13 ways of looking at a blackbird

You Tube:

Watch this short video.

The comments remind me that there are 13 ways of looking at a blackbird.

What grabs you from this video?

I love the collaboration that went into this project, the students working together. The creativity. And the engagement.

Not everyone responds to the same ideas.

Some may think that technology is the solution. Of course the video addresses that:

"The inventor of this system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind."

What system?

The chalkboard. Go figure.

Technology alone is not the answer. Active engagement in your own education is the key.

Think diffferent

Innovators think different, act different, (even talk different).

And many went to Montessori school. Check out this story in the Harvard Business Review.

Attention!

"Attention is our most essential stepping stone to happiness."

Surprised?

That's Maggie Jackson,author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. You can read a short interview here.

This is the same conclusion reached by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ("call me Mike") in his book Flow: the psychology of optimal experience -- a book that is one of the landmarks of Positive Psychology.

According to Mike, "The best moments of our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times--although such expeeriences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to achieve them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen."

Maria Montessori understood that, too.

She added this: learning the pleasures of concentration actually transforms the personality. The child changes. Becomes a different child.

Well, wouldn't it change you to discover the secret of happiness?

"My class"

"Whose class are you in?" the eleven-year old asked the three-year old. Upper elementary students help walk new primary students to class during the first weeks of school, until the younger ones learn the way to their rooms and get comfortable walking there independently.

"My class," she replied.

I broke out in a big grin. Was this answer a statement of philosophy? Eleven-year olds are eminently practical, so the upper elementary student rephrased her question. "Who's your teacher?" She got the answer she needed and the two of them walked into school hand-in-hand.

The current issue of Education Week deals with this as a philosophical response. In Joan Goodman's article, "Anything a child can do, a teacher shouldn't," she talks about ways to shift perception, so that children come to feel that the school is "mine rather than theirs."

What is she reacting to? In schools that impose, "a rigorous curriculum along with strict behavioral regulations ... The cost of achievement is submission by all."

Is this a nightmare or an educational ideal? Wouldn't this result in well-behaved students who learn what we want them to learn?

Or is this the key to a mystery?

When I asked a group of business people how many consider themselves entrepeneurs, most hands went up. When I asked how many are told what to do when they go into work in the morning, every hand went down.

I asked who gets excited about learning a new skill or some new bit of information. Every hand went up.

Then I asked who liked school. Nearly every hand went down. Down.

Why is it, I asked them, that a group of adults who love to learn, disliked school?

Danger: don't read this blog

"If you want people to perform better, you reward them. Right?"

That's Dan Pink speaking. He goes on to say that there is a gross mismatch between what science knows and what business does. What? Because in answer to his question he reveals that

rewards
actually dull thinking and
block creativity.

"Rewards don't work and often do harm."

"This is NOT philosophy. This is NOT a feeling. This is a fact--or as we say in Washington DC,

'a true fact.'"

Dan Pink has a new book coming out: DRIVE. It is about the science of motivation.

Two friends sent me links to Dan Pink's TED talk on the same day: Bubba Levy here in Houston and Tom Larsen in San Francisco. And a few days later, Emily Hansen sent me this from the New York Times: "When a parent's 'I love you" means "do as I say.'"

Same idea.

I guess most of us got the idea at home from our parents and pass it on to our children, so it is no wonder that we run our businesses this way and describe it as "The Real World".

What?

Does motivation really mean getting your child or your employee to do what you want him to do?

Dan Pink quotes the scientific research. Rewards only work to improve performance if the task is simple. If it is complex, or requires creative thinking, "rewards don't work and often do harm."

And what harm do rewards and punishment do to children? Check out the Times.

Why don't students like school?

...is a book by Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist.

"Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off." That's on the dust jacket. It reminds me of a presentation I made several years ago to the "Men's Business Breakfast Club".

I asked, "How many of you like learning something new?" and every hand went up.

Then I asked, "How many of you liked school?" and almost every hand went down.

This morning one of the dads was walking into school with his young daughter. She was skipping down the hall. He said to me, "Never before have I seen a child who was happy to go back to school after summer vacation." I smiled and said, "Yes, I know we're different."

Another dad, a third-year medical student, noted that a classmate wrote on her Facebook page, "Two words for today: yuck! and yeah! Yuck because school has started again; Yeah because I'll be done at the end of this year."

I've never met that med student. I wonder whether she is going into the wrong career, or whether she is crying out about how poorly schools fit students?

Another physician on another day, Dr. Montessori, a woman who went to medical school after deciding she did not want to become a teacher, took one of life's strange turns and dedicated her life to working with children. She approached the task the way a scientist would. After all, she was a scientist. She began by observing children, by finding out how they learn, and then began designing learning materials. This led to the creation of learning environments and the redefinition of the role of the adult. And when she was all done, the children rediscovered the joy in learning.

E-mail to Fast Company

Wonder whether education really matters?

It does, but not in the way common knowledge suggests. Ivy League? MBA? Technical training?

What do the following people have in common: Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Will Wright, Jimmy Wales, Sean Combs, and Julia Child?

If you said they are all creative, entrepeneurial, shapers of the culture, I'd agree.

They also attended Montessori schools as children, and note that approach to education (hands on, experiential, self-directed) shaped them.

Interested?

John Long
Head of School
The Post Oak School
Houston, TX