by Maren Johnson

I attended an amazing conference in Seattle this week, Excellence in Education: Washington State and Finland. We learned about some great things going on in Finland, we learned about some great things going on in Washington, and I experienced some culture shock.  Was it the differences between Finland and the United States that struck me?  Well yes, there was that, and that is what got me started thinking about culture.  However, instead of international differences, I was thinking about some of the cultural as well as philosophical differences between education groups in our own Washington state: differences between people who are in the classroom and those making policy decisions guiding classroom work; differences between policy makers and those doing education research. How to overcome those differences and build on them?  Keynote speaker Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of Finland’s Education Ministry, said, “So much of what we do in Finland, we have learned from American researchers and educators.”  He then very provocatively said the difference is that in Finland, they actually implement that research!  Here in Washington, we need to get those research<—>policy<—> implementation links tightened up, and yes, those are double-headed arrows: information needs to flow each way!

There are some vast historical and social differences between Finland and Washington—an education system cannot just be transplanted.  However, Finland has not always been an education high performer—it languished in the mid twentieth century—but over the past several decades, as Pasi Sahlberg said, “Finland has improved a lot, while the rest of the world has improved a little bit.”  This improvement can be traced to policy decisions.  What are a few of the Finnish Lessons we might learn?

When I was an undergraduate, I loved having the opportunity to choose whichever courses interested me. Outside of my major, I took everything from calculus to photography to sociology. I also took advantage of another benefit offered: the option to take courses "pass/fail." I engaged this option whenever there was the chance that I would earn less than an "A."

At the time, I justified it from a financial standpoint. I had tuition and housing scholarships which required a certain GPA: a "C" would harm my GPA, but a "P" had no effect on it and I'd still earn the credit. However, in hindsight, I see that this behavior was a sign of something I'm only now starting to understand: my transcript was my identity.

Recently at an after-school meeting, one of our building associate principals shared an article summarizing the work done by Carol Dweck of the Stanford University School of Psychology. The gist: while it is not absolute, there are generally two "mindsets" into which people can be classified--the "fixed" mindset and the "growth" mindset. 

A person whose disposition is in the "growth" mindset will relish challenge, recover from failure having learned and applied critical lessons, and "end up" in a different and usually better place from where they "start out."

In college, I was clearly of the "fixed" mindset.

Another invisible: the budget. I spend a lot of time on amazon.com as part of my job. As chair of the English department, I have keep up the inventory of our resources--a key resource, of course, is our store of books. Every student at my school is required to take an English class, and my department budget works out to be about $1.80 per student per year. Granted, once you buy a book you can use it multiple times--but books also wear out, and our department budget also has to cover, among other things, basic supplies like paper, staples, dry erase markers, and the other necessities that my 18 full- or part-time English teachers usually end up buying out of their own pocket when the department supply runs out around mid-November.

When I get an email that we are a class-set short of copies of an anchor novel in the curriculum, I have to find a way to cover that gap. In a dream world, I'd buy library-bound hardcover copies of each novel, which start at about $20 per copy. Scratch that: in a dream world, I'd supply all of my students with e-readers wherein they can interact with, annotate, and easily carry their texts. 

 By Travis

The message is clear. Very clear.

On the surface, the message comes across as positive, saying there is an organization out there to help children. I am all for helping children.

However, there is hidden message. An agenda, perhaps? This subtle meaning sends its message to the community even if the community does not consciously read it that way.

By Mark

It is one of my favorite times of year... Banned Books Week is September 25th through October 2nd. The American Library Association (click on the photo to go to their site) promotes the freedom of choice by encouraging libraries across the nation to celebrate every American's right to choose not to read controversial books.

Notice that I didn't emphasize "every American's right to choose what they read." When I consider the titles which have been challenged or banned over the years, what I see is not just the loss of a choice to read a book but the loss of the choice to not read. There is a reason I haven't read Mein Kampf and haven't watched Natural Born Killers. These are not the same reasons I choose not to read Twilight or watch, well, Twilight, but the fact is that I have the right to choose not to consume these texts. That decision was not made for me. Sure, I agree that every student's parents have the right to say that a text is not appropriate for their kid and ask for an alternative if a text is assigned in a class. 

But, there are only two parents who have the right to say what text is not appropriate for my kid.

Appropriately, this year's theme for Banned Books Week is "Think for yourself and let others do the same."

It's particularly fun this year that Banned Books Week corresponds with my teaching of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Down on the farm, literacy is wielded like a weapon. Those who are literate easily overpower those who are illiterate, essentially enslaving them by controlling information (hello FoxNews). A great Orwellian theme, and one to which we ought always pay close attention.

As a side note: There's a very intriguing interactive map at the ALA press-kit site which uses Googlemaps to tag exemplars of challenged or banned books. Some of the titles and reasons are rather surprising.

 

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