On Creative Monopolies and Felt Realities

Thanks for your work over cycle one! I immensely enjoyed reading your posts! As I’ve mentioned to you all, I’m experimenting this semester. I’ve assigned about the same amount of readings and videos as I have in the past, but I’ve chunked the content into fewer cycles. We therefore have more time to read, write and reflect. I’m obviously  hoping to encourage more personalized, in-depth and thoughtful responses. Based upon what I have seen so far, I would say this experiment has been a resounding success! Amazing work, thank you everyone!

Before I get to my thoughts on this cycle, let me first tell you a bit about the wonderfully diverse set of colleagues we have in this class. Of the fourteen students in our class, nine are from Michigan: two from mid-Michigan and seven from the Detroit metropolitan area. We also have colleagues working and living in Houston, northern California, southern California, and Thailand. Spartans all!

In terms of grade levels, we have one kindergarten teacher, two first grade teachers, one third grade teacher, one fifth grade teacher, two middle school teachers, and six high school teachers. As you might guess, we span the range of schools: charters, public comprehensive, independent and religious schools.

In terms of our subject area expertise in the upper levels, we have two math teachers, three social studies teachers, one Spanish teacher, two English language arts teachers, and one science teacher.

I hope this information alerts you to people who are both similar to, and different from, you. Everyone is a resource for your learning in this course. Seek out the blogs of those from whom you can most profit. 

Network. Learn. Dream.

Now, onto my thoughts.

I recently had the extraordinary coincidence of talking to one of our doctoral graduates. She is currently teaching at UW Eau Claire. It addition to her teaching and research, she also maintains a very active and successful career as a blogger. Her work has been picked up by the Huffington Post. Given the connection to our cycle, I can’t but help recommend her article to you and your students.

Her post is interesting because of the clarity with which it picks up on failure as a learning opportunity. Indeed, it’s almost hard to understand what has driven us to a place where, in most of the world, failure has become the greatest and scariest of all F-words. 

But before I go on to extol the virtues of failure, though, I think some context is in order.

More and more as I think about this set of readings, I have come to see that "failure" is not something that happens to us, but is rather something that we feel. That is, failure is first and foremost a subjective experience. 

I don't think schools should work to set kids up for failure: Rather, our goal should be to teach kids how to deal with failure once it is felt. 

I can imagine plenty of kids who might fail a class but feel no great sense of personal failure. Indeed, as John Ogbu suggested, there are plenty of marginalized kids in our society who might view school “failure” as a validation of their own power to resist a system they inherently distrust!

I also can imagine plenty of kids who might feel a great sense of failure by getting a B grade (even though their GPA is 3.8), or by letting a team down by missing the last shot of the game (even though they have scored 30 points that night), or by missing a single homework assignment (even though they were using that time to work at the local homeless shelter). 

In my research and life, whether rightly or wrongly, I’ve come to see failure as tied up with the feelings of guilt and shame that often come with them in our society. It seems to me that a big part of teaching might be directed at helping kids deal with those feelings of guilt and shame when we see them arise. 

So schools don't need to produce failure, but skillful teachers might want to teach kids how to face it squarely in the face once it happens. I worry that we too often reduce failure to a low grade. But grades are rather artificial in the context of a whole life. 

Perhaps we should not talk about overcoming failure but overcoming fear and disappointment, confronting our own sense of guilt and shame. I'm not sure.

If you’ve read Ross’ post, you’ll have heard about a wonderful young man named Max. He is the kind of student that very much interests and inspires me. As with Mark Twain, he didn't let schooling get in the way of his education. And that's a big deal. There is so much social good that could come from the work done in schools--if we would only help children see the social outlets for their skills and hard work. 

Nothing builds motivation and interest like an appreciative audience or an untapped market. Any actor, entrepreneur or engineer could probably tell you that. I often wonder why we define success as being the best within a system where everyone seeks the same outcome. Doesn’t such a system, as Ray McDermott suggested, ensure that we will continue to be a society of winners and losers? A truly democratic society, on the other hand, would tend towards maximizing the match of skills with untapped markets, thereby ensuring that personal gain and social profit go hand in hand.  

A high GPA, a stellar SAT score, and a string of varsity letters don’t mean much if they haven’t also resulted in the development of a robust character and a wider social climate of liberty and justice for all. I want our kids to learn that as well. Doing so starts to tease apart who really has succeeded in life and who, at least from my perspective, has not.

Thanks again for your wonderful work. I’m looking forward to your next set of posts for cycle two! Please be in touch if you have any questions or concerns. I’m happy to set up in-person or skype appointments to chat with any of you about these issues.

Kyle