Some Misconceptions About Schools, Part 1 (and not fully formed)

1.That schools somehow exist independently from the rest of society, as islands unto themselves. No school is an island (nor an “Ivory Tower”). They must function and live as integral parts of the main. This means that schools – including all public schools – are subject to the same immutable and universal laws of nature (especially human nature). To lead a school, to manage a school’s resources well, to serve those who are depending on the school (students, families, the greater community), all those who are employed in the work of the school must be conscious of this.

2. That “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.” Simply put, if you can’t do, you can’t teach. Before someone is prepared to be a teacher, they must be prepared in whatever field it is they intend to teach. In primary and elementary schooling, that field is a love for children, and a heart for seeing children grow. A common trait truly effective early education teachers share is an authentic love for children – they are interested in them, they get to know them at a very deep and authentic level, and they become advocates and mentors.

3. That a school is a building and a building is a school. A school is a community of learning, a community of souls. That community can — and, in fact, must — transcend the barriers of time and space.

4. That there are educational “experts” to whom we must all defer. Why is this? The hallowed and honorable enterprise of teaching and learning is concerned chiefly with the development of human beings, and human beings cannot and must not be reduced down to skill sets and other forms of expertise. Teaching is an art and craft. Like all art forms and like all types of craftsmanship, there are certainly “hard skills” and knowledge sets that must be known, practiced, and perfected to whatever degree necessary. But these are not the essence of the enterprise. What is? There is, I believe, an intuition that must be trusted. You might call it “common sense,” but it is a common sense that is cultivated to do the uncommon.

5. That because schools serve the needs of young people who have not yet reached full maturity, the work of the school is somehow not as “serious” as the work of other organizations and enterprises. Elementary schools may seem less “professional” or “serious,” or “challenging” as high schools, high schools less so than colleges, and all schools less so than pretty much everything else that takes place in “the real world.” But, just as there really are no Ivory Towers (see item 1 above), there are no Ivory Sandboxes. The work that goes on in primary and elementary education is, in fact, the most important work of all. You can construct a beautiful, innovative, luxurious house, but if the foundation was not properly laid, why, that house will surely crumble – and it will never be a home.

Ten Insights for Considering the Blessings of Digitally-Empowered Learning

1. Begin by setting aside outmoded notions of “distance learning” and even “online learning.” Digitally-empowered learning is infinitely more expansive than either of these terms begins to suggest, and encompasses more than just one set delivery mode, instructional style, or pedagogical approach.

2. Digitally-empowered learning is its own discipline, as distinct from traditional modes and ideas of schooling, teaching, and learning.

3. Digitally-empowered learning is about access: It opens up diverse opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to learn, think, and grow. It can be formal or informal.

4. Digitally-empowered learning is about engagement: it’s as much about inspiration as it is education. Digitally-empowered learning provides people with the means to become self-motivated, self-directed, and life-long learners. Another way to think about this is to say that it both encourages and empowers autodidactism/digitaldidactism.

5. Digitally-empowered learning is about collaboration: people can interact and work together in ways that are otherwise not possible or practical. In a digital learning environment, barriers created by space, time, systematic bureaucracy and personal idiosyncrasies are either removed completely or greatly lessened.

6. A digitally-empowered approach to learning must dispense with the systematic and organizational considerations, assumptions, limitations, and expectations of the 19th century industrial model of public education. It is a 21st century model of education, meant to address 21st century challenges, build or enhance 21st century skills, abilities, and capacities, and capitalize upon 21st century technological and organizations advances and innovations.

7. Notwithstanding insight six, digitally-empowered learning is subject to and respects eternal verities: it recognizes the enduring qualities of human nature (both good and bad), and builds upon timelessly effective learning strategies. Another way of saying this: it honors and seeks to pass forward authentic traditions, but it distrusts and seeks to dispense with mere conventions.

8. 21st-century, digitally-empowered education should be about building human capacities more than it is about constructing physical infrastructures; it is about creating intellectual property, more than it is about developing physical property and real estate. You’ve just been liberated from time and space – why go back in the box?

9. A digital learning environment can be every bit as elegant, intuitive, and humane as the finest traditional classroom. Indeed, it has the potential to more fully realize each of these characteristics.

10. It must be recognized that digital communication and collaboration tools and the social networking applications currently reinventing education tend to be highly organic, evolutionary, and self-organizing. As digital natives, today’s students will very likely devise their own unique protocols and vocabularies for interacting with peers, and will even invent new modes and applications. Teachers and administrators should be careful not to unduly restrain the unfolding of these organic, student-centered structures.

Who’s Afraid of Conservatism?

“Who am I? That question troubled me when I was very young. One is fortunate if this problem enters one’s head in childhood: for if one grapples with the conundrum as Hercules grappled with serpents in his cradle, he does not suffer an ‘identity crisis’ in later years.”
–Russell Kirk

“I’m happy when life’s good / and when it’s bad I cry
I’ve got values but I don’t know how or why.”
–Pete Townshend,
“The Seeker”

Rock stars would like us mortals to believe that they can get away with anything. Unlike, say, “Beef: it’s what’s for dinner,” an industry motto of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll” permits a spectacularly broad range of behaviors and beliefs. Smashing up hotel rooms? Just another day at the office. Drug addiction, alcoholism, and venereal disease? Mere occupational hazards. Assorted lewd, violent, or otherwise anti-social behaviors in public? Opportunities for extending the brand. Rock and roll, it seems, has a diabolical ability to countenance any form of debauchery and weather any controversy.

But while it may be de rigueur for a rock musician to disclose predilections for polyamory, voyeurism, autoerotic asphyxiation, or a host of other exotic compulsions, there are, in fact, limits to even rock and roll’s fabled permissiveness. Just ask Pete Townshend.

In an otherwise pedestrian interview with ABC’s Jonathon Karl last December, the Who’s legendary songwriter and guitarist confessed to being “a bit of a neocon,” and to supporting America’s role as the world’s policeman. He also rather sheepishly admitted that such views mean he’s “not that popular with everybody,” a comment that was proved correct by the response his remarks received in the leftist blogosphere. “As a political observer, Pete is a brilliant musician,” sarcastically opined one poster to the Huffington Post’s coverage of Townshend’s confession, while others dismissed him as “hard-hearted and cynical” and “a rich old white guy.” Some even sought to conflate Townshend’s rightward political leanings with his alleged pedophilia, for which he was investigated and later cleared. For those on the left, a rock star of Townshend’s stature admitting to even the faintest of conservative tendencies is simply a bridge too far.

Pete Townshend is indeed a brilliant musician. An innovative composer, insightful lyricist, and spectacular performer, his place in the pantheon of rock and roll has long been secure. He is rightly revered as one of rock’s great thinkers, known to use interviews as opportunities for personal reflection, confession, and psychoanalysis. His provocative 2012 memoir, Who I Am, is written in that spirit. Remarkably unsentimental, Townshend is so unflinching in his description of his own weaknesses and failings that one reviewer suggested it is the first autobiography that can legitimately be described as a “hatchet job.” Across 300 pages, Townshend details his infidelities (both professional and personal), alcohol abuse, crack and heroin use, mental illness, and hyper-sexuality.

Given his reputation for audacious candor, and being the engaged and thoughtful consumers of popular culture that we are, your humble servant hoped to probe Townshend a bit more deeply on his political persuasions, and crafted a series of 12 questions designed to elicit his thoughts on a range of political and cultural topics. Of particular interest was how his political views have developed over time, which neoconservatives impulses he shares, what values and ideals he would like to see America protect and serve as the world’s policeman, and what role rock music might play in inspiring those currently living under the burden of totalitarianism to challenge their oppressors. Working through the appropriate diplomatic channels, your minister was able to transmit a communiqué to the Great Man himself.

Sadly, Townshend demurred the request with a gentle “sorry, not my thing.” Now since Pete Townshend is, well, PETE TOWNSHEND!, he no doubt turns down any number of interview requests for any number of reasons. He’s a busy guy, currently in the middle of concert tour, and even a rock god finds his time limited. On the other hand, while recently promoting his book, Townshend made it a priority to meet the press (and press the flesh) wherever and whenever possible, even taking the effort to show The View’s former token righty, Elizabeth Hasslebeck, how to perform his signature “windmill” guitar move.

Hasselbeck admittedly cuts a more fetching figure than your scribe. Still, it wasn’t unreasonable  to hope that the opportunity to discuss, in a serious way, his ideas on music, culture, politics, and religion would be attractive to Townshend. But when admitting to being even “a bit of a neoconservative” gets you labeled a cruel, cynical, and greedy old know-nothing by what is generally taken to be your fan base, why risk giving an interview that might further reveal the depth and breadth of your latent conservatism?

Of course the only thing really shocking in any of this is that anyone is shocked by Townshend’s admission. This is after all the man who famously swatted Abbie Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock with a swing of his Gibson SG. He’s also the same man who, in a 1981 interview with the late, lamented Creem Magazine, proclaimed “I’m for nuclear power, but I haven’t told anyone because I am still hoping to [enjoy connubial relations with] Jane Fonda.”

In an insightful 2011 Economist profile, Townshend credited the late British playwright David Mercer (whose play “The Generations” inspired the title for Townshend’s ode to disaffected youth “My Generation”) for also inspiring his ideological clinging: “He was an incredibly impressive speaker. He said, ‘Once you’re on the left, you have to stay there whatever happens. I don’t care if you become a [expletive deleted] billionaire—stay there!’ And I’ve always kept that in mind.”

Thinking of Townshend’s conundrum (that of a self-professed “neoconservative” who is at the same time determined to “stay on the left, whatever happens”), one is reminded of Annibale Carracci’s painting The Choice of Hercules. It portrays the young hero seated between two women: on his right is the demure and laurel-wreathed lady representing duty, virtue, and piety, while on his left dances a scantily-veiled succubus, representing fleshly pleasures, vice, and materialism. The siren call of the left, like a tempting Barbarella promising fashionable decadence, easy virtue, and cheap popularity, can be too strong to blithely forsake.

No, let’s not fault Pete Townshend for not wanting to further provoke the ire of the self-appointed guardians of rock and roll’s deposit of the faith. His music is too good, and he’s too remarkable a character. Besides, sticking a finger in the eye of rock’s intelligentsia is your loyal minister’s job.

All Mod Cons: Innovation and Its Discontents

In the exuberance of the 1990s, as the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Soviet Union took its rightful place upon the ash heap of history, it was declared in some quarters that history itself would soon be rendered obsolete. Under the peculiar and heady reign of William the Philanderer, morning in America had passed, and it was high time to enjoy some afternoon delight.

Much has been written about how history did not, in fact, end as predicted; how the collapse of communism did not bring about a “universal and homogenous society,” nor the end of global conflict. What few people mention are two important points about the aftermath of the Naughty Nineties, neither of which has to do with the definition of what “is” is, or was.

The first is that the failures of this would-be ahistorical decade just took a little while to harden into some very hard history. Those years of drift, of purposelessness, were far more than just a silly little interlude in the American story – whether you look back on them with the disgust that must follow the thought of scraping a stained dress for a sitting president’s DNA, or with the wistfulness that attends budget surpluses earmarked for midnight basketball. We fiddled through that long, strange afternoon, when we were not sleeping (or reading the Starr Report, with a certain prurient interest). And those who cared, on both Left and Right, waited until they could wait no longer. Today we know them as the Tea Party and the members of the “Occupy” movement.

The second revelation is that, on a practical level, the end-of-history folks had a point, and we are now living in it. That is, while history itself marches forward, it is nonetheless hard to escape a sense of stasis in America, a belief that the gridlock so decried in Washington, D.C. has all of society stuck in a similar rut.

As bestselling author Mark Steyn pointed out recently, a time traveler who journeyed from 1890 to 1950 would have been amazed at the changes that had taken place. A time traveler who made the jump, by contrast, from 1950 to the present would find a society quite familiar. That is not intended as a compliment. Steyn suggests that the two major advances that occurred during that latter 60-year period were an increase in information technology, and breakthroughs in the space program. And today, the space program is a dead letter for the average American.

iPads and HDTV aside, where, it is implied, is the innovation? Where is the restless spirit that once made America great?

The answer is partly that an ever-increasing, ever-meddling government has cowed it. But it is also true that it has turned instead to a new field of innovation, where government smiles upon its restlesness. In truth, this “new” field is actually a very old endeavor, but one which was abandoned – with a few significant exceptions — by consensus until fairly recently.

That “new” field is the realm of moral and ethical innovation. We no longer dream of the stars, nor do we imagine inventions that can do more than reorganize our clouds of movies, photos and songs. Instead we seek to rewrite both sacred, and sacred secular, texts, to bring them in line with modern mores as if we were updating our apps. Why? Often, to pave the way for some technological innovation that promises to, in the words of the 17th century philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon, provide “relief to man’s estate.” Sometimes it is simply to avoid giving offense to those whose beliefs and lifestyles we find inconvenient, but whose feelings we find even more inconvenient to hurt.

But these “innovations,” whether they be ever-more humane refinements of euthanasia or revisions of law designed to make everyone even more “equal,” are no innovations at all. They disregard the whole intent of innovation, and offer a poor substitute for the real thing, which Steyn’s time traveler immediately understands is missing in today’s gadget-rich but idea-poor society.