I'm a parent, and I'm not happy. My two kids go to "great" schools, they get great grades, and by all accounts they're very successful students.
Unfortunately, they're illiterate.
Right now, in their classrooms, they're not "designing and sharing information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes." Nor are they "building relationships with others to solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally." And as far as "managing, analyzing and synthesizing multiple streams of information?" Not so much.
Those are all key components of what the National Council of Teachers of English feels a "literate person" should be able to do right now. You can see all six parts of the definition here. Go look. Each of the six requires a real understanding of the changes and opportunities that online social learning networks and communities are bringing about. But after a combined 12 years of formal schooling, my 13 and 11 year olds are no where near to being on the road to "literate" in those contexts.
Yours?
Let me be clear, I'm not at all bashing their teachers, who sincerely care about my children and want them to do well in school. And I am fully aware that the "literacy" issues most pressing for many kids in this country and around the world are much more about basic and crucial reading and writing skills. But all of our kids need to be in systems that care for them and are focused on literacy they will need to be successful in their lives instead of being focused primarily on standardizing their way to "high student achievement" based on a metric that is growing less and less relevant each day. And I'm mad that the "big" conversations around "reform" in education right now all revolve around basically doing what we've been doing for the past 100 years only "better," and that we'll get there by incentivizing teachers to teach for a test.
As others suggest, it's time for another conversation around education to start in this country, but it's one that's not being co-opted by billionaires and media corporations with tons of bandwidth and little or no experience in real schools or real classrooms. And, I think it's a conversation that has to start with learning, not schools. If we don't talk about how learning is changing first, the schools we create will continue to be places of "tinkering on the edges" instead of truly changed spaces.
Technology, specifically the Web, expands the learning opportunities our connected children and their teachers have. That's not to say that we can't do a whole lot of learning without technology; we can. But the reality for my kids and yours is that they are going to be immersed in these spaces, potentially connecting and learning with two billion strangers, required to make sense of huge flows of information and creating and sharing their knowledge with the world. That is their reality; it wasn't ours. The NCTE knows it. Heck, even the Obama Administration's National Education Tech Plan spells it out in no uncertain terms. (I doubt Obama or Arne Duncan have read it.) Learning and literacy are absolutely shifting, and that means the roles of schools and teachers are going to have to shift as well.
So here are some questions that keep me up at night: How are we to make our students literate if we ourselves are not? If we cling to age old definitions and ignore the wisdom of one of the oldest professional education organizations we have in this country, how do we provide my kids with the experiences they need to fully understand what it means to be a self-directed, participatory learner in this century? How do we make sure that every child and every teacher has access to these tools and connections? And what do we do when the reform conversations are being led by a majority of folks who have no context for the changes that are happening every day in these connected spaces, folks that by NCTE's definition, may have some literacy issues themselves?
As parents or educators or both, we're all learners first and foremost. I hope we can further explore these types of questions around how learning changes in these spaces.
Follow Will Richardson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/willrich45
In the Memphis, TN school system kids are taught to pass standardized tests. I believe a well rounded education would stress learning how to use tools like math, english (for US schools), social studies, playtime/gym, reading ect as a foundation. But the use of computers is paramount to learning how to interact in todays world.
There are new ways to learn and interact being introduced on the web at a faster and faster pace. Kids are by nature able to aborsb new thing very easily and it is the perfect time to intergrate them into the every changing world we live in. Without the ablility to adopt new ways to do things they will fall behind the kids from other countries.
That being said, I think the best approach would be to copy the success of other countries who have high acheivement levels. It's seems so simple to me, but if there's one thing I know the simplest things are the hardest to accomplish.
I think we are all ambivalent about what we are doing. Sometimes, when discussing theses and essay writing there is a feeling that the thinking is relevant and there's a sense of development. But we spend too much time in the room isolated, and the students are polite about it, but they go home and get engaged in social networking, etc. I'm confident that I know more about using web2.0 than they do; but I still feel like there needs to be a fundamental shift in how we do education- teaching/learning.
I think we're in a fundamental paradigm shift and we just don't know how to handle it- an education system that just does not know how to change with social evolution. So we depend on standardized tests- sheesh!!! We need to get creative in education or we will fossilize!!!
The majority of my high school student testing required essay responses as I believe that, to know or believe in something requires the ability to (in writing) inform and/or argue (in the rhetorical sense) a point to its successful conclusion.
Today, I am teaching at the community college level and, sadly, come across first year students unable to establish and support a thesis. I suppose this keeps me in business (so to speak) but I'd rather not be needed in this case.
Ah, Richard Mitchell must be rolling in his grave. Those not familiar with his writings on the education system (not for the timid or the apologist), should they care to investigate, will either cheer wildly and then cry themselves to sleep or curse him mightily and then cry themselves to sleep, because the problems go far, far deeper than the current debate touches on.
The Graves of Academe is a great place to start. (It's available, as are all of his writings, for free dl here: http://bit.ly/auASeO. But be warned: love him or hate him, he's gonna ruin your day because it is not a pretty tale and he pulls no punches or suffers any fools.)
I work in a computer lab in a low-performing, high-poverty school. Will, I appreciate your caveat that reading literacy is a problem and will need to be a first priority (especially in schools like mine), but I don't think it's an either or choice. We should be doing both because the students who get the most from using technology are language learners, and students who are below grade-level. @frank I think you are wise to worry about whether minority and poor students will get the short end of funding for this.
Also, students in schools like mine need those collaborative skills. The dominant teaching style in low-performing schools is direct instruction (teacher driven, with few opportunities for sustained group work). As a result, they are not learning how to work productively in groups settings, let alone in online group settings. I wonder how much the lack of collaborative work contributes to this type of thinking in low-income neighborhoods? http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/chicago-kids-take-on-bunker-mentality-no-friends-23798/
I get my dander up pretty quickly when the right attacks our public schools.
BTW I'm NOT a school teacher. Although I certainly had some wonderful teachers.
Our school system was designed to produce docile workers for an industrialized country.
I am all for teaching tech skills to our students.
If I were a multi-billionair, I would buy every student a laptop and provide broadband to every
school.
My youngest son has learning disabilities. I am well aware of the advantages of computerized instruction.
But, lets preserve what we have before we try to make over our schools into something different.
Where would the $$s come from for the needed technology.
Poor kids and minorities would get lost in the shuffle.
BTW, my kids- 12,14,22. Can run circles around me on a computer and on the internet.
They are far from being "illiterate" in the sense you convey.
I would argue that the changes enacted so far have been to the graduating generation's detriment. We need to get back to the basics, the fundamentals. I love to use new internet tools, but I tell my kids that they are just tools and, in History, nothing can replace the reading. Any history teacher knows this. You can not fit the fundamentals and all this other global junk into the lower grades. Beware of the theorists, slow down, talk to teachers, think of how YOU learn best, kids are human too!!
And I’m not trying to be snarky here (truly), but if your kids “can run circles around you on a computer,” how would you know if they’re illiterate or not? Please click through and read the NCTE Literacies and the National Ed Tech Plan, and then talk with your kids – and the folks in your local schools - about those literacies. Being literate is so much more than just being able to use a computer.
I'm hardly computer illiterate. Thats just my point.
You said, " Being literate is so much more than just being able to use a computer."
My point exactly, lets fund schools and let them work.
They aren't "broken", just under siege.
Please don't be part of the angry mob mentality.