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Looking for partners
Posted by Bill Ellis on 10/5/2004
In Reply To:Looking for partners Posted by Christian Abarca on 10/4/2004
The Critical Thinking & Life-Long Self-Learning Movements
There is a "Critical Thinking Movement" in American universities that closely parallels the "Life-Long Self-Learning Movement" of our White Paper.
In fact I'd go even further to suggest it is the same thing.
Universities across the country are recognizing that "Americans can expect to change jobs as many as half a dozen times in their lives." No amount of university education, as now given, can give them the skills and knowledge for a long fullfiling and productive life. Universities must transform themselves to produce "critical thinkers." They must cultivate open minds,
able to face any problem, economic, political, scientific, or social,
with
balanced, critical, reflective judgement. This does not mean abandoning the learning of techcnical and scientific knowledgei, nor the arts and humanities. It means aproaching all knowledge wth a more questioning, wholistic, exploratory and less dogmatic mind. To recognize that most decisions are made in a field of uncertainty requiring judgement and wisdom as much as reason and facts.
The difficulty universities are having in producing critical thinkers is, as one professor puts it, "that even 4 years of college only brings traditional-age college students to a very low level of critical thinking and judgement."
To my mind it is hard to see how anyone could expect much better. Young people in K-12 schools are imbued with exactly the opposite mindset. As our White Paper says. Authoritarian, undemocratic, hierarchal schools prepare students for an authoritarian, undemocratic hierarchal world. Students are taught to obey orders, work on schedule, and accept authority. Nothing could be more contrary to critical thinking. It is clearly not only unreasonable, but also inefficient, to spend 12 years teaching people to accept order and control, and then 4 years attemmption to erase that order and control mode from their minds.
Life-long self-learning suggests that the transition from K-12 schools to university learning be removed. There are things the two movement could learn from one another. We urge you all to read Clayton's "Rethinking Thinking" and the White Paper to see how the two can be combined in a learning system for the future.
A Coalition for Self-Learning
Bill Ellis, General Coordinator
POBox 567
Rangeley, ME 04970 USA
PEOPLE ARE NOT THE PROBLEMS, THEY ARE THE SOLUTIONS
IF THE PEOPLE LEAD, THE LEADERS WILL FOLLOW.
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For more on THE CRITICAL THINKING MOVEMENT read "Rethnking Thinking" by Mark Clayton from the Oct. 14 issue of Christian Science Monitor on:
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For more on THE LIFE-LONG SELF-LEARNING MOVEMENT read the White Paper
below:
THE lIFE-LONG SELF-LEARNING MOVEMENT
In the past three decades, there has been a growing movement to reinvent the way citizens learn and how young people are introduced into society. Homeschooling, charter schools, cyberschools, unschooling, life-long learning, Waldorf schools, and Sudbury schools are just a few of the elements of this movement. The movement has been growing exponentially each decade since 1980. It has become a challenge to the traditional school/teach/educate system. Life-long learning has been promoted by management guru Peter Drucker in "Post Capitalist Society" on one end of the spectrum and, on the other end, by Elise Boulding in "Building Global Civic Culture," and by many scholars in between.
The bottom line in this movement is to provide the freedom, opportunity and resources for self-learners of all ages, with their families and in community, to choose to learn what they want, when they want and how they want -- to self-learn.
RECOGNITION
In spite of the rapid growth of this movement, it has drawn
little
positive attention from governments. Professional educators and their
unions
have shown concern that the proliferation of homeschooling will draw
funds
away from the public school system. A few public school systems have
accepted the challenge and established special programs to provide
would-be
homeschoolers and other self-learners more autonomy within the public
school
system. Some have established parent-teacher programs that depend on
parental involvement and give parents greater autonomy in the learning
process. But, as parents are increasingly recognizing that personal
liberty
and private protection from control by majority rule applies to their
children's learning, none of the existing systems have completely
incorporated that concept. Nor do they fully meet the needs of our
information society which requires a life-long learning system to
provide
for each individual's continual learning processes, as detailed in the
work
of writers and thinkers from John Holt and Alfie Kohn to Daniel Pink and
Howard Gardner, among so many others.
Foundations, likewise, have been slow to rise to the challenge
and
opportunity that is unfolding. The millions of dollars for public
schools,
coming from all levels of government, is followed by millions more
coming
from private foundations. But little, if any, of this private funding is
available for the many non-public school experiments being undertaken. A
search of the philanthropy databases with words like "democratic
shools,"
"homeschooling," or "deschooling" comes up with no program in any
foundation. Whereas a search under "schools" or "education" comes up
with
many thousands. Individual appeals to hundreds of foundations by
"homeschool
support groups," "learning co-ops" and other forms of nonschool learning
communities are regularly returned with the words "this proposal does
not
fit into our current program of support."
MOTIVATION
Motivations for moving toward self-learning and abandonment of
traditional public schooling are many. Perhaps the most prevalent is
parental concern about the loss of control of the learning of young
children. Many families want to take direct responsibility for their
curriculum, approach to learning, and the principles and values upon
which
these are based. Some parents believe that the public school system
instills
values which run contrary to those of their family. Some are explicitly
guided by their religious beliefs to direct the education of their
children.
Others have had disturbing experiences with schoolyard bullies,
unfeeling
teachers, or misdirected bureaucracies. A few hold that government
support
is inherently controlling, and that their tax dollars are binding
families
to a failing system.
Self-learners are also influenced by education critics,
philosophers
and religious leaders. Some, like Ivan Illich, believe our current life,
including school, is based on the principle of work now for future
rewards.
They urge that schooling, and life, be convivial and vernacular. That
is,
that learning and work should be carried out in joyful collaboration
with
family, friends and neighbors. And that it should be embedded in the
local
culture, ecology, and friendships.
With Paulo Friere, some see schools as perpetuating the
socioeconomic
rich/poor status quo and preventing the natural social evolution that
would
occur if future citizens were given more freedom to self-learn in their
own
families, communities, and nature.
Following John Holt and others, many believe that every brain,
that
is every student, is unique and no two are prepared to learn the same
thing
at the same time in the same way. They believe that schooling is not an
efficient way to learn, nor for future citizens to be introduced into
society.
Most great philosophical traditions, including those embodied in
Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo and Krishnamurti, recognize a spiritual
component
to learning, teaching that knowledge is more than a way to get a job or
score well on a standardized test; that it is the purpose for living,
it is
being human. Rabindrnath Tagore started his learning community,
Santiniketan, to transform the human mindset from self-interest,
competition
and materialism to mutual aid, cooperation, and the love of learning.
Growing out of a variety of personal, philosophical,
educational, or
religious motivations, the life-long self-learning movement continues to
expand.
PROOFS OF EFFECTIVENESS
It is impossible to measure the success of self-learning with
tests,
grades, and scores. Perhaps the most interesting successes are found
among
those learners who do not flourish in a traditional setting with
standard
measurements of success. These individuals are free to blossom in their
own
ways and do -- anecdotal evidence abounds about happy and successful
learners who have traveled a nontraditional path to their own personal
success.
Self-learners are equally honored among our greatest leaders.
Thomas
Edison, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Abigail Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, the Wright Brothers, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and
Margaret
Mead are only a few of those who have learned without school. The
newspapers
are filled with stories of less well-known successes. Ryan Abradi, of
Maine,
showed an interest in numbers at an early age, so his parents let him
stay
home and self-learn; by age 10 he was working his way through
second-year
college calculus. Caitlin Stern of Haines, Alaska, stayed out of school
and
became a recognized expert by studying bald eagles in the wild. Jedediah
Purdy, a self-learner from West Virginia, graduated summa cum laude from
Harvard University; in 1996 he was selected as a Truman Scholar and as
West
Virginia's nominee for the Rhodes Scholarship. He then went on to Yale
Law
School and, in the meantime, wrote a best selling book.
The growth rate of self-learning is a partial measure of its
success.
From a few scattered homeschoolers in 1980, perhaps 20,000, the number
has
grown, according to Newsweek Magazine, to over 200,000 in 1990, and
into a
broad integrated network of an estimated 2,000,000 today.
Considerable research has shown that students learn much more
easily
when they self-learn. As long ago as 1930, the "8 Year Study" of 30
special
schools demonstrated that: "The most effective schools used a different
approach to learning. Instead of organizing learning by subjects, they
organized it around themes of significance to their students." There
seemed
to be an inverse relationship between success in college and formalized
education as opposed to student selected learning.
A recent Cornell University study confirmed this and showed that
schooled children become "peer dependent" while those who learned with
their
parents have more self-confidence, optimism, and courage to explore. A
Moore
Foundation study of children of parents who had been arrested for
truancy
found that their homeschooled children ranked 30 percent higher on
standard
tests than the average classroom child.
Providing possible insight into the reasons behind these
successes, a
UCLA project showed that the average schooled student receives 7
minutes of
personal attention a day but the self-learner receives from 100 to 300
minutes of attention daily. Following this, a Smithsonian Report on
genius
concluded that high achievement was a result of time with responsive
parents, little time with peers, and considerable time for free
exploration.
Standardized tests reflect self-learner success as well. Time
Magazine reported that "the average home schooler's SAT score is 1100,
80
points higher than the average score for the general population."
Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, conducted a study in 1998 that included
20,760 students in 11,930 families. He found that in every subject and
at
every grade level (K-12), homeschool students scored significantly
higher
than their public and private school counterparts. Some 25 percent of
all
homeschool students at that time were enrolled at a grade level or more
beyond that indicated by their age. According to the study, the average
eighth-grade homeschooler was performing four grade levels above the
national average. The average ACT score was 21 out of a possible 36 for
public schooled children. It averaged 23 for self-learners. This
qualifies
the average college-bound self-learner for the most prestigious
universities.
VISION
This movement is not only addressing the why, how, when and what
all
citizens learn, but is also rebuilding the foundation for the society in
which we all live. How we learn determines the kind of society we build.
Authoritarian, hierarchal, undemocratic schools prepare future citizens
for
an authoritarian, hierarchal, undemocratic society. A life-long learning
system based in family, community, society and nature could be the
foundation for new democracies of freedom, equity and justice.
The movement continues to promote the concepts of life-long
self-learning, in all its complexities, to a wider audience, to address
critics on the issues of accountability and credibility, and to promote
support to help those working to bring their ideals to fruition.
*************END OF WHITE PAPER******************
Notes:
"Resources and Further Reading" at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LearningCommunities/files/Life-
Long%20Learning
and
Discuss:
Discussion, Comments, or suggestions to:
or
Nance Confer or
Bill Ellis
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