The school year has ended for school-age children, but soon they will be studying again, while Facebooking and YouTubing, and searching online while listening to music. Simultaneously.

While most adults support the act of studying for children (teaches them discipline! keeps them off the streets!), my own three teenage children reported that in preparation for final exams this past spring, they did a lot of stuff that, well, may not be very meaningful in the long run. Their time was occupied, but not their brains. They memorized 180 irregular verbs tenses, memorized Boyle’s law, Charles’ Theorem, prepared for a 90-item multiple choice test on Indian independence, memorized the dates of the Chinese dynasties and memorized all the elements in the periodic table that are soluble.

In education, we increasingly look at learning in terms of how challenging it is cognitively and emotionally for kids. These exercises are low level, in some cases, the lowest level: memorization and comprehension. Although students do need to spend time some time memorizing some information, it needs to be connected to bigger, higher level concepts and challenges or they very quickly forget it.

You know that yourself, from your own educational life – and just because you had to do it doesn’t mean it’s good educational practice now. It’s a general problem, one that author John Medina, of Brain Rules [www.brainrules.net] sums up by saying, if you had to design an environment that was least interesting for the human brain for learning, it would probably be the classroom!

Why is kids’ time occupied by school, but not turned on in their brains?

• Schoolwork isn’t designed for the Google/Bing age. We see learning as something you “get,” a product to be acquired. Real learning isn’t like that, and most of what school asks kids to do is acquire information that can now be accessed on the internet. What else should school provide? An opportunity to talk over that information, critique it and understand it more deeply, said one high school sophomore recently.
• Control isn’t motivating. Controlling kids, particularly middle and high schoolers, isn’t motivating to them. Lots of learning environments are designed, first and foremost, to control kid’s behavior.
• Kids get too much negative feedback on their work, and negative feedback that is too general to be useful in improving performance. “This was a sloppy essay,” is not as helpful as, “in your first paragraph, you didn’t adequately define your main idea or suggest what the argument here is, and therefore I didn’t have a roadmap for moving through the rest of the paragraphs.” Most feedback on work is very broad and unhelpful. Scantron, machine-graded tests increasingly used in middle and high school, also don’t provide much real feedback on performance, unless you personally get a lot from knowing where you fall on a bell curve.
• You have to sit still too much in school. It’s hard to sit still all day. Few adults do it. We ask kids to.
• You don’t get to choose what you are going to learn most of the day. Choice motivates! Lots of school assignments, even if they do offer choice, offer false, superficial ones.
• We rely too much on superficial tests to judge the value of work. An ocean of evidence supports this, yet we are lining up for more testing.
• Most kids don’t see the connection between what they are asked to do in school, and the world of work they are going to. And they are probably right! A lot of the connections aren’t very clear. Old-fashioned ideas of authority – doing it because I told you to – aren’t motivating for this generation of students, either.
• Adults don’t listen to kids. Really listen to them. I observe lots of classrooms where kids are listened to only when they say things that a teacher wants them to say. When kids say things that adults don’t want to hear, they hardly get an ear. They may get a detention.
• Kids don’t have a real say in how schools are run. Most student government organizations are Potemkin villages – students don’t really have power to actually change things.
• Teachers are overstressed, and they don’t have enough time to think carefully about their students. (Or themselves, or other teachers.) Schools are often lonely places for adults! Teachers have little time to talk about their work, or think about how to do it better. So they often settle into complaining, which creates more stress. The cycle continues.
• Students are grouped together by age, not by developmental level, or what they know and can do. Students should be able to move in and out, backwards and forwards, in groups according to their levels of mastery, not based on their age. We should see grouping as aimed at getting kids together for their specific needs at that moment, then regrouping for the next challenge.
• Human brains are growing all the time, but we don’t act like this in school. In fact, we underchallenge kids and don’t give them enough to do that is real, interesting and important. We don’t encourage making mistakes, another way brains really learn.
• We undervalue teachers’ work. Being a great teacher is like being a great brain surgeon: you need very high level skills to work on your practice constantly and be supported by a great team that watches you and helps you do better. We treat teachers badly, and this rubs off in the classroom.

What do kids want from school? What they tell me is they want to learn how to be successful, to have friends, and to have fun. Teachers too. It’s time for big changes in our system, before the next exam.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
Capitol Climate Action: A national coalition of more than 40 environmental, public health, labor, social justice, faith-based and other advocacy groups plan to engage in civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant on the afternoon of March 2. The Capitol Climate Action, the largest mass mobilization on global warming in the country’s history, reflects the growing public demand for bold action to address the climate and energy crises. Wendell Berry, poet laureate and intellectual leader of the organic movement, and thousands of others intend to stage a multi-generational act of civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant, the utility that powers Congress with dirty energy and symbolizes a past that threatens our future. “The Capitol Climate Action comes not a moment too soon. For more than thirty years, scientists, environmentalists and people from all walks of life have urged our leaders to take action to stop global warming; and that action has yet to come,” said Dr. James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists. Dr. Hansen will join the protest. “Coal is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country and that must change. The world is waiting for the Obama administration and Congress to lead the way forward on this defining issue of our time. They need to start by getting coal out of Congress.” The Capitol Power Plant, which is owned by Congress and sits just blocks from the American seat of power, burns coal to heat and cool numerous buildings on Capitol Hill. The facility no longer generates electricity, but its reliance on coal – the country’s biggest source of global warming pollution and a documented health hazard – has made it the focus of political controversy and a powerful symbol of coal’s impact on the environment and public health. In response to public pressure, the House of Representatives converted half of the plant’s fuel to cleaner natural gas. But attempts to remove coal from the fuel mix entirely have been blocked by powerful coal-state Senators Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “This demonstration marks the beginning of a sustained effort to draw a line in the sand against this dirty and dangerous fuel,” said Matt Leonard of Greenpeace, which is helping to organize the protest. “Our leaders cannot promise us a healthy and prosperous future as long as coal is polluting our soil, water and atmosphere.” – www.capitolclimateaction.org

MINNEAPOLIS, MN
Research on Integrative Medicine: The North American Research Conference on Complementary & Integrative Medicine will take place May 12-15 at the Hilton Minneapolis Hotel. This conference is sponsored by the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, which consists of 42 leading academic medical centers from across North America. This is a follow-up to the very successful first conference presented in Edmonton, Alberta, in May 2006, which was itself the third in a series of international meetings initially co-sponsored by Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Francisco. The North American Research Conference on Complementary & Integrative Medicine is international in scope and invites and encourages the submission of scientific abstracts and proposals for sessions from corporate scientists, academic researchers, educators and healthcare providers worldwide. The conference will showcase original scientific complementary, alternative and integrative medical research through keynote and plenary presentations, oral and poster presentations, and innovative scientific sessions. Areas presented and discussed at this conference will include basic science, clinical, methodological, health services and education research. All interested researchers, educators and practitioners as well as conventional practitioners are urged to attend. This goal of the directors of this conference is to provide a single event that attracts a critical mass of cutting-edge, peer-reviewed science and discussion in the broad field of complementary and integrative medical research. The conference invites and benefits enormously from collaboration with many major professional organizations, publishers and granting agencies. Events throughout the four-day meeting are designed to foster the development of new collaborations and to strengthen existing partnerships. For more information, call 712.767.7984. – www.imconsortium-conference.org

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA
New Constitution: A national referendum on January 25 approved the country’s new constitution, granting long-overdue rights to the country’s indigenous majority in an effort to address 500 years of injustice. More than 60 percent of Bolivia’s population self-identify as indigenous, and nearly the same percentage live under the poverty line. The new constitution establishes Bolivia as pluri-national (a nation containing many nations), formally recognizing the country’s 36 indigenous and Afro-Bolivian nations. It also requires that government offices be able to communicate with their constituents in their own language, rather than speaking only in Spanish, a language a significant number of indigenous people don’t speak. The constitution grants autonomy to indigenous groups across the nation, enabling them to govern their own communities, develop their own economy, and administer the use of natural resources. These changes to the constitution, as well as the new parts of the document which call for state control of natural resources, seek to ensure the majority of Bolivians benefit from the country’s vast oil and gas reserves, resources which have historically been looted by multinational corporations and wealthy families. In addition, the new constitution reserves seats in the Senate and Congress specifically for representatives from indigenous communities, and officially recognizes forms of community justice practiced by many indigenous groups in the country – as long as the practices adhere to existing Bolivian law. – www.indiancountrytoday.com

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND
Global classroom design: Worldwide, 776 million people are illiterate. To address this crisis by providing access to a quality education for all children, there is a pressing need to upgrade the crumbling infrastructure of tens of millions of existing classrooms, and build ten million new classrooms. Meeting this challenge represents the largest building project the world has ever undertaken. In response, Orient Global, Architecture for Humanity and a consortium of partners are launching the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom, the first large-scale initiative to improve the design of classrooms around the world. The 2009 Open Architecture Challenge invites the global design and construction community to collaborate with primary and secondary school teachers and students to create smarter, safer and more sustainable learning environments. Teams can partner with a school of their choice or design a classroom for one of our school-building partners. Registration ends May 1 and entries are due June 1. The winning school will receive up to $50,000 to build or improve its classrooms and its design team will receive a $5,000 grant to help make it happen. The design competition will be judged by an international, inter-disciplinary panel of experts in the fields of both education and architecture (including students themselves). The resulting entries will be available and accessible to all on the Open Architecture Network [www.openarchitecturenetwork.org]. – www.goodnewsagency.org

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires. - William Arthur Ward

Each year, millions of children return to school to complete another year of education in their young lives. Some anxiously await the first day of school with eager anticipation while others face an annual dread of the entire process. From the earliest forms of learning such as the original home-schooling, then one-room schoolhouse, to modern trends of digitized instruction, the importance of information increases with the demands of our society.

Not so much concerned with regurgitating facts and statistics, life asks us to learn on many levels, and every day, we’re challenged by our culture to perform better, think faster and innovate more. In the school of life, the puzzles to solve become more difficult as we grow older. Spirit dares us to continue our journey of learning and we look to insight and integration, as well as possibility and resolution for the answers.

Insight

We all recognize an “ah-ha!” moment when it happens. In fact, the instant revelation and understanding happen, almost like a sneeze, the effect breathes irreversible and complete changes. Once you understand something – a concept, a method, a practice – you carry with you not only the ability to comprehend it, but also to apply it to other aspects of your life. The light-bulb of recognition forever alters the way you view the information, and illuminates your future consideration on the subject-matter.

The elusive “ah-ha!” seems to wash over us like a fragile limb breaking free in the wind from the gnarly tethers of ignorance. Life, then, raises the bar of expectation and in ever-increasing challenges, coaches us to make use of our insight in all areas of our thoughts. With increasing difficulty in proportion to the level of insight, the school of life judges and grades us at every turn. Then, the transformation from “ah -ha!” to “of course” takes place and we begin to consider concepts on a more encompassing scale.

Possibility

A psychology professor of mine taught about learning and memory. Dr. Erickson stressed to strive to understand “the gist” of ideas and concepts and the remaining details would fall into place. He noted that we spend too much effort getting lost in minor points without a clear understanding of an issue.

With a broad grasp of knowledge, we progress forward from a position of micro-focus to a search for possibilities. Once you “get the gist” of something, you then begin to see how the idea relates to the world around you and interacts with similar and opposing concepts. Possibility-thinking rises up from a position of solid understanding and serves as the cherry on top of our knowledge base.

Resolution

An old friend, an educator and author on relationship matters, once commented on a single person’s quest for the perfect mate. “Everyone has problems,” she began. “You just need to find someone with a set of problems you can live with.” In our earthly journey, life presents a series of challenges for us to overcome. One by one (and more often than not, problems arrive concurrently rather than serially!), difficulties arise in our lives. We use our understanding and insight and most of all our possibility-thinking to find resolutions.

Like the “ah-ha!” moment, resolutions allow us to move forward on our journey. No longer limited by the blindfolds of ignorance and doubt, resolutions offer a welcome ray of relief speckled with the kaleidoscope of promise and completion. While it’s true, we all carry our own set of problems – both solvable and chronic – the manner in which we make the highest use of our life-lessons to overcome the difficulties at hand speaks volumes for the strength of our spirit.

Integrate

My father always said that mistakes enriched our lives. He said to accept any mistakes I made, learn from them, move on, and try not to repeat them. I’ve found that when you integrate what you’ve learned from life through daily lessons, you make fewer mistakes. Calling on your history and experience, you more easily recognize the potential repetition of an error or misjudgment, and hopefully forestall or dodge a bad situation. Just like the childhood rule for crossing the street, “Stop. Look. Listen,” take a moment to reflect on what you already know and integrate that wisdom into your next moment of action.

Spirit put us on earth to learn. Our school appears either as academia or as real life lessons. No matter your learning style, life will repeatedly teach its lessons over and over until you learn them. So, by looking within, and using your skills of insight to create an open door of possibility, you can find a resolution when you integrate your cumulative experience and information thereby shortening your learning curve. The more you practice this mindful process of recognizing life’s lessons and moving through the steps, the wiser you’ll grow!

May you continually be inspired by life to reach your inner awakening and spiritual maturity.