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...Waronker says the academy has learned to get better control over students, and, on the day I visited, the school was well disciplined through the use of a bunch of subtle tricks.Ed: The children need walls, so why not give them real walls?
For example, even though students move from one open area to the next, they line up single file, walk through an imaginary doorway, and greet the teacher before entering her domain.
Right!
Right!
I hadn't quite thought of it that way!
These kids need walls, but the Harvard-ed-school / Columbia Teachers College / UFT grownups, in their collective wisdom, have declined to provide them with walls. And David Brooks approves!
Does David Brooks live in a house without walls?
Work in an office without walls?
I bet he doesn't!
Why do we have walls, anyway? Why were walls invented? Does David Brooks ask himself these questions before he writes a column extolling giant classrooms with no walls? If rooms with no walls are such an all-fire great idea, how come nobody lives in geodesic domes? Answer me that, David Brooks!
And while we're on the subject of making disadvantaged children imagine the walls they need but don't have, how about imaginary books?
Imaginary teachers?
Imaginary learning?
They've probably got all those things at the New American Academy. I wouldn't be surprised.
Ed says he visited an open classroom in California years ago. It was chaos, a din. No one could learn anything in that environment.
Of course, they hadn't hit on the idea of training the kids to pretend they were inside a room with walls.
P.S. I do like this column by David Brooks very much.
and see:
the founder, chair, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
Larry Summers has a really bad idea
Wash U professor on Reed Hastings' really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea, part 2
David Brooks has a really good idea
17 comments:
That does boil it down to essentials. Exactly!
My husband was subjected to an open classroom in 1st grade. It was something like 70+ kids with 3 teachers, all in one big room. He mostly remembers noise and getting sick a lot.
I've just been reading that new book, "Quiet," about the value of introverts. It points out that 15 years ago, they tried open office layouts (collaboration! communication!) and everyone hated them. That kind of idea is dead in the business world, but it just won't die in academia--it comes back every 10 years like a very persistent zombie. Won't someone think of the quiet kids??
"That kind of idea is dead in the business world, but it just won't die in academia--it comes back every 10 years like a very persistent zombie."
That's funny. I thought professors (even education professors) really like having nice relatively soundproof offices of their own with doors that shut and lock. If you want to see mutiny, threaten tenured academics with cubicles.
If you want to see mutiny, threaten tenured academics with cubicles.
That is the most hilarious image...
I meant academia as in people who decide what the new educational trend is, not college professors. Sorry for the poor word choice, I couldn't figure out what word I wanted!
I thought it was a charter school, but it's really a regular public school.
"The American education model, he [Waronker] says, was actually copied from the 18th-century Prussian model designed to create docile subjects and factory workers. He wants schools to operate more like the networked collaborative world of today."
I call these people "grand concept" people. They don't let details get in the way of a good idea. Twenty-first century collaboaration requires the best use of technology. Unfortunately, their web site contains mostly philosophy and propaganda. I see no details about curriculum or yearly academic expectations.
Parents and students get no choice and I'm sure the people in charge expect them to be docile and happy.
If you think about it, a huge open plan classroom with lots of students and different things going on in different locations resembles a factory floor much more than a small classroom does. (We visited the Blue Bell ice cream factory over spring break this year.)
My workplace must be 15 years behind the times. We have had cubicles for the 12 years I've been there -- only the HR director has an office with a door. We're currently in the midst of a remodel in which things are about to get even more open. :(
"...a huge open plan classroom with lots of students and different things going on in different locations resembles a factory floor much more than a small classroom does."
Collaboration and networking don't require open spaces. Most people in real jobs look for an empty conference room with a door. They want their cubicle walls to be higher. Experienced workers collaborating is something quite different than students learning. In the real world, there are people in charge who make decisions and in those meetings, the collaboration takes on a different form - usually in a conference room. Educators ignore those distinctions because the workplace model doesn't drive their choice of educational pedagogy. They are using their vague understanding (not real life experience) of business practices only as justification for what they want to do. When businesses send their workers off for training, it isn't to student-centered discovery schools.
Direct instruction does not preclude interaction and collaboration of students. Also, discovery does not preclude having a teacher introduce new material. However, student discovery is an inefficient process (neither necessary or sufficient) that has little to do with walls and little to do with "the networked collaborative world of today."
It's incredible how these educational ideas propagate based on very little analysis. It's a romantic idea of education that has little basis in reality or what works. Look at high schools. Ask the parents of the best students what goes on at home.
That does boil it down to essentials. Exactly!
Jean!
Yes!
It does!
That's what I LOVE about writing a blog, reading all of your comments, and occasionally getting Ed to weigh in: you finally 'put your finger on it.'
Of course, when I get up in the morning and read a ludicrous David Brooks column extolling a union-run charter school with an open classroom, I KNOW it's RIDICULOUS .... and the bit about the kids being trained to imagine walls jumped out at me .... but until Ed said 'they need walls' - until he used the word 'need' - I wasn't getting to the heart of it.
They need walls!
We need walls!
People need walls!
That's why we have walls, presumably.
My workplace must be 15 years behind the times.
Anonymous - did you ever read that hilarious Steven Hayes piece in Weekly Standard? (I think it was Steven Hayes - could have been Andrew Fergusson [sp?])
The only realm of life as hopelessly fad-ridden as public education seems to be business.
Far as I can tell.
Back to walls....these are DISADVANTAGED KIDS.
Last I checked, DISADVANTAGED means LOW-INCOME, and LOW-INCOME means NOT VERY MANY WALLS INSIDE YOUR HOUSE OR APARTMENT.
How many of these kids have enough walls at home?
ANd how is it a good idea to take a bunch of kids who have comparatively fewer walls at home and make them pretend to have walls at school instead of providing them with walls?
oops - it's not a charter school?
Really?
yikes.
How'd I get that wrong?
Amy - omg - !
You're right.
Factories don't have walls.
Factory floors, I mean.
These kids have very large class size, literally.
"Last I checked, DISADVANTAGED means LOW-INCOME, and LOW-INCOME means NOT VERY MANY WALLS INSIDE YOUR HOUSE OR APARTMENT."
Yep--crowding, not enough sleep, not enough privacy, interruptions, TV running all day, no quiet place to work, etc. At least that's a traditional explanation for why low SES students find it difficult to succeed academically.
(On the history of the office--wasn't there a move at some point away from open offices (think 1960s/1970s newsrooms where you had a clear view from one end to the other) toward the semi-privacy of cubicles? Not sure how private offices fit into the picture. People sure seem to like having their own offices, though. Ask Virginia Woolf.)
oh, interesting - (re: cubicles)
Could be - I was generalizing from news stories about groovy open spaces at Google & the like ---- (I have no idea what the history is)
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