What are you doing to challenge the system?

[SwiftEscudo]

I'm curious as to what you are all doing to challenge ageism and the current schooling system.

Writing? Spreading awareness? Organising walkouts and anti-schooling groups?

There are many things that we can all do and there are many things that must be done.

I'm personally a member of a socialist organisation in my country, I engage in weekly meetings and participate in protests. When we build the revolutionary party and crush capitalism, schools will be run by students and homeschooling will be a viable, normal option.

What are you doing/should do? What is to be done? (That last sentence is an easy reference but you still get +1 for getting it)

[Rule_BreakerXVIII]

I think that focusing on making homeschooling and other options more legal, and making school less compulsory along with educating parents about other, just as acceptable forms of education will do the trick. We can't hope for everyone to see how wrong school is, but we can make sure that those who do notice are allowed to live as they want.

[Education Reform Movement]

I am spreading awareness and I have an anti-schooling group.

A petition to reform education can be found here: change.org/petitions/board-of-education-and-all-educational-facilities-and-municipalities-reform-education-so-that-it-s-fair-for-all-and-not-for-the-elite-few-or-the-dull-many-no-child-left-behind

[Evan92]

I myself am in college, although I no longer attend school, I make my opinions known on how I feel about the educational system when the opportunity presents itself. I post on this website and give advice and opinions about various issues. When I head to the voting booth each election I keep these issues near to my heart as well, education being one of the key issues I base my support for a candidate.

I have my own philosophy on tackling bad schools and incompetent teachers, as an adult this may be different than how people presently attending school may view things. I believe highly in accountability of both educators and makers of education policy frame work. I tend to look at schooling issues from a legal prospective and I wish to teach younger people how to hold these schools accountable. To defeat your enemy you must know your enemy.

There are no instant solutions but a long arduous process of slight reformation. When I was younger I believed the entire system could be simply "torn down" now I realize that is hardly the case. If teachers are causing problems get rid of them, write your elected representatives and engage them in a discussion on education. Civil and legal action is vital to make the current system more bearable for kids. This is not the only way, but one of the more effective methods of change to a system that protects the worst.

The greatest problem within modern schooling is teachers unions. They protect the lazy and incompetent at best, and at worst, child molesters, criminals who are teachers. If I could say anything to students it would be please research these unions more for they are your greatest enemy. It takes an average of 5 years to get a teacher with repeated offences fired. Even if they are on leave during this time they are still payed. End this madness now, and take action against these extortionists.

[James Comey]

Working with xcriteria on Connected Summer Learning.

It'll be a while before we see noticeable change, but I think we can at least provide a service that can be influential.

[Slick]

Nothing. How can I challenge the school system when apparently I can't even challenge their expectations?
The school system is beyond my control, so challenging it is waste of time, at least for me it is.

The only thing I can do right now is only hope the choices and career I choose in my path can inspire others that has enough power to challenge the system and make society a bit better.

[brainiac3397]

Nothing yet...

[Ky]

I'm engaging in activism, on multiple fronts. I regret not having been able to support the Summer of Connected Learning as well as others have, but I'm currently the missionary of anti-compulsory-education in places you wouldn't expect to see it. I'm quite pleased with what my voice alone can do, and cannot wait to complement it with action.

[Rebag102]

I'm sorry but fighting won't do anything
School is a dictatorship you cannot win
I am not with school in anyway
But we cannot win
We can rant
We can rebel
We can do anything
But we cannot win

[xcriteria]

@REBAG2012

I like how you wrote that... but I think it's less clear-cut than that.

A lot of people can, and do, win, at least in terms of their own learning experiences. They might be a minority for now, but their stories show what can be possible.

If your parents come to realize that something else would work better for you than dictatorship-based school, at least, a range of options open up... especially in the connected world of 2014 and beyond.

Also, it does seem like more and more parents are questioning the traditional march through school.

Are you familiar with the various people talking about all this... like Ken Robinson, Nikhil Goyal, James Lehman, Justin Schwamm, Lisa Nielsen, Roz Hussin, Will Richardson, Roger Schank, Daniel Pink, George Siemens, and so on? We have a lot of credible allies... and the conversations I've seen in 2013 and 2014 differ a lot from what I saw before 2011.

But... even back in 2009, I could see signs of hope, like this Hacking Education conference...

http://avc.com/2009/03/hacking-education-continued/

"a group of leading thinkers, educators, and entrepreneurs... today we got them all together and talked about hacking education for six hours."

Some highlights from that conversation, from that url:

Hidden stuff:

1) The student (and his/her parents) is increasingly going to take control of his/her education including choice of schools, teachers, classes, and even curriculum. That's what the web does. It transfers control from institutions to individuals and its going to do that to education too.

2) Alternative forms of education (home schooling, charter schools, online learning, adult education/lifelong learning) are on the rise and we are just at the start of that trend.

3) Students will increasingly find themselves teaching as well. Peer production will move from just producing content to producing learning as well.

5) The education system we currently have was built to train the industrial worker. As we move to an information driven society it is high time to question everything about the process by which we educate our society. That process and the systems that underlie it will look very different by the time our children's children are in school.

7) Teachers are more important than ever but they will have to adapt and many will have to learn to work outside the system. It was suggested at hacking education that teachers are like bank tellers in the 1970s. I don't agree but I do think they are like newspaper reporters in the 1990s.

8) Credentialing and accreditation in the traditional sense (diplomas) will become less important as the student's work product becomes more available to be sampled and measured online.

10) Spaces for learning (schools and libraries) will be re-evaluated. It was suggested that Starbucks is the new library. I don't think that will be the case but the value of dedicated physical spaces for learning will decline. It has already happened in the world of professional education.

Those sum up a lot of what I'm seeing a lot of people talk about... and along with economic changes and the impact of technology and connectivity, school as many in the 20th century knew it, probably won't be around for all that much longer.

Justin Schwamm wrote a bit about that last summer... about how the one-size-fits-all "factory model" of education is a very 20th-century institution... which would be foreign even to his great-grandparents, and will certainly be foreign to our grandchildren:

"It’s hard to let go of the factory-vision … hard, but necessary. My great-grandparents would have been puzzled, even repelled by it; earlier ancestors would have been horrified; my own future grandchildren and great-grandchildren will doubtless wonder how anyone could have believed such nonsense. While Ms. X and other friends shriek in anger and fear at the death of the factory, there’s an amazing consensus building about what schools and other learning environments might look like in a post-factory world. Check out this piece by Christopher Lehman, and compare it with this piece from Alex Hernandez. From very different starting points, they’re calling for something quite similar … and quite different from the re-animated Good Old Days..."

(Steps and Setbacks, V, July 26, 2013)

I can link videos and writing from all the people I listed above, and many more, if you want to explore them. They're worth watching to learn about what people are saying and what's going on... but there's certainly a lot of change in the air... and unlike past eras of school survival, the idea that those here are all alone in their views is very easy to disprove.

So... what does that mean for possible next steps for any of us?

I think one of the big questions is, what's most important to learn... and many people agree that some of the most important is to know yourself... figure out your interests and explore what's possible to you in the world.

Related to that: metacognition, or learning to understand your mental processes and pause and reflect before reacting is a key one... and there are many more... but they're rarely covered in school, but we can certainly work together to cover them here and elsewhere.

How does that sound?

---

(And... I just accidentally deleted my earlier reply on this thread. So, here it is again...)

A lot of change is coalescing around the term "connected learning," including within traditional schools and beyond them.

I think helping parents to understand how some people don't fit within school-as-they-know-it is one step. Helping people understand that school-as-they-know-it in general is rather obsolete in the 21st century is another.

Justin Schwamm, a high school teacher (who's looking to create alternatives to traditional school), uses the term "factory model thinking" to describe the rigid patterns of thinking and behavior often seen in schools. That's often connected to outcomes like "pain-punishment cycles," people falling into passivity, "yelling and labeling" of noncompliant students, and in general a focus on compliance with a structure, above and beyond the actual needs of students.

But, that's not the only way to do education, and quite a few people are realizing that.

Explaining that could fill a whole book, but here's one example:

A Simple Ed Reform Solution - Connect School Life to Real Life

Another thing to check out is a thread I started in the recent MIT Media Lab open course, Learning Creative Learning:

Creative Learning for those Unhappy in School-as-usual (long thread, with lots of references.)

Yet another thing we can do (and we are doing) is take steps to improve School Survival, and help it to be more of a hub for learning and transforming things, starting with people's personal learning processes and life situations. One of the best things an individual person can do is to figure out who they are, discover interests and passions, and find a way to make it in the world, in ways "the system" is not likely doing much to help you with.

Another thing is, to the extent possible, see how you might mentor and support others with some of your time, and provide some more of what school and family life is often missing.

Beyond those things, one thing I'm working on is just helping people connect with each other, figure out and pursue their interests, and produce a documentary series / YouTube videos based around helping more people learn about the stories and concepts they might not know about.

The more success stories there are outside the system... and with change within it... the more it'll be possible to gain credibility for questioning practices people accept because "that's just how they are."

[brainiac3397]

(07-03-2014 12:21 PM)REBAG102 Wrote:  I'm sorry but fighting won't do anything
School is a dictatorship you cannot win
I am not with school in anyway
But we cannot win
We can rant
We can rebel
We can do anything
But we cannot win

The larger the problem, the slower the repair.

It is easier to destroy than it is to build(and even harder to renovate if it doesn't fit into the original plan)