"What Kinds of Human Beings Do We Wish to Produce?"

October 9, 2018: Study Session/Board Meeting at the District Office

1. Study Session (4pm): Social Emotional Learning
2. Board Meeting (6pm): Includes an agreement with Orem City for the School Resource Officers.  (pp.79-87)

All meetings are open to the public.  Public comment is available at every Board Meeting.

SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The most controversial issues of the twenty-first century will pertain to the ends and means of modifying human behavior and who shall determine them. The first educational question will not be 'what knowledge is of the most worth?' but 'what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce?' The possibilities virtually defy our imagination. --John Goodlad



There are so many buzzwords in education these days: 21st Century Learning, Social-emotional Learning (SEL), GRIT, the 4-C's (or the 6-C's), Response to Intervention, Critical Thinking, STEM, Project-based learning, Guide-on-the-side, Engineering Design Model, Workforce, etc. etc. etc.  It's hard to keep up with them all or even understand what they all mean.

Social Emotional Learning or SEL first really made its appearance (from my perspective) in the Federal re-authorization of No Child Left Behind, called ESSA.  In additional to academic measures, the Feds want us to use "non-cognitive" measures to assess how well schools are doing.  It came to prominence with a focus on GRIT, and a TED talk by a professor who wrote a book on the subject.  Now SEL is everywhere.  The idea is that kids should learn, not just academics, but the skills and dispositions to be successful in the workforce (aka the 21st Century because human nature magically shifted in 2001, I guess).  So, the purpose of schools has shifted from basic academics to creating a comprehensive person.  The only problem is whose vision of that "correct human being" is being implemented?  And is that really what we want from public education?  Who should determine what kind of human being your child should become?  Who is the "we" in 'what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce'?  (Does the word produce come across as a bit creepy to anyone else?)

On one hand, I can appreciate and understand that we want kids to be well-rounded, kind-hearted, honest, and sympathetic.  On the other, what is the purpose of public schools?  Well that goes back to the age-old debate.  Everyone thinks of it as something different, and way back when, our district mission statement included "democracy" as the purpose of schools.  I disagree.  I think for public schools, the purpose should be academic excellence.  Everything else, should be left to the individual child and his/her family. That's not to say that teachers don't teach, especially by example, kindness and honesty.  They do.  But that's just part of being a good human being, right?  When we focus on dispositions, we necessarily remove our focus from reading, writing, and [a]rithmetic. Supposedly, we are doing both academics (what we are calling the Right Side of the Pyramid) as well as SEL (the Left Side of the Pyramid).  Our goal should be to educate, not to tell you what the purpose of that education is supposed to be.

The other problem I see, is who decides what the appropriate dispositions are for our children to possess?  And what are those definitions?  I've found, too often, sadly, that when someone uses a word that sounds good, their meaning may be completely different from my own.

In Alpine, we are focused on the 6 C's (4 of which are borrowed from the 21st Century Learning 4 C's).  They are: Communication, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Character, Citizenship.  All sound great.  But what of the child who is introverted and Collaboration means lots of group-work projects?  She might do very well academically IF she's allowed to work alone, but in a group?  Not so much.  She is learning that she must go along with the group, and the knowledge she gains isn't as important as the "collaboration" with others.  It also puts young children in a very difficult position if they disagree with how something is going or what is being said.  Citizenship: what kinds of student advocacy do you want your child engaged in?  What if those citizenship perspectives differ from those of your family?  And Critical Thinking (also known as Higher-order thinking) has at least one definition in education that I would whole-heartedly disagree with.

...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong". "A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective [emotional] objectives by challenging the student's fixed beliefs. ...a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. --Benjamin Bloom

In short, it's wrong to be rewarding personality types instead of the knowledge that every child is capable of acquiring.  It's also wrong to possibly, modify a child's thoughts, attitudes and feelings, not through reason and the discovery of truth but by using emotional objectives to challenge their 'fixed beliefs', those beliefs instilled in them by their families.

If you agree with this shift, then you will be pleased.  If not, you may want to speak up about this dilution of academics with dispositions.

AGREEMENT WITH OREM CITY FOR SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS

Take a quick look at the agreement (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1b8lY2ExcO10gchOSZ2hxb1U_whvH2_M2)  I have the following concerns.

1. Restorative Justice:  Restorative Justice, as I understand it, is where the person who is at fault is asked to "restore" what they broke in some way.  In some instances, this makes sense.  If you spray paint graffiti, it makes sense to have you repaint whatever you vandalized.  However, if you physically assaulted someone, the victim of your assault may be traumatized by further interaction.  In this case, Restorative Justice isn't a good idea.  AND, it may not be the best idea as a first recourse in even situations like graffiti.  It is interesting to note that the Parkland Shooter fell through the cracks due to restorative justice.

Excerpt from this article:

Schools also began replacing more traditional methods of discipline with student-led mentoring programs ... as well as “restorative justice” programs, a Breakfast Club-like fantasy where, instead of punishment, the bully or the violent offender engages in talk therapy and group discussions with the kid he or she has been harassing to seek reconciliation.

That sounds like great fun for the victim.

2. Reading Miranda Rights for those 14 and up without requiring a parent to be present.  I don't know about you, but if my kid is in the kind of trouble where he or she is being read their Miranda Rights, I think I should be present.  Also, what about children who have mental disabilities that, while chronologically 14 years old, mentally are much younger?  Shouldn't their parents be present?

3. Student Privacy.  FERPA is the Federal School Data Privacy Act from 1974 that is all but worthless.  Anything that occurs at school is subject to FERPA, whether health-related or juvenile-justice related.  That means these records can be shared with anyone for "an educational purpose" without parental knowledge or consent. 

I would be curious to know your thoughts on these issues.

Learning is Earning...and our Bond Hearing

Tomorrow, Sept. 13, is a very busy day for education in our state and county: Competency-based Ed conference, Prosperity 2020, and Bond Hearing.

BOND HEARING
The Public Bond Hearing is @ 6pm @ the District Office in AF. Generic public comments are first, standard business stuff, and then the official Bond Hearing.  The bond will be on the ballot in November, for $387 Million, no tax increase, new buildings due to growth, rebuilding due to age.  I voted to put the bond on the ballot.  Our area will get 1% of the total amount of the bond.  Here's the agenda: http://board.alpineschools.org/2016/09/09/september-13-2016-board-meeting/  And here is information on the bond. http://alpineschools.org/bond2016/

On to the 'new visions' for education.  Lots of it has been in the works for a while, and some things are just rebrands of what has gone on before.  Full-disclosure, I'm not a fan of most everything that we are seeing proposed for 'ed reform': Competency-based ed, Workforce alignment, Digital Badges, GRIT, 21st Century Skills/Learning, etc.  I believe most everyone involved in these projects are well-intended and are proposing these visions and ideas with the goal to help our children.  But many who are involved in these reforms do focus primarily on workforce training, not education. 

Education is a much broader vision than simple workforce training.  Don't get me wrong, I want my kids to be gainfully employed, but I believe the well-educated individual will never be an anachronism in the workplace; they will be capable of seeing the consequences of actions due to a vast general knowledge and understanding.  The specific skills related to a job, with a few exceptions, can be learned 'on the job.'  And there's evidence that these supposed 'skill sets': collaboration, critical thinking, communication are directly related to the specific subject-matter at hand.  I may be good at thinking critically about a mathematical problem, but fail miserably when it comes to architecture, mostly because I lack the foundational knowledge allowing me to think accurately about a particular issue.  And collaboration works very well with experts from various fields; not so much with amateurs with similar backgrounds.  And sometimes, like in the case of Steve Wozniak inventing the Apple computer, collaboration is completely unneeded, unnecessary, and probably wouldn't have worked.  (Einstein: Theory of Relativity; Newton, Kepler, how much collaboration did they do?)

So, without further adieu....

JOINT LEGISLATIVE CONFERENCE on COMPETENCY-BASED ED
At 8am, there will be a Joint Legislative Conference talking about Competency-based ed at UVU--essentially, kids with computers designed to streamline credentials for workforce.  The discussion is not and never has been: Should we do Competency-based (or mastery learning or whatever)?  The focus tomorrow is how to implement it and how to overcome the obstacles (including, I'm sure whe'll hear about those 'people who just don't like change.')  Some of the focus is very appealing: don't make kids who already understand something sit through a semester or a year to get credit for it.  The question comes down to WHO decides what the criteria are for determining competency?  Is it a national organization dedicated to global citizenship?  Is it the local community college or the local school district?  Is it American Institutes for Research, SAGE test designer and behavioral research organization extraordinaire?  A newly-established and funded comptency-based ed board?And therein lies the rub.  Who is in charge?  I can guarantee it won't be parents.  Granted, my kids are taking online learning courses--specifically for the mostly brain-dead courses the legislature requires in order to 'check a box' to say they've done it.  While I would love for them to be able to test out of a lot of this garbage, I think the real answer is for the legislature to not impose arbitrary courses on to the locals.  I know that requires a lot of faith in your local school board, teachers and administrators and, most importantly, parents and taxpayers.  But, WE are obligated to chart the course to determine what our kids need.  If Park City thinks their kids need something different, so be it.  Why should we care?  Unfortunately, we live in an age where 'the experts know best', and parents are seen as obstacles in providing a child with 'real' education.

Back to the conference, many of you remember Marc Tucker, famous for his School to Work ideas during the Clinton Administration and the Dear Hillary letter (cradle-to-grave workforce development system.)  Mr. Tucker was the keynote speaker at last year's joint legislative conference.  This is Part Deux (part two).  This is Mr. Tucker's vision, and all the focus on Workforce as the end goal of education was enhanced by Mr. Tucker and his National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE).  It's always fun to think of my children in terms of their 'economic potential', as 'human capital'.  And dare are I ask, what happens to those humans who can't be turned into capital? 
THE LEDGER: 'FUN' ROADMAP FOR THE FUTURE
Here is a link to a video that ACT and others have put together to show what competency-based ed is projected to grow into.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zssd6eBVfwc

Learning is Earning 2026 - A partnership between ACT ... www.youtube.com Play the game, make the future. 9am March 8 - 9pm March 9 CST www.LearningIsEarning2026.org

And commentary from my favorite, liberal education blogger, Peter Greene (language warning).   http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-ledger-lab-rat-america.html

For those who don't want to read through Mr. Greene's blog, here are some excerpts:

Learning is earning.

Your Ledger account tracks everything you've ever learned in units called edublocks.
An edublock represents, supposedly, one hour of learning in any subject-- which brings us to our first mystery, which is exactly how one breaks down learning into hours.

...

Your profile displays all the blocks you've earned. Employers can use this information to offer you a job or a gig that matches your skills.

The Ledger will track the money you make from those gigs and use it to evaluate the edublock sources; ultimately every edublock source will carry a rating that shows which sources led to people earning the most money. Because in the world of the Ledger, money is the ultimate yardstick by which all value is measured. You can even market yourself as a commodity, bartering for free edublocks by offering a share of your future earnings in return. The video does not say anything about what happens if you do not provide a sufficient return on the investment, and I'd rather not imagine how that particular "collection" goes. [My note: See?  I'm not the only one who wonders.]

...

Does ACT have a plan for getting not one, but several governments to sign off and join up on the Ledger, so that the program can have access to everything, every last bit of data? Because this whole plan would seem to require that a corporation and governments join together to provide a more user-friendly computer-based surveillance state.
 

...

Who is going to create all the tasks that will measure and certify certain skills? It doesn't actually matter that much, because the bottom line is that all jobs and skill sets will be broken down to the simplest possible set of tasks, a simplification that guarantees that all nuance, complexity, and higher-order thinking will be kicked right out of the system.

Exactly what task will certify that you have acquired one hour's worth of critical thinking?

...

This is not education. This is training. This is operant conditioning for the servant class that also provides the upper class with tools that let them trickle even fewer benefits down to the working class.

In fact, I would say that this is just training rats to run a maze, but it's even worse than that, because ultimately even if we were to accept the premise that simply giving some job-ish training for the underclass is good enough, and even if I were to accept the racist, classist [b***sh**] that somehow ignores the immoral and unethical foundations of such a system, the fact remains that this would be a lousy training system. To reduce any job of any level of complexity to this kind of checklist-of-tasks training provides the worst possible type of training.

...

Do I think folks like ACT Foundation or Pearson (who also like a version of this model) can actually pull this off? It doesn't matter-- what matters is that this is their North Star, and even though you never get to the North Star, it still shapes the course you set. Worse, while I hope we never arrive in the world of the Ledger, these folks can do a huge amount of damage trying to navigate in that direction.

So, our legislators are being asked to start legislating competency-based ed stuff, so we can get on the Learning is Earning track without a public discussion as to why we're doing this and who will determine what is competency?  (And BTW, did you call your legislator to ask for this change?  I'm guessing you didn't.  Another 'brilliant idea' that comes down from some Think Tank somewhere that will be foisted on the public without any sort of pilot project, public demand, or scientific evaluation.  And then in 5 years, they'll say it wasn't properly implemented and come up with something else that's similar but somehow better that was presented with a nice PowerPoint at some conference somewhere.) 

PROSPERITY 2020
At 4pm at the District Office, Prosperity 2020 will be giving us a 15 minute presentation.  I'm not sure what they will be presenting, but they have a similar focus on the economic outcomes of education. 

Here is a quote from the Utah.gov website about Prosperity 2020.
"Great businesses are built with human capital—well-trained and educated workers."

Again, I think those involved are motivated by a desire to have well-educated kids, and they are seeing some deficits, I assume.  They want to 'bridge that gap.'  But I would argue, it's doing things the wrong way.  If there is a market for certain skills, the market, using supply and demand, will pay more for those skills.  People will jump through whatever hoops are necessary to gain those skills, in order to get a job that pays really well for those skills.  Public education should not be seen as a publicly-funded job-training program.  And your kids and mine should NOT be seen as human capital that can be used to promote the economic bottom-line of a corporation or the State of Utah. Central planning to match job skills with workers and 'training' (education) sounds so 1980's USSR to me.  So, I will try to keep an open mind (it will be hard) for the presentation.  But at the end of the day, my question will still come back to: Who decides?  In public education, it's supposed to be the parents and the taxpayers, not Marc Tucker or the Chamber of Commerce.