Scott,
Thanks for your kind response. I'd like to take the "love" of learning a
next step in discussion, and relate it to public education.
While we may home school our children, I don't pretend to believe that it
is the answer for the education of children in our society. The question
that we should raise is how to help children fall in "love" with learning.
Part of it is dealing with the home environment, which means everything
from turning the TV off to having parents who are involved in their
children's learning.
Recently I concluded work on an education task force whose mandate was to
develop a process of listening to the public to identify specific action
recommendations and benchmarks for education from pre-school through adult
education. I've written about this in eariler postings. One of the issue
which we found significant was the issue of evaluation. Evaluatoin and
assessment does have a relation to "motivation", which is another thread,
woven into this one for the moment.
Report cards with letter grades and standardized test are the means which
children's educational progress is measured. They are of some value. But
not to the child. Neither measurement has the potential of motivating the
child to want to learn more. There is a school district in rural Ohio
which tried to change how high school graduates are measured. A task
force of parents, students and staff from the high school drafted a plan
which called for the development of various portfolios. The purpose of
this was that this demonstrated what the student knew and could do, not
just how that compared to other students. The following were their
proposed graduation standards: 1. The Academic Portfolio has two parts a
record of general academic work, and a collection of public demonstrations
of academic ability. 2. The Independent Living Portfolio demonstrate's a
student's readiness to live independently with financial and personal
skill. 3. The Citizenship Portfolio reflects teh school community's goal
that our graduates become "active democratic citizens." 4. The Career
Portfolio demonstrates a student's readiness to enter the world of work
and be flexible in his/her career choices. 5. The Senior Project
demonstrates in one particular area a student's opportunity to research,
write and demonstrate their own expertise. The project has a written and
an action component.
To date, these proposed standards are waiting to be approved by the school
board, which has not shown any interest in doing so, even to the extent of
attempting to fire the principal who was behind this move. The community
has rallied to his support. He has been reinstated and several board
members have resigned as a result.
What this approach does is that it provides a way for the student to say,
this is what I know and this is what I can do. I think this is what lies
behind the idea of the "love" of learning. That what we learn makes a
difference in who we are, not just statistically, but in how we live apart
from an educational institution. This is what is needed to provide all
children the opportunities to love learning, as my kids do.
Thanks again,
Ed Brenegar
Leadership Resources
brenegar@circle.net
PS: It is rather encouraging that we can discuss education during the summer.
--"Edwin R. Brenegar III" <EdB3@msn.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>