25 Radical Ideas

I found this interesting snippet in the education issue of The New York Times Magazine: “It’s time to give educators an orange.” Okay, not the usual apple. That’s good. Those few words got me thinking and reading the articles about what might be next in education, about what others are doing for children. Let’s all drink a glass of lightning bolts and transform everything!

1. Get rid of testing, state and standardized. “This push on tests,” says Dominic Randolph, Headmaster at Riverdale Country School in New York, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.” He’s talking about the need to build character in children. This from a man who runs one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools.
2. Teach character – optimism, persistence, and social intelligence (group dynamics and social situations). David Lanvin, co-founder and superintendent of KIPP charter schools in New York City, tracked the first group of eighth grade students to attend KIPP Academy middle school in the South Bronx through high school and college. Almost all made it through high school, 80% enrolled in college, but only 33% graduated with a four-year degree. Lanvin noticed that the students who graduated from college were not necessarily the strongest in academics, but they did have exceptional character strengths.
3. Make it okay to fail. It’s important for children to be able to come to terms with their shortcomings and work to overcome them. Karen Fierst, a learning specialist at Riverdale, says, “Our kids don’t put up with a lot suffering. They don’t have a threshold for it. They’re protected against it quite a bit. And when they do get uncomfortable, we hear from their parents. We try to talk to parents about having to sort of make it O.K. for there to be challenge, because that’s where learning happens.”
4. Give children and their parents passes and transportation to museums, all kinds. Michael Bloomberg credits his Saturday mornings at the Boston Museum of Science for teaching him to listen, question, test, and analyze.
5. Fund school libraries and pay librarians to help foster a love of books and reading.
6. Value the arts as much as science and math and athletics. Some children have difficulties in school beginning at a very young age. But all children have gifts, and maybe he or she can write songs, choreograph a dance, play the piano, sing, dance, draw, or paint. Culture thrives on diversity.
7. Hire enough teachers so class sizes remain small, from three to ten students. Provide teacher support, differentiated instruction, and make extra help standard practice. Corporations pay lobbyists exorbitant amounts of money to buy policies favorable to their profits; perhaps we can channel some of this into education. Everyone benefits.
8. Let kids move. Children learn in lots of different ways. Some cannot learn chained to a desk filling in workbook pages.
9. Teachers make as many decisions in a school day as chief executives. Pay them accordingly.
10. Require teachers to get master’s degrees. Make these as rigorous and prestigious and worthwhile as other advanced degrees. Teachers need to be treated as trusted professionals.
11. If it’s not about teaching, teachers shouldn’t do it. No fund raising, no playground monitoring, no serving breakfast, cleaning classrooms, or collecting papers for the front office. Give teachers time for planning, for talking with students, and for communicating with parents.

12. Teach children to become active learners. Use technology for research certainly, but let them demonstrate how they think by building, explaining ideas, writing and performing. At the New Humanitarian, a private school in Moscow, students are expected to think. Vasily Bogin, the school’s director, rejects the idea of memorization and drill, which he was expected to do growing up. “I didn’t want to be a slave. I didn’t want to be a person who is ordered and must obey the orders without any thinking. I didn’t consider myself to be a person who repeats texts without any criticism or thinking…”
13. Schools develop their own curricula. No politician or corporation tells schools what to do or how to do it or when to do it. If a math teacher decides to have the children use a construction paper hand to estimate the size of a giant and then make it, and if that takes up several hours over the course of a couple of days, the teacher does it. No subject has to be taught at the same time, in exactly the same way every day.
14. Shorten the school day. Let teachers have time to meet, plan, and discuss methodology. Let children have time for play and for pursuing their interests. Education is not about competing with other countries for global dominance.
15. Get rid of school cafeteria food and vending machines. It’s loaded with fat and salt and sugar and includes sodas, pizza, burgers, chips, canned green beans, fruit cocktail, tater tots and ice cream cones. Teach children about nutrition, grow gardens, and make smoothies. Study the affect on hyperactivity and autism and other learning difficulties.
16. Take the pressure off. Stop insisting on high levels of achievement. “Race to Nowhere”, a movie about stresses facing affluent American high school students, talks about the high levels of emotional problems adolescents face from excessive pressure to succeed.
17. Ask teachers if children are learning. They are the ones who know.
18. Teach foreign languages. Children need fluency in three or four. Many people around the world learn English.  We need to learn the languages of other countries as well.
19. Offer classes that teach critical thinking. New Humanitarian in Moscow offers one that teaches students three ways of thinking: verbal, abstract and representational. They use word problems and puzzles to help children think more broadly. Bogin explains, “Does 2 + 2 = 4? No! Two drops of water plus two drops of water? One drop of water.”
20. Offer oral exams, Olympiads, poetry readings and contests.
21. Build, build, and build new schools across the country – from Pittsburgh to Fresno, from Jackson to Billings to Bangor. Learning environments matter.
22. Tax corporations. If they want an educated work force, they can help pay for one. It’s a necessary investment in people, and in the future health and well being of the country.
23. Get rid of federal legislation like No Child Left Behind. It’s not working. Period.
24. Start a new movement: Occupy the Classroom. Parents, teachers and children hold rallies at schools protesting the emphasis on standardization and data collection. Invite the media, bring sleeping bags, and spend the night in a classroom.
25. Remember our beginnings. When I was growing up I remember what made me proud to live in America. We were learning about immigrants and the Statue of Liberty in sixth grade. The sonnet by Emma Lazarus made me weep: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest–tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” I thought we were a country for everyone. My grandparents were immigrants from Poland and the Ukraine. My mother learned to speak English here. Isn’t a good education for all a part of the promise of liberty?

I am ashamed when I see the truth of what we’ve become: a nation unable to do what’s right in educating our children.