Playing for Change

Between deadlines, visitors, and traveling, I have been losing my steam, but I will persevere. Before I get back into my Save the World Academy series, I will do a couple of brief posts about randoms things. First, have you seen Playing for Change?

A mobile recording studio is capturing music from all over the world. We get to see videos reminding us that we are all in this together.

Robinson's The Element Reminds Us to Tend to the Lifeworld

My state, Ohio, has been reeling for some time from the wave of job losses that is just beginning to affect some states. Many people—from blue-collar workers to skilled trades people to educated professionals with solid track records—are contemplating choices they never thought they would have to make. Choices like:

• Should I wait out this drop in the construction trades or start college at age 40?


• Should I go back to college at age 50 for a second degree that will improve my "marketability?"?


• Should I move to where the job market is better—which means uprooting my family and selling my house at little or no profit? Or should I stay here and settle for a job that realizes a fraction of my potential?


• At what point will I take whatever job I can get so we can keep our house?

With those kinds of dilemmas all over the news, the vision of Ken Robinson's book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything is truly a revolutionary one. The current job market and the jobs President Obama is trying to stimulate seem to be largely for those whose "Element" is science, technology, engineering, and health care. Those certainly are pressing needs that must be met. But I think many who have been hit hard by the economic downturn may not be able to have the dream of working in a job that epitomizes their aptitude and passion. I fear that today's jobseekers who want to avoid major disruptions in their lifestyles will need to find that outside of the job world. I hope today's children and young people won't be in that position down the road.

As we rebuild, I hope to see some new dimensions of economic development emerge—a real attempt to begin making full use of human potential.

Thomas Sergiovanni wrote about "lifeworld" and "systemsworld." (Based on the work of sociologist Jurgen Habermas). The lifeworld deals with goals and purposes and is concerned with culture, meaning, and significance. The systemsworld deals with methods and means and is concerned with efficiency, outcomes, and productivity. He said that the two are symbiotic and that the lifeworld should be “at the center as a driving force for what goes on” while the systemsworld should be "at the periphery." With our systems—infrastructure, health care, financial—in serious need of attention, I think Robinson's book is an important reminder of why we are fixing those systems and the vision to which we should aspire.

Themes Instead of Subjects—Interesting to Consider

"Rethinking Education," an article by Julian Richardson in Sunday's Jamaica Observer, proposes that Jamaican high schools think about the humanities curriculum in terms of "life themes" that have "obsessed all cultures and all peoples in one way or another." Examples include 'The Origins of the Universe', 'Representations of God', 'Food and Nature', 'The Individual and the Common Good', 'Racial Differences and the Other', 'Gender Identity and Sexual Relations', 'Marriage and Family', 'Civil Life and Political Systems', 'Aging and Death', 'Art and Beauty', and 'Work, Tools and Technology'. (The article expands on each of these.)

Richardson proposes students would be more engaged in these themes than they are in things like "history" or "geography." Examples of arts integrated instruction in books such as Third Space: Where Learning Matters by Lauren Stevenson and Richard Deasy from the Arts Education Partnership, certainly could support that hypothesis.

Sunday Arts Education Connection #5: Unity and Variety

Third Installment in my series on Arts Elements and Principles

The complementary arts principles of variety and unity are this week's topic—building on last week's post on contrast. The principles of unity and variety are important in all four arts disciplines. Whether composing music or a dance, writing a play, or creating a painting or graphic design, the artist must strive for wholeness and cohesiveness—unity—while introducing enough variety to prevent a work that is monotonous.

Exploring these principles in an arts class could set the stage for other investigations. Consider: In science, children marvel at the vast variety of species while seeking to impose unity through classifying them. In math, they create a whole shape from a variety of shapes. In reading, they look for a common theme that unifies a novel or poem and for the variety of ways the author or poet uses to present that theme. In writing or speaking, they work on making sure they use variety to keep the audience's interest while building on a thesis. In social studies, they consider the many cultures and ethnic groups that make one United States or the many nations that make one world.


Photo Credits: Stefano Corso, Agência Brasil, Justin, Peter Halasz, Mark Harden's Artchive

Link to Be the Change

Sorry. I forgot to add the link to the Web site referenced in my earlier post. It's Be the Change—Year of Creativity.

Design Your Own Creative Business Card

A design Web site called Be the Change provides a fun way to play with ideas—a business card generator that features dozens of occupations you won't find in the classifieds. Some are thought-provoking—Idea Cultivator, Imaginary World Interior Designer, and Engineer of the Fantastic. Maybe more companies should create these positions. Others are whimsical—Goldfish Hypnotist, Moment Anticipator, and Paper Airplane Pilot.

This really made me think about the amazing work graphic designers do.

Here's an example:

Group Shares Thoughts on Human Greatness

With all the focus on preparing our next generation for the challenges of science and industry, I like to adjust my perspective by visiting the Web site of an organization called Touch the Future. TTF, led by Michael Mendizza, is an effort to revolutionize "the way local communities mentor parents and the people who care for children." It includes writings from visionary thinkers about what it means to care for children and support their development as human beings. Immerse yourself in those writings and you'll feel a heightened sense of urgency about making the arts a more integral part of the curriculum.

One visit introduced me to Lynn Stoddard, author of Educating for Human Greatness. Stoddard's work led a diverse group of educators and thinkers to develop seven principles of human greatness that should be at the heart of education:

1. Identity – Help students learn who they are – as individuals with unlimited potential, develop their unique talents and gifts to realize self-worth and develop a strong desire to be contributors to family, school and community.

2. Inquiry – Stimulate curiosity; awaken a sense of wonder and appreciation for nature and humankind. Help students develop the power to ask important questions.

3. Interaction – Promote courtesy, caring, communication and cooperation.

4. Initiative – Foster self-directed learning, will power and self-evaluation.

5. Imagination – Nurture creativity in all of its many forms.

6. Intuition – Help students learn how to feel and recognize truth with their hearts as well as with their minds – develop spirituality and humility.

7. Integrity – Develop honesty, character, morality and responsibility for self.

Read more about this list at The Daily Kos.

Sunday Arts Education Connections #4

Contrast
Second Installment in my series on Arts Elements and Principles (See overview post See introduction to series See entry on Form)

Contrast is a design principle at work in all the arts disciplines. Listening to or composing contrasting musical passages—high and low pitch, fast and slow tempo—and exploring the effects of color contrasts prepares the senses for scientific observation and opens the writer's mind to how contrasts in sentence structure improve the flow of a composition.

Contrast also is a technique used in arts criticism. Critics may highlight the contrasts within a work of art and explore contrasts across periods and movements to heighten understanding or suggest meaning. The critical exploration of contrasts in paintings can be a springboard for investigating differences across societies, ecosystems, and ideologies.



Photos from Flickr and Wikimedia Commons by: Aussiegall, Bobbie8, Vince Alongi, Andrew*, babasteve, Azoreg, roberdan, makemake, Thomas Schoch

Words Matter

The National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE) sponsors National Words Matter Week, a free celebration of the written word, held annually during the first full week in March. They have invited all bloggers to write on the idea that "words matter" during this week. Here are my thoughts:

I have savored words that capture and enchant the imagination:

A fallen flower
Returning to the branch?
It was a butterfly.

Moritake

I have shaken my fist, then hung my head, before words that sober me to realities I wish to see erased—but only if it's easy. Like genocide . . . poverty . . . war

I have cherished words that heal. Words of God that sometimes show up in human form. Like mercy and compassion and grace.

I have been embarrassed for words that are used as ornament when they should be the foundation. Like collaboration and community. I wish to reclaim them.

I have mourned the abuse of words. I have scratched to no avail at labels slapped on to mask the truth. Like communism—a sure way to silence so many calls for social justice. I have exchanged sad glances with words used to turn off thought. Like patriotism and faith—words used to stifle all questions when their power lies in nurturing inquiry. I will be faithful to them.

For words, I have done my little bit to defend meaning, to hold fast to words whose powers are being lost through carelessness—like respect . . . belief . . . love.

In words, I have heard the music—shimmer, silence, lovely—seen the radiance—dawn, springtime, eternity—shivered and flushed—exquisite, glorious, poignant, transformation—tasted the nectar and smelled the blossoms—poetry, prayer, peace.

To words, I raise a toast of light and warmth.

Yes, words matter.

Core Knowledge AND Critical Thinking, Please

Some bloggers continue to suggest that increased focus on creativity and critical thinking skills threatens basic literacy, numeracy, and knowledge in the disciplines.

On the Core Knowledge blog, Robert Pondiscio shows eloquently how the symbolism in President Obama's inaugural speech would be lost on those without knowledge of history.
He questions the impact of the speech on children. He asks: "How many of our children, instead of seeing mere novelty, comprehend fully and viscerally the improbable closing of a historical loop they have just witnessed?"

While no child could be expected to comprehend the full historic impact of the speech, I think many will comprehend it "viscerally" because they have been witnesses, and they have heard family stories. They have asked questions and wondered. I think many will be motivated to learn more about the struggles mentioned in the speech because they know they have witnessed something important.

As a person educated in the liberal arts and a lifelong seeker of knowledge, I know my content knowledge of history, literature, and the Bible significantly deepened my understanding of what the President was saying in his speech. But most of my mental activities during and after the speech were along these lines:

I remembered stories my grandparents and parents told of the Depression and saw vividly in my mind household artifacts from that time. I recalled the metallic smell of my grandfather coming in from the steel mill. I remembered models of the Gemini spacecraft my brother built. I remembered my uncle's letters home from Viet Nam and the tears of girls in my neighborhood whose brothers and boyfriends were shipping out. I mentally replayed news clips of the civil rights movement during my childhood and remembered being in sixth grade and seeing a photo of a bleeding, prostrate black man being beaten as I tried to read a textbook on race relations because O wanted to know why so many white adults seemed to be troubled by Martin Luther King. I remembered our black garbage man standing in the kitchen and giving my mother his take on the riots of 1968. I heard his voice clearly. No textbook accounts came to mind, nor did I remember any lectures—except one nun trying to make us view the civil rights movement through the eyes of black people. I remembered her simple but profound words.

Basic literacy skills acquired in school made it possible for me to use books in making sense of those experiences. The content knowledge I acquired in school made my experiences more meaningful. But what engaged me and made me want to learn about historical events did not happen because of an excellent curriculum.

I acquired the content knowledge that gave the speech meaning because of my own unique way of thinking about the world. Wanting to understand my world determined what I decided was important to know and what I paid attention to and pondered during and after my school experience. I believe that more opportunities to ask and explore good questions and share knowledge in creative ways would have enriched my understanding even more, sharpened my thirst for core knowledge, and made a better scholar out of me.

I remember so many questions not answered in my textbooks and history classes: What is communism? How could such things happen to Anne Frank? Why are blacks unwelcome in our neighborhood? Why should Americans die in Viet Nam?

Here's another: Why do some want to make everything an either-or proposition?

I think what we need now is "Yes . . . and . . . "

The Core Knowledge Blog and others (see tomorrow's post) acknowledge that content and critical thinking are inseparable, but then they set about exposing the inadequacy of critical thinking for making sense of history or solving problems. Is content knowledge all we will need to understand war in the Middle East or negotiate a treaty or craft an effective energy policy?

Art and the Inauguration

I was glad to see that the arts were part of Barack Obama's Inauguration.

According to the LA Times: "Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States of America exactly at noon today Eastern time in a fashion unlike any of his predecessors. The ceremony ran a couple of minutes late, and as the clock struck, Obama had not yet been sworn in. Rather power changed hands as he sat quietly on the steps of the Capitol and -– along with much of the rest of the world -- listened as violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill performed the world premiere of “Air and Simple Gifts” by John Williams. (You can watch and hear it below.)

Power changed hands just as the sober introductory air segued into an animated riff on the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts,” on which Aaron Copland famously wrote a set of variations for his ballet “Appalachian Spring.”

Here is the video of that performance:

Poet Elizabeth Alexander delivered a poem called Praise song for the day that inspired me to feel gratitude and hope. All of us made this country great and what each of us does matters. The "day" in the title was both the new beginning of an historic Inauguration and a celebration of every day—all the seemingly insignificant acts that create our lives and affect others in ways we don't know.I loved the last line and I hope it stays with us all:

"In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light."

Also, "View of the Yosemite Valley" by Thomas Hill of the Hudson River School was selected to grace the Inauguration luncheon. The Hudson River School artists (some of whom painted scenes from the West as well) sought to raise awareness about caring for the land and to further the idea of Manifest Destiny, the position that America should expand westward to extend "from sea to shining sea" and spread democracy throughout the world.

The Conundrum of Art as Evidence

I know that yesterday's post—an image and a song about 21st century kids—are not really evidence, in the usual sense, that the arts should play a central role in developing 21st century skills. I've done enough writing about research-based reading programs to know what it takes to make causal connections. And I know there is a growing research base on arts education and arts integration I could cite. (If you're interested, start at the Arts Education Partnership. )

But I'd like to suggest that developing creative, innovative thinkers requires that the education community and those who set policy need to adopt an innovation agenda for themselves. If you have decided to act based on scientific research, then fund basic and applied research to test promising approaches like arts integration in a systematic way. If you view education as a science, you must do more than look at the existing literature for answers. It is not scientific to ignore possibilities because no one has yet proved them.

At the same time, think about a broader approach to collecting evidence. I still concede that the two artists I mentioned yesterday have not provided a basis for action, but qualitative studies and meta-analyses, as well as looking at the culture, have a place in the quest for innovation. Think about it: While the theories of Einstein and Freud were taking shape, artists like Picasso and Kandinsky were investigating space, time, and consciousness in parallel.

Or did the poet Ezra Pound get it right:

"Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet- headed many will never learn to trust their great artists."

Sunday Arts Education Connections #3

First Installment in my series on Arts Elements and Principles (see overview post see introduction to series)

Form
Form is an element in music, dance, theater, and visual art. It shapes our expectations, perceptions, and memories of arts experiences. Imagine exploring form as it relates to art, culture, language, the diversity of nature, the landscape. The possibilities are endless.

Arts Education Connections #2: Overview of Approaches

This is an overview of the four ways of approaching the arts. (For readers who may have even less fine arts training than I do.)

Students' work in each of the arts disciplines can be categorized as:

Art-making (or production): Performing a musical composition, a dance, or a play. Creating an original work of visual art, writing a play, creating a dance or dramatic improvisation, composing music, etc. Includes a number of technical components, such as learning dance steps or proper intonation on an instrument and notating a composition, mastering paints and other media, and learning how to block a scene in a play. Includes the generation of original ideas, the involvement and expression of emotions, and the making of meaning.

Art history: Connecting art to people, places, and times. Gaining a better understanding of artworks, periods, and styles by examining them against a larger context of history and culture. Using art to better understand events, periods, and other phenomena.

Criticism: "Reading" works of art. Responding to the form of artworks (how the elements and principles have been used) or to their expressive qualities. Formulating and supporting hypotheses about the meaning, importance, or value of works of art.

Aesthetics: Examining theories regarding what makes art good, important, or valuable. Connecting works of art to bigger philosophical questions and ideas.

As you may imagine, these approaches often overlap and enrich one another. I intend in my "Arts Education Connection Sunday series" to explore how they might also overlap with and enrich other disciplines and help develop 21st century skills.

Arts Education Connections #1: Elements & Principles Overview

Although sources vary on what are considered the elements of visual art, music, dance, and drama. My list as an example:

Visual art elements: Line • Shape or Form • Color • Space • Value • Texture
Visual art principles: Balance • Contrast • Emphasis/Focal Point • Movement/Rhythm • Proportion/Scale • Repetition • Unity/Harmony

Music Elements: Duration • Intensity • Pitch • Timbre
Music Principles: Composition • Form • Genre • Harmony • Rhythm • Texture

Dance Elements: Action/Movement • Body • Relationships • Dynamics • Space
Dance Principles: Climax and Resolution • Contrast • Development • Repetition • Sequencing • Transition • Variety • Unity

Theater Elements: Characters • Plot • Setting • Script • Dialogue • Staging
Theater Principles: Balance • Collaboration • Discipline • Emphasis • Focus • Intention • Movement • Rhythm • Style • Voice

As you'll notice, some elements and principles are shared by different arts. That is the first indication that these elements and principles are powerful concepts that are widely meaningful. The word cloud below (made at www.wordle.com provides a first look at the overlaps.

Slowing Down to Catch Up

In Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, psychologist Guy Claxton says the tendency of our accelerated society to push us to think faster and make decisions quickly can stifle creativity because it over-emphasizes reason, logic, or analytical thinking—what he calls d-mind (d is for deliberation). In today's Western culture, he says, "time spent exploring the question is only justified to the extent that it clearly leads toward a solution to the problem. To spend time dwelling on the question to see if it might lead to a deeper question seems inefficient, self-indulgent, or perverse." Claxton says the "intelligent unconscious," which he calls the "undermind" or "tortoise mind," is a "patient, playful, mysterious" way of knowing that is especially valuable when the situation is "shadowy, intricate, or ill-defined."

In other words, innovators in science and industry use disciplinary knowledge and methods but more is at work in the emergence of breakthroughs. Opportunities for incubation—that mysterious process where nothing seems to be happening—are vital in the research and development jobs that will drive our future economy.

Is there time for incubation in the learning that happens at school? What might happen if students were allowed to arrive at the "aha!" moment more naturally? What if they were given opportunities to play spontaneously with ideas, tools, and concepts? What if they began each year with big interdisciplinary problems that could be continually revisited as learning unfolded?

This, of course, would mean the end of "periods" and "units." There would need to be some time built into the day for choice and freedom. Assessment would need to be fluid, formative, and flexible. The accountability systems and those in business who call for both rigor and 21st century skills would need to trust the tortoise mind.

Photo by The Learning Commonwealth at Wikimedia Commons.

Talk Summary and Comments: Stephen Heppell & Fundamental Change

I attended an online keynote speech by Professor Stephen Heppell, a professor at Bournemouth University in England. Called Europe's leading online education expert, Professor Heppell titled his talk “It Simply Isn’t the 20th Century Any More Is It?: So Why Would We Teach as Though It Was?” The video can be viewed at http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=268

Here are a couple of highlights I thought were especially powerful:

• Now that technology can "do jolly well what we want," the challenge is not ‘what can we make the technology do?’ The challenge is ‘what do we want?’


• He asserts that education as we know it—the factory model and the emphasis on productivity over community—needs to be completely replaced or schools will disintegrate. He says the signs are there and points to the indicators that preceded both the current financial crisis and the current trends in online learning.
  


• He called attention to the big, BIG picture context of new technology and media: We are seeing fundamental change, which he says can be described as the end of oligarchy or, more simply, as the end of "they" and the beginning of "us." He linked this to the dominant paradigms of prehistory and more "primitive" civilizations, which were/are "not locked in a world of narrative linearity and ownership of knowledge."
  


• He says we are witnessing "the death of education and the birth of learning."

As someone who spent much of the 90s writing about technological revolution, I was thinking about how that revolution was just the tip of the iceberg. So much attention was focused on that while all the structures of our society and how we think were being reconfigured.

I began to think about the ideas of the scientist Ilya Prigogine who many may remember was cited in Margaret J. Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science: Learning About Organization from an Orderly Universe (1992, Berrett-Koehler). I pulled out my copy and read that while it makes sense to stabilize machines and structures as a way to prevent deterioration, living systems (organizations) need non-equilibrium to change and grow because they exchange energy with their environments. Prigogine said living systems are "dissipative structures." In Wheatley's words, they "dissipate their energy in order to recreate themselves into new forms of organizations" (88).

In ecosystems, for example, external fluctuations in the environment exert great pressure on the system and the system uses its energy very inefficiently, but "as the ecosystem matures, it develops an internal stability, a resiliency to the environment that, in turn, creates conditions that support more efficient use of energy and protection from environmental demands"(92).

Wheatley applies these ideas to organizations. In the factory model, she says, "managers watched for departures from the norm so they could "make corrections and preserve the system at its current levels of activity"(78). Systems that are organized around core competencies but open to information from outside are less vulnerable to environmental disturbances. Their more fluid structure ultimately leads to an internal stability. As expressed by one scientist she quotes (Jantsch), "the more freedom in self-organization, the more order."

On other words, there is much more happening in education than a change in tools. Trying to impose the old factory model using new tools will not work. Openness, creativity and freedom to innovate are the system of learning that is being born as the old system of education dies.

Below
Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction: A chemical reaction caused by changes in temperature and mix (disequilibrium)

Wondering About Einstein

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."

- Albert Einstein

I am intrigued by the fact that Albert Einstein attributed his groundbreaking scientific theories to both mathematics and imagination, that he played his violin every day, and that he once said “I often think in music.”

I wonder:

Did Einstein's love of music and his interest in so many divergent streams of 20th century life play a role in his amazing ability to perform thought experiments about the mysteries of time, space, light, and energy?

We'll never know. But few would discount the value of imagination and intuition in Einstein's work. And shouldn't we at least consider the possibility that his genius was somehow interwoven with his music?

Ways of Knowing

A book called Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger discusses how our ways of organizing knowledge have changed due to hyperlinking capabilities. Knowledge is not longer a "thing" that we store in one place. This reduces the primacy of hierarchy.

I think this is true, and it is exciting, but we may be ignoring other realities. Using my old pre-Internet hyperlinking system (memory + pulling a book off the shelf) plus the synchronicity between our thoughts and what grabs our attention led to these three connections:

1) I remembered Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan's famous quote "The medium is the message," reflected a concern with the new medium of television. He meant to call attention to the idea that the media we use have their own effects on perception and consciousness that are independent of content.

2) I remembered Bill McKibben. In The Age of Missing Information, McKibben reports what he "learned" from a full day of watching television in contrast to what he learned during a day spent outdoors—and asserts that we are becoming ignorant about information that has meant the survival of our species.

3) I was reading philosopher/poet John O'Donohue and this passage jumped out at me:
"We were once enwombed in the earth and the silence of the body remembers that dark, inner longing. Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, memories from the time before the mind was born. Within us are depths that keep watch. These are depths that no words can trawl or light unriddle. Our neon times have neglected and evaded the depth-kingdoms of interiority in favor of the ghost realms of cyberspace. We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us. We have become haunted pilgrims addicted to distraction and driven by the speed and colour of images" (pages 33-34 in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace).