Types of discussion

In discussing different types of discussion, I will try to show that dichotomies are less useful in resolving problems.  I will do it by using a dichotomy between two types of discussions.
The type of discussion we are used to is that of a dichotomy:  Finding for a point of disagreement or conflict of interest, taking a side, establishing a position, then fighting.  This is the most familiar way of dealing with problems, where there is more than one person involved.  Between nations, organizations, couples, dogs and other forms of life.  The dogs are not trying to find the best way to share a bone or a yard.  They try to establish who is dominant.  At the end of the discussion between the dogs, one should be the winner and one should be the loser.  The bone is of secondary importance.  Neither dog was hungry anyway.
The dichotomous discussion is based on an underlying assumption of a zero-sum-game:  If dog X wins, dog Y must lose; if dog X is happy, dog Y must be unhappy; if dog X gets to be in the yard, dog Y doesn't get to be in the yard... And it doesn't matter how big the yard is - it's just a state of mind.

I will get back to the dichotomy, but at this point it would be good to mention the other option:  A discussion about a common-goal.  When two people see themselves as partners, with shared resources, shared problems and some needs that may be similar or different.  Two dogs meeting at the beach can - and often do - enter into this type of interaction, where the "yard" of the beach is a shared resource, and instead of fighting over it, they play together.  Probably it's because there is less emotional investment for the dogs in the beach as a territory, since it doesn't belong to neither one of them, and that enables them to just enjoy themselves.  They reach a win-win situation.

A more human example I am adapting from a lecture I heard about negotiation:  Two neighbors had an orange tree, and it wasn't clear to whom the oranges belonged.  In the dichotomous, zero-sum world, they had a loud argument, and at best reached a compromise and split the oranges between them.  One of them then made cakes from the peels of his half of the oranges, as he always wanted.  The other made juice from his half of the oranges, as he always wanted.  In the common-goal world, they would have talked about the reason each wanted the oranges, and they could have each had everything they wanted:  One would get all the peel, the other would get all the juice.  But not drama.

 

Of the two types of discussion, which one do we see on TV, in newspapers (that paper thing that was common before the Internet) and in the UN?  Of course it would be the type that generates more explosive emotions, that commands attention, the more dramatic, the compelling, the type that sells air-time:  The dichotomy.  the dogfight.
The common-goal interaction is boring to look at.  It doesn't even get bad press.  It gets no press.

On the general and theoretical aspect of the dichotomy between dichotomy and common-goal, we see that dichotomy has the advantages of being dramatic, interesting, compelling, using a simple message of zero-sum-game, allows each party to concentrate on a simple uni-dimensional position. But what outcomes can we expect?  One party may be vanquished by the other; the parties may reach a compromise, which means nobody gets what they needed; often the outcome is just more discussion and no resolution.

The common-goal interaction is certainly less fascinating for most people; it is more complicated in that many dimensions of a problem may need to be considered; it is "unsafe" in that opinions may change as new information is exposed.   It is even more unsafe in that I may discover that what I thought was a real need is only a perceived need.  On the plus side, I usually discover that a perceived conflict of interests can turn out to be a common interest in disguise.  Some say it's not usually, but always.

 

How does all this relate to Education?  Education faces great challenges:  There is always a lack of resources.  There are always unmet needs.  Different people and societies have different goals.  And all that in a fast changing, constantly new (and therefore frightening) world.  In response to these difficulties, people and organizations interact the way they know how - by finding a nice dichotomy to fight over.  One of the most common arguments is about the allocation of money - a zero-sum-of-money game, where if I get an extra dollar, you get one dollar less.  A nice and simple subject to fight over, to belittle each other's perceived needs, and at the end - to compromise so that neither one gets enough money to build that extra classroom, so we each have a half-built useless structure.

We spend all our energy, trying to damage each other, with considerable success.  Instead, we could have spent the energy together in the same direction.  For example, in the case of needing two classrooms for the price of one:  We may find a way to shift the times we use the room, so we can time-share and we each get a whole room for all the time we need it.

Nah!  Let's fight over it!

Balance: Competition vs. Knowledge Sharing

For a few years I have been promoting more freedom in schooling:  More freedom to open new schools; more freedom to create different types of schools; more freedom to parents in choosing the school for their children - possibly different schools for different children in the same family, for they are very different indeed.

Together with this freedom, a free market economy will naturally appear, with competition among the schools.  Schools will compete for pupils.  Theoretically, a good school will get more pupils, and a bad school will run out of pupils - it will be allowed to fail and close down.  There are several concerns that come up immediately:  What happens with the pupils of the failed school?  What happens when there are more pupils than a school can cope with?  Do we allow selection for entry into the good schools?  To what length will schools go in pandering to the lowest common denominator in prospective pupils or parent?

All these and more are valid questions, but this post will try to focus on one:  We want schools to share knowledge, which is against their immediate competitive interests.  How do we balance the Competition with Knowledge Sharing?

First, let's make sure we have a good handle on the reasons for sharing knowledge:

• For the regulation to work well, the regulator needs free access to information about what the schools teaches, what it doesn't teach, the results of teaching (=what types of graduates are created by the school), etc.  In some schemes, such as charter schools, the regulator needs access and even some authority on the school's plans.
• Transparency helps control the marketing and advertisement of the school, to ensure truth in advertisement.
• To facilitate parents' and pupils' choice of school, the information needs to be out there.
• Common knowledge would facilitate the creation of new schools - why repeat old mistakes?

But these are short term concerns.  One longer-term concern is that of continually improving humanity's understanding of what schooling we need, what doesn't work, etc.  This knowledge is lacking these days, and even if it were much better today, we would need to continuously update it to adapt to the requirements of a rapidly changing society.  Ongoing research is necessary, and since the variety of needs and the variety of different cultures and people requires research and experimentation to be very wide ranging, the research can't be limited to a few academics.  Research needs to be systemic.  It needs to be part of the culture...  And that goes against the secrecy that comes - to some extent - with competition.

Regarding market research, it may be possible to avoid a head-on collision between the need for transparency and the need for secrecy by allowing two types of research and knowledge gathering about the market, which is one of the most sensitive trade secrets for competing entities:

1. Each school may prepare a market research for itself, and not have to share it
2. The state will prepare periodic baseline market research and publish it

• To avoid the need for schools to develop a great market-research ability
• To raise the bar for all schools - existing and prospective, by exposing weaknesses, strengths and opportunities

Regarding pedagogic research, it may be more difficult to avoid this collision.  But on the other hand, secrecy of methods is very difficult to maintain in a school, even without any laws demanding transparency: The pupils are exposed to the teaching methods and teaching materials, and there are too many students to maintain secrecy. Schools will need to compete not in their ability to develop and concealing methods and materials, but in their ability to execute:  To take existing knowledge and put it successfully into practice.  Schools also have an advantage in generating new knowledge, even in an environment without secrecy, because they will be the first to be able to use the knowledge, before it is distributed.

There will always be the temptation to keep some new knowledge secret, or to release incomplete and unusable forms of the new knowledge.  Some of the ways to discourage this behavior include:  Laws, similar to antitrust laws that impose penalties on secretive behavior.  On the carrot-end, the state can offer financial bonuses to teachers who generate and distribute new knowledge.  On the school level, the state can provide recognition (=free publicity) to schools that generate and effectively distribute such knowledge.

This idea of a combination of competition and knowledge-sharing is not as wild as it may seem:  Hospitals and HMOs compete against each other, but share medical knowledge and work in a somewhat transparent environment.  Engineers working together share knowledge, at the same time they compete for raises and recognition.  More than anything, it is a matter of culture.

Minor Horror Stories

Usually, the way our children are being harmed is not dramatic.  It's the little things.  And the damage is often done by good people with good intentions.  Here are a few real-life examples:

For school, a pupil had to do some research about storks.  She posed a few questions for herself about the stork:  What it eats, how it sounds, how far it flies, how long it can stand on one leg...  Stuff that's interesting to a small child.  She found most of the answers, but couldn't answer the last questions - the one about standing on one leg. The teacher said the child didn't need to find the last answer.  She tried hard enough.  The message:  If something is hard to do - never mind.  Just give up.

A pupil hurt a finger on her right-hand in gym class.  Nothing serious - just poor ball-catching.  The next gym class, the pupil goes up to the teacher - unsolicited - and asks for something to do with the left hand instead of just sitting there.  The teacher's response (as prescribed by the ministry of education): "Just sit down for the duration of the lesson."  The message: What you do here is not important, but a show of doing what we are told.  Just be a good and quiet, and don't be noticed.

A pupil, who was ahead of the class, asked the English teacher for more advanced work.  The teacher gladly agreed.  It took over a month and an intervention by the parents for the kid to receive some advanced materials.  The message:  There is no point in trying to do something meaningful.  No sticking out.

Tests and homework are commonly administered.  Usually checked.  Often graded.  Seldom does the pupil get to correct the work and have it be reviewed and approved.  The message:  Error and failure are unremovable stains, not a necessary part of learning and creativity.

In Israel, teachers are not allowed to attend get-togethers after school, for fear they may be considered responsible for any accident, and the ministry of education may be liable.  Insurance/legal stuff.  The message:  The teacher-pupil connection is not a human-to-human connection.  It's limited to the prescribed interactions

On the classroom wall there are words, with spelling or diacritics errors.  They stay there for the kids to learn from in spite of parents informing the teachers. Goes nicely with the tendency to avoid correction of spelling mistakes in pupils' writing.  The message:  Don't sweat the details.  It's good enough for government work.

A second-grader already says "math is hard" and "I am bad at math."  From then on, this internal message keeps being reiterated.  Who knows how to reverse this damage?

A second-grader says science is uninteresting, even though outside of school she is very curious about how things work.  In third grade she is less curious, even outside school.  In fourth grade she avoids science-related activity altogether.  Our work here is done.

No ill will.

No major atrocities.

Just your everyday, garden-variety horrors.

Authority Issues - Establishment

A previous post about authority issues discussed parents, how they relate to the authority of the established mass education system, and their lack of enthusiasm for change, even if the change would bring them more freedom. This post will mention a few other stakeholders with authority issues around the right way to educate the masses: Those who are in a position of authority.

It is not surprising that the establishment is against it: An established organization's first precept is to keep its size and power. But there are also people - humans - who are against free choice, and they are more interesting to me. There are those who have a major stake in the establishment, and they want to preserve their own position. It's hard to expect a minister of education to voluntarily give up power. There are those who see themselves as part of the establishment, such as schoolteachers. They enjoy a position of authority over schoolchildren, and a position of authority is again something we like to keep.

This is a good place to state that I am not here to speak ill of teachers. If I were in their position, I might very well have behaved the same way. I also suffer from the affliction of human nature.

Back to schoolteachers. Their situation is more complex than that of the minister. The teachers are also the victims of the lack of choice: They usually have very little authority over what to teach, when, how, to whom exactly, etc. Their own lack of control over their work-life makes them part of the oppressed, and should make them supporters of change. And indeed a few teachers I know yearn for serious change, while others either reject the very idea of change, or are looking for minor changes rather than revolutionary changes. I believe that for many of them the fear of real change overrides their hope for a better existence.

There is another group of authority figures:  Those with academic authority.  Scholars in education, psychology, education economics, etc.  The premise of this post, like the previous one, is that the mass education system is seriously flawed and obsolete, and that it doesn't take uncommon expertise to see that.  The real experts who have academic authority usually see this very clearly.  But scholars in general are very good at articulating ideas and producing brilliant papers to publish rather than perish.  They are less inclined to act in the netherworld of politicians, labor unions, public fears, the details and the devils that reside in them.  They may support change, and have fascinating ideas about alternative education systems, but most of them are just not interested in the practicalities of change.  Many of them also enjoy the fact that a centralized education system keeps coming to them for sage advice, and are reluctant to support significant change that may make their expertise and status less important.  Again, just as with the teachers, I am not here to speak ill of the brilliant scholars I have met.  If I were as brilliant as they are, and as scholarly, I may have behaved in a similar way.

There is also an inherent problem with being a scholar or a practitioner of many years in any field - being an expert: One is in serious danger of being overly versed in the way things have always been, the way things are, the failures of past attempts at change, the complexities and difficulties, all the objective reasons why things are the way they are.  Experts spend so much time and thinking on the inside of their field, that they fall into a danger zone:  The danger of thinking they really know how education works; the danger of forgetting that the world outside their field is a changing place that should affect their field; the danger of thinking that what failed yesterday (making a change) will necessarily fail tomorrow; etc.  I try not to become an expert.  Being an outsider has its advantages.

One last group worth mentioning with regards to authority issues around education, is the "Do as I say, not as I do" group.  I know of several passionate opponents of freedom of choice in education who personally made the choice to have their children educated outside the mass education establishment.  Experts in the legal and pedagogic aspects of education; officials whose job is to prevent the independence of alternative schools; extreme left-wing social activists.  They are torn between their ideas on one hand, and their commitment to the well-being of their children on the other hand.  I believe they made the right choice for their children (and in some cases - grandchildren).  I just wish they wouldn't work so hard preventing the rest of us from making the right choice for ours.

Borrrrring!

The lesson is boring. It happens. In a mass education scenario, the lesson goes at a certain pace, but not all students advance at the same speed. At any given lesson, for some students the pace is too slow and boring, while for others it is too fast and frustrating. How do we let every student advance in their own pace when we have 40 students in a class? Or even just 20? Any number larger than 1?  Mass education, as long as it goes with a one-to-many (teacher-to-pupils) model, has an inherent problem of being boring to most of the pupils.

A few years ago I talked with a second-grade child about her science class.  She said it was boring.  Always.  I asked her to go and take note of how many pupils in her class are bored.  This gave her something interesting to do.  She came back with a complete list of all the pupils, two thirds of them marked as being bored.  Employing a healthy scientific skepticism, I asked her how she knew they were bored, and she answered that all those marked as being bored either put their heads on the tables, or let their hair fall over their eyes for much of the lesson.  This looked like good enough an indication for boredom.  I asked about the reason for the boredom, and she explained that it's mostly because the teacher teaches stuff everybody knows (metal sinks in water.  Like, duh!) and keeps repeating the same lesson (electricity is dangerous.)  The problem was not the number of children, but problems in the choice of materials in the lesson.  And in that case, it was probably because the lesson prescribed by the central authorities didn't leave much room for the teacher to take into account what the kids in her specific class already know.  Also, maybe the teacher wasn't very good.

But the problem is not only a problem of mass education.  I recently entered a classroom with about thirty children at the ages of 10-15.  I started talking about a subject that was very interesting to me, and in half an hour ended up with about seven children.  All the rest got bored and left the class.  I was boring most of them.  I just didn't do a very good job making the subject interesting to them.  And this is a happy story, because the children were allowed to leave. In normal school circumstances, such as in the science class mentioned above, pupils are not allowed to leave.  They have the choice of either disrupting the class, or shutting themselves down.

So boredom at the class is a clear and present danger.  Most of the people I talk to agree that boredom is a horrible experience, but counter-points are occasionally raised.   As a person who hates being bored, I would like to refute these points one by one:

• Real life is often boring.  Work is usually boring.  Kids need to learn to deal with boredom.

On one hand, there are enough opportunities to experience boredom.  It just happens.
On the other hand:  No.  Life is not boring , and work is not inherently boring.  If one is bored doing their job, they must make a great effort to either change their attitude towards the job, or change their job.  They will usually succeed.  Here's a tip:  If you find yourself looking wistfully at the clock during work - know you are in trouble and do something about it.

The occasional boring task is okay, if it's the exception.

• Boredom is good!  Out of it come ideas, and it causes kids to try new things

I make a distinction between "Open Boredom" and "Closed Boredom."
"Open Boredom" is when one has nothing interesting to do, but one is free to explore new ideas.  Like when a kid is on vacation and is bored with the cursed TV.  They may actually go out and play with their friends, which is a good thing.

"Closed Boredom" is when one has nothing interesting to do, but can't escape the situation.  This is the type of boredom common in classrooms. The pupil (victim) may choose to become externally disruptive to the boring environment, but such behavior attracts negative feedback from the authorities.  So most pupils opt for an internal solution:  Becoming numb to their own will to be interested or excited; toning down their curiosity.

• Not every subject is interesting to every pupil, but they still need to know it

Similarly to my belief that everything can be explained to a 6-year-old, I believe every subject can be interesting.  I have never seen a subject that is inherently boring, but I often saw fascinating subjects butchered in a classroom.  Also, if a student studies a subject without being interested in the subject, the learning is of a very low quality.  Not sure it's worth the effort.

• There are many subjects that need to be learned, which take a lot of practice.  Practice is boring, but is necessary

I can think of an important example of the issue of necessary practice:  Studying the multiplication table.  My daughter has been doing that for a while now.  It is pretty boring and I admit it is of great importance to know your multiplication table. Yet, she willingly plays an Internet game raising virtual horses, performing the same tasks repeatedly and acquiring familiarity with horse-raising facts through long practice.  So there are ways to practice through play, that is interesting to the child.  I don't see why there should be any exception to this possibility.

Bottom line:  Boredom is an unpleasant experience, and specifically closed boredom is likely to cause damage to the child.  We shouldn't mindlessly subject our children to it.

Looking at the length of this post, I think the title might be self-descriptive.  Oh well.  It's Open Boredom.  The reader is welcome to go look for something interesting at TED.

Authority Issues - Parents

Not everyone likes the idea of free choice in education. The system itself, and those in power within the system, are opposed to change.  But things get more interesting when we consider the parents.  I intentionally don't discuss the main subjects - the pupils - because they don't have much influence over their circumstances.  The parents send their children to be "educated" by the education establishment.  In general, they are not sure what "educated" is:  Is it being taught facts?  Skills?  Values?  But - again - in general they know their kids don't get a good "education."  Most parents know that the classrooms, teachers, materials and messages their kids are subjected to at school, are extremely similar to those the parents were subjected to during their school years. These parents have every reason to believe that this education is not very relevant to their kids.  They can remember that the experience of being a pupil is quite negative, and doesn't have much to do with learning facts, skills or values.  Many complain.  A few make extreme efforts to save the children - take them to expensive alternative school, opt for home schooling, or just go to another county, state or country, looking for a better school.  Some try to improve conditions in their kids' existing school.  But many parents just accept the situation, and quite a few even support the current state of affairs in the mass education system.

Now, this whole post is based on the understanding developed in the past 100 or so posts, that the industrial education system is damaging to children, and that it doesn't take an exceptionally keen eye to see it.  This makes the last group of people - parents who support the current mass education system and oppose changes to it - a very interesting group.  What makes them side and identify with an establishment that victimizes their beloved children, and - through the children - themselves?
I don't have a very clear answer, but I have a few thoughts and associations:

• Real socialist ideology.  The idea that I shouldn't be better off than others.  Very rare, but I did see it once.
• Real anti-socialist ideology:  "My kids will be okay, and I don't want the rest to have a better education."  Very rare, but I did see it a few times.
• Stockholm syndrome.  That amazing phenomenon, where hostages empathize with their captors.
• House of God.  A book by Samuel Shem, a large proportion of which discusses how Medical Doctors forget and deny how absolutely horrible their internship was.
• Fatalism.  Lack of belief one has any power over their own circumstances.  Low expectations.  AKA "accepting reality"
• Fear of the unknown.  Preferring the familiar devil.  Sometimes centered around what may happen if the changes will give a certain group of "others" more freedom, that those others may abuse.
• Fear of the responsibility and of tough choices.
• The wish to be taken care of.  Wanting someone to know, to have perceived certainty, to have perceived stability.  Unwillingness confront the fact that we live steeped in uncertainty.  Unwillingness to believe the state doesn’t know how to do it, like many people believe in the medical doctors, lawyers, economists.  This may be the saddest.

Not very flattering, but did I ever promise to flatter anyone?

Home Schooling

I admit I don't know much about home schooling.  I have never tried it as a replacement to the standard method of schooling for my kids.  I do try to educate my kids at home, after school: Teach them facts, skills, habits, values. Show them how to behave by providing an imperfect model of behavior.  Try very hard not to damage their good qualities.

But some people do go all the way, and take their kids completely out of the education system, to take full responsibility for raising them, including the education aspect.  Here are a few thoughts:

Pro home schooling:

• Home schooling can give 1 on 1 attention.  Almost by definition, the mass education system doesn't do that.
• Home schooling can give ongoing attention, which enables noticing of changes in the long term. A bit like my grandmother's schooling.  She had the same teacher from 5th to 12th grade.  It is clear to me that continuity can be a great advantage, being able to notice changes in the behavior of the child - either positive or negative; being able to see temporary behavior in long-term context.
• In home schooling the teacher (parent) has the most intense motivation.  Can't beat that.

Cons:

• Socialization suffers.  There is an advantage in meeting other kids in the school settings.  It's true that sometimes home-school parents organize themselves groups, so the kids are not isolated.  Still, the schoolyard with dozens or even hundreds of kids is a different place.  Some may say that for the children, mixing with other kids who are not friends is an unnecessarily stressful experience; some may say it's an experience necessary for modern life.  It's a mixed blessing.
• No detachment between educator and educatee. The detachment that is possible at normal schools may be an advantage in some situations, but it might deteriorate to alienation.  So again - mixed blessing.
• It's harder to ensure pedagogic competence in home-schooling settings, but who can ensure that in the normal education system?
• It's harder to ensure being up to date with research, but who is up to date with research in the normal education system?
• Discipline
• It is easier to establish discipline when the teacher is an uninvolved adult
• It is easier to manipulate a parent than an uninvolved adult
• Urgency vs. Importance
• There is often something that looks more urgent for the parent to do than teaching the kid, so it often happens that learning suffers
• There is often something that looks more urgent for the kid to do, than learning.  Unschoolers may claim that whatever the kids do that is meaningful for them, is valuable learning.  I can relate to this thinking, but I can also see how some study subjects don't come up naturally in the normal course of the kid's life and interests.  For example, it seems to me that learning the multiplication table is very useful, but I can't imagine a situation when it will just "come up," unless it is brought up by a teacher/tutor/parent.

So, it seems there are more cons than pros, but most of the cons are fuzzy or double edged, while the pros are clearer.

It's up to the parents to decide.