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TOPIC: What is a School?

Lesson Element .1: ASchool as a Factory@

History of Interchangeable Parts:

Eli Whitney was an amazing inventor. He invented the cotton gin.

The cotton gin:

Revolutionized the cotton processing industry.

The cotton gin did the labor of 50 men.

American cotton growers no longer need to rely upon slave labor to process cotton. This reduced their argument to own slaves to nothing.

The cotton gin not only removed a major argument for owing slaves, it could be considered a catalyst for the American Civil War.

Whitney=s Played a Crucial Role in Ending the Civil War with Another of His Inventions; Interchangeable Gun Parts.

Before his invention, all guns were handcrafted to unique specifications.

Gunsmiths designed each gun slightly different so that each part of a gun needed to be minutely adjusted to fit with the other parts.

If the gun broke, it required a gunsmith to specifically craft a new part.

This was a tedious process and something very had to do in the middle of a battlefield, which is where the guns usually broke.

Whitney invented interchangeable parts so that when a gun broke, the owner simply needed to remove the broken part and snap a new part into place.

Whitney=s Concept of Interchangeable Gun Parts was Not Readily Accepted.

Non-acceptance of interchangeable parts is hard to imagine in today=s society.
However, back in the 1860's, it was viewed as a strange and untrustworthy idea.

People were used to having craftsmen fabricate new parts as needed, and the idea of trusting your life to an untested method wasn=t well received.

Shifting the Paradigm: How Whitney Won Acceptance for His New Method.

Nobody would buy his new method or parts.
He finally got an appointment with the northern Secretary of War.
He and his partners walked into the office with an armload of guns and dumped them on the floor.
They took them all apart, mixed up all the pieces, and then randomly selecting pieces, reassembled a gun. They then fired it out the window, much to the amazement of the skeptical secretary.
The Secretary of War was so impressed that the new guns were immediately ordered and issued to the Union troops.
The ability of the northern troops to rapidly repair their weapons on the battlefield gave the Union troops a tactical advantage. Some say it won the war for the north.

Education Today Uses the Same Principles That Made Whitney=s Inventions A Success.

We tend to prepare students like they were good workers for factories and as interchangeable parts.

Many classroom practices have more to do with creating students who are industrious and obedient, rather than developing intellect and personal skills.

Schools are more a training ground for task completion than they are an arena to learn and discover new things and ideas.

We fool ourselves if we believe that children who are all taught the basics will come back equal and interchangeable parts.

The basics are important, but educational expectations should not end there.

Dr. Allen doesn=t buy into the concept of students as factory workers and interchangeable parts.

He believes that we are preparing students for a future of information retrieval, not information mastery.

Those skills may have been appropriate for the industrial age, but in our modern society they are far from ideal.

He also believes that the concept of molding students as interchangeable parts is hogwash.

Each student is unique, with their own strengths and personal learning styles.

Dr. Allen believes that balance is the key. Predictable skills and individualization.

It should not be one method or another. The answer is finding the balance of qualities from each method.

Lesson Element .2: ASchools as Preparation@

Schools Are In the Business of Preparing People For Careers In the Greater World.

They wish to ensure that they only admit people that they feel they can adequately prepare.

This is why schools have admission requirements which they use to try and predict how well students will do in their school.

Conventional Predictors Are Not Very Accurate.

Test score like the SAT and the GRE only accurately predict about 40% of student success.

This is also true with letters of recommendations and GPAs. They are only about 40% accurate as well.

The combination of all three only turns out to be 40% accurate.

The people who design admission tests are aware of the limitations. They may try to improve the predictability, but they haven=t gotten it over 40%.

Although the standard admission requirements are ineffective, there is little that can be done about it. With a few alternatives, schools still insist on the same old reference letters, test scores and GPAs.

Dr. Allen Has Tried Some Alternatives With Mixed Results.

As Dean of University of Massachusetts, he scrapped the GPA requirement for people seeking admission as a graduate student.

They conducted personal interviews, considered individual backgrounds and accomplishments, and ended up with a very different population of graduate students.

The goal was to discover alternative criteria for admitting students.

The experiment was not totally successful. They were never able to categorize new criteria.

Humans are too complicated, they contain too many variable to be predicted according to set criteria.

They admitted lots of students with non-traditional credentials, and turned away people with higher GPAs.

The lesson learned during the seven year period: Each person needs to be evaluated and assessed only by a system complex enough to discern all their facets. That system is another person in an interactive setting.

Lesson Element .3: ASchool as Bureaucracy@

Schools Are a Necessary Bureaucracy and Students Need To Learn How to Deal With Them.

Dealing with the bureaucracy cannot be escaped and is an essential skill.

Life can be very tough if you do not know how to successfully deal with a bureaucracy.

Bureaucracies are not inherently bad things. They are necessary.

When you live in a society, you need systems of management.

Unfortunately, the systems often become clumsy and impersonal, and you have to deal with them very carefully.

Bureaucracies often appear to be cast in stone. This is not true, there are back-doors to dealing with the bureaucracy.

These backdoor methods are not generally publicized, but they exist.

Example: The drop/add deadlines for classes at ODU.

These appear to be non-negotiable. They aren=t. You simply need to know where to knock, and whom to speak to. You have to have a reasonable alternative.

We need to teach people where those doors are, and how to use them responsibly so we can all operate successfully and comfortably.

Many bureaucracies do not publicize the back-doors because they are afraid people will use them irresponsibly.

Students need to be taught how to fit in.

This means not only learning how to use the bureaucracy, but also how to adjust to the environment socially and culturally.

We need to teach the students everything they will require to fully operate in society.

Lesson Element .4: ASchool as Babysitter@

School Is a Babysitter.

Without schools, parents would have to find other places for their children during the work day.

Our capitalistic American society with its eight hour work day only runs as smoothly as it does because the children are tucked away in school while their parents are at work.

One of the tasks we expect from schools is to free parents during the day.

Recognizing That School Is a Babysitter, We Should Adjust Things So That it Works That Way Even More Smoothly.

School currently ends before the end of the work day. We end up with latch key kids.

We should extend the school day so that the kids don=t go home until their parents are their.

The normal school day should go until around 6:00 pm.

Adjusting the School Day Doesn=t Mean Continuous Academic Study.

We should organize the day so that part of the time the students are doing things like homework, arts and crafts, extended PE, school projects, theater classes, etc.

The adjusted hours would give the school the time to introduce the types of education which we anticipate we are going to need in the future.

We Need to Change the Relationship Between Schools and Parents in Regard to Love and Discipline.

The current assumption is that schools discipline while families love.

This assumption leads to a whole lot of problems when families don=t discipline and schools don=t love.

Love and discipline needs to be used by both parents and schools.

The trick to this is that parents and teachers need to be clear with each other about what each is doing, so that they don=t step on each other=s toes.

We Need to Set up a New Understanding Between Parents and Schools So That the Greatest Forces Involved in Molding the Live of Our Children Can Work Together and Reinforce Each Other.

Actions taken in the classrooms need to be backed up at home, and actions at home need to be supported in the classroom.

Having both factions completing separate tasks is inefficient and often contradictory.

Lesson Element .5: ASchool as a Shopping Mall@

Course Requirement Were Deeply Scrutinized and Relaxed During the 1960's.

The concept was that it was the student=s responsibility to choose for him or herself which courses they wish to study.

The idea was short lived and not successful.

The majority of students slacked off and didn=t choose their educational paths responsibly.

Given too much choice, they abused their privilege and devalued their education.

Today, Requirements Are Once Again Standard and Dr. Allen Believes They Are Necessary.

Universities should clearly state what the students need to study in order to complete a degree.

They should also make it clear the requirements can be easily replaced with reasonable alternatives proposed by the students.

The school doesn=t lose anything if it allows individuals to make changes with correct authorization.

The students will still have the freedom to study what they personally like, as long as they can defend it=s inclusion in their broader programs of study.

A Modified Elective System Places a Lot of Emphasis on Personal Choice and Responsibility, but Does Not Allow the Slacking off That Occurs When Standards Are Not Clearly Stated and Enforced.

The standards are actually higher when the students are allowed to exercise choice.

In order to choose responsibly, you have to be engaged with your subject matter and care about it. This leads to higher standards and results.

Schools should emphasize the benefits of designing your own program with faculty approval, and then train the students how to go about doing that.

We all win if students learn how to choose well and take the initiative to do so.

Lesson Element .6: ASchool as Developer of Potential@

Schools Need to Equip Students with Basic Knowledge, Saleable Skills, and to Develop the Potential of Each Student.

Teachers need to watch their students carefully to learn their areas of strength and weakness, and then work with them to bring out their natural talents.

Schools Need to Be Held Accountable to Parents, Students, and Society to Develop the Potential of the next Generation.

If a school is not working for a particular student, the parents deserve to know why.

Students likewise need to be accountable to the school. They have to do the work assigned and behave properly.

Only when both factions are working together, can we be assured that education is being done properly and morally.

Schools must Be Prepared to Adjust to Individual Uniqueness.

Universities should be flexible when having their requirements met by alternative means, and they should recognize that each student has his or her own needs and interest, and the school should promote the development of those.

Schools Need to Educate One Child at a Time.

This means restructuring the classrooms environment to allow the teachers to give individual response to their students.

This means smaller classes, increased teacher aides, and whatever else needs to be done to ensure that the student=s unique educational needs are met.

Lesson Element .7: ASchool as Acculturator@

Schools Acculturate Their Students to One Common Culture.

This is the nature of heterogeneous cultural interaction in an institution where there are standardized expectations and procedures.

It is important that teachers be aware of the Aculture@ they are automatically promoting in their classroom.

They should be clear to their students and the student=s parents about what is being transmitted.

Teachers Have a Second Job in the Classroom: Minimize Cultural Differences.

The classrooms are filled with diverse students, each with different cultures.

A major job of the teacher is to minimize toe stepping between the different cultures.

Example: Simon and his experience with going to school in Zimbabwe.

Entering grade five, Simon was aware that the classroom operated on a different set of cultural rules.
Wanting to fit in, he decided to imitate his classmates. He observed that when students approached the teacher as he sat at his desk, they got down on their knees.
What Simon hadn=t noticed is that only the girls knelt, the boys showed deference to the teacher by standing respectfully beside the teacher and avoiding eye contact.
The first time Simon had to talk to the teacher, he knelt, and the whole class including the teacher burst out in laughter. This confused Simon.
The teacher minimized cultural differences by telling Simon what was expected. He informed Simon that he could simply stand by the desk and didn=t have to kneel.