Monday, February 27, 2012

Seth's Blog: www.stopstealingdreams.com is ready to read and share

Seth's Blog: www.stopstealingdreams.com is ready to read and share

reading it now..
nauseating me because it's so spot on. and why are we still going through the motions..

adding my questions (things not setting well with me as i read) here:
449 of 1882, 24%, or #32 (great idea Seth) - we can teach kids to engage in poetry, to write poetry, and to demand poetry - or we can take a shortcut and settle for push-pin, youtube, and lolcats..

[wondering about either or in the Mill's human vs pig thinking. wondering if we're assuming pigs because we've never really experienced freedom to be. we're always in situations of having to prove, and so never really ourselves, because we're tired, or burnt, or whatever..]


interesting: harvard business school turns out management consultants in far greater numbers than it develops successful bootstrapping entrepreneurs.

#34 - sudbury - spot on... if a school is seen as a place for encouragement and truth-telling, a place where students go to find their passion and then achieve their goals, it is not a school we would generally recognize, because our schools do none of this.
students ask for teachers when they wish. they play soccer if they choose. they take responsibility for everything they do and learn, for the age of six. and it works.

whoa...
being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school's premise.
the future is  not your fault.
oh.. in exchange?
your dreams.

#44
back to questioning:
what we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better.
why?.. why would we want to find the sq root of a number or sharpen an axe?

#45 - hmm. interesting.. winning the parent lottery or not.. fitting with our redefinition of nclb.

end of #70
teachers aren't given time/resource, or, most important, the expectation that they should sell students on why.
[i think they shouldn't... they should be setting kids free to find out their own why...? - motivation has to come from inside.. no?]  71 - why settle for a lecture.. even..?  73 - hw problems? why..?
74 - why would we need a classroom monitor, shuffler of paper, traffic cop? in this new school.. that's part of the new, none of that needed. let's find that "lesser" teachers gift. no? no students will be stuck .. what is stuck? i think our curriculum, and our belief that people have to prove themselves creates - stuck..]