Energizer

This one I recommend. It always works, if you believe in it yourself. It can be done only if the number of students is even. If not I suggest you give someone the runaround. Certainly the headmaster needs urgent information, whatever.
Act like the severe strict teacher the kids know you can be. Pass on sheets of paper, one per pair of students. Tell them to clutch hands. Do glare fiercely at the two boys who don't like sharing hands until they follow suit.
Explain that each couple now has one pair of hands available, a left one and a right one, right? Tell them you are going to show how to fold a paper air plane. They are to co-operate with their pair of hands to copy your procedure.
Turn a blind eye to students who swap now: left-handers have to be expedient in a right handed world.
Be sure to be able to show how to fold a paper plane model that is somewhat beyond their ken, that they haven't seen before. I f you have never folded any paper plane, then leave this post. Try something more serious.
Of course, as the teacher you are, you understand that you have to demonstrate this above your head against the blackboard or whiteboard with your back towards the class, to prevent any confusion about what's done left and right. Don't crick your neck when looking over your shoulder to synchronize the moves. End with counting down for take-off.
I believe I invented this activity myself. But I'm not too sure about that. As an artist I am an expert in nicking ideas unconsciously.
This year I started with a cover lesson. A colleague of the maths department had taken ill. There is a lot of mathematics in folding paper planes. I bet you can come up with that yourself.

The Engine of Culture

Michelangelo Buonarotti,
The Creation of Adam, 1508-1512, detail.

This post was triggered by a post Art as Salvation or Education on Joanne Jacobs' blog and was partly published as a comment there.

We stand on the shoulders of the likes of Galileo Galilei, Michelangelo Buonarotti and Siddharta Gautama. The engine of human endeavour is revved up by three disciplines: Science, Art and Religion. These main strands of our expertise cannot be circumvented when devising a curriculum in secondary edation.

Religion

To start with the latter: even when you are an atheist like I am, you have to come to terms with the meaning of your life, or the futility of your death. The quest for the answer is a religious journey. Atheism, Islam, Christianity, or Zen, all those different ways to solve the riddle of our just being here for a short time only are all intricate patterns of do's and don't s, procedures, and systems of thought. They are bodies of knowledge and their findings should be communicated in the school's curriculum, not to foist a particular religion on the students but to have the question of meaning at the core of the curriculum. You may call it philosophy if you distrust the term religious studies.

Science

The impact of science on our world is obvious. I suppose that's why politicians and administrators emphasize the importance of science and maths in education. I agree with them completely.

Art

Piero Manzoni,
The Artist's Shit,contents freshly preserved shit, produced and tinned in 1961.

Visual artists have been asking profound question's about our cultural codes throughout the twentieth century. Their weird art works cannot be frittered away as just "shit." It is the art teacher's job to clarify the thoughts underlying such a work to make it understandable to the students.

source image

Art is epitomised by its products being rendered seemingly effortlessly. The sparkling colours of the painting, the high pitch of the trumpet, the terse prose in the novel, the beauty of the chair you sit on, the accessible design of the website, the wonderful proportions of the building, all these riveting expressions of art seem to come naturally and with ease. I guess that's why art is often underestimated in education when decisions are made about budget and curriculum.

The artists who perform these acts are experts in their disciplines. They don't want you to feel obliged because they worked so hard to attain this level. They just thrill you with their skills.
Be sure: they have worked doggedly for many years to make you feel enthralled. And they need you. They need an educated public that perceives their colour combinations, discerns the melodic line in the symphony, recognises the style of the chair, and appreciates the post modern whimsical approach of the architect. Above all they need the applause or jeers that tell them what is ugly and without merit and what is beautiful and contributes to our well-being.

That's what we do as art teachers in secondary education. We teach the audience for the artists. Every so often we have a talented artist among our students and we will show him the way to a profession as an artist. But that is not the main thing. Neither am I very interested in developing hobbyists who take up art for leisure at a later stage in their life, though such a thing is not to be sneezed at. Art classes are not about making lovely art only. We teach creative procedures, artistic principles, art history, and the making of art to create a knowledgeable audience for the artists. Thereby we rev up the engine of our culture with a divine spark and advance the quality of our lives.

About dogs, kids and standardized tests

Can we compare the kids we meet in our class room with dogs? Are we trainers or educators?
Source image

Jason Flom has posted a highly peculiar metaphor at Ecology of Education. He has been on vacation to Scotland and has admired the remarkable skills of the Border Collie.
This leads him into thinking about a crucial dilemma in education. Shouldn't we accept that some children are inept at maths or science, or history?

It isn’t that many different breeds can’t be taught to herd, lead high-altitude rescue efforts, or kill foxes. They can. It’s just that teaching all dogs to do things which one particular breed can do better than any other doesn’t make much sense.
We accept the reasonableness of that argument for dogs. We reject it for kids.

His observation of dogs shepherding in the Scottish highlands triggers Jason Flom into rejecting standardised tests.

Think a promising trumpet player shouldn’t be kept out of the school orchestra or pushed out on the street because he can’t remember the date of the Boxer Rebellion?

This is a lousy metaphor. It is based on poor ethology. It results in detrimental ethics.

I have had a happy dog for sixteen years

Dogs are bred to demonstrate predictable behaviour to meet to their master's wishes. Being descendants from wolves, domesticated by mankind, they love to follow the leader of their pack, which happens to be a human being. That's why dogs are eager to show their innate qualities and don' t need to overcome their flaws. Dogs are not aware of their flaws. Don't teach your dog to overcome his dependency, it will result in a mean companion. You can train your dog to do tricks based on his natural behaviour, retrieve a stick and so on. That's all.

There is a difference between training and education

Humans are educated to enable creative versatile behaviour with which they can react to unpredictable circumstances independently and thereby pursue their personal happiness and shore up the common good of their tribe. They may heed the chief's stance, but only if it makes sense.
That's why they need a broad knowledge and understanding even in those fields in which they are not that talented. They need to learn a lot of things. Being able to learn a lot of things is the quintessential talent of our species. Homo sapiens is a far better learner than Canis lupus familiaris.

You do not own your classroom, you owe it to the world at large.

Secondary education must guarantee that everyone can participate in society and contribute to the survival of the species. That's why everyone has to attain a basic curriculum. On top of that everyone has to develop his natural talents for making a living as an expert, as a plumber, a rocket scientist or as a trumpet player. We need all those special skills and talents.
But we definitely need the excellent trumpet player to have also an educated opinion on matters of science: he has to vote on legislation which deals with environmental issues, for example. We don't want daft voters, do we? We don't want to treat musical talents like dogs who are rewarded with a cookie or hug when showing their tricks on request of the master, do we? We don't want the plumber to be invoked as a politician's running gag “Joe the Plumber,” do we?

No education without testing

Standardised testing guarantees that students push themselves to pass muster in a broad range of subjects, not only in their favourite activity. Without standards they would be too lazy and bail out. The trumpet player might get his applause but the world will collapse

I don't get it

I do not understand my fellow teachers from The United States. I only ran into this contentious issue while blogging. I am ignorant about “No Child Left Behind” or “The Common Core Standards.” I am a humble teacher from The Netherlands, who has been dogged for years and years by the standards of our national exams. But looking at international comparison of efficacy of education, I can only conclude that The Netherlands rank perennially in the top ten, if not the top five, while the United States lag way behind. Albeit, we, Dutch teachers, we are embarrassed, because we used to be in the top three. Apparently we have a problem and we are enviously looking at Finland: number one. Their secondary school concludes also with a nationally graded matriculation examination, devised in the ninetenteenth century, just like our national exams. They keep their exams up like we do.

Dear fellow teachers from The States: heed your chief's caution: you need standardised tests. You need national exams. It makes sense!

By the way

It goes without saying that any promising trumpet player who can memorise an intricate musical pattern is capable of remembering the date of the Boxer Rebellion. If he is too lazy to work at it, then just send him on the streets to busk. He may earn his bread and butter while other people decide on his future.

Life's a Carnival–the Education Buzz #2

The second Education Buzz Carnival is up at Bellringers! The funniest post in this carnival deals with posters newly arrived college students embellish their rooms with. Apparently Van Gogh's Starry Night, Salvador Dali's surrealism, and De Toulouse Lautrec's poster designs appeal to youngsters just as much as those icons of yesteryear did to my generation fourty years ago.
Another item that struck me when viewing all those dorm room posters to avoid was the visual rhyme between Mick Jagger and Albert Einstein. Having such a poster in your dormroom at least reminds you to speak your mind.

Images: Einstein. Mick Jagger

Exchange through Art

Self portrait done by a fifteen year old Dutch boy in my class room. Matthias borrowed my beret to decorate his head with for this work.

Today I started working on “Exchange through Art,” an eTwinning project in which students from various schools across Europe will publish their works of art and communicate about it, in English. So far a wonderful Bulgarian art teacher and an amiable Turkish school administrator joined the party. It would be nice to have a fellow teacher from an English spoken country in the project. So if you would like to show off those imaginative drawings, highly decorative ceramics, crafted chair designs, riveting paintings, stunning photographs that your students are going to produce in your art room this year, and have your students write about it and look at works done by students abroad, then please contact me.

Why we matter much more than we think

I have never read a more succinct description of the teacher's job than ”Why you matter much more than you think” by Justin Tarte. Have look at it! It made my day!

Standardized tests

Hundreds of students at Ulenhof, Doetinchem, The Netherlands are focussing on their national exam. At the very moment candidates of all Dutch secondary schools do exactly the same test.

Reading all those wonderful educational blogs it strikes me that so many teachers are outraged about standardized tests mandated by government.

Just some examples out of many:

J. at A Teacher's Viewpoint complains that

"The first thing that absolutely must be done is to abandon the absurd notion that anything useful is gained from the current misuse of standardized tests."

Joe Bower propounds abolishment of all grading:

"Ironically, it is the skill & drill kinds of learning that standardized test measure that are taking precedent over real learning. This is exactly why parents need to be concerned when they see rising test scores."

In The Netherlands general secondary education is dominated by the national exam with which students conclude their school career. I wouldn't have it otherwise.

The results for the exam are proof of the student's level per subject, regardless the school where he has studied. The results of all students per school give relevant information about the school's efficacy. And I have to accept that the results of my students at the national exam for my subject gauge the quality of my teaching.

It goes without saying that school has to offer more than just a highway towards an exam. The exam result is only one of many features that make a good school. But our national exam definitely makes the teacher accountable for intellectual attainment measured with a yardstick that is not homespun.

I do not trust teachers, nor schools, for that matter, to devise their own goals and have them decide which level is sufficient. I would not entrust myself with such responsibility.

I have to deliver the goods and services that society needs. School is not a playground in which we are given leeway to implement our best intentions for the benefit of other people's children. Education at school is an essential part of the real world.

The real world can be harsh. A student who fluffs his exam has to resit it next year.