Posted by Fiona on September 18th, 2008 — Posted in Rationale
The most pleasurable thing for me as a teacher is seeing the excitement and enthusiasm generated by thought filled challenges. The Tournament of Minds challenge here in Australia creates such a challenge and, dare I say, the finalists’ jubilation was as inspiring as the Olympians’ commitment. It seemed entirely appropriate they they were each awarded with a gold medal. The ceremony was a perfect ending to a Sunday of presentations by inspired young minds. Well done and thanks to the kids for reminding us of the joys of thinking.
Popularity: 60% [?]
No Comments »
Posted by Fiona on August 18th, 2008 — Posted in IB, Rationale
The article by A.C. Grayling in New Scientist on 9th August 2008 says what many educators already know: that “critical thinking should be right at the centre of the education system.”
This seems so obvious and yet it appears that it doesn’t occur - maybe because many of our students don’t want to think too hard, the focus is on content (as if skills don’t help with understanding and remembering the content!) and skills are hard to measure.
One of the interesting comments in the article is Grayling’s decree that “only the International Baccalaureate makes critical thinking (”theory of knowledge)” a standard requirement.” I wonder, is this true? Certainly IB does lead the field in so many ways, but do no other education programs require their students to know something about being a critical thinker? If they don’t then we have a bit of a problem!!! In Victoria we have the essential learning standards which include “thinking processes” as an interdisciplinary domain requirement. The reality of this seems that everyone gets an average mark based on the problem of measurement, of knowing where they really stand on the critical thinking scale.
Something else Grayling ponders is whether critical thinking lessons are needed more for the humanities than the sciences, because, he asserts, the sciences are by their nature have critical thinking built in. Hmmm…. this is interesting (and maybe causes problems for his assertion above). I would have thought that humanities students tend to be the better critical thinkers than the science ones because the (good ones) reflect and question and look for things that aren’t there. Sure, science makes hypotheses, tests and evaluates but how “critically”? Is one subject domain necessarily more “critical” than another? Sounds like we need a very clear definition for a start…
Popularity: 91% [?]
No Comments »
Posted by Fiona on August 18th, 2008 — Posted in IB, Rationale, USA
Getting there
Apparently I win the award for traveling the furthest for this conference!!! My prize? 28 hours of overfeeding, puffed up ankles and very bad hair. In fact I’m quite astounded at how some peoples’ hair changes in different atmospheres and others do not! Odd! Mine didn’t recover until I got back home in Melbourne!
Nonetheless, the IB Regional Conference was well worth the travel. The IB educators I met at the conference were brilliant - from Day 1 at the cocktail party I met some gems - friendly, committed educators who enjoy a laugh and learning from other colleagues. Such an event is an invaluable meeting place for people of like minds and I learnt this was the 40th year of the IB programme - so short a time for such an impact on the educational world stage.
The Conference
As far the conference itself, I spent most of the time in the Austhink booth with my San Francisco Austhink colleagues - James, Maresha and Dale. I also talked a lot! There were many teachers, coordinators and principals who saw the new Version 2 beta release and the feedback was terrific. I suspect that the favorite new features will be the jumble activity and the teacher tools panel which contain feedback comment notes. The essay planner is always a great hit - wherever I go. The problem of writing seems a universal problem because there is a tendency for most students to just “cut and paste” without thinking about ideas and knowing how to piece them together in an essay. I think that this problem is not simply about writing skills for it negatively impacts on students’ confidence. This is why I love our essay planner - it is a confidence builder because often for the first time, students are producing an essay - a structured, reasoned essay! The planner is certainly not the end of the story, we (educators) can do a lot more to develop their skills, but the initial confidence builder is gold.
Keynote Address: Eboo Patel
I do want to reflect upon the first keynote address by Dr Eboo Patel and his Interfaith Youth Core . When I looked at the program my reaction to the topic “The New Multiculturalism: Teaching for a Religiously Diverse World” was one of cynicism: “another talk on the importance of tolerance,” I thought - don’t get me wrong the ideal of tolerance is valuable, but the tedious thing about talks on tolerance is that they can often sound like “accept anything anyone says because to do otherwise is to be intolerant.” Indeed, how do you develop an attitude of tolerance in the classroom but also maintain a critical attitude? Some people think that being tolerant means accepting anything anyone says as “ok for them” and that one should thus not enter a critical dialogue because questioning someone’s beliefs could be interpreted as intolerant and disrespectful. So how does one be critical while being tolerant?
Eboo’s thought provoking and inspiring presentation took my concern in a different direction than I had anticipated, though provided some further thoughts on the issue of tolerance and being critical. His talk was about human beings understanding their similarities, entering a discussion with each other and developing a sense of social service - coming together to cooperate in order to serve others (an ideal at the heart of the IB programme). He referred to Martin Luther King’s reference 40 years ago about the “world house” where people could actually get along with each other and how this speech could be seen as the IB’s mission statement. The question then raised was what role should religion play in the classroom? Eboo referred to his own experience and that of students with the common experience noted; ” we’ve always been friends but we’ver never talked about religion.”
Religious Literacy and Dialogue
Eboo’s concern is that ”If educators do not engage the terrain of religious devotion and religious diversity directly, we run the risk of forfeiting that territory to the extremists who dominate our headlines and our bestseller lists.” In other words, due to the silence and non understanding of our shared terrain, discussion about religion is taken over on the world stage by statements based in ignorance and statements about the clash of religions rather than discussion about such things as say, compassion, helping others and how we each face so called “spiritual” issues that arise in human existence.
Eboo’s call to a religious literacy is something I applaud because even amongst my friends and peers, there is an ignorance about religions - not in terms of what they read about religion, but an ignorance about the lived experience and interpretation of a religion in one’s existence. To put it another way - religious literacy in my view is not simply about knowing “facts” from textbooks but by entering the lived experience with those that embody, or attempt to embody a certain faith. Understanding how and why individuals choose to live the way the do and how they face challenges and understand the world is a profound learning experience and one that can assist an individual as they travel through life. Having a discussion that “my idea is better than yours” or “this is right and this is wrong” is suffocating and leads to personal and national conflicts. So it seems that the former type of understanding and literacy is what helps rather than hinders.
Eboo referred to an insight by Madeleine Albright, that at highest levels of government policy making there are a huge number of economic advisors but only a few as with regards religion. This is certainly astounding, that advisors with knowledge about the economy of a State is manifestly more important than understanding the religion of that people - or to put it another way - the belief systems that underlie the actions of that people. Even in economic terms it makes sense to understand what and how people think and act, their goals and motivations, in order to build economic arrangements with them.
In the classroom
So in the classroom, what do we do? I suspect that why religious literacy is not practiced as Eboo would wish, is that (1) gaining trust amongst class members can be quite difficult. One needs to feel that the arena in which they speak their personal views, will not be met with ridicule or division. I suspect that this mindset often prevails because (2) for the most part “we” maintain an attitude of righteousness and ego clinging: “I’m right, you’re wrong”, ” I don’t care what you think… what would you know…. you’re stupid”.
So what to do…? This is where Eboo offered some practical suggestions which I thought would be useful:
- Serve others: social service/ community activities where students focus on understanding and helping other people. Eboo’s group tutor other students; clean parks; build houses!
- Talk actively about positive actions and intentions of religions, such as compassion, dealing with difficulties, love! He suggested having months decreed in a school as say, “May is compassion month” - students then direct classroom activities to respond to their ideas and views…
- I may not have this quite right, but Eboo suggested cutting up a newspaper’s articles that involve religion and dividing them into issues. I think what he has in mind here is that when we undertake this task we may well see the imbalance between how religions are portrayed. Perhaps we could write articles to counter the imbalance - they need not be published as such, but make students aware of some positive actions and stories.
Another idea (not mentioned by Eboo) is implementing a philosophy for children programme in your school, where the emphasis is on trust and the development of a “community of inquiry” is a central focus. And a plug for Rationale - use a central (projected) map as a means to depersonalize the issues so that people can add their ideas to the map without having to point and decree “Danny is wrong, I don’t agree”!!! The map acts as a central place to record and explore ideas and reasoning.
Religious to want religious literacy?
I don’t think one has to be religious to want religious literacy to evolve. Opening our eyes to the belief systems of others also acts as a means of opening our eyes to what we think, and why we think it. It opens up other possibilities. One can be “critical” in this sense of not choosing certain actions or beliefs but at least one is aware and reflects upon such issues. That our “world house” is filled with discussion about conflict between religions should be reason enough for us to seek another perspective, such as positive aspects of religion or religious thinking. There are some you know!
Critical yet tolerant
So where does this lead my concern of being critical yet tolerant? I think that when we listen and understand the perspectives of others - and I mean really listen and respectfully question and ponder - we may come to realise that things are not always as they seem and that our understanding can itself be constantly reviewed, revised and updated. (Like an argument map where my conclusion is always provision based on the possibility of further reasoning being added in the future). The problems and issues we face personally and in our world house are difficult and tangled - thinking that one knows the answer is perhaps a little premature and perhaps a little arrogant. If we come to see that occasionally we may ourselves be incorrect, despite good thinking, then we may perhaps become a little more tolerant of other’s thoughts, ideas, actions … and more inclined to want to understand other possibilities. This understanding is not simply some facts or quick information but analyzing what lies beneath and at the sides of the point of view. (In a map, this means locating the assumptions, the basis, the further reasons…).
I really don’t pretend to know the answers to the issue of religions in the World House. What I do think and purport is that real dialogue (where people can question, tease out ideas and try to get at the heart of a problem and possible solutions ) is really helpful in opening up one’s mindset and one’s understanding of other people.
I look forward to hearing more about Eboo’s projects and thinking about what I can do to add a “critical yet tolerant” voice in this great House! Your ideas?
Popularity: 100% [?]
No Comments »
