Dangerously Irrelevant

Here are my notes from Dr. Yong Zhao’s presentation, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, at the 2009 School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) conference…

• Dr. Zhao’s book will be out soon from ASCD.
• Thomas Friedman: “When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: ‘Finish your dinner — people in China are starving.’ I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: ‘Finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your job.’”
• When something bad happens in America, it has to do with education. When something good happens in America, it has to do with some politician.
• March 24, 1958 article in LIFE magazine comparing Russian students’ work with American students’ was very similar to the rhetoric of 2 Million Minutes.
• 1983, A Nation at Risk: “a rising tide of mediocrity” and “we are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate.”
• Achieve, the College Board, and ACT are writing the upcoming national standards. Ask yourself who stands to benefit from the new standards?
• 2 Million Minutes: now the ‘enemy’ is China and India. Dr. Zhao grew up in China and is back there almost every month. He disagrees with Bob Compton, the director.
• The USA continues to be the most economically competitive country in the world. We continue to be the most innovative, as measured by patents issued. And of course we are the most open, democratic.
• No other country comes close to the US when it comes to exports of intellectual property / knowledge (patents, royalties, copyrights, license fees). China dominates toy exports, not knowledge exports. China is a country built on cheap labor, not knowledge.
• If the US educational system is so bad, why are other countries (like China) trying to emulate us (see, e.g., China’s 2002 and 2005 curriculum and assessment reforms).
• Singapore is emphasizing the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills.
• The correlation between the 1964 First International Math Study test scores (FIMS) and economic output, hourly productivity, quality of life, etc. 40 hours later are all negative. Democracy, creativity, livability all have no relationship or a negative relationship with the FIMS scores.
• Recommends reading Day of Empire: How HyperPowers Rise to Global Dominance – And Why They Fail, by Amy Chua, and The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida. Diversity of talents, creativity, entrepeneurship, and passion are what allow nations to thrive.
• We are busy closing the achievement gap. Asian countries are busy closing the creativity gap.
• The strengths of American education: school talent shows (value individual talents, inspires passion and responsbility, tolerate deviation, cultivate entrepeneurship) and children are popcorn (some pop early and some pop late; respect individual differences; have faith in every child; second, third, and fourth chances)
• Creativity is fundamentally to be different. America is a society that tolerates, values, and celebrates difference.
• We do face new challenges. For example, globalization (i.e., the death of distance). Columbus took about 3 months to get from Spain to the Bahamas. Now it takes 13 hours on airplane. Electronic information, money, voice phone calls, etc. now get there instantly.
• Global supply chains: corporations can fragment their production and distribute it wherever it makes sense (outsourcing of labor). Products are now made from parts that come from a multitude of different countries.
• New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce: “Today, Indian engineers make $7,500 a year against $45,000 for an American engineer with the same qualifications. If we succeed in matching the very high levels of mastery of mathematics and science of these Indian engineers – an enormous challenge for this country – why would the world’s employers pay us more than they have to pay the Indians to do their work? They would be willing to do that only if we could offer something that the Chinese and Indians, and others, cannot.”
• Equalling China’s or India’s performance on standardized tests doesn’t differentiate ourselves, doesn’t allow us to offer what others cannot.
• Problems in other countries also affect everyone now (e.g., swine flu, poverty, violence, financial meltdowns). We no longer can keep ourselves isolated.
• Where does the new hope lie? With Madonna and eBay! Many people don’t like Madonna. But across the globe, there are enough who do for her to be successful. Globalization allows us to find the other crazy people across the world who find value in what we offer. eBay allows us to find others outside our local area who will buy our trash. Globalization expands our audiences and allows our skills, talents, products, etc. to find new places that they can thrive. What do you have that others don’t? What can you contribute to other markets? What’s your niche?
• Societal changes create new job opportunities. Right now, for example, we need people who understand other countries’ cultures, languages, politics, etc.
• Technology demands new skills (e.g., virtual designers). Virtual “gold farming” is now a $2 billion industry worldwide.
• The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills framework is too long and complex. Our problem in America is that we keep adding, we never take away.
• See Jenifer Fox’s www.strengthsmovement.com.
• We need to take technology and the digital world SERIOUSLY.
• Every child should have a personalized curriculum. This is happening in other countries (e.g., United Kingdom).
• We should think of schools as global enterprises, not local entities, and draw on global resources.
• Never send a man to do a machine’s job. Let people and computers each do what they do best.
• Slides available at http://zhao.educ.msu.edu

Here’s how we’re doing at collectively creating a list of model 21st century schools that are doing a nice job of infusing 21st century skills, digital technologies, problem- or inquiry-based learning, and other innovative practices into their school organization:

Those 59 United States schools represent 26 states. The International schools are in 10 different countries.

So we’re making GREAT progress. However, we still have a number of states (and countries) that don’t have a single school organization listed. I know that there are schools in every state that are doing wonderful things in the areas of problem-based learning, 21st century skills, or technology integration. Would you help us identify more model schools, either by adding them yourself or passing this quest along to others? We are in desperate need of good models that educators can learn from and visit. Thanks!

A week ago I asked for your help identifying model 21st century schools. Although I knew of a few schools or districts that were good models of what the new learning paradigm might look like, I was sure that there were many more schools out there that were doing great things when it came to project- or inquiry-based learning, technology integration, and so on.

Here’s what we have so far:

• 36 schools/districts in the USA, representing only 18 states
• 6 international schools, representing 5 countries

So, as you can see, we have a long way to go toward meeting my goal of at least 2 schools in each state and at least 50 in other countries.

Why don’t we have more? Several reasons, I’m guessing:

1. My readers don’t know what the exemplary 21st century schools are in their state/country,
2. I wasn’t persuasive enough for my readers to actually go to the Moving Forward wiki and enter the schools that they know about, and/or
3. There just aren’t that many exemplary 21st century schools.

While #3 is probably true to a certain extent, I’m guessing (hoping?) that each state has at least 2 schools that can serve as models for others. And I’m positive that some states, like California or Texas, have many more than 2. So I’m asking for your help again. Please go to the United States or International wiki pages and enter schools in your state/country that you know about. Also pass this quest along to others who may have knowledge in this area. We’re in desperate need of models of 21st century schooling. Help me create a shared resource that will be of value to everyone?

Which schools are good models that others could (should) visit to see what a new educational paradigm might look like?

This is the #1 question I get asked when I work with K-12 educators. I know a few, but I’m guessing that you know more. So I’m on a quest…

1. Think about who's doing a nice job in your state/country of infusing 21st century skills, digital technologies, problem- or inquiry-based learning, and other innovative practices into their school organization.
2. Go to the United States and/or International page at CASTLE’s Moving Forward wiki and add the name of the school organization and contact person in the appropriate place. If your state/territory/country isn’t listed, please add it.
3. Using the category list at the top of the page, indicate the category of innovation at the end of your entry so that visitors know which schools to visit for what. If you need to add a category, please do so.
4. Hyperlink the name of the school organization to its web site.
5. Repeat Steps 2 through 4 for each school organization that is a model of 21st century learning.

By Monday, April 27, I’m hoping that together we can identify at least 150 model school organizations, including at least 2 in every state and at least 50 overseas. I will be reporting out daily on our progress both here and via Twitter.

Please pass along this quest. The more model 21st century schools we get, the better resources these two pages will be for everyone. Feel free to use the logo as desired. Thank you!

I confess that my knowledge is sparse of web sites, wikis, etc. that aim to connect classrooms together for projects. Yet I’m starting to get asked more and more often by educators for places where they can go to connect their classrooms with others from across the globe. Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

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Jeff Utecht says that in
America (as opposed to China):

[W]e focus on getting students to think different, we encourage them to
think, to analyze, to question their findings. We teach them to learn on their
own.

Do we, Jeff? Or do we just benefit from our country’s overall openness
compared to China? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I don’t see a lot of explicit
instruction here in American schools regarding how to learn on your
own, at least not using present-day information and communication
technologies (which, of course, are what people need to master to be effective
learners in this century). And I don’t see a lot of encouragement of students
to really think, to critically dissect and analyze information that’s
meaningful and important (as opposed to better regurgitating
factual-procedural knowledge or doing what we say more often). And
I see few opportunities for children to engage in discovery learning
opportunities where they might actually have findings that are interesting and
worth questioning (as opposed to the controlled and often contrived
‘experiments’ that accompany publishers’ science curricula).

I’m fairly certain that Postman & Weingartner’s quote from Teaching
as a Subversive Activity is as applicable now as it was in 1969:

What students do in the classroom is what they learn (as Dewey would say) . .
. Now, what is it that students do in the classroom? Well, mostly, they
sit and listen to the teacher. . . . Mostly, they are required to
remember. . . . It is practically unheard of for students to play any
role in determining what problems are worth studying or what procedures of
inquiry ought to be used. . . . Here is the point: Once you have learned how
to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have
learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or
need to know . . . [However,] what students are restricted to (solely and
even vengefully) is the process of memorizing . . . somebody else’s answers to
somebody else’s questions. It is staggering to consider the implications of this
fact. The most important intellectual ability man has yet developed – the art
and science of asking questions – is not taught in school! Moreover, it is
not “taught” in the most devastating way possible: by arranging the
environment so that significant question asking is not valued. It is doubtful if
you can think of many schools that include question-asking, or methods of
inquiry, as part of their curriculum.

I agree with the general theme of your post, Jeff, but so far I disagree with you on this issue. I think that whatever advantages America may
enjoy over China regarding critical thinking, creativity, innovation, and the
like might be occurring despite our schools, not because of
them.

Thoughts, anyone else?

Head on over to Leading From the Heart and leave Tracy Rosen a comment on her thought-provoking post about revisiting digital literacy. Here’s the comment I just left her:

I am by no means a ‘literacy’ expert. For me, the idea of literacy means something like ‘fluency in the dominant information landscape(s) of your time, both as a consumer and as a producer.’ In the past, that has meant being an adequate reader and an adequate writer. It is increasingly clear that the dominant information landscape of our present and future is one that is digital, networked, interactive, hyperconnected, dispersed, rapidly-changing, multimedia, and so on. This new information landscape requires additional fluencies beyond those needed for a paper-based world.

Fluency in paper-bound text and graphics is still a necessary skill today. The need to be a high-level reader and writer is going to be around for a long while. But the dominance of the written word slowly will be eroded by other forms of audio/video expression. For me, the exciting thing about many of these new ‘literacies’ is that students and educators now have unprecedented opportunities to create things of value to the larger world, to have a legitimate voice, and to reach authentic audiences.

Like any good progressive, Chris Lehmann advocates emphasis on facilitation of students as digital citizens rather than emphasis on preparing students to be digital workers. I too am very much in favor of empowering students personally and on the citizenship front. But I also want my kids to have a meaningful, rewarding career (that, hopefully, also contributes to society in some way). And that means getting what Richard Florida calls a ‘creative class’ job – one that requires autonomy, independent judgment, creativity, innovation, creative problem-solving, and, yes, fluency with digital technologies. Creative class jobs are facilitated and enhanced by digital technologies, not replaced by them (as often happens with service or working class jobs).

So I empathize with your concern, Tracy, about respecting others’ approaches to sense-making. And I too am concerned with the differential access that developing countries and underserved student populations have. But I think the task for all of us is to bring them into the digital, global 21st century, not to define ‘literacy’ in ways that continue to disempower them socially and/or economically for decades to come (note: I’m not saying you’re doing this).

Here’s an old post of mine on social justice that might be of interest:

  http://snipurl.com/35ivk

Thanks for a thoughtful, thought-provoking post. I look forward to reading others’ comments!

Here are my notes from ISTE’s annual digital equity summit at NECC. There is too much information to fit in one post so I’m breaking it up…

From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities
Dr. Paul Resta, U. Texas-Austin

• Current estimate of world repository of pictures/words/movies = 7 exabytes (Library of Congress is largest in world = 20 terabytes)
• It’s not just more information. More is now different.
• UNESCO Digital Opportunity Index allows the tracking and comparison of countries in different aspects of the information society
• Essential conditions – access to…
• Basic literacy skills
• 26% of world adult population (1 billion people) is non-literate (2/3 are women)
• ICT devices, software, and sufficient bandwidth for Internet connectivity
• Most of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East has less than 10% of the population with personal computers
• High-income economies are far ahead (International Telecommunications Union, World Information Society 2007 Report)
• The top 1,000 companies in the world have over 70 million computers to dispose of
• Low-cost laptops: OLPC (600,000 orders from Birmingham (AL), Peru, Haiti, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Mexico, Uruguay, Mongolia), EeePC, Intel Classmate (150,000 orders from Nigeria, Libya)
• Cloud computing (virtual servers) means not much power has to reside on the computers themselves
• Asia and Europe both have more Internet users than North America; a near-perfect relationship between Internet use and income
• Broadband access takes up 2.1% of high-income (and 909% of low-income) yearly wages
• USA is now 15th in broadband penetration (see www.itif.org)
• Wireless access is increasing exponentially in many developing countries
• Meaningful, high-quality, culturally-relevant content in local languages
• 68% of Internet content is in English; next highest is Japanese (6%)
• 4Directions project is an indigenous model of education to create culturally-relevant curriculum resources
• Virtual museum partnerships
• Creating, sharing, and exchanging digital content
• The majority of the 7 billion videos streamed on the Internet each month are user-generated
• The number of blogs has roughly doubled every 6 months
• We need to enable indigenous voices and to use the Internat to foster cross-cultural understandings and share knowledge
• Educators who know how to use digital tools and resources in pedagogically-sound, culturally-responsible ways
• UNESCO ICT Competency Standards for Teachers
• Development of National Plans for ICT in Teacher Education
• Teacher Learning in E-Learning Age (UNESCO, forthcoming)
• Effective leadership in policy and planning
• Removing policy barriers and formulating new policy frameworks
• Broadband challenges require new thinking
• There is a need for ICTs customized to the needs of the poor in the developing world
• How do we ensure that the USA stays competitive?
• What is our role as educators to help address the global digital divide?
• From the Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities

If you haven’t yet done so, The Rise of the Rest in Newsweek is worth reading. Here’s an excerpt (hat tip to Richard Florida):

American parochialism is particularly evident in foreign policy. Economically, as other countries grow, for the most part the pie expands and everyone wins. But geopolitics is a struggle for influence: as other nations become more active internationally, they will seek greater freedom of action. This necessarily means that America’s unimpeded influence will decline. But if the world that’s being created has more power centers, nearly all are invested in order, stability and progress. Rather than narrowly obsessing about our own short-term interests and interest groups, our chief priority should be to bring these rising forces into the global system, to integrate them so that they in turn broaden and deepen global economic, political, and cultural ties. If China, India, Russia, Brazil all feel that they have a stake in the existing global order, there will be less danger of war, depression, panics, and breakdowns. There will be lots of problems, crisis, and tensions, but they will occur against a backdrop of systemic stability. This benefits them but also us. It’s the ultimate win-win.

To bring others into this world, the United States needs to make its own commitment to the system clear. So far, America has been able to have it both ways. It is the global rule-maker but doesn’t always play by the rules. And forget about standards created by others. Only three countries in the world don’t use the metric system—Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States. For America to continue to lead the world, we will have to first join it.

Americans—particularly the American government—have not really understood the rise of the rest. This is one of the most thrilling stories in history. Billions of people are escaping from abject poverty. The world will be enriched and ennobled as they become consumers, producers, inventors, thinkers, dreamers, and doers. This is all happening because of American ideas and actions. For 60 years, the United States has pushed countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and embrace trade and technology. American diplomats, businessmen, and intellectuals have urged people in distant lands to be unafraid of change, to join the advanced world, to learn the secrets of our success. Yet just as they are beginning to do so, we are losing faith in such ideas. We have become suspicious of trade, openness, immigration, and investment because now it’s not Americans going abroad but foreigners coming to America. Just as the world is opening up, we are closing down.

Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that by the turn of the 21st century, the United States had succeeded in its great, historical mission—globalizing the world. We don’t want them to write that along the way, we forgot to globalize ourselves.

I love those last two paragraphs!