Synergetic Responsibility

“So what do you do to achieve such big change goals? What are the general components of your strategy? What are your choices of organizational models? How do you turn your model into a movement for social change?” (Kanter 2005). I believe children deserve the right to freely play and make independent decisions about their development. Currently, the development in classrooms around America provide a demanding framework of knowledge to be an “intelligent” child. If a child fails within this framework they are casted aside and labeled as a struggling learner. This system of tracking has led children to be depressed learners and less children are eager or happy to learn. 

Adults make choices about a child’s development daily. Children look to adults for control within the learning process. How beautiful would it be if every adult acknowledged and acted upon every teachable moment in our communities. We would be more connected as humans and isolated parts of communities would be linked through observing intentional teaching moments and acting upon them.  These moments would provide an acceptance of mistakes instead of the preconceived notion that failure rules over success. How would our children react to failure if we taught generations of people that we can learn most from our short fallings. Providing an opportunity to reflect on mistakes…

How was that a mistake?

What could I do wrong to fix that mistake in the future?

What did I learn from my failure?

How could I have avoided this mistake?

As a child learns they can be exposed to the idea that critical thinking is present within success and failure. How can we incorporate failure as an opportunity of reflection in our schooling systems— not negativity and a mechanism we use to rank one’s ability?

“We gotta do much more than believe, if we want to see the world change.” DMB

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”—Richard Feynman

“Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science.

There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.” “

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as the Candle in The Dark

The industrial structure of school demands that we teach things for certain. Testable things. Things beyond question. After all, if topics are open to challenge, who will challenge them? Our students. But students aren’t there to challenge—they are there to be indoctrinated, to accept and obey.

Our new civic and scientific and professional life, though, is all about doubt. About questioning the status quo, questioning marketing or political claims, and most of all, questioning what’s next.

The obligation of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unrea- sonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.Industrial settings don’t leave a lot of room for doubt. The worker on the assembly line isn’t supposed to question the design of the car. The clerk at the insurance agency isn’t supposed to suggest improvements in the accounts being pitched.

In the post-industrial age, though, the good jobs and the real progress belong only to those with the confidence and the background to use the scientific method to question authority and to re-imagine a better reality.

Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams

Whole brain teaching in a classroom.

Making mistakes is apart of the experience of learning. Developing a culture in your classroom that changes the norm of failing and shows it as a success, creates collaboration amongst children. 

Is bullying the problem or is it a result of another problem of how children are being taught by their families, communities and schools?

(via adventuresinlearning)