Jody Cooper

How Important is Curriculum?

Morgan talks about curriculum, history curriculum in particular;

“You know when we grew up we learned white people history, mostly wars…”

“…out of a text book, and it was very Western culture-centered, and history was mostly about who fought, who won, and…

When Morgan said this I thought… The Trojan War, the Wars in the Bible, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War 1, World War 2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. She’s right, at least that’s what I studied in school, at least in middle school and high school. It never occurred to me that the history of the world didn’t have to be followed in threads of fighting.

Morgan suggests other ways history could be organized,

Why do we learn history by wars? How about we learn history based on science and invention, or from a women’s point of view or from you know indigenous people’s point of view or there are so many more things which in some ways makes, like I don’t feel like I had a well-rounded education because it was from such a narrow point of view.

And outside of history,  curriculum-guided content still dominates what a child learns in school. When I chose to homeschool my children, I searched out the local public schools for their grade-level curricula to make sure my children learned the “important stuff”; I so bought into the absolute sovereignty of the curriculum the public schools had created. Morgan had the courage to imagine something different.

“Like it doesn’t seem to me, in this day and age, that there is a particular curriculum that you need to know.”

Morgan unschools her children. She doesn’t follow a curriculum. When asked what goals she has for her children she responded,

I think my goals are for them to be confident that they can figure out stuff. Like I don’t think you need to know this or you need to know that so much as more the confidence that they know how to figure things out or know people to go ask or can go online and figure stuff out. Like it doesn’t seem to me, in this day and age, that there is a particular curriculum that you need to know as much as the ability to learn what you need to know.

Morgan’s personal school experience made a strong impression on her and the direction she steers her children.

I feel like when I grew up you had to know Western Civilization and bloddy blah, and that a lot of the rest of the world history was just kind of ignored. And it’s like well there’s more if you tried to learn all the world history from forever, you could never know it all, and it would take up all your time. So I think everyone’s view of everything is so much broader, that you can’t say you have to know this.

I’ve read some of the classics when I was in school, and there is other stuff that I haven’t read. and I don’t feel my life is ruined by the classics I missed and history I don’t know.

Morgan reports feeling bored or angry when she went to school. She felt unable to do the things she was interested in.

Well, I was super bored through all of school. and I was angry a lot of the time…I joked about Cuisenaire rods, because I loved to play with Cuisenaire rods, and I remember they were really something that got brought out for like two or three days in the school year. And I REALLY loved them. I really wanted to play with them and make patterns and do stuff, and we weren’t allowed to. Like they only came out at that one time. That’s just one example, but there were a lot of things that just made me angry…having to do what they thought was important, the way they wanted to do, and being bored just a lot of the time. I was smart. I got my work done really fast…and I wasn’t allowed to do what I was interested in.

These experiences in traditional classrooms led Morgan to try something different. When asked about how she plans school, without a curriculum, she laughs and says,

I would say we have a lot of books in our house. and we have the computer. And I do go through and sort of look at, like Ricky will be in third grade this year, and I do go through and look at what’s expected of a third grader, and I will get books out of the library…The other thing that I do, was like we went to the mountains and there were like 50 million garter snakes everywhere. Ricky was capturing them. We were there when they came out of their den this spring and had the mating ball…when we came home from the mountains, we went to the library and got all these books out about garter snakes, and Ricky looks at the pictures and we talk about it, and I read them and tell them about it. Like sometimes they’ll read them and get interested, and we watch videos, but that’s sort of my planning is sort of when something gets interesting, we get a whole bunch of books.

Going against the tide has not been worry free. Math is one example; her boys haven’t studied math in a structured way. Some of this causes her worry. She’s not sure that her choices are always the right ones, but she does the best she can. She talks about the math she learned in school,

M: Like the times tables, Any times tables (Morgan snaps her fingers a few times) pops out of my head, you know?

J: you mean you can’t remember the?

M: No, I know them all. Oh, they were drilled into my head. 6×7=42, you know like, it’s just there. And they will never (pause)

J; have that?

M: have that. That immediate knowledge of 8×5=40. and I can’t tell whether that’s a problem or not.

I spent a lot of math time teaching math facts to fourth graders. When they didn’t learn them I heard about it from the teachers in the upper grades; it caused problems in higher level math. It remains to be see how difficult this will be for Morgan’s children. Maybe they won’t ever use higher level math, or else use calculators. Maybe one day they’ll decide they need to know this and learn it.

Curriculum holds a place in our culture that few people question. I’ll share how some other parents in my study approached curriculum.

 

photo credit: Bundesheer.Fotos via photopin (license)

Jody Cooper

The Culture of Schooling

You, yes you, when you graduated from high school, were more prepared to major in education than most other majors. This is because you already have 12 years of experience with education under your belt. You’ve been immersed in the culture of schooling for your whole life.

Smagorinsky (2011) presents an elegant explanation as to why teachers continue to employ traditional, teacher-centered, lecture-driven instruction when research recommends more progressive, constructivist, student-centered, experiential pedagogies. He argues, “that the issue of the persistence of authoritarian patterns of teaching and learning is a function of the culture of schooling, a culture embedded in 4000 years of stone and seemingly impervious to real, systemic change” (Smagorinsky, 2011, p. 78).

Here is a brief accounting of Smagorinksy’s thinking about why education is slow to change. (For the full argument read the chapter on The Culture of Schooling in his book.)

…the deep processing of students’ conception of schooling is established early and thus powerfully (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) 83

 A teacher starts learning to be one when they first enter school as a child.

 I approach this problem by going through the process through which people, particularly teachers, become acculturated to authoritarian schooling and questioning the degree to which even the most passionately progressive teacher education program can produce fundamental changes in teacher candidates’ thinking as they transition from their generally authoritarian school and university experiences as students to their brief exposure to alternatives in teacher education courses. From this course work they immediately cycle back, often concurrent with their university preparation in progressive teaching into the very settings that for so long socialized them to authoritarian conceptions of teaching and learning. 80

 It can be very hard to impose newer, progressive ideas of teaching over well-known, often loved ways of teaching.

 Faculties, then, tend to reproduce themselves by hiring people who will perpetuate their values; and the pool from which they draw their candidates is filled with people who are inclined to oblige. 94

 The result for the workforce is a profession more likely to be filled by those who embrace authoritarian traditions than those who seek alternatives. 95

It is hard for new ideas to displace cultural norms. A person has a hard time even waking up to understanding the culture they were raised in; it is so powerful in molding who they’ve become. There’s a very strong desire to hold on to what you know, to stay on the path. This is one reason I’m drawn to alternative ways of educating, rather than trying to change the traditional school.

photo credit: acase1968 Graduate via photopin (license)

Jody Cooper

Homeschooling with Kindles

Mollie is a homeschooling mom in my study. Technology opened up a whole new relationship between Mollie’s children and their grandfather. Their grandfather was a pastor with a disability, ataxia. Mollie explains,

He doesn’t walk well or speak well, but he’s losing different, many abilities and so I was trying to think of ways to connect with him better. He can’t talk on the phone anymore, he lives in Georgia… we see him like twice a year. And I just felt like… even when we’re together it’s hard to talk because he physically can’t speak well.

Mollie’s father discovered Kindles. He could still type and so he got very excited discovering the things he could do with Kindles and he made sure that everyone in the family had one. Mollie was looking for ways for her children to interact with their grandfather so she asked his assistance in planning their Bible class for that year. The rest is history…

He got really excited and he started saying oh he had ideas and he was going to use this curriculum and all that. So, he sends every week on Wednesday, he sends them their assignment for the week, and for my son they are doing a video course and there’s a workbook that goes with it, so you watch a DVD and he takes the notes that his grandfather made up for him.

Collaborating on this project opened other lines of communication for the family and their grandfather. Mollie gets a little emotional when she talks about this. She says,

I just haven’t been able to talk to him very much and now we’re emailing a lot more. And my daughter…so every time she gets her email…she’s better at this because she gets her work done faster, so she has more spare time. But uh she’ll get an email from him with the assignment, and then I got her to try to write back to him. So, she writes back, and she’ll write and tell him whatever she’s doing during the week, just to keep it going. So that’s been great. And I’ve just been emailing him more because I’m paying attention.

I love hearing this story because the older people in my life would love more communication with their young relatives and for this grandfather to have found it using technology is a hopeful sign of what technology might be used for.

Jody Cooper

The Demise of the Nation State

NOTE: My intention for this blog was not to be highly political. However I believe this article provides background to the idea that schooling is suffering and needs to change to meet the needs of the changing world.

On Facebook, today, I read The Demise of the Nation State, published by The Guardian. I had recently come to a personal acceptance that the populist or nationalistic state of our current country is in sync with the state of many other countries and felt very alarmed. This article was long, and mentally taxing at times, but it woke me up to how I accept nation states as a way of life, a way of being. Contemplating the idea that nation states have a lifetime, that death may be part of their journey was alarming. However, this article’s claims seem plausible.

 

If one studies the history of education, one learns quickly that the purpose of most schools has been indoctrination: mainly of ‘country values’ (political), economic needs, or religious ideas. If nation states are failing, then educational institutions, tasked with creating citizens for that nation state, will become obsolete. (I was going to say quickly, but educational institutions never do things quickly.)

 

I am a strong proponent of alternative education. However, I also believe that traditional schooling has played an important role in our nation state. I am deeply interested in exploring ways that traditional educational institutions could be more flexible, change with the times and meet the needs of their growing population. But I can’t say I have any good ideas at present. I fear if I had children to educate today I’d flee to homeschooling or some form of alternative education.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta

Jody Cooper

Off the Beaten Path

Families that choose a different path for schooling often find that family and friends don’t understand. Janna, a homeschooling mom, coined the phrase “off the beaten path’ when trying to explain their choice.

I mean they just don’t really understand why I would choose, why anybody, but why us in particular, would choose to go this far off the beaten path kind of thing.

She carries the metaphor even further:

…that’s why I keep telling my parents… if anything, it has shown, it’s proven to me and Mark, but also to the kids, that there is no one way. And not only is there not only one way, but there’s not only one way for you.

I feel like homeschooling…we’re already on a different path. I feel like…any other different path you take is cool. I mean homeschooling is a different path for a lot of people; they see it as a really odd path, but it works. I think it works. It works for us. I think it works for a lot of people. I think it could work for more people than people think they could.

I pulled my son off the beaten track in fourth grade, onto a new path of homeschooling. At the time I was unsure how our schooling would play out. I thought even if he just read for a year he’d be okay. He reported to me later that it occurred to him, if we can approach school in such a different way, we can probably approach other things in life differently than the traditional way.

There is no one way to learn, more people can probably manage it than think they can, and it may open up new pathways to thinking and acting in many different arenas.

 

 

 

Jody Cooper

Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this blog is to discuss alternative approaches to education in light of traditional, cultural approaches.

I love to watch children learn, more specifically how they learn. For that matter, I like to watch anyone learn. I want to do everything I can to foster learning. I have been a fan of alternative forms of education ever since I stuck my neck out and homeschooled my fourth-grade son. I’m particularly interested in the role technology and the growth of the Internet will play in the future.

My dissertation focused on how technology was employed, or not employed, to learn literacy in homeschooling families. I interviewed twenty homeschooling families who held a wide variety of educational philosophies. I have continued to interview fourteen of these families for four years now and hope to continue for another six years. This longitudinal study provides lots of stories and data about alternative education.

The purpose of this blog is not to find the ‘one true path’. I believe there are and should be many paths. The families I interviewed have graciously given me permission to share their stories. I share these stories because they provide such a diversity of possibilities, so many different paths. Please hear these stories with care; questions and your own stories are welcome, but this is not a forum to harshly criticize what is shared. I intend to also post about articles and other ideas which would be open to more debate and discussion, but I will protect the sharing of everyone’s personal experiences.

My interest in alternative education doesn’t diminish the respect I have for traditional education, having taught in elementary school for eleven years and in college for three. I’m curious how traditional schooling will evolve in this digital world.

 

 

Jody Cooper

What is the Beaten Track

I like a beaten track as a metaphor for schooling. While a beaten track was never planned, it responded to the needs of those traversing it. It took them where they wanted or needed to go through established, predictable territory. Over time, as the trail became more defined, so did the structure of schooling. It found the shortest paths, avoided swamps where possible, forded streams, climbed mountains, but eventually arrived at its destination. Once people followed a trail to a successful end, others followed, hoping for the same success.

The school system has remained a slowly evolving institution, even in a world where globalization and technology are forcing massive change. One educational theorist argued “the persistence of authoritarian patterns of teaching and learning is a function of the culture of schooling, a culture embedded in 4000 years of stone and seemingly impervious to real, systemic change.” However, schooling has grown, one might argue, much as a trail grows as it gets more use. It widens gradually, becoming more clearly defined. The dirt, beneath the onslaught of many feet, is slowly pounded into a harden surface.

I like to think of alternative educational ideas as different paths, different ways to reach a variety of destinations. Alternative approaches to education are less established and predictable. You are less sure where you will end up. You may not follow the tried and true established procedures of traditional schooling. You may search for new vistas, follow new paths or creep through uncharted country. You may run into unexpected swamps, dead-ends, or just get lost. But the possibilities are endless.

I have been hiking a lot lately. Many of the pictures of trails in this blog are from my hikes. And one thing I’ve learned is that the trails are beautiful, as is the environment off the beaten track.