schoolyard subversion

Links to other sites coming soon. If you have 'em, send them in!

Realizing the Promise of Technology: "In fact, the success of these projects has less to do with technology and more to do with the philosophy of learning and conception of professional development that they embody." A short paper by the Department of Education that explains how technology can be used to change our educational system.

A review of Schools of Thought: "The chief virtue of the exposition is...a 'literacy of thoughtfulness.' This is not a literacy of profitable skills, the certitude of facts, or the safety of truisms. Instead, it cultivates meaningfulness, attentiveness, and engagement in the human conversation as the entitlement of everyone. ...It depends on faith in children's inherent curiosity, and it encompasses communities of learning, rich classroom environments, articulate teachers, work that makes sense, good questions, and plenty of talk about things that matter. "

John Taylor Gatto, Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher: "School takes our children away from any possibility of an active role in community life -- in fact it destroys communities by reserving the training of children to the hands of certified experts -- and by doing so it ensures that they cannot grow up fully human."

Top Ten Mistakes in Education part of Engines for Education, an online hyperbook. If nothing else, read these top ten mistakes, then try and fix them.

Text, Knowledge, and Pedagogy in the Electronic Age, a course on the use of modern technologies in education. Interesting thoughts on the use of hypertext and the myth of knowledge.

How Can Technology Be Used to Enhance Teaching and Learning gives examples of the use of technology in the classroom. It's interesting, but it doesn't go far enough.

ERIC: "The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) is a national information system designed to provide users with ready access to an extensive body of education-related literature."

The EFF Educational Censorship Archive is a great resource for information on various attempts by schools at electronic censorship.

Ted Nelson: "Education is typically the process of successively ruining subjects for you, and the last subject to be ruined determines your profession. An educated person is someone who says, 'I don't know anything about that, I never took it.' Whereas a free-minded person can become excited about a new idea, in any subject, whether or not he or se ever heard about the idea or subject before."

Slashdot's Tales From the Hellmouth series: 1 2 3.

An education anarchist gives his thoughts on education, the information revolution and more. Highly reccomended!

Education and Technology: The Future of Education: The most important skill in a knowledge economy is an advanced ability to think and learn. The traditional "passive" classroom is oriented toward crowd control, fostering conformity and dependency. It neither puts students in charge of their own learning nor encourages them to seek alternate sources of knowledge. We learn to be parrots rather than inquirers. The passive waters we swim in are so pervasive that most of us remain blind through the entire process of schooling. The nexus of the new learning architecture will be to strike a death blow to uniform and passive learning.

Gatto in the WSJ: I just can't do it anymore. I can't train children to wait to be told what to do; I can't train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can't persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn't any, and I can't persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn't true. A great quick sum-up of Gatto's beliefs and the problems with schools.

Deschooling Society: the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, but it's been highly recommended from people I respect all around.

Learn and Live, George Lucas Educational Foundation. It's not too subversive but it does have Robin Williams in it.

Alternative Education, Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio. A great background behind the Sudbury Valley Model.

Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd. A great song about school.

Schooling: The Hidden Agenda. A great speech about how our educational system came to be.