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Warning--I'm not happy. It's late on a Friday and I'd normally wait until Monday to catch you fresh, but this is time-sensitive and I'm ticked off. And I owed you another post about creativity anyway, so here we go:
On my way home tonight I heard a story on my local NPR station, KUOW, that riled me up. A school district near Seattle is requiring a signed permission slip from every student's parents as a condition for watching President-elect Obama's inaugural address. Why? Because it's not part of the normal curriculum and is more than 15 minutes long, and the district has a policy that watching any video more than 15 minutes long that departs from the normal curriculum requires parental consent.
The result? Some poor staffer has been calling the parents of every child in the district--the entire district--to remind them of the policy so they'll send in their slips by Tuesday if they want their children to be able to tune in.
Now, I'm sure the policy was originally adopted with the best of intentions. And I'm sure there are still cases where it makes sense. Especially with the pressure schools are under now to perform well on standardized tests, the normal curriculum is more narrowly defined than it once was and perhaps (I'm not convinced, but perhaps) it has to be. But inflexibility is the antithesis of creativity, the enemy of adaptation. In this case the result was bizarre enough to catch a reporter's attention.
As applied, the district's policy treats teaching staff like children, and suggests schools can't be trusted to decide that a once-in-a-lifetime view of history-in-the-making is worth paying attention to. How can educators possibly model creative thinking if they're barred from thinking for themselves? Since when were historic events problematic "extras" instead of perfect teaching opportunities?
This is not a stretch, folks. This is not a frivolous use of class or assembly time. Regardless of who you voted for, I'm talking about the first inaugural address of the first African-American President of the United States. What could better support true learning than an event that so vividly demonstrates the importance of History, Government, Social Studies, and Literacy? Come Tuesday, are they really ready to exclude children whose parents forget to sign the required slips?
You might be wondering at this point, what this has to do with Office. That's easy. The Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), and Office Online--the templates and help-and-how-to articles and demos and training courses that are organized and delivered here, provide great resources for teachers. The Home and Student Edition of Office 2007 delivers to students some of the best tools we can give them. Most of my colleagues have kids and, like other good parents, they are involved with and concerned about their kids' education. We care about helping people learn. If the school systems educating these children don't permit their teachers room to innovate and adjust, how is learning possible? Students can't learn to think for themselves when their teachers aren't allowed to.
In my next post I'll point you to a video I found on TED, which makes the case the our standard educational system is optimized for killing creativity. In my current mood I'm inclined to agree. I'll also point you to a book on how our brains work best. (Hint: Not when we sit quietly still in tidy rows with our eyes on the blackboard.)
Okay, I'm done. Please tell me what you think. And if you're one of those parents, raise a little hell if you agree that, however sensible that 15-minute policy may sometimes be, in this case it's utterly inane.
--- Holly L. Thomas
Comments: (12) Collapse
I use to be a teacher. I left becasue of these things. It's a shame. What is even more shameful is if you confront the people that make these policies you get about 25 reasons why you are wrong to question their judgement.
Lynn, thanks for your comment. You're a case in point. Your blog is full of creative ideas and explorations--what a shame that you found teaching so bureaucratically stifling. Change is in the air. Let's hope it extends to fundamentals like education.
I wonder if you would feel as incensed if Obama was a conservative Republican president-elect. I'm guessing probably not.
Gurn - The inauguration of a conservative Republican president wouldn't be an historic first - although all inaugurations are learning opportunities and it seems a shame to prohibit school kids from watching. Holly - I was in the third grade when John F. Kennedy was shot. Our teacher rolled a television into the classroom so we could all watch the news reports, horrifying as they were. Fortunately, with today's media there should be plenty of coverage and playbacks available everywhere you turn.
Appreciate the post. I spend a lot of my time, as a parent of kids in public school, trying to challenge these kinds of weird rules. I agree that bureaucracy is death to creativity, not just in schools, but anywhere.
"The inauguration of a conservative Republican president wouldn't be an historic first" If he (or she) were African American it sure would be.
I appreciate all the comments. My point is that rules that interfere with a teacher's ability to teach are counterproductive, and this sounds like a classic case of just that problem. Fortunately, yes there'll be ways for kids to view the experience afterward. But live is live, and to be excluded from sharing the experience with one's peers because of paperwork seems absurd to me. A system that affords no flexibility can't do a very good job of teaching children how to think. -- Holly
Imagine if you are a student without a permission slip. Will this be an opportunity to skip? To feel marginalized? What about the teacher? What more important lesson plan will be presented? Or will the time be lesson free? How much time and energy will be spent segregating the students? What about the parent who did not receive the request for a permission slip? Luckily, there will probably be several outlets on line that will archive the ceremonies.
In my kid's first grade class, the teacher likes to show commercial movies (Narnia, Wizard of Oz!) on Fridays (which some complaining parents just put the kabosh on) but won't bring in a TV for today's Innauguration. I considered keeping her home...but we just spent 10 days of nearly 24 hours/day together and, well, it had to end...
I hope everybody gets to see as much of it as they want to (or can stand). It's amazing how news coverage as evolved over the past few years: at my laptop I had Facebook integrated with CNN's multiple live video streams so you could read comments from FB'ers all over the world, NYT.com once again with live video on "page one", and live stream from KUOW.org -- all of which would have been unheard of a few years ago. Now to the BBC for a more international perspective. Amazing access to information, tremendous sense of goodwill.
One problem is how "normal curriculum" is defined (or perhaps that it is defined at all). If something is then outside the definition, it becomes abnormal or wrong. Something you need a parent's permission for. Free expression, the ability to be wrong and learn from it (or teach others when it turns out you are right) should be a cornerstone of the educational process not the thing guarded against. The analog here is software that allows customization and development, that encourages sharing and communication, that replaces error messages with "Wow, let's see if that will work" messages.
Seems to me that there are inherent contradictions in our approach to education that are reflected in the business world as well. We want outstanding performance and creativity but impose rigid standards for evaluation, and we want it without having to pay for it. We want educators to be flexible and to inspire creativity but we also make rigid objective standards (test scores) the fundamental way we evaluate performance. We want exceptional performance from educators but do not want to pay better salaries or even support smaller class sizes that would make it possible for good teachers to teach rather than “cope” with impossible conditions. If we want better education for our children, we have to support education, not just complain about its shortcomings. “We have met the enemy and it is us.” -- Pogo
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