hacking education

I recently applied for Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) brand spanking new Ed.L.D. (Doctor of Education Leadership) program.

And was subsequently rejected.

I am learning to conquer and even welcome failure in my life. Fail often. Fail fast. If you aren’t failing, you are not trying hard enough. If you are not failing, you are not learning as fast as you could be.

There were a few ironies to my Harvard application. My stated purpose in education is to stage a coup to overthrow and topple the current regime. To seek that knowhow from the leader of the current establishment is, truly, ironic. That irony was never lost to myself and something I questioned often.  When I was just graduating from high school I wrote in my journal (those are like blogs with poor readership) that my goal was not to attend Harvard but to become the Harvard of the next generation. There would have been great irony to Harvard issuing a diploma to the force that will one day come to overthrow it.

And I do intend to be part of the force that brings the Harvard dynasty to an end.

That said, I harbor no ill feelings for Harvard. It is the very best of the current education system. It was a recent pioneer in the financing of middle-class students among many other great strides. It has created a model for elite, sustainable education. It is the best of what we currently have to offer.

But it is the leader of a system that, at large, is failing America. Harvard’s stated purpose for this new Ed.L.D. program is to train the leaders to fix America’s K-12 education system. With that as their stated purpose, I believe that Harvard has already failed.

How do I know? From the social streams.

The premise of my argument rests on this distinction. In 100 years who will the history “books” (“books” because in 100 years “books” will not be the storage unit of knowledge) mention: Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, or Arne Duncan, the most powerful US Secretary of Education in the history of our nation?  It is my predication, that Arne Duncan will have been long forgotten and lost from our national memory and that Jimmy Wales will be enthroned as the grandfather and pioneer of “modern” education.

I like Arne Duncan. But there is little that he is doing that even matters.  Tweaking our broken system will yield little. Pouring billions into broken districts and states systems will change little. Arne Duncan has been charged with fixing the Encyclopedia Britannica. His reform is only as radical as to fire the old writers, hire new and improved writers, and pay them on a different model.  When all the while we slowly usher in the era of an wiki-model education.

(I support most everything Arne is up to and think it will make the current system better. That is in no way my argument. The argument is that it really doesn’t matter. The goal shouldn’t be to make the horse buggy any better than it already is when Model T’s are starting to come off the line).

My hope was that Harvard would have had the wisdom to identify the change that is upon us and be the pioneers in training the leaders that would take us boldly into a new era. To realize that training and leaders were needed for a system that doesn’t yet exist. To step into the dark and begin to imagine what is next and take risks on how we can get there as a nation. Instead, they picked out leaders to drive the last efficiencies from our current system, to slow the inevitable change, and to train the current establishment’s last generation of leaders.

My proof. The social streams.

The internet is the greatest learning tool ever invented. It is the backbone and infrastructure upon which the new education will be built. The leaders of the new education will rise from the ranks of the internet, the blog sphere, the twitterverse. The internet is the most powerful agent for change and the change agents will be those who know the tool well enough to envision how it can fix and solve our dilemmas. How it can serve us, teach us, and educate us. 

By their fruits ye shall know them. Or in our case, their online, social profile. Their online stream. Their online community.

Getting into the HGSE program is a life changing event—by any standards—and would have been the primary topic of interest for anyone who got in. Anyone who leads, participates, or engages online would have left a digital footprint of this event. A blog post, a facebook post, a twitter post, to announce and celebrate this success. And yet, there has not been a single mention online by any of the admitted class of their success in getting in.

I have tried smart queries using a variety of key words on google, facebook, twitter and elsewhere. I have gone weeks back in the histories. I have checked deep into the SERPs. Nothing.

Without knowing a single person that Harvard picked, I know Harvard failed. Not because of who these people are, but because of who they are not. They are not leaders in the new education. The new education has already started, the force that will fix American education, and all 25 of Harvard’s picks are absent from roll call.   

(download)

Click here to download:

Harvards_Failure_The_New_Educa.zip (116 KB)

Via The Daily Show

In reading this article about the Association for Information Media Equipment opposing UCLA’s streaming of their education content this quote came to mind.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.

- Albert Einstein

One of many great nuggets from this wiki article:

“Social constructivism views each learner as a unique individual with unique needs and backgrounds. The learner is also seen as complex and multidimensional. Social constructivism not only acknowledges the uniqueness and complexity of the learner, but actually encourages, utilizes and rewards it as an integral part of the learning process.”

Via Wikipedia

PROFILE of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. President Obama has allotted Duncan more than seventy billion dollars in federal economic-stimulus funds to hand out to the states—more money “by a factor of a lot,” as Duncan puts it, than any Secretary of Education has had before him. The stimulus money and the close relationship Duncan, who was the C.E.O. of the Chicago Public Schools before coming to Washington with Obama, has to the President give him extraordinary leverage. Duncan has the potential to be a uniquely influential Secretary of Education. Any state that wants its full share of stimulus money needs to give the Department of Education what are known as the “four assurances”: progress in raising standards; in recruiting and retaining effective teachers; in tracking students’ and teachers’ performance; and in turning around failing schools. Duncan has played basketball with Barack Obama for nearly two decades, and first met him through Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s older brother, who now coaches Oregon State University’s men’s basketball team. In the fight over education in America today, there are, roughly speaking, two major camps: free-market reformers, who believe that competition, choice, and incentives must have greater play in education; and liberal traditionalists who rally around teachers’ unions and education schools. Obama’s choice of Duncan was widely received as a compromise. His appointment was a loss for the unions. Republicans approve of Duncan’s commitment to market-based reforms. Duncan must contend with critics on the right who don’t accept the federal government’s active role in education, and ones on the left who see him as a neoliberal enforcer, exploiting Obama’s Democratic bona fides to impose the free-market reform agenda on the unions. Tells about Duncan’s childhood on the South Side of Chicago and the after-school program his mother ran and continues to run in North Kenwood-Oakland. After graduating from Harvard, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia before returning to Chicago. Describes Duncan’s career in Chicago, leading up to him being named C.E.O. of the Chicago Public Schools in 2001. Writer discusses Duncan’s tenure as C.E.O. and interviews several critics of his policies. Tells about the rules by which the stimulus finds will be awarded to states and considers the legacy of No Child Left Behind. Many people who voted for Obama are finding out that on education, as on other issues, he is more of a centrist than they ever imagined.

via The New Yorker

“"Kids learn in different ways," said Baust. "Some use more of their right brain, the creative problem-solving side that is more artistic, while others use more of their left brain, the more structured and traditional way of learning."

“Massengill and Baust are encouraging their students to use and develop both sides of their brain, even if one is more dominant.

“In order to cater to each side of the brain, the pair created spaces that adhere to each, a left brain room and a right brain room. The left brain room has desks and is more of your traditional classroom, while the right brain room has comfortable rugs and pillows. The only desk you'll find in this room is the teacher's.

“"The room we use depends on the lesson we're teaching that day," Massengill said. "If it's something that requires the use of textbooks and a more individual working space, we'll use the left brain room. If we're discussing a novel or want to have a more free-flowing conversation, we use the right brain room."”

Via Daily Press

“The most detailed study to date of the 18- to 29-year-old Millennial generation finds this group probably will be the most educated in American history. But the 50 million Millennials also have the highest share who are unemployed or out of the workforce in almost four decades, according to the study, released today by the Pew Research Center.”

Via USAToday