How Do U Teach with Questions?

A new found friend has had me working on a project with him that includes some meditation on Socratic teaching.  Thought I might share the outline I produced for the work just to put some thoughts out there on how to teach in that manner.  Just sharing the love…

Socratic Method Outline

Environmentally Formed

I have way too many thoughts on Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, to write them all down now and here, but I will blog for quite some time to come (probably over on my book review site, here) about those thoughts.  Today I am simply marveling at how my various readings have started to coalesce in my mind:  the notion of community, action, education, conversation, and the like are continuing to come together.  Smith builds the thesis that we are much more lovers than thinkers and therefore what we do has as much to do with education as what we think about.  The classroom must be a place where:

1. Everyone is a learner.  The more we lower the distance between the teacher way up here in the ivory tower, full of all knowledge and wisdom, and the learner, way down here, merely a peon, worthy only of staying busy getting the teacher’s gold nuggets into note form, the better we will be at true education.
2. The actions are forming the actor into the biblical description of one who is wise and virtuous.  Certainly the “worldview” must be taught, but it is not taught if the requisite actions are not caught as well.  What does a classroom of humility, engagement, peace, faith, etc. look like?
3. Planned spontaneity is allowed.  I have been throwing these paradoxical terms around together since college.  A classroom with no aim, no plan, no path, no “curriculum” is not going to succeed.  But we have swallowed the hogwash that planning is about measurable outcomes only.  And too many, once there is a plan, would die rather than go with the flow of thought that must accompany any good classroom.  The plan become tyrant and the student closes up his mental shop. Frankly, the teacher probably loves the plan because it allows thinking to be done with prior to class time.  This just cannot be called real education.

Lots of ranting, I know.  My thoughts will get more organized when I sit down to actually review the book.

More Writing on Less College

http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2629

Don’t agree with all his points, but he is headed in the right direction.  I hope parents can follow this kind of thinking before its too late.

It Keeps Coming Back to Conversation

Compelling discussion about compelling discussions seem to surround me lately. At least four folks have pressed this button with me in the last two weeks. We are in a time and place that does not give time or place to good conversation. I have believed for some twenty years now that “conversation” is the single best descriptor of a school. I am still reading bits and pieces of Diane Ravitch’s wonderful work, Left Back, and in those pages see lots of examples of where instead of having a conversation, the educational leadership over the last 100 years have simply each taken a position and yelled it at others. There has been no give and take, no willingness to reconsider, no seeking of premises for the conclusions, etc.

Let me illustrate with just one small example that I have spent a great deal of time on recently (unfortunately in my own thoughts, not with anyone else). Spelling. That wonderful discipline we love or hate. I tend to be a better than average speller. I hate the formal way in which it is usually taught as such was a bore and bother to me as a student and to a lesser degree as a teacher. Churning out lists of spelling words for a kid and mom to slave over all week seems much less natural and pedagogic than learning the rules of spelling as one learns to read, then applying those rules over and over as you use them, and simply being expected to spell things right when you write them.

Okay, so you have a good dose of my own theory there. But this has not been conversed upon much. Can’t give any excuses, just have not engaged others in my thinking. And I could easily be shown other light. But for years now I have stood safely in my little cocoon of ignorance, thinking about this issue of spelling from my own vantage point, secure in my own thinking, never risking the challenge and enlightenment of putting it out there for others.

Again, my point here is not for everyone to go at my views on spelling. You can, but that would be the little target. The big one here for me is a plea for us to be courageous and carry our ideas out into the marketplace of conversation. That is not the same as surrounding ourselves with those we know agree and then getting “yes’d” to make us feel good. I mean purposely taking our ideas out where we know others disagree and then listening, learning, bantering, shaking the tree, in general having real conversation and thereby growing.

A Culture of Cheating

WARNING:  A rant is coming.  Read this article first, then read on:  http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/12/02/beyond-cheating-on-long-island/

I  am convinced beyond any ability to retract that we have moved into a new era in our culture that comes from a loss of true culture.  It is epitomized by controlling fear.  This fear leads and pushes all actions most of us undertake.  Because those of us who see the value of a truly liberal education lost the ideological war around 1900, we are now suffering the effects of inheriting no wisdom from the past, but rather living in something like godless superstitious terror (something like?  I think that is exactly what it is). I have beat this drum many times before on this blog, but let me beat out the wearying rhythm one more time.

“I work like a dog, selling my soul to “the man” for exorbitant wages so I can afford a comfy home and enough “stuff” that will allow me to put my child through the hoops of getting themselves a ‘college degree’ and launch their own campaigns for the covetous life.”

I know that whenever I put it this bluntly, perhaps in a caricatured form, though with questioning many parents I have dealt with eventually confirm the reality of the caricature, everyone backs off and starts asserting higher motives.  But in the end we believe that to be successful, our kids all have to go to college.  When this fear grips us, it produces a willingness to “protect” our young by doing whatever it takes to get them what we believe they must have.  And none but the mythical 1% have enough cash to simply pay outright for a college education.  That leads to the secondary myth of the “college scholarship.”

So now Dad is in the backyard forcing Johnny to learn how to throw a curve, so he can get a scholarship.  And Mom is in the den with Susie pushing her through memory hoops so she can get the 6.0 on a 4.0 scale and get a scholarship.  Remember the mantra: you have to go to college to be a success and we can’t pay these current prices for college.  Of course this leads to a few more thoughts.

If college is the key, and Mom and Dad both went to college back when it was cheap, then why has their college degrees failed to provide them with jobs that can pay for college for their kids?  What went wrong and why do we believe that our kids will do better than we did with these degree thingys?  And if all kids in the nation are vying for a few possible scholarships, then what do we need to do to get the advantage?  Well, we could pay massive amounts (topping $35,000 in some cases) for a coach to make sure our kid’s applications are the top of the pile type of packages, including coaching on how to write a brilliant essay, conduct a great interview, and put together a first rate self-promotional video or website.  (We laughed at such things, or at least chuckled, when we saw it parodied on Legally Blonde and other movies, but it is an all too real horror these days).

But then, again, we are culture-less, so we have lost our morals, so now our fear leads toward cheating.  And now we come around to the latest public atrocity, the Long Island cheating scandal.  The killer is that the only real issue seems to be that they got caught.  It’s almost like we expect the current college entrance situation to make people cheat, but we only respect those smart enough to get away with it.  Those caught are losers.

And now the angst and hormonal rush have peaked and I am coming down off my anger and all that is left is sadness and a still solid faith that God’s principle of sowing and reaping is still in place and working fine.  But that does not change my horror at living in the times right before Nebuchadnezzar comes knocking at our city’s walls.

Stella!

Sorry for the “Streetcar Named Desire” reference, but it’s my mental marker for a great work going on down on Desire Street.

Back in the early 2000′s I was blessed to visit and get to know the folks at the then thriving Desire Street Academy.  Then came Katrina and washed it all away, or almost.  The ministry has shifted a little, but the vision for inner city renewal is still there.  I recently caught back up with this ministry and wanted to throw it out there for others to get to know.

Here is their current site: http://www.desirestreet.org/

Being and Doing

As I continue to read and read and read and wish I had a decent job to take up my time, I become more and more convinced that I don’t have a single original thought in my head.  I am on a tear through all the great educational books I have meant to read but have not had time for.  Right now I am working through the essays of Michael Oakeshott entitled, The Voice of Liberal Learning.  I don’t agree with many of his assumptions, but there is enough of a love of true learning to keep me reading.  He makes the necessary distinction between an education that brings forth a human being and one that seeks to graduate a capable doer.  He voices strong support for the former and bangs away at the contention that the latter is not truly education but a substitute for such.  Now we have heard all this before, but it bears repeating somewhat like a mantra that true education is that which brings its students into a more fully human condition, not simply that which makes the State a good “worker.”  As clear and simple as this seems, it also appears completely disregarded in the modern educational discussion.  Why?

Compromise as a Cost of Community

The ability to swallow it is very difficult for those of us who fancy ourselves to be thoughtful and philosophical about our choices.  Compromise seems sinful.  The older I get, the more convinced I become that at the heart of true community is humility: the ability to swallow my own convictions more often than I would like to.  Now I am not selling truth down the river, but I am saying that we often hold on to things that are not substantive truth but what we feel are indispensible to our philosophical purity or principled living.

The closer to our center of life the issue may be, the tighter we tend to grasp at these community bursting bombs.  Education is certainly one of those close to the center areas and I am reminded daily of how hard it is to balance the desire to swallow and get along with others with my desire to remain true to what I believe God would have me to hold onto as principles.  This is where wisdom must fall down from heaven like rain.

I hope my brothers and sisters in Christ give this some thought and prayer.  What do we really need to keep in place in order for there to be unity in the truth?  Our modern society has butchered this so bad that it seems like something lost that we must search for without ever having truly seen it before.

Right on the Heels of Weaver

Here is a great article on recovering the local governance of our schools.  It does not go far enough, but it steps in the right direction.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/08/3845

Weaver on Educational Prostitution

I have been re-reading Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences for the first time in about 25 years.  It has been amazing, and I look forward to moving right on through his other two books in his educational trilogy.  I came across this quote that just set me back on my heels.  It is gold encrusted with diamonds:

Nothing is more certain than that whatever has to court public favor for its support will sooner or later be prostituted to utilitarian ends.  The educational institutions of the United States afford a striking demonstration of this truth.  Virtually without exception, liberal education, that is to say, education centered about ideas and ideals, has fared best in those institutions which draw their income from private sources.  They have been able, despite limitations which donors have sought to lay upon them,to insist that education be not entirely a means of breadwinning.  This means that they have been relatively free to promote pure knowledge and the training of the mind; they have afforded a last stand for “antisocial” studies like Latin and Greek.  in state institutions, always at the mercy of elected bodies and of the public generally, and under obligation to show practical fruits for their expenditure of money, the movement toward specialism and vocationalism has been irresistible. They have never been able to say that they will do what they will with their own because their own is not private.  It seems fair to say that the opposite of the private is the prostitute. (Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, pp. 136-37)

This was written in 1948.  He nailed it.  I have said it before in this blog:  I am philosophically conflicted over the issue of “public” or government run education.  My reasoning to date runs as follows, with my final point being the point Weaver is making.

1. We need an educated populace to have a civil society.  That much causes me to agree with the need for a generally educated populace that probably means the government in some way facilitates.
2. The government, especially the federal level, does not do service well.  Normally when it gets involved in insuring people, or trying to take care of them in any way, they mess this up.  This argues against education being public.
3. At the heart of great education is a unity of purpose between student (and behind him, his parents) and educator.  For a long time this was captured in the phrase “the cultivation of wisdom and virtue.”  Everyone agreed on this purpose (and it is only one) for education.  That is not so anymore, and thus makes public education very difficult when the dozen horse are all pulling in differing directions.
4. Once any unified philosophical principle of purpose has been lost, education inevitably comes down to utility (this is Weaver’s point).  You have to justify all the work, time, money, etc. by showing how it is beneficial.  This quickly becomes Marxist, “the most good for the most people” type of thing.

If you have not read this work, consider it worth your time.  I will try to give it many more words over at my review blog when I am done.