Education Law

Geek reform

Wired had an interesting piece in this month’s issue on how to reform education. Yes, BoardBuzz subscribes.

The gist of the article is about how a venture capital firm staged a daylong conference on school reform where a group of authors, professors, financiers, and entrepreneurs discussed embracing “digital culture” to transform education. Non-attendees could participate via Twitter and have their ideas appear on a wall during the conference. As Wired describes, it was all very techy with lofty ideas.

And then Alex Grodd brought it back to earth: 

“The driving force in the life of a child, starting much earlier than it used to be, is to be cool, to fit in,” Grodd said. “And pretty universally, it’s cool to rebel.” In other words, prepare for you and your netbook to be jeered out of the room. “The best schools,” Grodd told [Wired], “are able to make learning cool, so the cool kids are the ones who get As. That’s an art.”

The article goes on to say that educators must be prepared to change the culture of schools. School must become cool. It’s an idea that seems rather obvious yet daunting. And to see the veracity of the statement, simply take a look at the geeks. Geeks love knowledge and learning so much that the coolest members of the subculture are the smartest. So if you really want to reform schools, you’ve got to make them geekier.

“Geeks get things done. They’re possessed. They can’t help themselves,” says Larry Rosenstock, founding principal of eight charter schools in San Diego County collectively called High Tech High. The schools’ curriculum forces kids to embrace their inner geek by pushing them to be creative and foster shared enthusiasm in small groups. Rosenstock says that last part is a key ingredient. If two students can get excited about learning, a third has a harder time labeling them uncool.

Another key ingredient to geekifying schools is bringing in more adults. We don’t just mean teachers. “A big chunk of the school experience is having them hang out with the adults they could imagine becoming,” says private-equity manager Tom Vander Ark, former head of education investments for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a onetime school superintendent. “A big high school has a youth-owned culture. You’ve got to break that.”

The article is a quick interesting read, and BoardBuzz suggests you check it out.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).