LearningForward

Kent Chesnut's technology in education blog.

This week I was asked to serve as a “harsh reader” for a grant application for a  local school.  Although I don’t know anything about grant applications (and I explained this to the requester), I did think it would be interesting to read one… so I read through and provided input where I thought it might help (I only hope I wasn’t too harsh ;-).

This was Wednesday.  By Thursday I was thinking about the grant application and its assumptions.  I certainly can’t describe the whole grant, but I’ll give an overview.  A couple of junior high schools in this district have significantly higher rates of suspension and performance gaps than the state average.  The grant proposal is to hire a graduation coach for each of these 2 schools.  The purpose of the coach will be to identify students who (according to certain criteria) are likely to be drop outs before graduation, design and implement intervention and incentive programs to keep them in school.  These at-risk students were described as disengaged in school and having behavioral problems and numbered somewhere between 13% - 25% of the schools’ populations.

It all seemed so reasonable… until I started thinking about the underlying assumptions.  These students don’t see any value in school, they haven’t been successful there, school has no relevance to them, they are going to be stuck in school for several more years with no way out,  and they cause problems.  So let’s hire a couple of guys to fix the kids! 

Why not fix the schools to make them relevant and engaging?!?   No, that doesn’t seem to be in the plan.  Instead, we’ll identify and target these at-risk kids with a series of behavioral modification techniques (as I would perceive intervention and incentive programs) to try to get them to fit in with the way school is done.

To think about… 

• Are the other 80% of the students in school engaged, enthusiastic learners?  Or are a great majority simply “doing their time” with the hopes of being released when their sentences are up (i.e. finish 12th grade)?
• Are students that are strongly engaged (at least trying to get good grades and not causing trouble) well served by the schools as they are?
• How many of the classes that your child(ren) are in (or have been in) have caught their imagination, engaged them to learn (not just get a good grade), and have motivated them to work their hearts out for the love of the subject?  In my case, there have only been a very few - but it it’s great to see my children motivated in this way.  What would school be like if only 2 - 3 classes each semester reached this level of engagement?  I’m afraid the school atmosphere would be so disrupted that somebody would put a stop to it!   

Alfie Kohn has a couple of good articles on this subject, “Constant Frustration and Occasional Violence: The Legacy of American High Schools” and “Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide”.  I recommend them both if you want to think further about these issues.  Gary Stager’s article about working with kids in the Main Youth Center (juvenile detention center), “Constructive Technology as the Key to Entering the Community of Learners”, is also great (and fits in with my prison metaphor).