Connect Four To Solve Education

Administrators, teachers, parents, and kids

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I have worked both inside and outside the educational system, and have a plethora of family members that work in and with educational systems at every level. In that experience, I find what people typically “say” about education to be closer to “some truth” than “the truth”.

If we really need to solve education, we have to stop fighting wars around what amount to tangential factors. We have to, as my good friend Dr. Shaun Mason said recently, connect four. We need to connect administrators, teachers, parents, and kids as part of a continuum. Not each out for self. All for one, and one for all.

I want to approach this from the following angles:

• The Federal vs. Local Control Issue
• The System vs. Parents/Kids
• The Psychographic Factor
• Getting Past It All

The Federal vs. Local Control Issue

Yes, there are those who want to control education for their personal profit.  I know that federal control can be problematic. But so can local control in the absence of connection to expertise and an understanding of mission. Further, local control can be every bit as unforgiving and ridiculous as federal control. That is, in my opinion, not the primary factor.

My case to illustrate this is New Zealand with their Te Whariki concept. They have federal mandates for early childhood education…that involve lots of exploration and play for kids. So, the federal guideline IS to release teachers and children to experience. They also mandate and fund certain kinds of resources for communities to have for schooling.

Now, I will say that corporate control via is problematic for me. I believe that connection drives forced production for profit, and really has been a greater and greater influence since the inception of public education. But again, that does not mean the inherent problem is “government in education”.

The System vs. Parents/Kids Issue

I have heard many characterize the problems in our school as a monolithic system that is against parents and kids. While that does happen, we have to stop pretending that is “the truth”.

Case in point

Recently, the principal of an elementary school in New York cut out homework, and replaced it with advocating for play/exploration in the afternoon for the kids.

The school board objected, right? The superintendent issued a stern warning, right?

Nope.

The complaints came from parents. The school board actually left the discretion to the principal. They were fine with this.

 The Psychographic Factor

Here is my own simplistic definition of a Psychographic: The presence of a group of people that reaches across multiple ethnicities, creeds, and other identifying factors. This group is bound by a set of philosophies around a certain issue or life in general. This can also include particular emotional tendencies and patterns in how people react to events.

The largest factor in education, in my opinion, is a battle between people who feel one way about education/children, and people who feel the other way about education/children. In short, this is a battle of psychographics.

One psychographic – let’s call them the Big Bad Widget Makers, gravitates toward a production model, and ensuring kids put more and more time into regimented academic pursuits, using words like “rigor” and “testing”. They are very focused on future success.

It is true that Big Bad Widget Makers are more likely to end up in administration. But administration is not only people that feel this way. Nor does having administrative capacities in an educational system require people that feel this way to the extreme.

The other psychographic – let’s call them the Magical Hippies, gravitates toward collaboration with kids, experience in learning, and playful exploration. Full disclosure: I am closer, obviously, to this psychographic. This group is very focused on the value of the current experience. I would say, after years of perusing the research and observing/working with kids, that this group has more of the research on their side.

The Magical Hippies are more likely to end up as teachers, or homeschooling parents. But members of this psychographic can be Big Bad Widget Makers as well.

These views, truly, do not need to be quite as polarized as they are.

Here are some examples of middle ground:

As I said, I am closer to being a Magical Hippie. But that doesn’t mean I don’t find value in things like all kids knowing our history. That doesn’t mean there isn’t value in certain math skills being required to function as a society.

I am fully behind the playful, experiential approach. But that approach does not, by itself, solve our problems entirely.   Further, I don’t think the secret to education is the complete and utter absence of evaluation. I think the secret is the right kinds of evaluations. But those are conversations for another time.

In our system, it is an unfortunate truth that job success nets access to food and resources. However, The Big Bad Widget Makers often make the mistake, through fear of exclusion from resources or an attraction toward dominance of those resources, that every moment is some desperate preparation for the future. They completely ignore the value of joy and cooperation, except for occasional lip service.

On the other side, sometimes the Magical Hippies have reactions to any guidance that can be interpreted as “control”. Magical Hippies, rightfully so in many cases, feel the need to protect children from the machinations of those that would operate from fear and ego. But need we shun every single thing that could possibly represent any guidance, evaluation, or requirement?

Every tribe has requirements in order to cooperate and flourish. Some are implicit, and some are more explicit. We need to find balance, and we especially need to recognize that reaching our tribe’s requirements is often hampered, not served by control.

Those are simply examples of where we could see more of a middle ground view between polar opposites.

Getting Past It All – Connect Four

Let’s connect four! We need to look at “fixing education” from a different perspective. What we need to realize is that we are all a “system”. The battles are often arbitrary: parents vs. administrators, local vs. federal. Can we listen to each other?

What is happening here is a separation: We are seeing each other as competing for dwindling resources.   So many parents, teachers, and administrators are trying to get an “edge”, a leg up, or a piece of the pie. There is too much money being spent at the top both because of greed and because of pressure to produce. There is too much focus on testing and scores and because manure tends to wash downhill the pressure is transferred to teachers and kids.

Imagine a different approach. Weird, crazy things happen when people consider themselves part of the same community. They begin to think of one another as partners, rather than enemies. I’m not talking about some utopian society here; just one with “more”. We become a community with more connection, a community with more consideration.

In order to come together, we also must see the flaws in each of our perceptions. We often get caught up in whatever “movement” we are a part of, that we cannot bring ourselves to see merit outside of the perfect realization of our personal ideology.

The fact is, unlike many of the pundits or corporate entities that claim an interest in education from the outside and often in their own interests: parents, teachers, administrators and kids are actually in this together.

Seeing the kids as partners and sometimes leaders, instead of potential monsters or potential commodities, allows us to accept them as they are, and listen to them. Some see this as letting the insane run the asylum. But here’s the deal: kids are (mostly) not insane. This has to come first. That has to be there before we do anything else. That has to be the first chip in our Connect Four game.

Administrators can (and sometimes do) see themselves as supporters and facilitators of the sacred relationships between teachers and students.
Seeing teachers as partners with parents allows them to create powerful partnerships with one another. It allows them to communicate about what is going on with a child and what they are responding to, in service of that child’s future.

Further, there needs to be a recognition that what each of us has to do: be a kid, parent, teach, manage resources – is tough. We need to have empathy for one another’s plight. And no, it doesn’t work when that empathy only flows in one direction.

We cannot have maniacal administrators browbeating people or expecting kids and parents to “just understand”. Nor can we have parents constantly pointing fingers at everyone when their child doesn’t get his or her way. Nor can we have everything in the classroom designed around test prep.

Challenge: “All this is well and fine Kwame, but politicians and corporate heads are taking over and are very powerful”.

Answer: The more a community galvanizes and cooperates internally, the less outside forces are able to truly control them. But if forces outside of education get us at each other’s throats, then they take the lion’s share of the influence.

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Originally posted on MoveTheory
Photo: DQmountaingirl/Flickr

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