years. I've been meaning to do this for a couple of days, and now I've got
the time.
It's not school, but many of the priorities that educators and public
expectations have imposed on schools for many years that are fading in
relevance. However, I'd argue that a great deal of what happens in schools
around socializing young people and helping them develop intellectual
character and moral purpose continues to be extremely relevant, if not
utterly essential for the survival of the planet and everything that
dwells upon it.
I am not talking about just a continuation of classical forms of
instruction or the maintenance of triumphalist historical and cultural
narratives.
Technologies come and technologies go (although lately I've felt like the
new triumphalist narrative on this list is the growing up/grown up digital
concept, in which everything that anyone has ever done in the past without
the benefit of cell phones and Twitter--both of which I use--is somehow
"industrial," intellectually crude and stultifying). I think that we might
remind ourselves that glorious communications technologies have been used
for evil purpose (Nazi films, Rwandan radio, Mumbai satphones), and that
all technologies are no better or worse than the people who use them.
People evolve more slowly than tubes and chips. Daniel Pink may be calling
it A WHOLE NEW MIND, but it's not quite that--it's a new way of deploying
tools. (Let the record show that I was the first on this list to mention
that book--I LOVE it.)
Human beings are gregarious by nature, and science seems to support the
idea that fae-to-face interaction and collaboration make for stronger
experiences, including learning experiences, than virtual ones. This is
why many of us go home for Thanksgiving even though we could Skype the day
away, and this is why virtually every human society has some provision for
educating and acculturating its young in groups, not just within nuclear
families.
Schools, in particular the independent schools represented by members of
this list, evolved for their own purposes, and they have an interesting
history. Groton was not founded to pump out industrial workers, nor were
Winsor or Greenwich Academy or Westtown or Hockaday or Kinkaid (or Beaver,
for that matter); the "industrial model" dog won't really hunt when sicced
on most independent schools. These schools were founded in a particular
era to help a particular group of students from a particular stratum of
society gain an understanding of how th world works and how to apply their
talents to keeping it working and to make it work even better. Along the
way these schools were inevitably caught up in preserving certain forms,
and certain privileges, that in time obscured some of their founders'
purposes and gave birth to the "elite prep school"--snob school--image
that we have to contend with today.
However, I think a good case can be made that many independent schools,
old and young, have in the past twenty years or so looked hard at their
heritage and tried to rediscover or reshape their original moral purposes.
Look at how hard some schools have worked to make themselves relevant
around issues like globalization, diversity, environmental sustainability,
and even social justice. Intentionally and as a collective enterprise,
some schools have pushed to give their students a deep and broad
understanding of how the world works and how it doesn't.
Some of this push has been curricular, much and wonderfully aided and
enhanced by technology. "Depth" and diversity not only mean deeper and
broader conceptualization, but when done well (do we "do depth"?) they
also involve multiple points of view, cultural and ethical. Tools like the
web and the various cool new communication technologies make it much
easier to find these points of view, and teaching students how to use the
tools--and to evaluate what they find--is vital to a better future. So is
teaching students how to work collaboratively, in small groups in the
hallways and in larger groups in the auditorium and in virtual, global
groups.
The push has also involved giving students new kinds of experiences. In a
Depression world, it isn't a terrible thing that some students are still
doing old-fashioned (c. 1995) "community service." It's an even better
thing that in many cases activist field work on social and environmental
problems is part of the learning experience: service learning, which can
also be powerfully enhanced by technology.
The push has also involved the kinds of communities our schools are
struggling to become: diverse racially, culturally, ethnically, and with
regard to religion, sexual orientation, ability, and family structure.
Endicott Peabody, who founded Groton, might be spinning in his grave at
the thought, but independent schools have worked very hard of late to
become the kinds of social experiements--intentional communities--that a
hundred and fifty years ago would have been called "utopian." That we so
often fail to achieve our loftiest goals in these areas hasn't stopped
most of us from trying.
Kids being kids and perhaps adults being adults, some things haven't much
changed. We still have sports teams, and most of our students still crave
what they call "school spirit." We still divide fields of knowledge up
into disciplinary chunks, and most of us can ruefully point to examples of
interdisciplinary education that have failed, making us wonder what it
will take to make it work right. (The examples I know of worked well when
a few true-believers were developing and delivering the curriculum, but
they didn't scale well nor did interdisciplinary instruction prove to be
something for which the generality of teachers seemed to have the knack,
even if they had the inclination.) Maybe technology will change this.
Maybe the brain likes categories too much.
Whether the current economic turmoil will pitch us all backwards, clinging
to what we've done and know best, or whether it will entirely and brutally
purge the system of old modes and orders as it rewards disruptive
innovation, I cannot say. But I think that school, or at least some
schools, will continue to have extreme relevance as long as educators can
conceive of a purpose to what they do and as long as that purpose makes
sense in the context of the era. Our job, our calling, is about helping
the youngsters of our world develop the habits of mind, the awareness, and
the moral concern that will keep the world going, and keep human society
evolving in directions that we believe are the right ones. Technology can
help us do that, in a big way that gets bigger every day.
But let's not get so carried away being disgusted with our colleagues who
don't get cellphones or who can't learn to set multiple margins that we
decide that school is irrelevant. If school is irrelevant, then so is
trying to create a better society. School--whether it's an outdoor
classroom at a giant refugee camp in Kenya, a masterpiece of Gothic
pretension surrounding green playing fields, or a suburban elementary
school--is what we try to do for our kids. We can do it better, we should
do it better, and in time I believe that technology will help us to
actually to it better. School is relevant.
(And he steps down from his soapbox.)
Cheers--Peter Gow
Peter Gow
Director of College Counseling and Special Programs
Beaver Country Day School
791 Hammond Street
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467
www.bcdschool.org
617-738-2755 (O)
617-738-2747 (F)
petergow3 (Skype)
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
