rudely mocked the young, African-American subjects of several prom photos.

When I spoke with the sender, the reply was essentially, "Oh, come on. Those outfits are clearly not in good taste!"  Perhaps not, if you are looking at them through the "cultural lens" of a conservative, white, middle-class sense of propriety.

But that's not the way the kids looked at them.  I know this, because, I have known many young people from a similar cultural background.  They have very little connection with a conservative, white, middle-class sense of propriety--but they are very creative.

So here's a small challenge for you.  Suspend your preconceptions for a moment, and join me on a short photo tour.

All I ask is that you look at these beautiful young people, arrayed in their best finery, participating in a "milestone" event they'll remember all their lives.  Just to keep you alert, I've included a few photos from a couple of other events that have been in the news lately.

Young women in extreme dresses

I think it is likely only one of these young women is wearing a dress she did not design herself (that includes Victoria Beckham in the upper left corner).  

Young men in unusual outfits

All of these outfits include interesting or extraordinary accessories, but I couldn't find a single young prom-goer wearing spurs or carrying a sword.

Young ladies wearing creative hair styles

I'm guessing the young prom-goer at left could have a future as a hairdresser for Fashion Week.  What do you think?

You still may not like some of these fashion statements.  But I hope I've made my point that "weird" or "bizarre" is in the eyes of the beholder.  I hope you'll also agree that the young prom-goers truly didn't deserve to have their personal photos and homemade finery turned into the laughingstock of the Internet.

Educators must never forget respect.  Especially when we are relating to young people who are at an extremely vulnerable moment in their emotional lives, I think it is of absolute importance to ask, "where are they 'coming from'?"  "What is their goal?"  It truly isn't always to "get to us" (surprise: it's not all about us!).  Sometimes it is simply to look their own personal version of fabulous.

PHOTO CREDITS: This post presented more than the ordinary challenges, when I tried to figure out how to attribute the prom photos.  I used the TinEye site to do a reverse search for them, but encountered a long list of joke sites.  Many of these photos have indeed been made the laughingstock of the Internet, on blog after blog.  I have no intention of boosting the circulation of any of them by adding a link here.

I do, however, want to thank Colby Jones for his cartoon, "Tolerance?" which I found on his SirColby website.  

The British Royal Wedding photos are from The Daily Beast. They include the work of photographers Pascal Le Segretain and Odd Anderson, AFP for the Young Women in Extreme Dresses collection, and Peter Macdiarmid and Ben Stansall, AFP for the Young Men in Unusual Outfits collection.  All are associated with Getty Images.  

Setting aside the girl with the "helicopter hair," whose joke-site source shall remain in nameless shame, the three middle photos in the Young Ladies Wearing Creative Hair Styles collection are from Fashion Week, January 14, 2011, courtesy of the Onjer Hairstyle site (photographers not credited); the Crimped Hair Hat on the right end is the design of John Galliano, from the Christian Dior Show of Paris Fashion Week, Sept. 29, 2008, courtesy of The Frisky (AP photographer not credited).

Of Form and Function: Exploring what the Paradigm of "Control" looks like

There's an old saying, "Do what I say, not what I do."

As teachers, we know that  children seldom are fooled when adults' actions do not conform to their words.  In my last post, I discussed the 19th-century connections between schools, child labor, and the juvenile justice system--and the way in which I believe this history predisposes schools to follow a paradigm of "Control."

We all know the good things that we want to do for children in our schools.  That is the "What I say" part.  Now please suspend your objections for a few moments, and come along with me as we do a purely visual comparison, to see what we do:

The women at left are seated at punch presses, working sheet metal in a St. Louis factory around the turn of the 20th century.  The images of kids at computers come from a library and a school in California.

L-R: British child factory workers in the 19th century; a contemporary math class, and a contemporary science class.

L-R: A 19th century sweatshop; a contemporary civics class, and a contemporary elementary classroom.

L-R: A minimum-security prison in Oregon; the former Central Junior High in Ames, IA, and a contemporary hallway in an unidentified school.

Walk-through metal detectors look much the same, whether they are in a school (L) or a prison entrance (center).  And surely the student spread-eagled against the lockers feels his school is a safe place to learn.

No matter how nice the man wearing the gun in the school library, or the one using the handheld metal detector on the elementary student may be, they, their tools, and their uniforms still look a lot like the prison guard at center.

L-R:  "Rikky" the Labrador is a member of the security team at Lubbock-Cooper ISD, Lubbock, TX.  At center, an unidentified prison guard and his dog search for bombs.  At right, "Dutch" is the newest drug-sniffing dog for the Nampa School District in Boise, ID.

Please understand that I am NOT saying our schools are "just like" 19th century factories or prisons.  But perhaps you'll agree with me that some of the visual parallels are a little eerie.

I think it is certain that many alert students have not failed to notice, as well.


PHOTO CREDITS: I have a lot of people to thank for these images!  Click the links to get context for each:  "Factory/School #1": Women at punch presses-Northern Illinois University; Library computers-City of Huntington Beach, CA; Classroom computers-Brock University.  "Factory/School #2": British child laborers-South African History Online; Math class-Moving with Math; Science classroom-Celsias.com.  Factory/School #3: Sweatshop-Fundamentals of Finance; Civics class-Kindnews.org; Elementary classroom-Paladin Post.  "Prison/School": Prison hallway-The Oregonian; Historic Central Junior High-Ames Historical Society; unidentified school hallway-Parent Society.  "Metal Detectors": Walk-through at school-American Studies Wiki; Robben Island Prison entrance-Charles Apple; NYC metal scan-Gothamist.  "Uniformed Officers": SRO Officer Psilopoulos-Johnston Insider; Unidentified British prison guard-The Daily Mail; Unidentified officer with schoolchild-"Snippits and Slappits."  "Police Dogs": Rikki the Lab-Lubbock Online; Prison guard and bomb dog-K9 Pride; Dutch the drug-sniffer-KBOI-TV.