Election 2016: Democracy and Education
It is Election Day 2016, and as I look around at Abrome, I recognize that the people in our community who will be most impacted by this election are the ones who are too young to vote. Our Learning Coaches (the adults) each voted early, although I would be willing to bet that none of them did so enthusiastically. No matter what your political affiliation or orientation, I think most of us can agree that the 2016 election has brought out the worst in many, and that it highlights some glaring flaws in the American political system.
First and foremost, the political system is not democratic by any means. As I previously alluded to, not everyone has a say in who is elected. Children, high numbers of the infirm or mentally disabled, many homeless, most incarcerated felons, many ex-felons, residents of US territories, and foreign nationals are locked out of the process, even though they most often feel the brunt of public policy decisions.
Among those who can vote, the process is still not truly democratic. Voter turnout issues aside, a vote in New Hampshire carries more weight than a vote in Wisconsin, which carries more weight than a vote in California. This is a function of the Electoral College, and clearly violates the notion of “one person, one vote.” And even if all votes were equal, those who directly and heavily contribute to candidates have an outsized influence on the policy positions that those candidates take once in office.
Add on top of the undemocratic nature of these elections from the people’s perspective, the two-party system that has a tight grip on the electoral process makes the notion of democracy in politics a laughable one. The parties are semi-private organizations that cater to a tiny number of powerful constituencies that are out of step with the majority of Americans, but the overwhelming majority of voters believe that they must fall in line behind one of the main party candidates on Election Day.
So what does this have to do with education? Considering that schools are a key tool used to prepare young people for engagement in society, a considerable amount. Unfortunately, the roles current students are being trained to hold in society are not nearly as idealistic as we have been led to believe. Fundamental to the purpose of schooling was a sorting function to create different classes of people, most of which were to serve at the convenience of those who controlled society. While the makeup of the people who control society has evolved, and while there is a greater possibility for mobility from the lowest classes to the controlling classes today than when the schools were created, from a functional perspective modern day schools further entrench disparities instead of serving as a great equalizer. And as noted before, inequality is incompatible with true democracy.
There is a nation-wide collection of “Democratic Schools” that argues that by creating democratic settings in the schoolhouse, where every child has as much of a say as every adult, that we can create a democratic society where the people take control of the political machine. Although we love Democratic Schools, we disagree with this hypothesis.
Democracy is not a silver bullet solution to our problems, as any black man in East Texas or any homeless man in the streets of San Francisco might be able to attest to. Democracy in its worst form allows for the minority to be abused by the majority. It is essential that an enlightened society respect the rights of all people, in spite of biases and privilege. While we agree that there is tremendous value to be gained by giving young people as much of a voice as adults in schools—promoting democracy in education does not solve the problems of the status quo, and in many ways it serves as a distraction.
So how can education get us to a better future? Three powerful ways it can move us there are (1) by promoting empathy within the populace, (2) by creating an informed, thoughtful populace that is not easily moved by false promises or dogmatic rhetoric, and (3) by allowing all members of society to believe they can improve the human condition.
First, many of the problems of our political system revolve around a fear or hatred of the other. These manifest themselves most powerfully in an anti- stance against entire communities such as black people, immigrants, Muslims, Jewish people, people with mental illness, the homeless, drug users, and people who identify as LGBTQ, among others. Politicians recognize this fear and often times play on it, promising policies that will directly harm these groups so that the bulk of voters can feel safer in the status quo.
An Emancipated Learning environment that embraces diversity of people, ages, and ideologies would directly undermine the divisions that require a lack of empathy to sustain. When people are introduced to those they are told to be scared of, they quickly recognize that we are all far more alike than we are different. Diversity brings tremendous value to our lives in terms of enrichment, creativity, and connection. The age diversity component of empathy building cannot be emphasized enough. In most schools we segregate children by age, taking away a critical opportunity for them to develop empathy by way of caring for those who are younger than them.
Second, our current political system requires a largely uniformed or apathetic populace. This may sound pessimistic, but it is easily affirmed by looking at what politicians promise and what their donors advocate, and comparing them with the decisions politicians make once in office. While society is much better off now than it was a century ago, there are still large swaths of the American populace that are marginalized or oppressed by the political and private institutions that most accept as necessary. An informed populace that also has empathy for marginalized and oppressed communities would not tolerate the current structure of society.
An Emancipated Learning environment, free of a status quo promoting standardized curriculum, and free of hierarchical structures that demand subservience, allows Learners to seek truth in their world. It allows them to question narratives that are presented to them, and to have the courage to seek out alternative explanations, or novel solutions. These people are far less likely to be moved by empty promises or exaggerated threats.
Third, our political system is tailored to appeal to the belief that we cannot improve the world around us. We are left to look for saviors who will come in and manipulate the political institutions to organize society in a way that benefits us, most often at the expense of others. It is not a system that encourages people to try to create a better society for themselves. It tells people that a vote every several years is how one performs their civic duty, while suggesting that how they spend the rest of their lives is irrelevant (except when politicians decide to alter their daily behavior for the benefit of others).
An Emancipated Learning environment would reject the notion that our value can be captured in a vote. Instead, it would remind us that we can all lead remarkable lives—lives in which we have a positive impact on the communities around us. It allows us to realize that we can be happy, healthy, and serve others so that we can all be better off. And these people are the ones who do not need to rely on the established institutions that have left them virtually powerless.
On Election Day 2016, our Learners are unable to vote on the person who is going to have an outsized impact on their lives over the next decade, for better or worse. But far more importantly, they are in an educational environment that allows them to recognize that they can transcend the limitations of electoral politics. These Learners know that they can purposefully and directly improve the human condition.
Photo: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Republican and Democratic presidential nominees (Wikipedia)
Five Steps to End School Bullying: Collaboration, Not Competition (Essay 2 of 6)
We previously pointed out that the first step to ending school bullying was to end age segregation.[1] The second step is to eliminate competition and grades.
The most overt (and odious) function of schooling is a sorting function. Edward Thorndike, the father of modern educational psychology, pushed for standardized classes, homework, and tests in schools in order to rank students. He figured that ‘smart’ students would thrive under these conditions, and that less intelligent students would falter.[2] He did not see students faltering as a shortcoming of the system, he saw it as a desired outcome. He would ask you, why waste resources on students who were unlikely to benefit from the time and money invested in them?
What Thorndike did not know, and what we know today, is that learning is not linear. Learning happens in spurts, and cannot be set to a developmental timeline. Some of the most intellectually curious learners seem to be going nowhere for long periods of time, while those who appear to most quickly learn subject material often get lost in the long run. Yet our schools still judge students as Thorndike wanted them to be judged over a century ago—by the speed at which they can master predefined tasks.
Schools judge and sort students by grading them. In the overwhelming majority of traditional schools, students are given a letter grade (or worse, a numeric grade) for each class that they take. This helps administrators and teachers quickly determine whether the students are dumb, average, or smart by subject area (although they often use the euphemisms basic, proficient, and advanced). While the adults may appreciate being able to measure and rank students, young people tend to absorb these grades into their self-worth. And because schools would be unable to rank students if they gave all of them perfects scores, most students are going to accept that they are less than intelligent. This may come in the form of “I am not good at math,” “I am a bad writer,” or “I don’t like science.” And unsurprisingly, when students come to embrace the belief that they are not good at certain subjects, or that they are dumb, they often give up on the learning process.
While grading is detrimental to the self-confidence of most students, and undermines the learning process, it also tends to negatively alter the behavior of parents. Parents generally understand that the prospects of their children getting into top colleges out of traditional high schools requires that their children rank at the top of their class. In order to rank at the top of the class, it is not sufficient to master the content of the classes they take, or to love learning. Instead, they must get the highest grades in all subjects. When the ultimate measure of academic success becomes whether or not one gets higher grades than all of his peers, there is no room for anything less than winning. Winning isn’t everything in the eyes of these parents, it’s the only thing.
With a hyperfocus on being number one, cheating becomes one way to rise in the hierarchy above one’s peers.[3][4] Other students become relegated to nothing more than competition, and this idea is reinforced by teachers who are quick to accuse collaborators of cheating.
Additionally, the focus on outperforming peers then bleeds into other activities that colleges care about when considering traditional schooled applicants, namely sports and clubs. Participation and engagement alone does not allow one to rise above. Instead, students recognize that they must be the Captain of the football or volleyball team, the President of the debate or robotics club, the Editor of the student newspaper, and the President of the student council. And while cheating becomes the way to squeeze out those extra points to get the top grades, a Machiavellian approach to stepping on classmates and teammates often becomes the way to rise to the top of extracurricular activities.
In the schooling environment where everyone wants to be number one, bullying becomes ingrained in the fabric of the culture of the school. If they cannot be at the top of the class academically, at least they can assert their position socially. Where hierarchy is everything, many students resort to bullying as a way to secure their spot at the top of the class, or at least above select others (the bullied). And because so few can be at the top of the class academically or socially, there is significant pressure for schoolgoing children to engage in bullying, or to lend support to bullies.[5] Even the popular kids, the ones us adults so often assume to be doing the best, often engage in bullying. And disturbingly, the students who are the most popular with the teachers and administrators are often given the longest leash to engage in the most aggressive forms of bullying.[6]
In order to eliminate the bullying effects of competition in school, schools need to eliminate competition. Unfortunately, most schools cannot fathom a world without competition, because competition is the bedrock of the academic experience, and it is what is expected from parents, administrators, and bureaucrats. The simplest and most meaningful step toward eliminating competition is eliminating grades. Some schools give lip service to the value of reducing the pressure of grading, and a smaller subset of schools will ‘refuse to rank’ students to address the harmful effects of competition, yet they continue to grade students.[7] Schools can eliminate academic ranking by eliminating grading.[8]
The next step schools should take to eliminate competition is to embrace age-mixing, as articulated in the first essay in this series on bullying. When students are surrounded by other people appreciably older or younger than them, the urge to compete lessens dramatically. There is little reason for a ten-year-old to attempt to show that they are superior to a six-year-old, or a 14-year-old. Simply put, society does not expect six-, ten-, and 14-year-olds to compete with each other. Hopefully, someday, society will no longer expect ten-year-olds to compete with ten-year-olds, either.
Once schools eliminate grading and age segregation, they will be able to truly embrace collaboration in lieu of competition.[9] In a collaborative environment, the emphasis is not on how much more one knows than another, it is on what students can accomplish together. In such an environment, every member of the community is valued for what they can contribute to the experiences of others, and the need to jockey for position relative to one another disappears.
The collaborative environment we propose does not take away opportunities for leadership roles. Those leadership opportunities will be able to grow out of demonstrated interest and intentional action in the pursuit of one’s goals. Without the focus on beating one’s peers, there is less of a stigma in joining someone else’s project (becoming a follower). And in an environment with age diversity, it is natural for younger people to join in the efforts of older people without feeling as though one is not measuring up to the leader.
When we eliminate competition, we eliminate the existence of losers. In an environment where no one becomes a loser, the need for bullying evaporates.
(1) http://www.abrome.com/blog/2016/10/3/five-steps-to-end-school-bullying-age-mixing-essay-1-of-6
(2) https://www.amazon.com/End-Average-Succeed-Values-Sameness/dp/0062358367
(4) http://www.glass-castle.com/clients/www-nocheating-org/adcouncil/research/cheatingfactsheet.html
(7) College admission committees are not thrown off by schools that ‘refuse to rank’ their students. The committees get a profile of each high school, and back their way into figuring out how each applicant compares to their peers. Further, if multiple students from a given school are applying, it becomes readily apparent where in the rank order the various applicants fall. This reality can often exacerbate the stress that comes from grades, as students work frantically to improve their unknown position against peers.
(8) It is important to note that in addition to promoting a bullying culture, as previously mentioned, grading is harmful to students from a learning perspective. Even if schools were uninterested in addressing the issue of bullying, it would make sense for them to eliminate grading. An argument against eliminating grading would be that grading is necessary to assess what the students are learning. However, the reality is that assessments do not require testing or grades.
Non-graded assessments, in general, still undermine learning. Students benefit the most when they are able to deeply engage in learning without external pressure. If students know they are being evaluated, even if there are no consequences to the results of the evaluations, they are more likely to lose interest in the activity. This point is described well by Alfie Kohn in an essay on grading: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/grading/.
(9) While many argue that just a little competition peppered into a collaborative environment is better than full collaboration or no collaboration, the truth is that any amount of competition gets in the way of collaboration. Once again, Alfie Kohn covers this well in an essay on competition in collaborative classrooms: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/competition-ever-appropriate-cooperative-classroom/.
Teachers give terrible advice on how to deal with teachers
I recently stumbled upon a Quora question posted by a parent who wanted to know if she should speak to her daughter’s teacher, who is a bully, about the teacher’s treatment of her daughter. The Quora question asked:
“My daughter’s 1st grade teacher refused to let her use the restroom, and she ended up wetting herself. Should we talk to the teacher?
“The request to use the restroom was made 3 times before my girl wet herself. A week later, my daughter was hit in the nose by a boy that sits next to her. Then the teacher refused to let my daughter go to the nurse (she wears a contact lens, and is not allowed to put in eye drops w/out the nurse).”
I found the parent’s question to be reflective of the unfortunate power dynamic between less affluent parents and teachers or school administrators in the society we currently live in.[1] Parents too often defer to teachers and administrators, believing that professional educators must know better how to make choices for children than parents. And even when it is clear that a teacher is bullying a child, parents too often walk on eggshells around the teachers and instead turn their attention to helping the child alter her mindset or behavior to conform to the actions of the teacher.
However, it was in the responses to the question that I was most annoyed. Multiple people came to the defense of the teacher and/or shifted blame to the child.
Daniel Kaplan, a 15 year veteran public school teacher commented:
“You could go talk to the principal instead, bypassing the chain of command, but what if things aren’t quite as they appear? What if your daughter isn’t sure of the truth herself? What if she misunderstood? What if she isn’t quite telling the truth? What if it isn’t the whole story?”
Becky Dole, a 33+ year educator commented:
“You also need to consider the possibility that you don’t have all the facts. Do not ever bypass the teacher. At least get the teacher’s side of the story. THEN, if not satisfied, go to the principal. Most districts have a chain of command and post it. If you go over someone’s head, you are likely to be discounted and get the reputation (not just this year) as a difficult parent.”
Emily Richards, another teacher commented:
“Unfortunately, teachers have to err on the side of caution with toilet breaks. Some kids – given the freedom to go to the bathroom during lessons – do crazy things like start fires. Far more common – children will realise that you’re the teacher that lets them go to the toilet, and they’ll abuse the liberty. The same rule applies to lending out pens, letting them use your printer or accepting crappy excuses for not having their homework.”
Gabriele Alfredo Pini, a first grade teacher commented:
“Two truths to keep in mind:
· Children lie. Even when they want to tell the truth.
· Teacher make honest mistakes.”
I believe parents should have a few takeaways from these responses by teachers.
The first takeaway is to never ask a teacher for advice on how to deal with abusive teachers. It is human nature for teachers to make excuses for other teachers. The more someone identifies with a profession, the more likely it is that they will make excuses for other members in the profession (e.g., military, police, politicians). If you’re going to ask someone for advice on how to deal with someone who is abusive, do not ask someone who feels an allegiance to the abuser.
The second takeway is that too many teachers seem to believe that schools should be treated as if they were military units. Both Daniel and Becky talked about a “chain of command,” which makes a lot of sense because schools are often quite militaristic. In schools children are often expected to speak only when spoken to, they are expected to stand or walk in formation, they are expected to adhere to restrictive rules and standards, they are expected to conform to the culture of the school, and in many schools they are even expected to wear a uniform. However, children are not soldiers, and they should not be treated as if they were. My response to Daniel said:
“There is no chain of command. It is a school, not a military unit. Children are not soldiers, and teachers and principals are not NCOs and officers. The teacher doesn’t deserve a consultation. The teacher is clearly unfit to be working with children. The responsible thing to do flew out the window when the teacher refused to allow the child to go to the bathroom or go to see the nurse.”
The third takeaway is that too many teachers have a belief that children are inherently dishonest or sinful, while teachers are inherently well intentioned. Daniel, Becky, and Gabriel all suggested that the child who wet herself could have or likely lied. Gabriel extends this unfounded assumption to every single child. Emily, meanwhile, suggests that left to their own devices, children are going to abuse whatever liberties they are given, and even “do crazy things like start fires.”
And the fourth takeaway stems from the other three, parents should take the responsibility of protecting their children into their own hands instead of leaving it in the hands of tone-deaf teachers and administrators. The teacher who would not let the little girl go to the bathroom is clearly too incompetent to be trusted with children. However, the quoted teachers are also people that children should be protected from. If children are treated as dangerous, untrustworthy, and naturally deviant or sinful, then psychological harm follows. These children learn to not trust themselves, and to always defer to abusive authority figures for decision-making and permission to act. That is not healthy for the children, for the relationships between children and their parents, or for society as a whole.
And this was my response to the original Quora question:
“I would not talk to the teacher for much the same reasons as Laura Machado Toyos outlined in her answer. However, I would also bypass the principal. While the teacher who did not let your daughter go to the bathroom acted woefully inappropriately as a teacher, an adult with responsibility over children, and as a human being, one should recognize that the treatment was based on a disregard for the child, and that is present in all traditional, compulsory schools.
“What other type of environment in our society requires people to ask for permission to go to the bathroom? Other than school, jails and prisons are the only ones that I can think of.
“Schools prioritize control and management over student autonomy. Schools treat children as if they are incompetent beings, or worse, inherently destructive of sinful beings. And that type of assumption doesn’t only lead to some children wetting themselves, it tears down their sense of self-confidence and self-worth, oftentimes causing irreparable psychological harm.
“I would recommend that you pull your daughter out of school. Instead of subjecting her to harmful environments, I would encourage you to look into alternatives to schooling. In particular, look at progressive alternative schools such as Sudbury schools or Abrome, homeschooling, or unschooling.”
Remember, there are alternatives to school.
1. There is ample evidence that more affluent parents are more willing to speak up and make demands of educators than poorer parents are, as well as evidence that school administrators and teachers are more responsive to the demands of wealthier families.
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
At Abrome, we are currently trying to build an educational alternative that will eradicate the traditional model of schooling. Our blog posts generally revolve around what we do at Abrome and how various educational theories, psychological research, and economic and sociological realities relate to what we are trying to do. However, on Monday I took a break and went to see the movie Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (PG), and I just had to write about it and encourage parents to go see the movie with their children.
The movie revolves around a young man named Rafe who has a wild imagination that flows through the drawings he keeps in a special notebook. He also has not had the best experiences at school, seemingly due to behavioral issues, and is on his third school since his younger brother died from leukemia. He understands that this is his last shot at public school, and the threat of being sent away to a military school looms on the horizon if he does not make it work at Hills Village Middle School (HVMS).
His first day of school does not get off to a great start. After staying up all night drawing cartoons in his notebook, he is stopped by Principal Dwight as he is approaching the front doors of the school. Principal Dwight informs Rafe that the clothes he is wearing violates one of many school rules. While Principal Dwight is droning on, telling Rafe to get to know all of the rules in his rule book, Rafe’s friend Leo shows up behind the principal and mocks his every gesture. Rafe is thrilled to see Leo, who also says that he was pushed out of his old school.
In class, the first thing Rafe experiences is laughter from his classmates when they find out what his last name is, and then a student tells him, “welcome to hell.” Bullying is baked into the environment at HVMS through the common structures of schooling which include age-based segregation, competitive testing and grades, and the oppression of restrictive rules and abusive adults (e.g., Principal Dwight). The social conditions within the school and society also contribute to a bullying culture. While giving a pitch for his student council campaign at a school assembly, a male student encouraged people to vote for him because, “my dad is super rich and my mom is smoking hot.”
While bullying contributes to the misery of schooling, so does standardized testing. At the aforementioned assembly, Principal Dwight attempts to rally the students to focus on the upcoming B.L.A.A.R. (Baseline Assessment of Academic Readiness) test. Unfortunately for Rafe, a fellow student grabs his notebook while he is drawing up a sketch that mocked Principal Dwight’s focus on the B.L.A.A.R., and this brings the assembly to a tense halt. In retaliation, Principal Dwight destroys Rafe’s notebook.
Distraught, Rafe holes himself up in his room at home. Fortunately, Leo comes to the emotional rescue and encourages Rafe to find revenge by engaging on a campaign to undermine Principal Dwight’s oppressive rule. Leo convinces Rafe to figuratively destroy Principal Dwight’s rule book. With eight weeks left until the B.L.A.A.R., Rafe and Leo begin to plan and execute elaborate pranks that systematically violate each of Principal Dwight’s beloved rules.
As Rafe and Leo violate prank after prank, with the outcome always seen by an amused audience of students, many older viewers will be brought back to their middle school years, wishing that they could have done something about the needless limits they had on their freedoms, while younger viewers may find themselves imagining themselves taking on the man in their schools in their own ways.
Imagine if we treated lab rats like school children
Imagine the following experiment. Researchers place hundreds of rats into a large cage. The rats are then separated into groups of about 20, and each group is placed in their own partitioned space within the cage. The rats are not permitted to move around in that space; they are each assigned to a specific spot, and must remain stationary for 40-minute blocks of time. If they move from their assigned spot, they are subjected to a stress inducing sound.
The rats are not allowed to socialize with other rats while they are in their assigned spots. Instead, they are given menial tasks that they must perform to a time-based standard. They have no control over which menial tasks they are to perform. If they are caught socializing with other rats during the 40-minute block of time, or if they fail to perform the assigned tasks, they are subjected to a stress inducing sound.
At the end of each 40-minute block, the rats are released from their stationary positions for five minutes so they can be moved to their next assigned spot in a different partitioned space within the cage. They are allowed to socialize with other rats during the move, but if they are not in their assigned spot and performing their required menial tasks within the five-minute time limit, they are subjected to a stress inducing sound.
These 40-minute blocks make up the bulk of their day, with two exceptions. For 40 minutes each day they are permitted to roam free in a designated portion of the cage that may or may not have a beam of sunlight that falls upon it. And for another 40-minute block, they are permitted to eat processed rat food.
The sequence of these 40-minute blocks do not change over the course of the year. Each day is virtually identical to the day before it, with only a slight variation in the menial tasks that the rats are expected to carry out.
How do you think the rats in this experiment would fare in terms of physical, emotional, and mental health relative to a free-range rat? Physically, they would suffer. 40 minutes of free play per day cannot offset a sedentary existence. Cardiovascular health and muscular fitness would likely deteriorate, and the rats would probably begin to gain weight. The processed rat food would likely accelerate the weight gain, unless the rats lost their appetite for food. The poor quality of the processed rat food would likely contribute to malnourishment and longer-term health complications. The rats’ physical health would be further debilitated by emotional and mental stress.
Emotionally, the rats would have been prevented from socializing with other rats for a majority of their time in the cage. Rats are social animals, and the inability to socialize would lead to harmful behaviors during the small windows of time they would be permitted to interact with one another. It would not be surprising to see increased aggression and violence from select members of the rat community, especially in their attempts to exert dominance over one another, as is common among animals that spend much of their existence being controlled by others (e.g., researchers). The emotional stress experienced by the rats would negatively impact their physical and mental health.
Mentally, large number of rats would likely suffer from depression, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, or behavioral disorder, among other negative mental health effects. Their confined conditions coupled with a lack of autonomy and control would lead to serious mental illness for a significant number of rats. The resulting mental health complications of these rats would contribute to a degraded experience for the other rats, threatening their emotional and mental health, as well.
Now imagine that these rats are children. The structures and practices outlined in the experiment mimic the conditions children are subjected to in traditional schools. If it is inhumane to subject lab rats to such an experiment, it should logically follow that it is inhumane to subject children to traditional schooling.
Five Steps to End School Bullying: Age-Mixing (Essay 1 of 6)
A 2013 CDC Study found that 19.6% of youths had been bullied on school property in the previous 12 months, and 14.8% had been electronically bullied.[1] In a 2011 National Crime Victimization Survey, close to 1.2 million students reported that someone was hurtful to them at school once a week or more. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, and bully victims are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims. And while many parents focus on the violent bullying that is more often associated with boys, bullied girls are at an even higher risk of suicide.
When we launched Abrome, we believed that our model of emancipated learning would most strongly appeal to families that wanted their children to gain entry into the world’s top colleges and universities, without having to sacrifice their health and happiness.[2] However, it quickly became apparent that school bullying was the primary driver for the plurality of families that looked into Abrome. This subset of families wanted to end the misery associated with schooling. They were desperate for an alternative to schooling.
Bullying does not have to be a rite of passage for young people. There are a variety of factors that drive bullying, and educators and parents are able to influence, mitigate, and alter those factors to limit or eliminate bullying. This is the first of six essays that will lay out how we can end school bullying.
The first step to eliminate school bullying is to eliminate age segregation in schools. Unfortunately, by their very nature, schools segregate children from society. From the ages of 5 to 18, the expectation is that children disappear from society for the bulk of the day so that they can be schooled. While the motivations behind segregating children from society to school them were a mixture of noble and nefarious, the practical reality of segregation was an unnatural extension of childhood; an infantilization of young people.[3] While educators and parents cannot easily change the way young people are segregated from society, they can substantially change the segregation that exists within schools.
There has been ample research that shows that age-mixed classrooms produce substantial academic benefits to students.[4] However, less publicized is the benefit of age-mixing as an antidote to bullying. Age-mixing is powerful for what it brings into a classroom, and what it leaves out.
By mixing older children with younger children there is an injection of empathy into the classroom. Older children are drawn to serve as mentors and protectors of younger children, and they quickly hone in on the well-being of the younger children. This empathy also brings a level of calm into a classroom, no matter how visually and audibly chaotic it may seem. As Peter Gray points out, “the presence of little kids has a pacifying effect on big kids. Even when they’re not interacting.”
What age-mixing leaves out of the classroom is the social pressure to assert dominance over peers. Without younger and older children in a classroom, there is a natural tendency for young people to introduce new forms of hierarchy. This often results in unhealthy and abusive relationships among peers wherein family wealth, familial connections, athleticism, attractiveness, and brute force (among other factors) becomes the basis for social hierarchy. And the way these hierarchies are often validated is through mechanisms of bullying, which quickly and clearly highlight who is at the bottom of the hierarchy.
It is worth noting, however, that age-mixed classrooms are not sufficient to stop bullying. First, there are other factors that will be addressed in the following essays. Second, age-mixing in two to four year bands is not nearly as beneficial as age-mixing between very young children and older adolescents. Because children mature emotionally, mentally, and physically at different rates, multi-year groupings of children may at times mimic what single-year groupings look and act like. A wider range of age-mixing is necessary to fully extract the empathy and concern that older children will have for younger children. Schools in our society are generally bound by the 5- to 18-year-old age range, and that should be considered the minimum range of age-mixing for a school. Ideally, our children would be able to interact with people outside of the 5- to 18-year-old range, on a daily basis, with the opportunity to regularly interact with infants and retirees, alike.[5]
Age-mixing is a necessary step to effectively end school bullying. The greater the range of age-mixing, the better.
1. This study covered only high school students. The incidence of bullying is higher among middle school students.
2. Anecdotally, we have observed that the families most focused on elite college placement seem to be believe that sacrificing the happiness and health of their children is a necessary trade-off for admission success.
3. For example, one of the drivers behind compulsory schooling laws was an effort to protect children from child labor, which I would argue was a noble effort. Unfortunately, a nearly universal driver behind compulsory schooling was the attempt to condition or indoctrinate young people to become good citizens and loyal servants of the church or state.
4. One of the most appealing features of the growing micro-school movement is its eagerness to embrace mix-aged classrooms. For micro-schools, this is often a necessity as they do not have the scale to have break out students by year group.
5. In fact, despite the large anti-bullying industry that has popped up to help insulate schools from the liability associated with their bully-infested environments, the only intervention that has had a substantial impact on bullying is one that brings babies into the classroom.
Banned Books Week: the Abrome Library
This week is national Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. In recognition of Banned Books Week, we wanted to share the thinking behind the building of the Abrome library.
Abrome holds the radical belief that young people should be free to learn what they want to learn when they want to learn it, so long as it does not interfere with or harm anyone else. That learning happens best when Learners have full agency over their education. That dialectical learning greatly enhances one’s education. And that Learners should have access to resources that challenge their beliefs and assumptions.
We do not have classes or curriculum at Abrome, and we do not lecture Learners in order to instill certain values or beliefs. Instead, we give Learners the time and space to engage in learning that is meaningful to them. We focus on creating a culture where intellectual vitality thrives. We encourage Abrome Learners to challenge themselves by seeking critical feedback from their peers, reaching out to people with alternative opinions, and tapping the nearly endless stream of information available over the internet. And while we encourage tapping the resources that are now available due to the increased accessibility of information and connectivity of society, there is still something special about finding a nice, warm, comfortable spot where one can lose themself in a book.
Although we are a new school, we take a lot of pride in our library. In part to promote a love of literature, we have 700 books conveniently spread across multiple bookshelves throughout our space. To promote intellectual vitality and dialectical inquiry, we filled our shelves with challenging books in terms of prose, content, and message. We chose books that were highly relevant in terms of cultural literacy, that are of great historical significance, that promote ideas both virtuous and reprehensible, and that may not otherwise be accessible to Learners at traditional school or public libraries.
Our books generally fall into a few categories that traditional school libraries also have, and a few that they do not have. Among the categories that our library shares with traditional school libraries are a wide range of children’s literature, classic literature, biographies, domain specific (e.g., mathematics, physics) books, and reference books. Even within these categories, we hold titles that have often been challenged or banned by more traditional school libraries.
Outside of these shared categories, Abrome carries books that are not generally embraced by traditional school libraries. The reasons for their exclusion most often revolve around perceptions of morality, particularly as they relate to or intersect with politics, race, religion, sexuality, gender identity, drugs, or violence.
While 700 does not make for a particularly large library, we are proud of the fact that a good number of these books have been banned in the past. In fact, our library includes every book that has been banned or challenged that the Library of Congress included in their exhibit, “Books that Shaped America” (which includes Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, ironically).
We do not push any of these books on Abrome Learners; we allow them to sit on the shelves waiting to be found. If a Learner stumbles across one and dives in, we are ready to share in their learning, to make suggestions on other books and resources that may be worth seeking out (especially those with alternative viewpoints), and to talk with them about where they can take their learning next.
A selection of the books in the Abrome library that some have considered too controversial for young people, or that have been banned or challenged include:
· The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
· The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley
· Beloved, Toni Morrison
· Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, Susan Kuklin
· Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
· The Call of the Wild, Jack London
· The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
· The Color Purple, Alice Walker
· The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
· The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
· Howl, Allen Ginsberg
· The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
· Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
· The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
· Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
· Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler
· The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
· Our Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective
· The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
· Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
· Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong
· Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky
· To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
· Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
· Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
· The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez
What Abrome is Trying to Accomplish
“A society free of compulsory or coercive schooling, where young people are celebrated for their contributions to society, and where they all have the confidence to believe that they can improve the human condition.” [1]
Abrome was not envisioned because we believed that schooling could be administered more effectively; Abrome was envisioned because we know our civilization can be better. We live in an unjust, hierarchical, authoritarian society where human rights are violated and human capital is destroyed on a mass scale. Despite the tremendous progress that we have made economically and technologically over the past century, we have not made similar strides when it comes to expanding the freedoms and dignity of all people. [2]
Of all the levers that we could pull to radically improve the human condition, none comes close to the abolition of compulsory, coercive, traditional schooling. Schooling is not the only problem in society, but it is one of the most significant ones, and it perpetuates or amplifies virtually all of the other problems in society.
Schooling injects injustice into children’s lives at an early age. It strips children of their freedom and free will, and replaces it with strict rules on conduct, manner, thinking, and beliefs. In schools, children are voiceless. Sure, they may be allowed to talk, if they raise their hands, or at recess, if recess still exists, but their words carry no weight. Adults dictate to them anything adults think is of consequence.
Schooling introduces hierarchy in ways the family or church cannot. For most children, school is the first place they learn that there is a steep hierarchy in society, and that the assumed place for children is at the bottom. With the passing of time, so long as they obediently stay in their place, they can hope to slowly move up, one step at a time, one year at a time.
Schooling stamps authoritarianism onto the soul of children. It becomes obvious on its face that the teacher has complete control over the children in the classroom. And that the principal has complete control over the children in the school. There is no consensus, or shared responsibility. What the person in charge says is true; it is law. Those who question, resist, or rebel are punished quickly.
Schools prepare young people to become compliant members of the status quo. They are not educated; they are indoctrinated. They are not celebrated; they are simply measured. They are not trusted; they are managed. They learn to keep their mouths shut when they see injustice, and they are encouraged to go along to get along. If they are particularly compliant, and they figure out how to ingratiate themselves with their masters, they can even hope to rise to the top so that they can be the ones controlling others, whether it be as a teacher, a police officer, a corporate executive, or a politician.
By encouraging compliance, and allowing young people to think that they can only make a difference by moving along the approved and preordained paths prescribed to them, schools perpetuate and amplify the injustices already present in our society. It gives power to those already in power, and makes powerless those who come to believe there are no other ways to improve their world.
Through Abrome we aspire to radically alter the way society operates. We will free young people so that they can lead remarkable lives, fully confident in themselves and their ability to change the world for the better, with a support network that will encourage them along the way, as opposed to pulling them down. And just as importantly, we will validate this as a superior alternative to the status quo. Instead of placing children into destructive schools, it will become apparent that allowing them to be free actually increases the health, happiness, and future outcomes of young people. We will prove that we do not have to sacrifice the youth of children, nor do we have to make tradeoffs between health, happiness, and achievement, for the sake of their future.
Over the coming weeks we will highlight how the Abrome model is working to invalidate the traditional model of schooling so that parents will pull their children out of these schools, and instead allow their children to attend truly alternative schools, or to homeschool or unschool. We will write about how we eliminate the harmful structures and practices of schooling, and we will also share how Abrome provides Learners with the space and tools necessary to improve the human condition.
1. http://www.abrome.com/mission/
2. Although the rate of economic growth and technological innovation over the past century is unparalleled in human history, we have only scratched the surface of human potential. If humans were respected, freed from oppression, and empowered to participate in all aspects of economy, we would be significantly more advanced, prosperous, and egalitarian. Purely on economic terms, Libertarian L. Neil Smith claims that we would be eight times more wealthy if we were free. http://lneilsmith.org/utopian.html He is not alone in postulating how much wealthier we would be if free, as many others have made similar arguments. His estimate, however, is short by orders of magnitude.
What Abrome Learners are reading as of September 14, 2016
Five books we are currently reading:
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2 Learners)
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- Teach Your Own by John Holt
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Last five books read:
- The One Thing by Gary Keller
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid; The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney
- Drive by Daniel Pink
- The Art of Self-Directed Learning by Blake Boles
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Any System Designed Around the Average Person is Doomed to Fail
“How will children learn what they need to know if you don’t teach it to them? How do you know they are on track?”
These are the two questions we most often receive from parents and educators when we explain that the Abrome learning model is non-coercive. We do not test our Learners, we do not give them grades, and we do not give them homework. We do not have classes for the Learners to sit in on, or a curriculum for them to follow. In a society, where virtually everyone is forced to go to primary and secondary school, the assumptions are that learning happens at school, and that without the standard structures and practices of schooling, somehow that learning will be lost. At Abrome, we value the lives of young people far too much to give credence to these false assumptions.
Learning can happen anywhere, and the structures and practices of schooling are obstacles to learning, not vehicles for it. In this post I will address two beliefs or schooling practices that are particularly harmful. The first position I will attack is the belief that young people need to be directed and motivated to learn what is essential. The second position I will attack is that we can measure a student’s mastery of those essential learnings by comparing them against same-age peers.
Motivation: How will children learn what they need to know if you don’t teach it to them?
The overwhelming majority of young people do not need to be told what is essential to learn, and they most certainly do not need to be told how to learn it. Society assumes that if left to their own devices, young people will spend all day eating Twinkies and staring into space. It assumes that young people are docile, lazy, and/or want to remain ignorant about the world around them. It believes that young people are only interested in the most basic forms of stimulation—passive entertainment, food, and refreshments. What it fails to recognize is that our human nature is not to be docile, lazy, and/or want to remain ignorant about our world. In fact, we want to understand our world, to master it, and we are eager to engage with the world in order to do so. It just so happens that most people have had those instincts suppressed through traditional schooling and a generally hierarchical, oppressive society.
Because we pull young people out of society and throw them into schoolhouses with strict class schedules and curriculum requirements, we take away opportunities to engage with the world in ways that are meaningful to them. Many adults bang their heads against walls trying to motivate young people to find an interest in reading, writing, and arithmetic, which they presume to be the foundation to a successful academic career and professional future. And many adults are greatly pained that the only things that many young people seem to get passionate about are video games.
Daniel Pink’s New York Times best-seller Drive leans heavily on a half century’s worth of psychological research into motivation.[1] In it he makes the argument that our understanding of motivation is fundamentally flawed, and that our efforts to motivate through benefits and rewards actively undermines motivation for all but the simplest, rote tasks. He argues that deep motivation is driven by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which are three ingredients that are essentially absent in traditional schools. They are also three ingredients that young people have the rare opportunity to access through video games—which helps explain why so many young people (and adults) are drawn to video games as a respite from school, much to the dismay of parents and teachers.
What Abrome does, that so few other schools are willing to do, is give Learners the opportunity and space to choose what they want to engage in. In other words, they have autonomy in their learning. We allow them the freedom to choose (or not) the measures of achievement that they want to apply to their efforts, so that they can develop mastery on their own terms. And by focusing the community on identifying and pursuing experiences that are meaningful to our individual values, they develop purpose in their activities. And while it is difficult to let go of our desire to shape young people through extrinsic motivation, we understand that by trusting them to shape their own educational experiences (with our support), that they will eventually develop that deeper level motivation that is essential to a love of learning that will remain with them for life.
Age-based benchmarking: How do you know they are on track?
The concern over whether or not alternative schooled (including homeschooled and unschooled) students are “on track” is misplaced because of several misconceptions. First and foremost, parents and educators do not have a firm grasp on what is an appropriate pathway for individual students, much less 50 million school-aged children. Given an ever evolving and dynamic economy and society; and a future predicated on knowledge, inventions, institutions, and discrete events that no human can fully imagine; it is the height of hubris for any educator to state with conviction what defined pathways will lead to future success for any student. Yet traditional schooling systems employ curricula that require students to hit certain benchmarks according to a pre-set timeline, with the most “progressive” traditional schools giving students the ability to self-pace their way through defined blocks or units. If traditional schools that rely on pre-defined curricula cannot determine what the appropriate pathways are for each student, how can they properly determine if a student is on track?
Another misconception parents and educators (amazingly) have is the faulty belief that most students in traditional public and private schools are on track. Traditional schools are not shy about their almost universally aligned beliefs that the purpose of primary and secondary education is to prepare students for admission into and success in college, which is a ludicrous measure of success considering that one does not need to go to college to lead a remarkable life. However, even by this woefully misguided aim of theirs, the schools are a dismal failure. The public high school graduation rate as of 2014 was 82%, meaning that traditional schools failed to graduate nearly 1 in 5 students.[2][3][4] As of 2014, of those who graduated high school, about 68% enrolled in college.[5] And as of 2006, only about 39% of those who enrolled in college for the first time graduated within four years.[6][7][8] While these numbers do not all cover the same cohort, it becomes readily apparent that less than 1 in 4 traditional schooled students graduate, go to college, and graduate from college within four years. So the default position of traditional schooling is by their own definition, “off track.”
A third misconception of parents and educators is that we can determine who is on track by comparing them to an age-based standard. Nearly every traditional school in America is segregated by age. The most “progressive” traditional elementary schools allow students to be in mix-aged classrooms that span 3-4 years of age, and no traditional schools that we know of allow 16-year-olds to work alongside of 8-year-olds. By segregating students by age, these schools also segregate curricula by age. And age-based curriculum is built around the learning capabilities of the average student. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an average student.
All students learn in unique ways. Learning comes in part from the creation of complex neural pathways in the brain, and even the construction of those pathways for the most basic concepts differ from one individual to another. These differences are amplified when we consider that the appropriate timing of learning, the duration it takes to learn something, and the sequence in which one learns something differs from person to person. When those differences are multiplied by all of the subject areas, lessons, and concepts that are embedded in traditional schooling curricula, it becomes obvious an average student does not exist.
The End of Average, a recently released book by Harvard professor Todd Rose, highlights the dangers of trying to judge people by systems that are based on the hypothetical average person.[9] The title of this essay (“Any system designed around the average person is doomed to fail”) is also the self-described cornerstone of his book. And as highlighted above, the traditional schooling system is a failure, by its own measures, but it is also dooming to failure the students who are subjected to the system. So even if it were possible to identify the average traditional schooled student, that ill-fated student is not the one parents should be measuring their children against.
Recommendations for moving forward: Trust your children
We live in a society where traditional schooling is the wrongly assumed standard that we must be willing to subject our children to in order for them to learn what they need to learn and for them to be on track for future success. While no school or education model can assure future success, trusting young people to take control of their learning experiences greatly enhances the probability of future success.
Allowing young people to choose their own learning experiences, and how they engage in them, will substantially increase the likelihood of them becoming self-directed and motivated life-long learners. This will allow them to reach higher levels of mastery in the domains that they choose to play in, and it will greatly improve their life experiences while they are school-aged. And not comparing them to others is not only the most compassionate approach we adults can take toward evaluating their educational progress, but it is also the most rational and humane approach. Instead of asking if a child is on track with his same-aged peers, we should be asking whether they have the opportunity to mix with people of all ages, so that they can learn from those who are younger, teach those who are older, and every possibility in between.
1. https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805
2. http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/tables/ACGR_RE_and_characteristics_2013-14.asp
3. This number does not include private school or homeschool graduates
4. This number conveniently overlooks the documented practice of public schools classifying many dropouts as “homeschooled” to increase their reported graduation rates
5. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
6. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_326.10.asp
7. The four-year graduation rates at American colleges and universities varies tremendously: http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/four-year-graduation-rates-for-four-year-colleges.pdf
8. Complete College America produced a particularly disheartening report on the failure of most college students to graduate on time: http://completecollege.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/4-Year-Myth.pdf
9. https://www.amazon.com/End-Average-Succeed-Values-Sameness/dp/0062358367