A lesson in Humility and Patience

John Hope Franklin ( 1915-2009) told of this incident from his childhood during a TV interview. When John was about six, his family lived in a village with no grocery store. They had to travel to the next village to buy their groceries. One morning John’s mother along with John and his sister waited by the railroad tracks to flag down the train to the next village. When the train arrived, the three jumped onto the train as quickly as possible, since the train didn’t stop but only slowed down for them. Once on, the three of them settled into the first available seats they could find. A while later the train conductor showed up. The conductor said that they had to leave the coach immediately since they were in the whites-only section of the train. John’s mother responded that she couldn’t possibly get off the moving train with two small children in tow. The conductor then stopped the train and made the three members of John’s family exit the coach. But instead of letting them get on the non-white section of the train, he threw them completely off the train in the woods between the two villages.
As they walked back to their village along the tracks, John started to cry. It was too much to handle for young John. He felt angry, humiliated and sad. He turned to his mother for comfort. His mother said.”No amount of crying will get us back on that train. So instead crying over what happened, focus all your energy in proving that you are better than the people in the coach, because of whom we had to be kicked out”.

I have thought of this incident many many times. When faced with injustice and discrimination, this mother chose to downplay the embarrassment and use the experience to motivate her upset child.

John went on to become Dr.John Hope Franklin, John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at The University of Chicago and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States of America.He passed away in March last year.

Thank you John for setting a wonderful example by leading an exemplary life.

I will Prepare and some day my chance will come

These are the words by Abraham Lincoln. I believe now that this quote is more about the preparation than it is about the chance.  What compels us to keep going in spite of obstacles that make taking each step that much more difficult? At some point we must start to believe that the right things will happen.Such is the case with educational research.

The problem at hand is fairly simple and straight forward. How do we educate our children to confidently face 21st century challenges? To answer this question, thought processes that brought us so far may not work. The reason being that knowledge that once was very difficult to access is now almost freely available. Not only that, it can now be studied, analyzed, discussed, dissected and represented in a different form rather easily. Of course, can also be misrepresented, falsified, disproved and written off without making any real case.

Unfortunately, a considerable amount of research today is a result of seeking incremental improvements of the status quo, as long as some statistical significance is achieved. What we probably need are some radical thinkers not afraid to put forward interesting theories of learning and instruction of the future and pilot them. We could perhaps use crowdsourcing to identify and encourage these thoughts.

I am pondering these things and more as I browse through the conference catalog waiting for some colleagues to arrive on a cold, dull rainy day here at Louisville, KY. This is the view from where I am sitting. Come tomorrow, this space will fill up with some of the best educators and educational researchers in the country.

New Moon on the Shuttle

Travelling between ASU campuses for work is not only time consuming but can also get very boring. Added to this, the reciprocal parking lots are not near the buildings I visit. I therefore began using the ASU shuttle services. The shuttle bus is usually almost empty, reasonably comfortable and the drive itself is relaxing. Especially so, if what I am reading is interesting. This brings me to my  current reading. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer. I still remember the first time I saw “Twilight”. I say first time because, I subsequently watched it a few more times along with my wife and by myself on the DVR. The movie remained in my thoughts for several days following my first viewing. I felt that it was one of those movies where everything just fell into place, and I mean EVERYTHING. But most of all, I liked the first person narrative of the movie. Kristen Stewart fit the role perfectly. The chemistry between her and the hero of the film is undeniable. This was a few months ago.

During a recent visit to London, I was pleasantly surprised by our friends when I was presented 3 of the 4 paperbacks in the Twilight series. As I read the New Moon on the shuttle, I cannot but help recount the characters from the movie. Bella Swan for me is Kristen Stewart. And so are all the other known characters. As I read the book, my visualization is like a movie with the real actors. This is the first time I am reading a sequel after watching the movie made from the first.

Stephanie Mayer’s writing itself is not particularly poignant. When building a scene or describing a character she stops short in such a way that the reader can fill the gaps to complete the missing pieces. I don’t know how it was in Twilight, but I am sure that there may be some who would be irritated at this kind of writing.

I an currently on page 140, beginning the chapter titled “Repetition”. It’ll take me a few more bus rides to complete the book.

BTW, has anyone noticed that I am not talking about my doctoral studies. I need a good shakedown pretty soon.

ANOVA and I

My stats exam is due on Monday. That means I begin to sweat and hyperventilate starting Friday. During the day, I squeeze an hour out to chalk out a game plan of study. I wander a bit around the campus. One of my favorite places on the campus is this quiet corver just adjecent to the Student Services building. The image you see above is taken from the corner of the walkway that leads to MY bench.

I hope I do well on the exam.

The Grieving Period for traditional teaching

Many of us like to teach in the same way that we were taught. But something has fundamentally changed in the last ten years. Information that was once locked in the minds of professors and in libraries is now out in the open. Every concept is explained and re-explained on the internet. Alternate theories are put forth freely. Animations and videos provide easy ways of visualizing complex information. Communication between individuals, teachers and students alike, is instantaneous and well beyond the walls of the classroom and confines of the work day. Once we teach our children the three Rs, we should probably get straight down to helping them make sense of the abundance of information now available.

Learning to learn

In other words, the skill our children will need the most is to learn to learn. Today's education does an excellent job of teaching children to read, write and to do basic math. Things seem to go very well till our children are in their fourth grade. After this, with the pretext of building upon prior knowledge, we bombard them with information and expect them to memorize almost all of what is presented. In addition to dealing with increasing amounts of information, our children will need to integrate information learned separately and in the past and make sense of it all. Many fail at this. Some call it the "fourth-grade slump". The slump exists because we teach our children information that is separate from the context. And we wait for the "A-ha" moment to happen. When it doesn't we go back and try to see what went wrong. Research studies ensue. "Decoding, comprehension, maturity, ability, strategies, resources, professional development of teachers, SEC, gender, ethnicity, age" just a few of the variables we study to death. The answers are lost in journal articles in the jargon of statistical significance, interactions, effect sizes and ANOVAs.

A new approach to education

We know what our children need. A new approach that presents our children with carefully designed problems (preferably taken from real life situations) that requires them to think more deeply, connect the dots, integrate the knowledge and come up with a solution. In the course of this learning, we will teach our children how to find the critical knowledge, effortlessly work with other students and stay focused on finding a solution to the problem. This system of learning is generally termed problem-based learning. And I believe that this approach will teach all of us to be lifelong learners and problem solvers.

The birth of a revolution

Change is hard and unwanted. Implementing problem-based learning (PBL) as a complete educational system is meeting with stiff resistance. Some opposing such drastic change in curriculum have argued that it costs too much and takes too much time to develop materials. Some others have argued that there is no research data that warrants this shift. After all this dies down, we will still face what can be called as the "grieving period". This is the period of transition from one macro educational approach to another. I believe that this has begun. When this will end, I do not know.

In the meantime, I only hope that not many children will slip through our unsuitable educational system.

Photo-of-the-day