quote:

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"The report goes on to examine theories of organizational change. The texts they use are The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen of Harvard's Business School and Creative Destruction by Richard Foster of the McKinsey Group. Frankly, their conclusions sound strikingly similar to those in Jim Collins' Good to Great and other recent popular successes about organizational change.

Their bottom line: It is infinitely harder to change existing organizations than it is to start from scratch.

The reason for this resistance to change is what Foster calls "the invisible architecture" of the organization, which is to say its culture -- "this is the way we've always done things."

When powerful CEOs implement innovations, even they find that over time the company's culture molds and erodes the innovation until it "fits comfortably back into the old culture."

Starting from scratch means that you can define the objectives, values and structures without battling an entrenched culture. We know, for example, that typical, factory-model American schools were designed to be efficient, easily sloughing off problem students including those not making it academically. The 1950's dropout rate was over 50 percent.

We also know that educating those once-sloughed kids requires engaging relationships. But the organizational structure and the culture of factory- model schools prevents students and teachers from being engaged with each other, with their work, with parents or with community.

Even many kids who survive and excel in traditional public schools loudly express wanting more interesting and relevant work, served up in less dull ways, where their own passions can play a part in at least some of what they learn. Engagement on anyone's part never was a goal of the factory-model school, whereas it is a goal of virtually all charters. . . .

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quote:

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. . . regular public school districts have by far and away the largest share of kids and power, but too often their objectives are so last year, we can't afford them any more. We need the new world of teachers who are organized and encouraged to behave like professionals in engaging new schools. . .

"This is not an easy journey. But if we are going to retain the wonderful institution of public education through this new century, we must have the courage to help it change."

Amen.

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Reply author: JJ Ross
Replied on: May 10 2005 10:03:41 AM
Message:

While some of us were discussing the five-year-old girl handcuffed at school last month, the story about police and school systems recruiting students as "snitches" came out.

Neither case is about learning or teaching; both are about crime, law enforcement and population control, pure and simple. And they both stem from our increasingly institutional view of what's best for young children (despite all the flowery individualistic language with which institutions try to make it seem otherwise) --

Here's an excerpt from the snitch story, followed by my response from the PDE list:


> http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-ap-school-tattling.story
>
> Students Rewarded for Tattling at School
> By DOUG GROSS
> Associated Press Writer
> April 26, 2005
>

. . . Critics call them "snitch" programs, saying they are a knee-jerk reaction to student violence. Some education professionals fear such policies could create a climate of distrust in schools and turn students against each other.
>
> "There are very few things that I can think of that would be more
effective at destroying that sense of community," said Bruce Marlowe,
an education psychology professor at Roger Williams University in
Bristol, R.I.
>
> About 2,000 schools and colleges, from Honolulu to Palm Beach
County, Fla., have adopted Student Crime Stoppers programs like
Houston County, according to the nonprofit Crime Stoppers U.S.A.,
which began helping schools set up such programs in 1983.
>
> Most schools offer an anonymous phone line or a school drop box for
tips. Rewards range from cash to gift certificates to free parking passes. The goal: "Heading off some problems rather than waiting until they happen and responding afterward," said Tim Hensley, a school system spokesman. . .
>
> Frank Farley, an educational psychology professor at Temple
University in Philadelphia, said students should be taught to speak up
without being offered a reward.
>
> "This idea of surveillance -- there's something unsavory there,"
Farley said. "We're familiar with the history of that in the former
Soviet Union and Nazi Germany." He added: "I think it's bad civics."

******************

One individual's response to the "snitching as bad civics" quote:

But we never step back to look at the institution of "school"
itself, to see if IT'S bad civics? And to see how we could change the
institution instead of the inmates?

Seems like that would be a smarter choice than just going with the
flow, pouring on the acid and turning them all into one big barrel of
pickles.

So this is the current thread running through Thinking Parent news
discussion -- when bad things happen involving our kids, what are our
choices as we figure out how to respond? And what do kids "learn" from
the different responses we can make?

I see connections between this and punishments of all types, for
example. The reasoning is that we must command children's respect for
authority "for their own good." Scofflaw behavior and disrespect for
authority must be swiftly corrected and contained. I see a straight
line between this choice of response and the way communities treat
school-aged children, how truancy crack-downs lead to sweeping all
kids (even hsers and the non-truant) off the streets with suspicious
questioning and curfews, to the testing and accountability excesses
that I fear soon will demand every child learn everything "for the
good of the community."

More law and order is one mainstream choice of response, but too
often it feels like the only one. Schooling and education in our
society seems to be more and more about law enforcement (and not
without reasons.) I remember back in the 80s when the first handful of
benign, helpful, positive "school resource officers" began appearing
on school campuses, to the great concern of most parents and
schoolfolk. Now we don't even pretend they're resources and role
models -- their job is to handcuff, arrest and if necessary swat-team
and lock-down the whole school, and apparently not even the
kindergarten girls can call them Officer Friendly these days.

So here it seems their street protocol has gone another step. They
are developing networks of snitches among the population they patrol
and control. This makes perfect sense from a law-enforcement mindset,
of course. And what fine preparation for the kids who will wind up in
prison -- .

There must be other choices. Not just for each of us in our free,
autonomous families, I mean, but in our collective wisdom for the good
of the society and schools we share. As DS9 has said ever since he was
old enough to talk, "I need some more options!"