“Good work. It’s what we’re all about.”

by Lynn Barendsen

Expeditionary Learning 2010 National Conference

Wendy and I are attending the Expeditionary Learning Schools National Conference in Kansas City. An amazing group of educators, and an inspiring series of discussions. This year’s focus is on good work and we’re honored to be a part of it. For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with Expeditionary Learning, let me tell you a little bit about it, because it’s growing, it’s having impact, and that impact is of exceptional quality. What was once a small group of schools now seems to be a movement: 165 ELS schools now serve over 46,000 students.

Ron Berger, Chief Program Officer of ELS and a treasured colleague of the GWP, explained how good work appears in Expeditionary Learning Schools as follows. Their schools are good in quality: they have academic rigor, accuracy, craftsmanship, and beauty. They are good for the soul: they are engaging and fulfilling for students and for teachers. And they are good for the world: they provide contributions that go beyond the classroom, they build character, citizenship, and 21st century skills. Expeditionary Learning is all about the student work; it is on display at this conference in abundance, and it is beautiful. I have only words – no pictures – to describe some of the visuals I’ve seen today, but I’ll do my best by relating one of Ron’s many stories about student projects.

Years ago, 3rd graders at the Capital City Public Charter School in Washington DC asked a simple question. In their school, they were taught to treat everyone with respect and kindness. And yet, every day on the way to school, they passed homeless people and never said a word. They questioned themselves and wondered why they treated homeless people differently than they treated one another.

They began with research, asking how people become homeless, and wondering what they could do to help. They interviewed police, workers in shelters, and eventually the homeless themselves. They decided they wanted to create a product to educate very young children about the homeless, to teach them that “homeless people are people too.”

Working with a grant from a local foundation, these 3rd graders wrote “The ABC Book of Homelessness”. Each page has a watercolor illustration and text addressing an aspect of the issue. For example, “H is for Heart. Homeless people have heart. They help other homeless people.” This book was published and sent to schools around the DC area. Some cynics might ask what, if anything, was accomplished by this work. Did the homeless population decrease? Did anything change? According to one child involved in the work, “everything changed.” As he explained it, “now we know the names of the homeless people and they know our names and we say hello to each other. Everything’s changed.”

Indeed, something registered in the minds of these students. Several years later, now in middle school, some of these students remembered their project on homelessness vividly. So vividly, in fact, that when the President and First Lady came to their school, this was the work they wanted to show them. I know I don’t remember anything that formative from my own 3rd grade experiences … do you?

We spoke in a session on Good Work this morning about people that inspire us: individuals that we believe truly exemplify good work. We brainstormed together about their qualities: they are brave, visionary, humble, honest, collaborative, trustworthy, hardworking, creative … the list goes on and on. An intimidating list of qualities and sometimes, as we hold these standards up to ourselves, the list seems unrealistic and impossible. How can anyone be “all that?” But interestingly, the exemplary “good workers” looked up to by our group were neither famous nor, by some standards, extraordinarily accomplished. When asked to tell us more about the people who inspire them, we discovered that they were thinking about their parents, their students and their colleagues.

So, I guess a couple of lessons learned today in Kansas City. First, when we’re pushed beyond our comfort zone, (for example, to interview the homeless), we learn about ourselves. ELS students are regularly pushed to accomplish more than they ever imagined possible. Second, we don’t need to look too far to find inspiration. There are examples of good work all around us. It’s just a question of seeing it, learning from it, and trying to help it grow.

Link: http://www.elschools.org/

Digital Media and American Youth

by Katie Davis

Have the digital media changed American youth? That’s the question that a group of researchers, including members of Howard Gardner’s research team at Project Zero, met to discuss last December in Princeton, New Jersey. The MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative sponsored the day-long event, which gave researchers from a variety of disciplines the chance to share their research and reflections on the changes over time in youth’s interests, experiences, and development that appear to be associated with their digital media practices. Katie Davis, a researcher at Project Zero, wrote about the event for MacArthur’s Spotlight Blog. Her full report on the convening is also available from the link below.

Document: princeton_convening_report_dec09.pdf

Surface Manifestations of Leadership

by Howard Gardner

With President’s Day around the corner, it seems a good time to reflect on the nature of leadership. Below, we share Howard Gardner’s responses to some questions recently posed by an Italian journalist.

Until the 20th century, most citizens had no idea of what their leaders looked or sounded like, and certainly did not feel that they had any personal relations or connections to the leaders. This did not matter so much, because most countries were not democracies, and even those that were usually had parliamentary systems rather than direct election of leaders.

We live in a time of more direct voting for leaders and where most citizens have access to the media– first radio, then television, now a 24-7 news cycle which includes Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. Even though leaders themselves do not know that many citizens, citizens feel that they know the leaders. Indeed, they might well want to use the first name with Tony or Bill or Silvio because they feel that they have an intimate relationship to the leaders, even if the relationship is obviously one way and largely illusory.

Also, politics in terms of parties has declined universally. Fewer and fewer people ALWAYS vote Labor, or Christian Democrat or Communist. Indeed, as the world now knows, my home state of Massachusetts, regarded as the most liberal state in the United States, just voted in a Republican Senator by a wide margin. In most elections, only a tiny minority of voters actually know the stated positions of the candidates, and even fewer understand the issues well enough to paraphrase a law (like health care legislation) or a policy (on immigration, on nuclear test ban, on carbon emissions etc).

Accordingly, we now have a state of affairs where elections are significantly ‘beauty contests’. Just as voting on television programs like “American Idol” have a lot to do with how comfortable the audience feels with the performers now invading their living rooms, so, too, elections often hinge on how likeable and simpatico are the candidates. It is not that most Americans thought that George W. Bush was MORE competent than Al Gore or John Kerry. They liked Bush better and that sufficed for him to win two elections, against individuals who were arguably more competent and certainly more knowledgeable, but with whom the voters would not have liked to ‘share a beer’.

Your questions focus on the faces and on the body language of leaders in the world today. In ordinary life, we do judge people in terms of how comfortable they seem to be with themselves (that is signaled by body language) and on how sincere and friendly they seem (and that is signaled by eyes, mouth, and facial expression). With respect to the British case, it is clear that the smiling, comfortable charming Blair wins out over the rather dour and awkward Brown. And Cameron also wins in that comparison against Brown, and perhaps that is why he is the head of the Tory party.

Turning to France, Sarkozy comes off as too active, too energetic, too frenetic, but with the passage of time, people are getting used to these personal characteristics and, for his part, Sarkozy has calmed down a bit.

Obama certainly comes off as likeable and as comfortable in his own skin, and those are major reasons why he was elected. But there is something about the presentation of self that is rather distant, rather professorial. Obama likes people well enough but, unlike Clinton or Blair, does not seem like he NEEDS to have people around him. And that sense of distance– which served Charles deGaulle well– does not play well in a determinedly demotic, populist environment.

Which leaves Silvio Berlusconi. Truth to tell, most of the rest of the world cannot understand why Berlusconi remains a popular leader, despite his checkered past and his obvious personal and professional involvement in shady activities (financial, sexual). I have to think back to Latin leaders, like Juan Peron, for a similar example. And of course, Berlusconi cannot really be a ‘man of the people’ with his billions of dollars and control of the media.

I suspect that Berlusconi prevails for two reasons: l) There is no viable opposition (Sarkozy benefits from this lack of opposition as well); 2) His rascal personality and behavior has an appeal to the Italian population, particularly older males– just as Zuma’s persona in South Africa justifies sexism on the part of macho males. This is not just an Italian or South African phenomenon: Both Scott Brown in Massachusetts and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California benefit from this male chauvinist persona.

As an American with little sympathy for Berlusconi or Zuma, I like to quote Abraham Lincoln: “You may fool all of the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.” There will be a post-Berlusconi era!

Howard Gardner in Mexico City

by Mayus Chavez

Last October, Mexico City had the pleasure of receiving Dr. Howard Gardner. Banamex, one of the most important Mexican Financial Groups, invited him to their “2009-3rd Encuentro de Educación Financiera “Respuestas de Pe$o” Ser, conocer y hacer para vivir juntos”. Dr. Gardner’s lecture “Five Minds of the Future” gave participants new alternatives to develop strategies within ourselves, and everyone who is devoted to education in a formal or informal way. He focused on how ethics must be present in each of our goals in the fields of knowing how to be, how to do, how to know and how to live, introducing his GoodWork Project to our Mexican society. In this forum, participants worked to find new answers for big questions such as: how to get new resources, how to administrate those resources, and how to create and save a legacy to our people.

Some participants in the forum were Alonso Lujambio, secretario de Educación Pública, who opened the event. Also, Enrique Zorrilla, General Director of Banamex, Alejandro Werner, subsecretario de Hacienda, Javier Arrigunaga director corporativo de Jurídico y Desarrollo Institucional de Banamex, Andrés Albo, director de Compromiso Social de Banamex y Loreto García Muriel, directora de Educación Financiera Banamex.

Dr. Gardner’s presentation contributed to analyze our social and economical situation from another point of view, giving to those who are concerned about education and about our global situation the opportunity to make deep reflections on our personal behavior, and how our daily work has a big impact on others, considering ethics, respect, creativity, synthesis, and discipline as the stones to construct a better future for mankind.

Some conclusions were: that we must work together to increase financial stability to Mexican families, giving them access to education through different cooperative programs, to promote GoodWork in order to make people realize how important it is for a country to work with its principles, and make a link with personal values to develop their financial situations, educating through values, and through the “Five Minds for the Future” principles, acting and working hand by hand to make that happen in every way, within each one’s job, family, government, society, school, mass media, and corporations.

We thank Dr. Gardner for being among us, and for his guidance in making a better Mexico.

See Howard Gardner discuss 5 Minds for the Future at the RSA in London in December of 2009.

The Ministers’ Misconceptions

by Howard Gardner

Of all the findings from cognitive psychology that are relevant for education, one stands out. That is the repeated demonstration, across a number of disciplines, of the prevalence of misconceptions and the difficulty of getting rid of them and replacing them with more powerful and more veridical conceptions. The most famous examples occur in physics. Students at outstanding universities, who have studied the laws of motion and have done well on standardized measures of achievement in physics, are asked to explain a new phenomenon—one that they have not studied but one governed by the laws of motion. Not only do these star students typically fail on these performances of understanding. More dramatically, their responses are often indistinguishable from those obtained from students who have never studied physics. Comparable examples can be found in biology, astronomy, psychology, economics — indeed across the disciplinary spectrum.

These difficulties can be blamed in part on inadequate instruction, but they also reflect a disturbing reality. When young, without the need for formal instruction, nearly all human beings develop ‘folk theories’ of how the world works: the physical world (if an object is broken into tiny, no-longer-visible parts, it ceases to exist); the biological world (all organisms were created at a single, pre-historical moment) and the social world (people who look different from me are to be feared and shunned). More effective theories can only be constructed in the mind of the learner through effective teaching and significant involvement with the materials (object, data) for which the disciplinary understandings are appropriate.

Nowadays almost everyone goes to school. And even in the remaining unschooled societies, there is informal tuition. Nonetheless, misconceptions continue to hold sway. Here are the some of the powerful misconceptions about learning and teaching that characterize the folk theories of human beings:

• Education involves the transmission of ideas and skills from older and more powerful persons to those who are younger and under the control of their elders.

• The young mind is a blank slate on which correct ideas and needed skills need to be implanted.

• Learning should occur bit by bit; to the extent possible, errors should be identified, discouraged, corrected.

• The best way to teach—indeed, the only effective way — is to reward correct answers and punish wrong ones.

• On any dimension worth considering, you can array people from the best to the worst (a so-called ‘league table’).

• If someone does not do what you want them to do, just ask them to do it, louder and louder, over and over again.

Now, since misconceptions like this are part of the human condition, it is not surprising that most children and most parents believe them. But that does not mean they are correct, any more than that the world is flat or that all creatures were created at the same moment. Indeed, considerable social-scientific research over the last century calls each of these so-called truisms into severe question.

It might seem reasonable to expect that those who are in charge of educational policy should have moved beyond these misconceptions. And indeed, if engaged in quiet discussion, at least some policymakers reveal their awareness of the research. And yet, in observing ministers of education all over the world, I find them remarkably tied to these powerful, though erroneous ideas. Indeed, I sometimes think that for most Ministers of Education, their only goal is to improve the performance of their nation in the international comparisons, independent of the worth or utility of that comparison. In fact, I’ve recently encountered a new ironical twist on this: The absolute standing of Scotland is less important than its relative position vis-a-vis England. Better to be 20th if Britain is 21st, than to be 10th if Britain is 9th.

Going beyond this ‘league table’ mentality, I am constantly surprised at the persistence, in ministerial talk and writing, of allegiance to the ‘transmission theory’ of education; the focus on rewards (even monetary ones) and punishment; the lack of openness to multiple answers, productive errors, creativity; and the preferred solution to bad performance on tests—the administration of more and more tests. It is like the misguided belief that if the patient is sick, the royal road to health involves repeating measurement of temperature.

I don’t mean to demean all Ministers of Education. As already suggested, some of them know better, and a few try to do better. It may be that there is something about the air in the ministries of the world, and in their all-too-frequent meetings with one another, that reinforces the worst of these misconceptions and repeats them endlessly to the public at large.

Of course, we do know a great deal about what actually brings about strong achievements in education around the world; plausible goals, understood and subscribed to by the range of constituents; awareness of the changing nature of knowledge and the need to prepare learners for an uncertain future; respect for teachers who, because of their knowledge of content and pedagogy and sensitivity to individual differences, merit respect; regular parental involvement; instilling in young people a love for learning that endures throughout life, even when no one is looking. If I were trying to determine in which school system to send my children or grandchildren, I’d beware of Ministers bearing misconceptions, I’d look instead for ones who understand these equally simply, and yet surprisingly elusive powerful ideas.