Education 2.0

The LearningWeb Revolution and the Transformation of the School

Leonard J. Waks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317260783
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Thirty years of spirited school reforms have failed to improve our schools and instead have left our public school systems in disarray. Meanwhile, employment prospects for high school and college graduates are fading, and the public is losing faith in its schools. The education paradigm inherited from the Industrial Era is in crisis. In the last decade, however, the Internet and new Web 2.0 technologies have placed the entirety of human knowledge in the hands of everyone. What will our educational institutions make of this unprecedented flood of Web-based learning resources? How can schools be transformed to accommodate the new possibilities for personal and social learning? Leonard Waks gathers all the pieces of our current educational puzzle together in this groundbreaking book. Drawing on new organizational models grounded in complexity theory, Waks maps out an inspiring new paradigm for education in the Internet age, and connects all the dots in constructing detailed models for new schools-now transformed into "open learning centers." Finally, Waks details action steps readers can take to speed this transformative process along in their own locations.

PART ONE

SCHOOLING—THE INDUSTRIAL PARADIGM

CHAPTER ONE

YOUNG PEOPLE

In March 2008, eleven-year-old Tavi Gevinson of Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, connected to the cyber-community, “casting a net” by posting a first entry in her aptly named blog Style Rookie:

Well, I’m new here. Lately I’ve been really interested in fashion, and I like to make binders and slideshows of “high-fashion” modeling and design.¹

A year after this first online post Tavi was declared the “new darling of the fashion industry.” Her blog was getting 1.5 million hits a month. While her classmates struggled with long division and parts of speech, Tavi dashed off to front-row seats at runway shows in New York, Paris, Tokyo, and the world’s other major fashion centers. USA Today profiled her and soon she was seen on the cover of Pop and in feature articles in Sassy, Love, and the New York Times Magazine. Top fashion designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, hooked on Tavi’s cutting-edge fashion commentary, highlighted her in their 2009 Rodarte collection for Target. Soon other top designers came running with new projects. In October 2011 Tavi was selected as cover girl for the 90th anniversary issue of L’Officiel, the leading Paris fashion magazine.

Critics have been astounded by the range, elegance, and sheer professionalism of Style Rookie. Some question the blog’s authenticity, declaring that no eleven-year-old could have produced anything like it. Child advocates worry that young girls like Tavi, in exposing herself so openly to the adult world, court danger. Lawyer Parry Aftab, of the online protection site http://WiredSafety.org, says, “Parents have no idea what their kids are doing online…. Most parents have no idea what a blog is.” Aftab could have been speaking for Tavi’s father, English teacher Steve Gevinson, who hardly knew about his daughter’s blog until Tavi asked for permission to appear in the New York Times Magazine article. He says, “It was a kind of non-thing to know…. I didn’t look at it. I wasn’t terribly interested in it.” Today Steve is a proud father, and a spirited defender of youth bloggers.

Of course, not everyone can be Tavi Gevinson.² Tavi is clearly an exceptional young person. But teen fashion blogging is an important industry trend and many other young fashionistas are making their mark. Jane Aldridge, the sixteen-year-old native of Trophy Club Texas and publisher of the blog Sea of Shoes, receives 25,000 hits a day. Julia Frakes, who started PaperMag as a high school student in Scranton, Pennsylvania, started a second blog, Bunny Bisous, to handle the more whimsical, offbeat stories that didn’t fit in the first one. At eighteen, when Frakes moved to New York City to cover the fashion scene, she was receiving 800 emails a day from PR people pitching her stories. The industry friendships she made through her blog have helped her score many inside scoops; she tags along with the models and listens in when they talk about the clothes that turn them on. Her competitive advantage: few industry insiders enjoy the direct access to the models Frakes has gained through her blog or bring her youth perspective to the table.

And out in the Philippines, when blogger BryanBoy posted a home-brew video tribute to top designer Marc Jacobs on his self-titled blog, Jacobs emailed to say he was a fan. Jacobs then named a bag from his 2008 collection, the “BB,” in Bryan’s honor. “Marc sent me the original prototype via courier from New York, in a box bigger than a fridge, and I literally had tears running down my face when I opened it,” Bryan reports.

* * *

Some may complain that the obsessive interest in fashion runs counter to our highest educational aims. Fashion, however, is not the only field affected by young bloggers. Teens and preteens are doing amazing things in many fields, casting nets far and wide.

Fifteen-year-old Jayralin Herrera, for example, might be considered an anti-fashion blogger. Jayralin lives in a 2,800-square-foot mini-mansion in suburban New York. Two years ago she rejected her family’s consumerist lifestyle.

I was sick of all the excess. So, I began to pare down to the essentials. There were over eight big bags of stuff I got rid of and threw away. I slowly began to realize the excess we really own.

Jayralin started reading blogs about alternative “minimalist” lifestyles and began her own minimalist blog. Eventually she attracted the attention of senior lifestyle bloggers like Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Francine Jay of Miss Minimalist. Jay invited Jayralin to do a guest post, exposing her views to tens of thousands of readers. In that post she writes,

The whole idea of a house, cars, a huge closet full of clothes … it overwhelms me! Everything I own now fits in my single closet, with plenty of room to spare. I now own less than 55 things and keep trying to get rid of more. Seeing the way the environment is being torn apart and not cared after destroys me inside. Sustainability, along with “minsumerism,” and proper knowledge on what goes on with the world helps for the right decisions.³

Unlike Tavi, Jayralin isn’t rushing off to Milan, Tokyo, or Paris for the latest fashion shows:

My plans for the future include backpacking from my single backpack, walking everywhere and having a garden.

Jayralin’s own blog, reminiscent of Thomas Merton’s journal, is filled with acute philosophical and religious insights. In June 2011, I interviewed her by e-mail and asked first about her experience in high school. She said that overall it provided a positive learning environment, but she added,

I just wonder if we could someday change the schooling system to become something that focuses on the individual’s needs a lot more than it does at this moment. We’re all fed this stuff in one system, all the same way, so creativity is squashed.

She added that beyond excellent training in basic academic skills like spelling, grammar, and arithmetic, conventional school subjects are not really necessary for everyone. She would prefer her studies now to focus more directly on her writing. I also asked her about the role of the Internet at school and in her life. She said,

The school doesn’t force us to get familiar with the web, [but] we all do it out of habit. Since all our friends use Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr on an everyday basis, we all get used to it. Not to mention the handiness of the mobile web.

Finally, I asked about whether she had opportunities to study or discuss her ideas about frugality and minimal lifestyles in school.

Frugality, minimalism. Those things don’t come up often in school, honestly. Consumerism does, actually. Everyone in school simply wants to buy, buy, buy, and show off what fancy goodies they brought. I express my opinions with my peers, not so much my teachers. They actually think I’m some kind of crazy dreamer. Everyone thinks what I want to do in the future is a bit crazy. [But] I usually get positive feedback: people ask me more and more questions and think I’m a genius when it comes to what I own and my ideas. These ideas are open and should be shared with the world; people need to be aware. The reason why people don’t debate about things is because they aren’t aware, and to make them aware opens their eyes to tons of new possibilities.

Let’s take note of four features in these teen blogger stories that can help us frame a larger vision for the Internet and education:

• Anyone, Anywhere: The young people are not located at industry power centers. Tavi is out in the Illinois suburbs, Jane Aldridge in Trophy Club, Texas, Jane Frakes in Scranton, Pennsylvania, BrianBoy in the Philippines, Jayralin Herrera in the New York suburbs, Priyasha (whom we will meet in a moment) in Indonesia.

• Building on Basic Skills: All four possess some basic communication skills—writing, editing, organization and selection of images, videography—which they put to creative use.

• Channeling Personal Interests to Build Powerful Capabilities: All channel a personal interest or passion and express a unique point of view in communications addressed to particular public cultural communities.

• Connecting to Adult Communities: Their activities connect them to other participants, influencers, and leaders in those communities, opening doors for further development, visibility, and professional opportunity.

TEENS ARE AWESOME

Priyasha, a fifteen-year-old blogger from Indonesia, writes in a guest post titled “Simply Said: Teens Are Awesome,” on the multiauthor youth activist blog Itstartswith.us, that “teenagers are awesome, because (some of us at least) still have little bits of innocence from our childhood combined with maturity as we turn into adults.”⁴

Priyasha is certainly on to something. Teens really are awesome, with or without the Internet. Psychologist Robert Epstein, a former editor of Psychology Today, in his recent book Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence, argues convincingly that teens are true adults whose development is artificially inhibited by constraining institutions, especially schools. Freed from these constraints, teens are highly capable—in some ways more so than adults.⁵

Epstein points to studies demonstrating that by age fourteen the brain is at its state of highest development. Studies based on Piaget’s test of formal operations show that all formal operations—those involved in adult thinking—are acquired by age fourteen, and if not demonstrated by fifteen will probably never be acquired (165). Intelligence matures at age fifteen; the nonverbal and culture-free progressive matrices scores peak at age fourteen (172). Scores of memory improve until age thirteen or fourteen and then level out or decline (177). Even on tests of judgment, the scores of fourteen-year-olds did not differ significantly from those of either eighteen- or twenty-one-year-olds, and they are significantly better than those of nine-year-olds. Markers of creativity are high in childhood, peak again during the teen years—with a dramatic leap between fifteen and eighteen—and then decline throughout adulthood (255).

As a result, teens have surprising and sometimes even shocking mental and emotional capabilities. Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical adding machine when he was nineteen; Anton van Leeuwenhoek made his famous perfections of the microscope at sixteen; Louis Braille developed his system of reading for the blind at fifteen; Philo Farnsworth provided the critical breakthrough for electronic television at fourteen.⁶ Tennessee Williams was only sixteen when he wrote his first book, Edith Wharton fifteen, Jane Austen fourteen. Jorge Luis Borges was only nine when he prepared his Spanish translation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince.”⁷ Mozart, who composed his first piano pieces at age five, wrote his first successful opera at fourteen and all of his violin concertos during his nineteenth year; Chopin wrote his first two polonaises at age seven and many of his most important works before age twenty; Mendelssohn composed his first symphony at fifteen and his beloved overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream at sixteen.

Recent examples from the news of astonishing teens (alert readers will regularly find similar news stories) include these:

May 27, 2012: Shouryya Ray, a sixteen-year-old Indian immigrant living in Germany, was the first to solve a problem posed by Sir Isaac Newton more than 300 years ago—how to calculate precisely the path of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance. His father, an engineering technology professor at a technical college, says that Shouryya never discussed the problem with him until it was solved and that it relied on mathematics “way beyond my reach.” Labeled a genius by the German media, Shouryya explained his discovery as a result merely of “curiosity and schoolboy naivety.” He said, “when it was explained to us that the problem had no solutions, I thought to myself ‘well, there’s no harm in trying.’”⁸

June 4, 2012: Sho Yano, who graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University of Chicago at age twelve, has graduated from the combined PhD/MD program of the medical school of the University of Chicago at age twenty-one, making him the youngest MD graduate in the school’s history. He picked up his PhD in neurobiology along the way. He hopes his graduation will silence those who questioned his readiness when he entered medical school. The University of Chicago took a chance on Yano after other medical schools refused to admit him, concerned that the challenges of medical school would hinder his chance of having a “normal adolescence.” He said, “I never understood that. Why would being allowed to challenge yourself be considered more damaging than being totally bored?”⁹

While these stories of individual achievement are amazing, idealistic teens also can work together to improve society. Lots of teens, Priyasha says, “have ideas on how to change the world around us.” She adds,

This teenage generation has the power of the Internet, and we are stronger than ever, if our “powers” are used correctly. Since a mass percentage of the teenage generation is connected on the Internet and frequently uses it, if we put our “powers” together, we could start something really big, or change the world in a really big way.

Aristotle would have agreed. He said that “young people long to do noble deeds … because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things.”¹⁰ Perhaps we adults can help them do great things and even join with them, instead of raining on their parades.

Jayralin Herrera’s parents and teachers, for example, do not share her minimalist views, and she, in turn, does not discuss her ideas much with them. Like many young netcasters, she is flying solo. But few young people can discover passions and shape life projects without some adult support. Priyasha thinks “it would be incredible if teenagers and adults could work together more often to combine our thoughts and hopes to create something of greater good.”

This is an educational vision worth pondering: teens combining peak mental capabilities with childlike naiveté, learning at high adult levels; becoming valued members of society; making creative discoveries in science, the arts, scholarship, and invention; and putting their powers together, working with adults for the greater good. In what follows we’ll see where Priyasha’s vision takes us.

WHAT’S SO AWESOME ABOUT ORDINARY TEENS?

A nagging thought, however, is that the teens mentioned above are so awesome, so exceptional, that their experiences shed no light on learning prospects and potential achievements of “ordinary” teens. In response it is worth considering that such teens share the same humanity with their amazing counterparts. They have the same vast number of brain cells—up to 500 billion by some estimates. It is a commonplace that most people use less than a tenth of their brainpower. All “normal” humans have astonishing capabilities—their brains are millions of times more powerful than the most advanced computers.

Aristotle famously said that “all men by nature desire to know.” We delight in our senses and especially our sense of sight, he said, “because it makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”¹¹ Today he would say “all people.” Harvard philosopher John Rawls developed this insight as what he called the “Aristotelian principle.” Stated simply, “other things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity.”

Rawls regarded the motivation to richly develop our capabilities and to enjoy their exercise as a “deep psychological fact” about human beings¹²—not a rare trait of “exceptional” people. Rawls regarded the values of personal affection and friendship, meaningful social cooperation, the pursuit of knowledge, and the fashioning...