Joyful classrooms?

Kathy Hirsch-Pasek's recent award of $19,980,000 from the LEGO Foundation reminds me of an earlier Out in Left Field post of mine, inspired by an earlier interview, in which Hirsch-Pasek says many of the same things that come up here. According to the Temple University news release on the LEGO award:

Professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek thinks that playful learning can create a gateway to 21st Century skills needed in the workplace of tomorrow. Schools continue to operate on an "assembly line" model of learning fostered by the memorization of material-material that is available at the touch of a keyboard in the modern era. Professor Hirsh-Pasek and her long term collaborator Roberta Golinkoff of the University of Delaware, along with an impressive cast of scientists, teachers and school administrators, offer an alternative. In their new book Making Schools Work, they chart how bringing active, engaged, socially interactive and joyful classrooms-or playful learning-can bring about deeper learning and joyful teaching. Their model has been piloted in schools in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire, paving the way for a scaled-up, more sustainable study of the playful learning approach. 

Temple is proud to announce that the LEGO Foundation awarded Dr. Hirsh-Pasek and her team a five-year, $19.98 million grant to partner with school districts in four different states (California, Illinois, Texas, and Virginia), using their model to follow children from Pre-K through 4th grade.

For better or for worse, the grant is "prioritizing under-resourced schools."

It's not clear from this article what exactly Hisch-Pasek is offering in lieu of the "assembly line" model that schools purportedly continue to operate on, or how it is different from what is actually already happening in classrooms across the country:

The LEGO Foundation and Hirsh-Pasek share a common goal: to spread the benefits of learning through play by making real, systemic change to educational policies and institutions. The program follows a three-part equation, one that Hirsh-Pasek employs for her work in schools, communities (Playful Learning Landscapes) and digital media. 

"The first step is to respect cultural values and find out where the community values lie - what is important to parents, what do people care about?" notes Hirsh-Pasek. "In our research, and in the method that we're using for education, we bring parents and the community in as partners." 

The second takes the science of learning and morphs it into actual practice in real classrooms. Teachers and their coaches will learn the playful learning pedagogical approach and apply it to their existing curricula. The approach fosters a more active and collaborative relationship between students and educators, encouraging more small group work, more discussion, and a willingness to think about contexts for teaching material that is responsive to student interests.

The third and final part of the equation asks a key question: What does or should count as success for a school system?

It seems there's nothing new under the sun--just more of the kind of unstructured and group learning that especially disadvantages students with autism, plus a whole lot of vague language.

Along with an inconvenient, unanswered question: what if the community's values favor traditional instruction and academic skills over play-based education? 

So what I wrote earlier about the Hirsch-Pasek phenomenon is perhaps just as relevant now...

Today's progressivists regularly malign traditional education as being

based on a 19th century Prussian model, or an early 20th century factory model, designed to foster obedience to political, military, or capitalist authority. 

These people, as I've noted from time to time, are conflating political, military, and workplace authorities with educational authorities, and obedience to political, military, and workplace authorities with obedience to educational authorities.

There are some common elements that contribute to this conflation: all that lining up, all that waiting in silence, all that being yelled at or shamed for fidgeting during class or losing track of your belongings or having difficulty remembering complex instructions or daring to play tag or climb trees during recess. 

But other requirements--requirements like not disrupting the class, and attending to the educational authorities (competent teachers, decent textbooks) are essential to learning.

An NPR segment on the book "Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children," reminds me of two additional items--things that authors Roberta Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek join other would-be reformers in disparaging:

• sitting in rows
• spitting out facts

Here's Hirsh-Pasek:

If Rip Van Winkle came back, there's only one institution he would recognize: "Oh! That's a school. Kids are still sitting in rows, still listening to the font of wisdom at the front of the classroom."

…

We're training kids to do what computers do, which is spit back facts.  

How quickly people forget the virtues of row seating--even as they sit in rows in movie theaters or, say, during TED talks in which education gurus disparage row seating. Desks in rows is the only way to arrange a classroom so that a dozen plus kids can easily attend to the teacher, see what's being written on the blackboard, and take notes while using a hard surface (the surface of their desks) rather than their laps.

And how quickly people forget what it takes to learn things. "Spitting out" facts, while it should never be the be-all and end-all of education, is a key component of learning bodies of knowledge. The task of retrieving and articulating facts, when implemented well by competent teachers, is not a meaningless, rote repetition of disembodies chunks of information, but a way to strengthen long-term memory of meaningful systems of integrated knowledge--knowledge that is crucial to personal success and societal progress.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek compares the challenge of raising children to climate change.

What we do with little kids today will matter in 20 years. If you don't get it right, you will have an unlivable environment. That's the crisis I see.

I agree.