ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER MARCH 1992 ~~~~~ TI-101 ~~~~~ OUR 4/A UNIVERSITY by Jack Sughrue Box 459 E.Douglas MA 01516 .CE #2 Holism Happy New Century Last time, Class, in our TI-101 classroom we introduced the historical perspective of public education in a few strong words. We stated that some of the wrongs with our schools today is the profiteering by the big book industry who would like all our children to be into some kind of large-scale, lock-stepping curriculum as devised by them. [Close to 100% of all the schools in America have curriculums established by publishers and screwed into place by administrative bureaucrats. They are not created by the teachers, the trained professionals who work directly with the children. Once in a while - such as the school in which I presently teach 3rd graders - a school is blessed with an intelligent, child-oriented principal who is not afraid to empower her teachers. But this scenario is truly rare in our country.] Which brings me back to THE REVOLUTION in education I discussed during our last class. This is the revolution of holism in education. It is an international grass roots approach to learning. Whole Language is the most prominent movement in the revolution. It is a philosophy that asks how children learn and then seeks ways to provide those opportunities for the child. It is, in short, a research-based philosophy and an intellectual attitude and a creative style. But what is it, specifically. Well, let's look at product results first, although Whole Language Educators will be the first to say that process rather than product is the goal of W.L.: In the standard achievement tests scores given world-wide the U.S. ranks 47th. On those same tests New Zealand is 1st. New Zealand has close to 100% of its teachers, K-12, using W.L. New Zealand has the highest rate of literacy of any country in the English-speaking world. Now back to how W.L. works and what it is. In the U.S. we have had a long history of process methodology. Unfortunately, it has never been a part of mainstream education. Like jazz, as musically intricate as any form of music on the planet, has never become the mainstream of American culture. But there were many educators who understood how children think and how children learn. These people have taught and have written books and have done research. But, except for the unusual teacher or an extremely rare school staff, few people had access to these ideas and materials and methodologies. Such things as the Teacher-Writer Collaborative in New York, the Bay Area Project in California, and the Framingham Writing Project in Massachusetts. These were a few of the isolated programs and projects and groups that sought to integrate the curriculum by starting a Square One and helping the students learn from their own strengths in a positive "unending" environment which tied various aspects of learning into complex, relevant activities. Thinking on a large scale, understanding analogies, making connections, discovering solutions. To explain another way, Class: Most of us grew up learning little isolated skills. We learned to Captitalize on the 9th week of school, let's say, in the 8th Grade. Following that week, during which we'd be forced to learn the 60-odd capitalization rules for Friday's test, we'd leap into a couple days of hyphens and dashes, before going on to colons and semi-colons, and so on. Isolated. Irrelevant. Boring. And not a good learning environment. A publisher's dream and an administrator's idea of Heaven. Because the kids can be tested on each of these isolated pieces, numbers can be attached to their names. These numbers can then be sorted into descending order and grades issued based on this garbage. This has nothing to do with learning, with life-long skills, with internalizing and ownership. This has to do with outside forces trying to jam 19th Century methods down the throats of the people who will be running the 21st Century. Bad stuff. Take almost any English book you can get your hands on, and you will not find any writing activities (or few except in the most recent books and then as a way to thwart the movement away from texts). The books tell, tell, tell, tell how YOU are supposed to know this rule and that. The books test, test, test. They introduce the English materials in the most inane ways. For the most part, traditional English text books are sappy, to say the least, and anti-education to be really honest. And, except in a splashy, surface way haven't really changed since McGuffey's Readers of a century ago. At the time of the Industrial Revolution the sum of human knowledge doubled about every 150 years; at the turn of this century it doubled about every 75 years; after World War II every 25 years; in 1990 every 9 months! We still need to teach our kids skills, but we need to teach them DIFFERENT skills, better skills, more relevant skills, as "coverage" is impossible. [By the time a science book is researched and written and edited and printed and sold and distributed and finally used in a classroom it is already quite a few years out of date. And this is not just for info about our Solar System, for example, since the Voyager trips; it is about dinosaurs, which we know more about today than we did last year. Information progresses at a quantum rate, and this is true in every area of our real as well as academic lives.] Coverage is impossible, Class. Remember that. It's going to be on your next test. We need to teach our kids HOW to think. Informational regurgation is no longer relevant as we swing into the 21st Century. We need to teach our kids HOW to think, so they can be prepared for the future. And no matter how much we may long for the good ol' simple days of yore, they just ain't a'comin' back. We are - for better or worse - in the Electronic Age. And our kids, if they are going to compete with the rest of the world or if they are just simply going to keep America great, have got to become thinkers. They've got to become thinkers who can use the tools of the future NOW. Einstein (Albert) was asked for his phone number by a reporter. He looked it up in the phone book, astounding the reporter. Einstein explained that it would be foolish to clutter up his brain with anything that could be looked up. If Einstein felt he should not be cluttering up his brain with useless information, maybe we could all take heed. Let's give our kids and everyone else's kids a headstart for the next century by supporting our overworked teachers (instead of bashing them) and joining forces with them to provide a new environment in schools and in our homes. Let's advocate FOR our kids and their teachers. On 60-MINUTES, recently, Andy Rooney said the real problem with education today is not the teachers and not the schools but that "there are too many dumb kids," and, worse, too many dumb parents who don't prize education, who don't value learning (thus, too many dumb kids). I believe, truly, that we can get rid of this dumbness (which Steve Allen calls "DUMBTH" in a wonderful book by that name about the state of American thinking) by turning off the electronic babysitters (TVs and Nintendos) and get the kids into electronic tutors (computers) and maybe even (gasp!) books! And here we are at the point of these articles: our TIs and what they can do to reverse this terrible dumbing trend in our country. We'll take this up in our next class by introducing you to some of our brave TI-World educational experts and what they have offered and how we can use their gifts. Your homework is to dust off all your your educational cartridges (which includes TI-WRITER, of course, as well as TERMINAL EMULATOR and MINI-MEMORY (think about it), as well as DRAGON MIX, READING RALLY, SCHOLASTIC SPELLING, and BEGINNING GRAMMAR). You don't have to pass in any papers next session, but you must be prepared to present a 10-minute talk on at least two of your selected cartridges, being prepared to defend its educational relevance to the child of the future. Be early for TI-101 next time and get a good seat up front. Adios. .PL 1