R&D–10 Things We Love About Education

7/21/2019 R&D10 Things We Love About Education

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10 Things We LoveAbout Education

There are a few things about theeducation revolution that we discuss

repeatedly at R&D, committed as we

are to Albert Einstein's noble cause

nurturing the holy curiosity of inquiry

and the enjoyment of seeing and

searching by promoting intellectual

freedom and creative stimulation.

Although we do, on occasion, turn a

critical eye toward the nefariousforms

of coercionand conformismthat

plague our schools and our societies,

we strive mostly to celebrate the good

in education, and to support its growth

everywhere, as old Albert would have

wanted. In this hopeful Einsteinian

spirit of liberation and empowerment,

here are ten topics that most inspire us:

www.researchdevelop.org/ideals

Shel Silverstein, on radical experimentation and the

importance of challenging conventional wisdom:

You've really got to check these things out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_Districthttp://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/04/08/officer_posing_as_high_schooler_leads_drug_sting/http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/256926/november-30-2009/cevin-solinghttp://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/256926/november-30-2009/cevin-solinghttp://www.nyclu.org/news/nyclu-aclu-file-class-action-lawsuit-against-nypd-over-excessive-force-wrongful-arrests-new-yorhttp://www.nyclu.org/news/nyclu-aclu-file-class-action-lawsuit-against-nypd-over-excessive-force-wrongful-arrests-new-yorhttp://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/04/08/officer_posing_as_high_schooler_leads_drug_sting/http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/04/08/officer_posing_as_high_schooler_leads_drug_sting/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_Districthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District


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1. Youth Power

We are confident that the

learning revolution will flourish

in the coming years, knowing

as we do the limitless nature

of the movement's ultimate

weapon: the power of youth.

Many education reformers

talk a lot about teacher

accountability and the urgent

need for great public school

teachers while failing to see

that there are many great

teachers sitting silent in schools

today, marginalized and disempowered simply because they are under the age

of eighteen and are labeled students. If administrators started re-imagining

the troubling 30:1 student-to-teacher ratios as opportunities for 31 potential

student-teachers to collaborate, labor and resource concerns could be turned

on their heads. Then, for instance, a 5:0 student-to-teacher ratio would not be

undefined in the math, but could be identified and celebrated as five students

helping teach each other. The truth is that students and teachers necessarily

create their learning environments togetherwhether or not teachers and

administrators embrace this factand we shouldn't underestimate the

awesome potential that students have to transform these environments.


As children, our favorite superheroes were teenagers,

trained and advised by an inspirational

teacher and mentor, Splinter.
http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/ideals


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Despite calls for higher standards and high expectations for students, most

education reformers don't seem to expect much from even those high

performing students they championacademic success in most schools

largely boils down to memorizing content, passing standardized tests, writing

grammatically correct essays that nobody really wants to read, and politely

obeying the rules. Young people know this well, which is why their most

common characterization of schools is that they are boring. Students who say

this are only half right, of course, overlooking their own power (and thus, their

responsibility) to invest meaning into the experience of school, or to envision

and embark on a more fulfilling experience beyond the classroom confines.

School, like the rest of life, is largely what we make of it.

So, young people: now is the time to be the masters of your fates and the

captains of your souls! Engage with your schools on your own terms! Now is

always the time! Professional educators and other former young people:

inspire, encourage, support and collaborate with young people to build a more

participatory culture of learning!

Child prodigy Adora Svitak: Now, the world needs opportunities for new leaders and new ideas.Kids need opportunities to lead and succeed. Are you ready to make the match?

http://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitakhttp://www.gallup.com/poll/11893/most-teens-associate-school-boredom-fatigue.aspxhttp://www.gallup.com/poll/11893/most-teens-associate-school-boredom-fatigue.aspx


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Here are just a few activities we will explore that young people are doing every

day to change the world:

Youth Research: All across the country,

students in groups like theYouth

Researchers for a New Education

Systemin New York City and the Council

of Youth Researchat the UCLA Institute

for Democracy, Education, and Access

are leading participatory action research

projects to study school environments

and student attitudes and to design

solutions to complex school problems.

Youth Teaching:Thankfully, not all young

teachers are sitting silent in their

schools! Many areengaging in exciting programs designed to leverage

and support the unique power ofyoung teachers. The nationwide

Breakthrough Collaborative(formerly Summerbridge) empowers high

school and college students to serve as inspirational teachers to younger

students, while receiving guidance and mentorship from professional

teachers. The nonprofit Let's Get Readyrelies on college studentdirectors to manage its network of programs bringing college volunteers

into low-income high schools to teach and advise students, supporting

them through the daunting process of testing and admissions required to

attend college. U.K-based group We Are What We Dohas developed the

http://vimeo.com/11699538http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttp://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/projects/the-council-of-youth-researchhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/projects/the-council-of-youth-researchhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.wearewhatwedo.org/http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/http://www.letsgetready.org/http://www.letsgetready.org/http://vimeo.com/11699538http://vimeo.com/11699538http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttp://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/projects/the-council-of-youth-researchhttp://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/projects/the-council-of-youth-researchhttp://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/projects/the-council-of-youth-researchhttp://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/projects/the-council-of-youth-researchhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdfhttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/YRNES_REPORT.pdf


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Young Speakers Programmeto train teenage students to design and lead

interactive presentations at schools to inspire their peers and younger

children to use simple everyday actions to address social and

environmental problems. And students hardly need national

organizations to get out there and teach each other. The venerable teach-

in, popularized by Students For a Democratic Society in the movement

against the Vietnam War, has returned with a new importance in the

current movement against financial corruption andinequity, as the impenetrable complexity of modern

financial systems proved to be an important cause of

our helplessness in guarding against the tsunami of

financial fraudulence that has flattened the economy

and left millions of victims financially devastated.

Youth Activism: Students have led massive protests

worldwideagainst educational inequity, budget cuts,

privatization, and the various other symptoms of our

generally antidemocratic educational systems and

societies. From Santiago to Rome, Glasgow to Oakland,

students have been mobilizing by the thousands to liberate learning from

the clutches of business and bureaucracy and save it from the ravages of

austerity measures. In the United States, education activism has

aligned with the Occupy movement, leading to the emergence of Occupy

Educationand Occupy Colleges. In Chile, many schools have been

literally occupied(en toma, they call it), in protest against the inequities

http://vimeo.com/30808782http://www.occupyed.org/http://occupycolleges.org/http://occupycolleges.org/http://www.occupyed.org/http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/10/28/top-10-education-protests-worldwidehttp://www.takepart.com/article/2011/10/28/top-10-education-protests-worldwidehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9y51Su3iohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9y51Su3iohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9y51Su3iohttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://vimeo.com/30808782http://vimeo.com/30808782http://occupycolleges.org/http://occupycolleges.org/http://www.occupyed.org/http://www.occupyed.org/http://www.occupyed.org/http://www.occupyed.org/http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/10/28/top-10-education-protests-worldwidehttp://www.takepart.com/article/2011/10/28/top-10-education-protests-worldwidehttp://www.takepart.com/article/2011/10/28/top-10-education-protests-worldwidehttp://www.takepart.com/article/2011/10/28/top-10-education-protests-worldwidehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9y51Su3iohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9y51Su3io


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perpetuated by Chile's privatized voucher education system, which was

designed by the exiting Pinochet dictatorship.

Youth Entrepreneurship:Entrepreneurs build teams to explore the

shifting sea of social needs and discover innovative opportunities to

create value (though notions of social needs and value may not

always be so high-minded). In many ways, young people are ideally suited

to this sort of challenge, and through programs like Ashoka'sYouth

Ventureand BUILD, they are indeed rising to the challenge.

Entrepreneurship training can provide students of all ages with powerful

skills and experiences to thrive in the demanding and dynamic societies

of the twenty-first century, whether or not they choose to become

professional entrepreneurs. Thats why the Kauffman Foundation and

Three Chicks Media developed a multimedia program to introduce

entrepreneurial concepts to children ages eight to twelve, which they callAll Terrain Brain.

From the Activity Guide for the Kauffman Foundation's All Terrain Brain, a multimedia project

designed to encourage kids to take their brains 'off road' and tap into their entrepreneurial spirit.

http://www.allterrainbrain.org/http://www.allterrainbrain.org/http://www.allterrainbrain.org/http://www.youthventure.org/http://www.build.org/http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://allterrainbrain.org/http://allterrainbrain.org/http://www.allterrainbrain.org/http://www.allterrainbrain.org/http://www.build.org/http://www.build.org/http://www.youthventure.org/http://www.youthventure.org/http://www.youthventure.org/http://www.youthventure.org/


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2. Democratic Education

When we call for democracy in education, we're talking about participatory

democracycultivated daily through direct and unmediatedactivity by ordinary

people in collaboration with each othernot the watered-down, electoral form

of democracy which has given us in our national politics such an obviously

unrepresentative collection of mostly white, mostly male,largely millionaire,

entirely out-of-touch politicians who are only occasionally accountable to the

public during elections, the outcomes of which are undeniably

unrepresentative of the desires of the majority of the population. (This was,

indeed, the goal of the white, male, aristocratic founders who drafted a

Constitution exclusively for citizens who were white, male landowners. As

James Madison wrote with a great deal of satisfaction in Federalist #63, the

principal distinction between

American democracy and its

Athenian predecessors liesin the

total exclusion of the people, in

their collective capacity, fromany

share in actual political decision-

making. [emphasis in original])

So, what does participatorydemocracy mean for education? Inclusion, rather than exclusion, of all

stakeholders in decision-making, with the aim of continually increasing our

collective capacity. The democratization of learning will empower students to

decide what, where, when, and how their learning happens. The democratization


Join the new movement for democratic education in

America. Read the IDEA strategy document.
http://democraticeducation.org/downloads/idea_strategy3.pdfhttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/demographics.tt?catid=allhttp://democraticeducation.org/downloads/idea_strategy3.pdfhttp://democraticeducation.org/downloads/idea_strategy3.pdfhttp://democraticeducation.org/downloads/idea_strategy3.pdfhttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AkNY_hPTsz8C&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=%22lies+in+the+total+exclusion+of+the+people,+in+their+collective+capacity%22&source=bl&ots=TsPlI4ZF3y&sig=X8yHyGecBoaht_vlZCo0nhu7ko4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sf0KT_7dDIKpiQLi1-S8CQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22lies%20in%20the%20total%20exclusion%20of%20the%20people%2C%20in%20their%20collective%20capacity%22&f=falsehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/us/politics/economic-slide-took-a-detour-at-capitol-hill.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/us/politics/economic-slide-took-a-detour-at-capitol-hill.htmlhttp://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/demographics.tt?catid=allhttp://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/demographics.tt?catid=all


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of teaching will empower everyone everywhere to share what they know with

others, and to continually develop their abilities to do so effectively. Students

should have an especially empowered role in teaching each other, as peers are

uniquely disposed to understand the challenges they face at their common

level of comprehension. The democratization of cultural and intellectual

production is exploding the traditional barriers to freedom of the press and

enabling a massive outpouring of valuable intellectual insight and artistic

expression from nonprofessionals and amateurs. And the rapid proliferation of

open source educational materials is enabling anyone with access to an

internet connection (which is, importantly, not everyone) to acquire the tools

necessary to learn just about anything.

http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/ideals


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In the new culture of education we see emerging, learning will be commonlyconsidered to be central to one's entire lifenot just one's childhood and young

adulthoodand will be accorded the highest value and respect in society. Full-

time educators will be highly professionalized and highly respected, like

doctors, lawyers, designers, and consultants, but there will also be an even

greater wealth of part-time and casual volunteer teaching provided by millions

of people with skills and knowledges to share and the desire to share them.

The concept of the Education City, pioneered in Israel by democratic educator

Yaacov Hecht, shows a way forward. City by city, town by town, the citizens of

the world can take up the banner of the Education City to invest the spirit of

teaching and learning into every aspect of civic life, and to identify, and enrich

the processes of education already in action in their communities.

The idea of the Education Cityholds revolutionary potential as an approach to transforming education.

http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://education-cities.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/article.pdfhttp://education-cities.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/article.pdfhttp://education-cities.com/http://education-cities.com/


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3. Design Thinking

When we think of design, we often think of beautifully crafted objectsan

iPhone, a Ferrari, a Coach bagwithout considering the process that goes into

bringing such beautiful things into reality. Behind every intuitively designed

thing lies a deeply human approach which gives central importance to

experimentation and playactivities we believe are essential to great learning.

The Stanford d.school, which

offers courses in design thinking,

elaborates five stages in the

design process: Empathize,

Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test.

Note that before any attempt to

create an actual thing is made,

there are three courses that

designers embark upon to

develop the great ideas that make

great things possible. And even

when designers begin making

things, they only use the first

creations as models for testing

and refining their ideas. Note,

also, that the first process is empathizing with the people that the designers

are designing for: discovering how they think, feel, and live their lives to create

solutions that work for them. This is clearly an important lesson for schools.


Award-winning designers Constantin and Laurene Boym

note that the character of Curious George is distinctly

one of a design thinker: He is driven by curiosity to play

and experiment with elements of his daily environment.

He finds new uses for familiar objects, invents different

ways of doing things, and tests the limits of materials

and objects. Many of his experiments do not work, and

he routinely gets in trouble, but occasionally he reaps

praise or a medal. This sounds a lot like a designer's
https://dschool.stanford.edu/http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttps://dschool.stanford.edu/https://dschool.stanford.edu/


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IDEO, a highly innovative design firm, has been leading the movement to bring

the creative principles behind brilliant design to the arena of education, where

they are ideally suited and desperately needed. Design Thinking is the

confidence that everyone can be part of creating a more desirable future, the

IDEO designers explain, and a process to take action when faced with a

difficult challenge. That kind of optimism is well needed in education.

Classrooms and schools across the world are facing design challenges every

single day, from teacher feedback systems to daily schedules. Wherever they

fall on the spectrum of scalethe challenges educators are confronted with are

real, complex, and varied. And as such, they require new perspectives, new

tools, and new approaches. Design Thinking is one of them.

From IDEO, Design Thinking For Educators:

http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/


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4. Serious Play

Let my playing be my learning, and my learning be my playing, declared Johan

Huizinga, a Dutch social theorist, in his pioneering 1938 book, Homo Ludens

(Playing Man). Exploring the central characteristics of play, Huizinga observed

that all aspects of society are defined by play structures. We have to conclude

that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played, he wrote. It does not come

from play like a baby detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play,

and never leaves it. What is life, after all, but a sort of role-playing game? What

are codes of laws and social norms but game rules with serious consequences

attached to their violation? What is school but a game structured around

academic performance, with game points awarded as letter grades, scholastic

honors, and so on? Surely, if we took this idea to heart, we could make the

experience of schools less boring, more playful.

And if games can be seen to constitute the foundation of all aspects of human

society, then surely training students in the art of gameplay and game design

could prove a powerful way to develop thriving citizens of the world, who could


The ever-evolving game of Calvinball. The only permanent rule of Calvinball is that you can't play it the same way twice!


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build the new game systems of twenty-first century education. The recent

ideas of gamification, alternate reality games, serious games, and so on

provide excitingopportunities for us to fully realize our human potential and

transition into our next stage of evolution, as Homo Ludens.

Bill Watterson's Calvin is

an intellectual hero of

ours, a true six-year-old

super-genius with an

imaginative playfulness

and radical nonconformity.

His brilliant game

invention, Calvinball, is a

postmodern milestone in

game design theory: while

sincerely acknowledging

the conventions of game

rules and play space, the

game radically subverts

them by incorporating into

the ruleset the first rule ofimprov: always say, Yes,

and to any new play,

including the spontaneous

creation of new rules.


Calvinball freely combines elements from many games, and experiments witheverything from physical boundaries to point systems. As Hobbes reminds us,

The score is still Q to 12!
http://www.alternet.org/story/37144/stephen_colbert's_address_to_the_graduateshttp://www.alternet.org/story/37144/stephen_colbert's_address_to_the_graduateshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.alternet.org/story/37144/stephen_colbert's_address_to_the_graduateshttp://www.alternet.org/story/37144/stephen_colbert's_address_to_the_graduateshttp://www.alternet.org/story/37144/stephen_colbert's_address_to_the_graduateshttp://www.alternet.org/story/37144/stephen_colbert's_address_to_the_graduates


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The shifting of rules and blending of game elements opens up another space

for creative exploration that allows Calvin and his Hobbes to make their play

however they want it at every moment. This sort of high-level innovative

creativitystructured yet extremely flexibleis exactly what societies will need

to discover solutions to the Gordian knot of problems we face globally and

locally. We must face the challenges of the twenty-first century as Calvin does:

with an improv state of mind.



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Here are a few directions in the field of play that we'll continue to explore:

Children's Museums: Nothing brings us more joy than a visit to the

Exploratoriumin San Francisco, or the New York Hall of Science. They

spark our wonder, shift our thinking, and let us relax into learning. In

Huizinga's words, inside of them we can let our learning be our playing.

Concepts like the Museum of Mathematicsa much needed celebration

of the infinite fun and beauty in mathand the traveling Museum of

Interesting Thingsoffer a playful twist on tradition notions of a museum.

Adult Playgrounds: Some questions have been with us ever since became

adults (when was that, exactly?). For instance: Why are public play

spaces (as distinct from sport facilities) created exclusively for young

people? Why don't we create spaces for adults that encourage the same

sorts of playfulness as playgrounds do for children? Why is this not a

thriving field of design? We'll be following up on this, in search of some

good answers (or better questions).

Games For Change: There is a growing community of practitioners in the

serious games movement dedicated to developing games with the goal

of generating social awareness and influencing social change. Naturally,

people were quick to recognize the enormous potential of such an

approach for education, and have begun exploring the frontiers ofserious games for student learning and training. Games For Change has

developed an interactive toolkitto teach how to design social issue

games for activist movements and causes.

http://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkitflash/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_for_Changehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_for_Changehttp://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23696952-bank-holiday-special-adult-playground-launched-at-tate-modern.dohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnDJ4KhRVM0http://momath.org/http://momath.org/http://www.exploratorium.edu/http://www/nysci.orghttp://www.childrensmuseums.org/http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkitflash/http://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkitflash/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_for_Changehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_for_Changehttp://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23696952-bank-holiday-special-adult-playground-launched-at-tate-modern.dohttp://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23696952-bank-holiday-special-adult-playground-launched-at-tate-modern.dohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnDJ4KhRVM0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnDJ4KhRVM0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnDJ4KhRVM0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnDJ4KhRVM0http://momath.org/http://momath.org/http://www/nysci.orghttp://www/nysci.orghttp://www.exploratorium.edu/http://www.exploratorium.edu/http://www.childrensmuseums.org/http://www.childrensmuseums.org/


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Alternate Reality Games: Wikipedia currently defines the Alternate Reality

Game (ARG) as an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a

platform and uses transmedia to deliver a story that may be altered by

participants' ideas or actions. ARGs are a form of role-playing game,

where players typically play themselves as protagonists in a drama

unfolding in the real world, the characters in which maintain a firm

insistence that This Is Not A Game. As one guide to ARGsexplains,

one of the main goals of the ARG is to deny and disguise the fact that itis even a game at all. By defining the world as the game-space and real

world actions as gameplay activities, ARGs offer a compelling context for

the activities of learning, training, or evaluation.

Gamestorming: When creative professionals are called upon to design

solutions to problems, they often start by playing games. A few visual

designers from the design and consulting firm XPLANE gathered the best

of the professional world's knowledge games into a manual, described as

a playbook for people who want to design the future, to change the

world, to make, break and innovatea rough-and-ready toolkit for

inventors, explorers and change agents who want to use design thinking

to navigate successfully in complex and uncertain knowledge and

information spaces, to engage others, and to start, grow and sustain

movements for change. The creators of Gamestormingset up a games

wikito collect and sharean ever growing archive of gamestorm designs.

We love the similarly playful approaches to ideation in Thinkertoys, IDEO's

Method Cards, and, for entrepreneurial types, Business Model

Generation. This is the future of education.

http://www.gogamestorm.com/?page_id=234http://www.gogamestorm.com/?page_id=234http://www.gogamestorm.com/http://books.google.com/books?id=67WQLf_7XX4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=this+is+not+a+game&hl=en&ei=CzDiToLrEqXe0QGF0ujbBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=this%20is%20not%20a%20game&f=falsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_gamehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_gamehttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/bookhttp://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/bookhttp://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/bookhttp://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/bookhttp://www.ideo.com/work/method-cards/http://www.ideo.com/work/method-cards/http://www.ideo.com/work/method-cards/http://www.ideo.com/work/method-cards/http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1580087736/qid=1148674248/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-3480993-9857466?v=glance&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1580087736/qid=1148674248/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-3480993-9857466?v=glance&s=bookshttp://www.gogamestorm.com/?page_id=234http://www.gogamestorm.com/?page_id=234http://www.gogamestorm.com/?page_id=234http://www.gogamestorm.com/?page_id=234http://www.gogamestorm.com/http://www.gogamestorm.com/http://books.google.com/books?id=67WQLf_7XX4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=this+is+not+a+game&hl=en&ei=CzDiToLrEqXe0QGF0ujbBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=this%20is%20not%20a%20game&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=67WQLf_7XX4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=this+is+not+a+game&hl=en&ei=CzDiToLrEqXe0QGF0ujbBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=this%20is%20not%20a%20game&f=falsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_gamehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game


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5. Learnology

We've always thought it more than a

little strange that schoolswhich depend

for their success upon the capability of

their students to learnspend little to no

time addressing the art and science of

learning with their students. Judging

from the standard school curriculum,

one would suppose that both students

and teachers are expected to intuit

automatically the best practices and

conditions for learning, although

neuroscientists and cognitive and

developmental psychologists have foundit necessary to devote an enormous

amount of research in the past decades

to understand just this. While these

scientists have still only scratched the

surface of this enormously interesting

field of study, they have discovered many

valuable insights about learning that we

believe will provide enormous benefit to

students, teachers, and all of society, as

we learn better how to learn better.



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Moreover, we think the processes of thinking about thinking and learning about

learning activate an important self-reflective impulse in students and teachers

that can amplify awareness and expand mental flexibility. As learning happens

everywhere, throughout our entire livesespecially after students finish their

sentence of compulsory schoolingdeveloping a clearer, more informed

approach to learning can have an incalculable impact on one's expanding

capabilities over the course of a lifetime.

And learning isn't just for individuals, of course. Groups, social movements,

businesses, cities, and entire societies learnand surely, with insight into the

process, they can learn better. Peter Senge brought popular awareness to the

idea of systemic learning and adaptation with his 1990 book, The Fifth

Discipline, outlining five key disciplines for organizational learning: systems

thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning.

Learning organizations, he explained, are organizations where people

continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where

new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective

aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the

whole together. Senge owes much of his theoretical insight to the pioneering

work of Donald Schn (himself greatly influenced by John Dewey), who saw in

1971 that the nature of constant, rapid, radical change in modern societyrequired a better understanding of the processes of learning, not just for the

individual, but also for groups and for entire societies.



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As Schn wrote in Beyond the Stable State:

The loss of the stable state means that our society and all of its institutions

are in continuous processes of transformation. We cannot expect new stable

states that will endure for our own lifetimes. We must learn to understand,

guide, influence and manage these transformations. We must make the

capacity for undertaking them integral to ourselves and to our institutions. We

must, in other words, become adept at learning. We must become able not

only to transform our institutions, in response to changing situations and

requirements; we must invent and develop institutions which are 'learning

systems', that is to say, systems capable of bringing about their own continuing

transformation. The task which the loss of the stable state makes imperative,

for the person, for our institutions, for our society as a whole, is to learn about

learning.

What is the nature of the process by which organizations, institutions and

societies transform themselves?

What are the characteristics of effective learning systems?

What are the forms and limits of knowledge that can operate within

processes of social learning?

What demands are made on a person who engages in this kind of learning?

Over forty years later, Schn's questions remain essential, even vital.



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6. Vitalogy

Mind, body, and spirit form a holy trinity of real learning. Healthy, active bodies

make healthy, active minds. To transform the next generation of learners and

teachers, we must explore the frontiers of what it truly means to be healthy, to

be vitalthat is, to be full of life! Future generations may look back and

conclude, as Russian scientist Israel I. Brekhman argued, that our modern

medicine, with its intense focus on pathology, has made great progress down

the wrong path. Throughout his career, Dr. Brekhman championed the study ofhealthinesswhich he termed valeology,from the Latin valeos, to be strong, to

be healthyfocusing his efforts on exploring a range of health-promoting

herbal compounds, known as adaptogens. As our interest will be primarily in

the education and training of vitality-promoting activities and habits of

awareness, not in organic compounds, we prefer to use a different neologism,

vitalogy, which suggests the active vital force that generates life and the

process of revitalizationand is also the title of a great Pearl Jam album.

Rather than a binary approach to health care which regards health simply as

the absence of illness or injury, we find it important to view health as a

continuum or field, potentially infinite, inseparably intertwined with the ideas of

strength, energy, clarity, harmony, balance, fluidity, lightness, rhythm. There is

much to be done to bring our systems of education into harmony with the vital

processes of the mind, body, and spirit. We must revolutionize the approach to

food in our modern school systems, not just by replacing the terribly unhealthy

school lunches with more nutritional food, but also by investing in a real

education in nutrition, food preparation, and organic food cultivation. We must

revolutionize the approach to physical education in



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-

schools by bringing the insights of the health sciences to every aspect of our

learning environments, not just to the one period students endure every day,

unaffectionately known as P.E. We must take cognizance of the enormous

impact on physical and mental health that sleep has, and reschedule our

schools accordingly. Other important and largely disregarded influences on

health must be reconsidered with a new level of concern: the quality of light

matters greatly for learning, for instance, as does regular movement,

stretching, breathing, posture, and so on.

Finally, we must devote more attention to the social, psychological, mental, and

emotional health of our students and teachers, and to the burdens on health

imposed by current education systems, so that we can design new

environments that promote an integrated health of the spirit. It is a mistake to

wait for problems of dispiritedness to manifest in obvious behavior or

performance issues, as the level of spiritual health is always a powerful

determinant of the capacity for learning or teaching, and of physical health as

well. Even minor emotional or psychological issues can profoundly impair

education, while a strong, healthy spirit can make almost any learning

challenge attainable. Along with physical health, we must train as students in

emotional and psychological health and the behaviors and activitiespersonal

and collectivethat support this vitality of the spirit. Students deserve real

training in counseling, communication, collaboration, introspection, spiritual

practice, sensuality and sexual health, and so onif not simply for their sake,

then for the sake of society as a whole. We cannot even imagine what might

come from a generation whose vitality were unshackled by the training of truly

healthy ways of living.



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7. DIY Education

Once upon a time, it was not uncommon for society's leading thinkers to be

polymaths, accomplished in many fields. Today it would be exceedingly

remarkable for a leading scientist to be an important poet, philosopher, or

politician as well. Examples like Benjamin Franklin (political theorist, politician,

statesman, printer, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, writer) or Francis

Bacon (philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, writer) or Leonardo da

Vinci (painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor,

anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, writer) were hardly even atypical in

their eraindeed, there's even a typical term for them: Renaissance Men.

However, it is almost inconceivable that one could achieve something of

significance in as many different fields today.

A major reason for this, we believe, is that modern society strongly promotes a

long and costly process of intellectual specialization inside of highly structured

academic institutions, while the polymathy of the past was largely driven by

individual curiosity and pluck, by which bright thinkers learned for themselves

how to achieve great things in many fields. Even inside of the academic

institutions of the day, it was tutorsnot lecturing professorswho were the

primary agents of instruction, offering a highly personalized approach to

learning. Great thinkers of the past were not boxed in by rigid conceptions of

who they were or what they could do, and thus were free to experiment and

explore as their passions dictated. We need a renaissance of this Renaissance

Man, and so we will need to free intellectual inquiry from its current state of

over-institutionalization.



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The internet, of course, has heralded a new intellectual renaissancedifferent

in scope and scale from anything to ever come beforeand has done much to

transcend the relatively rigid intellectual boundaries reinforced and defended

by the old guard of academia. With the democratization of learning andthe

proliferation of open source educational materials, individuals no longer need

to feel the dependence upon institutions to develop new capabilities and

explore new fields. The unfortunate monopoly on the modern mind that schools

have held over educationis now being disrupted by

the infinitely available

internet and the

collaborative connections

it fosters among curious

seekers of knowledge.

DIY education has always

been as common as its

academic counterpart

more sobut it is only

now becoming as

organized and as visible.

We love DIY learning for the way it fosters so many of the values we celebrate: it

engages the processes of design thinking, experimentation, and participatory

democracy, it inherently involves learning about learning, it empowers students

to be teachers (of themselves), and so on. Most of all, it liberates learning from


Learn how to make an Urban Guerrilla Movie Houseat Make:Projects
http://makeprojects.com/Project/Urban-Guerrilla-Movie-House/691/1http://makeprojects.com/Project/Urban-Guerrilla-Movie-House/691/1http://makeprojects.com/Project/Urban-Guerrilla-Movie-House/691/1http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/ideals


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a dependence on experts and instructors (as valuable as they can be). Nor

does DIY education have to be a solo affair. Group classes can be organized

with no teacher at allperhaps only a lead learner, responsible for facilitating

the overall course of learning undertaken by the group, but in no way an expert

on the subject under study.

And its especially great to double down on the DIYteaching yourself how to do

and make things yourself is greatly empowering. The more we know how to

make the things we want and need ourselves, the closer we will come to true

independence and sustainability. Knowing how to make things also entails

knowing how things work, an important systems-level awarenesswhich will

remain especially important for the societal learning we need to evolve in this

era of rapid flux. Not to mention that making things yourself is just plain fun.


Gon Kirin, and his fire-breathing dragon, featured at the World Maker Faire New York
http://makerfaire.com/newyork/http://makerfaire.com/newyork/http://makerfaire.com/newyork/http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/2004v28/i01/p0127p0138/00000132.PDFhttp://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/2004v28/i01/p0127p0138/00000132.PDF


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8. The New Socratic

I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone

whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you

who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much

about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little

about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never

regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I an

arguing says: Yes, but I do care: I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate

and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only

says that he has, I reproach him with overvaluing the greater, and undervaluing the

less. For this is the command of God, as I would have you know...

Socrates,Apology


The legendary tutor Socrates accepted the penalty of death for the cause of free intellectual inquiry.
http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://books.google.com/books?id=yTUzAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA16&dq=%22I+shall+never+cease+from+the+practice+and+teaching+of+philosophy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y04PT5XDH8WRiQKjz6yyDQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22I%20shall%20never%20cease%20from%20the%20practice%20and%20teaching%20of%20philosophy%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=yTUzAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA16&dq=%22I+shall+never+cease+from+the+practice+and+teaching+of+philosophy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y04PT5XDH8WRiQKjz6yyDQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22I%20shall%20never%20cease%20from%20the%20practice%20and%20teaching%20of%20philosophy%22&f=false


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Perhaps the most famous teacher of all time, Socrates literally gave his life to

the teaching of a philosophy of virtue by the method of elenchus: a question-

driven dialectical interrogation of ideas now known as the Socratic method.

Socrates put the art of questioning at the heart of teaching and learning,

insisting that he was no wiser than any other Athenian, except insofar as he

knew that he was not wise. Although the Socratic method is a popular and well-

respected instructional approach in educationfamously used in law school

courses along with the casebook method of studying legal precedents

Socrates was clear that his means of inquiry was not his greatest contribution

to society. Most important, he insisted, was his revolutionary effort to persuade

people to value wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul

over wealth and power and petty superficiality. As a philosopher, Socrates was

foremost an ethicist.

So, in honor of this great teacher, we call for a New Socratic movement that not

only puts inquiry at the center of learningfocusing on asking questions rather

than answering them, and valuing the open question that has no answerbut

also puts the committed ethics of Socrates back into the method that bears his

name. After all, Socrates was sentenced to death not simply for discussing any

old philosophical ideas, but for radically challenging the pretensions of those in

power in Athens. As Socrates said of the motivations of his accusers, They donot like to confess that their pretense of knowledge has been detected. We

need to train young minds to think critically about the most critical issues of our

timeand to really rock the boatif we are to make the rapid progress we need

to solve the overwhelming complex global problems we face. Merely academic



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philosophizing is not good enough: we need to engage in critical inquiry to

make new things, and make new things happen.

As proponents of the design thinking approach, we advocate for a bias toward

action. Open inquiry and cross-examination are great tools for refining ideas,

but alone can lead to analysis paralysis in making decisions and

implementing solutions. Notions like project-based learning, problem-based

learning, and mission-based learning provide examples of approaches that

inherently demand critical inquiry as an integral part of hands-on action.

Participatoryaction researchleverages the power of student study to make

meaningful active researchthat both examines and influences the social

environment. Deeply enriching learning evolves out of this kind of praxis

defined by Paulo Freire as reflection and action upon the world in order to

transform it.

9. Global Exchange

Some of the world's greatest cultural and intellectual developments have

emerged from the threads of several cultures interwoven together. Algebra and

the decimal numerical system, for instance, appeared in the Western world in

the twelfth century thanks to Latin translations of the work of Persian

mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, who based his work on

Indian numeral systems and Greek mathematical treatises like Ptolemy's

Geography. Transformative modern art made by Pablo Picasso and Henri

Matisse was heavily influenced by the exhibition of African art in the museums

of Paris at the time. The varied American musical traditions of jazz, blues, rock,

http://books.google.com/books?id=xfFXFD414ioC&pg=PA51&dq=%22reflection+and+action+upon+the+world+in+order+to+transform+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JFIPT9unLIaSiQLY0NTQDQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22reflection%20and%20action%20upon%20the%20world%20in%20order%20to%20transform%20it.%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=xfFXFD414ioC&pg=PA51&dq=%22reflection+and+action+upon+the+world+in+order+to+transform+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JFIPT9unLIaSiQLY0NTQDQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22reflection%20and%20action%20upon%20the%20world%20in%20order%20to%20transform%20it.%22&f=falsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttps://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/548fb/Bias_Toward_Action.htmlhttps://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/548fb/Bias_Toward_Action.htmlhttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://books.google.com/books?id=xfFXFD414ioC&pg=PA51&dq=%22reflection+and+action+upon+the+world+in+order+to+transform+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JFIPT9unLIaSiQLY0NTQDQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22reflection%20and%20action%20upon%20the%20world%20in%20order%20to%20transform%20it.%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=xfFXFD414ioC&pg=PA51&dq=%22reflection+and+action+upon+the+world+in+order+to+transform+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JFIPT9unLIaSiQLY0NTQDQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22reflection%20and%20action%20upon%20the%20world%20in%20order%20to%20transform%20it.%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=xfFXFD414ioC&pg=PA51&dq=%22reflection+and+action+upon+the+world+in+order+to+transform+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JFIPT9unLIaSiQLY0NTQDQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22reflection%20and%20action%20upon%20the%20world%20in%20order%20to%20transform%20it.%22&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=xfFXFD414ioC&pg=PA51&dq=%22reflection+and+action+upon+the+world+in+order+to+transform+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JFIPT9unLIaSiQLY0NTQDQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22reflection%20and%20action%20upon%20the%20world%20in%20order%20to%20transform%20it.%22&f=falsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_researchhttps://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/548fb/Bias_Toward_Action.htmlhttps://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/548fb/Bias_Toward_Action.htmlhttps://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/548fb/Bias_Toward_Action.htmlhttps://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/548fb/Bias_Toward_Action.html


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soul, hip hop, and rapwhich have since become global musical traditions

emerged from the forced African migration to the American colonies carried out

by European and colonial slave traders. The list of such intercultural origin

stories is endless.

We believe in the enduring power of these global intercultural exchanges. On a

daily, lived basis, one can feel the transformative power of immersion in a

culture different from one's own. An individual spending time in a foreign

country can be a natural ambassador and teacher of her culture, as well as a

natural student of the cultural environment in which she finds herself, and can

even be a natural inventor of new cultural blends woven together organically

and idiosyncratically. In a foreign country, everything is different, everything is

new, and thus, everything is a learning opportunity. If this is naturally true for

every stranger in a strange land, then it follows that the more people travel

outside their native cultures, the more intercultural teaching and learning ispossible. And in the translation between cultures and ideas, new insights and

creative breakthroughs will continue to emerge.

10. Teaching To Change The World

What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write

films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel

good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to

educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.

Howard Zinn,Artists In Times of War and Other Essays

If the youth are going to take the lead in solving the major problems that the

world faces, as we believe must happen, then their teachers must be



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committed to helping them do so. Young people should know that we expect

them to change the world, and that we support them in their mission.

Educators must teach with the clear goal in mind of developing a generation of

world-changers. This will require a conscious training of certain habits of mind,

ways of seeing, ethical commitments,

intellectual and physical skills, and so on.

It will also demand from professional

teachers a demonstrated respect for the

power of youth and their role in world-

changing, enacted daily in the ways in

which we teach and the type of intellectual

projects in which we engage our students.

In 2010, the Texas school board rewrote

the state social studies curriculumto

propagandize for a neo-conservative

system of values and view of history, and

the Arizona legislature outlawed the

Mexican-American studies programand

any others that advocate ethnic

solidarity. Those students should betaught that this is the land of opportunity,

and that if they work hard they can achieve

their goals, Arizona Superintendent Tom

Horne wrote to the citizens of Tucson.

http://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/arizona-hb-2281-fact-sheet.htmlhttp://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/arizona-hb-2281-fact-sheet.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.htmlhttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/arizona-hb-2281-fact-sheet.htmlhttp://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/arizona-hb-2281-fact-sheet.htmlhttp://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/arizona-hb-2281-fact-sheet.htmlhttp://ethnicstudiesweekoctober1-7.org/arizona-hb-2281-fact-sheet.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html


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They should not be taught that they are oppressed. In 2011, Wisconsin

Governor Scott Walker signed legislation stripping public teacher unions of

collective bargaining rightsand cutting $1.85 billion from education spending,

striking fear in the hearts of embattled public school teachers everywhere. But

studentsand teachersare fighting back.

Education has always been a contested front in the war for the hearts and

minds of our young citizens. The only war that matters is the war against

imagination, writes poet Diane Di Prima, all other wars are subsumed in it.

The struggle over education is critical because, as Ivan Illich wrote in

Deschooling Society, schools reproduce society, and so they are extremely

important engines for the maintenance of the dominant social order:

All over the worldschools are organized enterprises designed to reproduce the

established order, whether this order is called revolutionary, conservative, or

evolutionary. Everywhere the loss of pedagogical credibility and the resistance toschools provide a fundamental option: shall this crisis be dealt with as a problem

that can, and must, be solved by substituting new devices for school and readjusting

the existing power structure to fit these devices? Or shall this crisis force a society to

face the structural contradictions inherent in the politics and economics of any

society that reproduces itself through the industrial process?

There is no cause more important for the survival and liberation of the human

race than that of education, because it holds the key to the development of the

new minds that will determine the fate ofthe future. We must move forwardas

educators with this firm conviction in mind, guiding us on our way through the

darkness toward the light.

Amen.

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich:_Deschooling_Societyhttp://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/a-student-uprising-in-arizonahttp://www.educationvotes.nea.org/2011/06/15/fight-for-wisconsin-workers-moves-to-federal-court/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2pSsIem6aYhttp://www.educationvotes.nea.org/2011/06/15/fight-for-wisconsin-workers-moves-to-federal-court/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2pSsIem6aYhttp://neatoday.org/2011/03/09/wisconsin-republicans-ram-through-unpopular-bill/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/26/politics/main20074509.shtmlhttp://neatoday.org/2011/03/09/wisconsin-republicans-ram-through-unpopular-bill/http://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich:_Deschooling_Societyhttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich:_Deschooling_Societyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2pSsIem6aYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2pSsIem6aYhttp://www.educationvotes.nea.org/2011/06/15/fight-for-wisconsin-workers-moves-to-federal-court/http://www.educationvotes.nea.org/2011/06/15/fight-for-wisconsin-workers-moves-to-federal-court/http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/a-student-uprising-in-arizonahttp://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/a-student-uprising-in-arizonahttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/26/politics/main20074509.shtmlhttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/26/politics/main20074509.shtmlhttp://neatoday.org/2011/03/09/wisconsin-republicans-ram-through-unpopular-bill/http://neatoday.org/2011/03/09/wisconsin-republicans-ram-through-unpopular-bill/http://neatoday.org/2011/03/09/wisconsin-republicans-ram-through-unpopular-bill/http://neatoday.org/2011/03/09/wisconsin-republicans-ram-through-unpopular-bill/


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Howard Zinn, Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest:

Equally important for social control as the military scientists are those professionals who

are connected with the dissemination of knowledge in society: the teachers, the historians,

the political scientists, the journalists, and yes, the archivists.We have all heard the cries

of don't politicize our profession [but] this neat separation, keeping your nose to the

professional grindstone, and leaving politics to your left-over moments, assumes that your

profession is not inherently political. It is neutral. Teachers are objective and unbiased.

Textbooks are eclectic and fair. The historian is even-handed and factual.

However, knowledge has a social origin and a social use. It comes out of a divided,

embattled world, and is poured into such a world. It is not neutral either in origin or effect. It


Chilean President Salvador Allende was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973,

with the covert support of the CIAand other U.S. federal agencies and foreign governments,

inaugurating a brutal 17-year reign of terror. If the CIA had its way, nobody would know about its

involvement. Thus, history itself is a battleground.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB255/index.htmhttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB282/index.htmhttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB282/index.htmhttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB282/index.htmhttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB255/index.htmhttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB255/index.htmhttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://www.researchdevelop.org/idealshttp://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/44118/MA02_2_3.pdf?sequence=3http://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/44118/MA02_2_3.pdf?sequence=3


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reflects the bias of a particular social order; more accurately, it reflects the diverse biases of

a diverse social order, but with one important qualification: that those with the most power

and wealth in society will dominate the field of knowledge, so that it serves their interests.

The scholar may swear to his neutrality on the job, but whether he be physicist, historian, or

archivist, his work will tend, in this theory, to maintain the existing social order by

perpetuating its values, by legitimizing its priorities, by justifying its wars, perpetuating its

prejudices, contributing to its xenophobia, and apologizing for its class order.

The problems of the United States are not peripheral and have not been met by our genius

at reform. They are not the problems of excess, but of normalcy. If all this is so, then the

normal functioning of the scholar, the intellectual, the researcher, helps maintain those

corrupt norms in the United States, just as the intellectual in Germany, Soviet Russia, orSouth Africa, by simply doing his small job, maintains what is normal in those societies. And

if so, then what we always asked of scholars in those terrible places is required of us in the

United States today: rebellion against the norm. Scholarship in society is inescapably

political. Our choice is not between being political or not. Our choice is to follow the politics

of the going order, that is, to do our job within the priorities and directions set by the

dominant forces of society, or else to promote those human values of peace, equality, and

justice, which our present society denies.

Documents

R&D–10 Things We Love About Education