Portland Public Schools product value

The Willamette Week has the story on incentives to attend school for Marshall students. In the 2009 class of 100 - 34% dropped out. It had only 37% of on-time graduates.

The rationale: "Operating with the belief that rewarding good attendance is as important if not more important than punishing poor attendance, Marshall and District staff have developed a process to reward good or improved attendance."

When the educational product requires an incentive for "purchase," what does that say about the quality?

Portland Public Schools product value

The Willamette Week has the story on incentives to attend school for Marshall students. In the 2009 class of 100 - 34% dropped out. It had only 37% of on-time graduates.

The rationale: "Operating with the belief that rewarding good attendance is as important if not more important than punishing poor attendance, Marshall and District staff have developed a process to reward good or improved attendance."

When the educational product requires an incentive for "purchase," what does that say about the quality?

Changing Education Paradigms

Adapted from a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson.

Our children and their education

Self taught aspie now at Cambridge

Alex Goodenough, an Asperger’s sufferer who taught himself at home after his local school rejected him because of his condition, has won a place at Cambridge.

Read it here.

The mother who set up a new school for her son

"Eighteen months ago, Freddie Buckner's schooldays were often spent washing up mugs in the staff room after being excluded from mainstream lessons for lashing out at teachers and his fellow pupils. The eight-year-old's complex behavioural needs, including autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia, meant that teaching him alongside other children in mainstream schools was deemed impossible. So the search began to find him a suitable school."

More here...

The Beast That Swallows Its Young

The Beast That Swallows Its Young from Matt Kresling on Vimeo.

Snooping lollipops

"Lollipop ladies across the country are to be equipped with cameras hidden in their poles." Read more...

The spirituality of education

Parker Palmer: "A spirituality of ends wants to dictate the desirable outcomes of education in the life of the student. It uses the spiritual tradition as a template against which the ideas, beliefs, and behaviours of the student are to be measured. The goal is to shape the student to the template by the time his of her formal education concludes.

But that sort of education never gets started; it is no education at all. Authentic spirituality wants to open us to truth - whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox. By this understanding, the spirituality of education is not about dictating ends. It is about examining and clarifying the inner sources of teaching and learning, ridding us of the toxins that poison our hearts and minds."

Listen online: Parker Palmer Podcasts

Summerhill Documentary

"Summerhill School is an independent British boarding school that was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around."

Watch online: Part 1 - Part 2

Summerhill - A S Neill

Some quotes from the story of the 1st free school in the world:

"Most of the schoolwork that adolescents do is simply a waste of time, of energy, of patience. It robs youth of its right to play and play and play; it puts old heads on young shoulders."

"The molded, conditioned, disciplined, repressed child, the unfree child, lives in every corner of the world. He lives in our town just across the street. He sits at a dull desk in a dull school and later, he sits at a duller desk in an office or on a factory bench. He is docile, prone to obey authority, fearful of criticism, and almost fanatical in his desire to be normal, conventional, and correct. He accepts what he has been taught almost without question; and he hands down all his complexes and fears and frustrations to his children."

"To give freedom is to allow the child to live his own life. Thus expressed, it seems simple. Only our disastrous habit of teaching and molding and lecturing and coercing renders us incapable of realizing the simplicity of true freedom."

Read the book online...

Jerry Mintz and Nellie Dick

Jerry Mintz has been described as an alternative education expert and Nellie Dick as a pioneer in the alternative education movement. Here's two short videos uploaded by Education Revolution - to watch them, click on the titles:

Jerry Mintz Interview
Nellie Dick and the Modern School

Lao-Tzu on Education

The ancient Masters
didn't try to educate the people,
but kindly taught them to not-know.

When they think that they know the answers,
people are difficult to guide.

When they know that they don't know,
people can find their own way.

Ken Robinson - Differentiated Teaching

Dalai Lama on Education

The Dalai Lama talks about the purpose of education. Check out: The Human Brain and Intelligence; Global Responsibility and The Practice of Compassion. To listen click here.

Schools Out

A video by Graham Attwell, looking at the reasons to move from the industrial schooling system to Personal Learning Environments.

Matthew Fox - Education Crisis

Mass Education

"Today we are confronted with mass education - education designed to earn a livelihood, which means survival in a society comprised of ambition, pleasure and competitive pursuits. It expresses itself in the acquisition of wealth, power and social respectability. So survival no longer means understanding our own needs and living with sanity. Instead it means succumbing to all that the social world has created. This has left our educational system bereft not only of human values but even of simple human courtesies."

Satish Inamdar, in Dialogues on Universal Responsibility & Education

Alan Watts: Music & Life