My Idea for Change in America: New Core Literacies for Schools
From Change.org:
President-Elect Obama says he wants to hear ideas from all Americans, so we’re taking him up on his offer. Submit your ideas for how to change America, discuss with others, and vote for your favorites.
The “Top 10 Ideas for America” will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day. We will then build a national campaign to advance each idea in Congress, marshaling the resources of Change.org, MySpace, and our dozens of partner organizations and millions of combined members
My idea: New Core LIteracies for Schools
If there is one thing we have learned in the past year is that the old standards of learning (the three Rs) are no longer adequate. We face new challenges–from climate change to growing international debt–and it’s time we prepare our students to face these challenges.
I propose we redefine literacy to address the new issues that we are facing and prepare our students become competent and competitive citizens.
- Environmental literacy: Being environmentally literate extends beyond recycling and using better lightbulbs. Increasingly, reducing our reliance on foreign oil and our consumption is becoming a matter of national safety. So what does it mean to be green? How can we redesign buildings, cars, cities, and policies to reduce our impact on the enviornment and on other communities while still growing?
- Legal literacy: My favorite quote regarding government is “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people.” Too often we are unaware of the various laws that impact our lives and as a result we dont know how to make demands. Education is key. What are your rights? What is the legal process when it comes to issues like crime and voting?
- Financial literacy: Whereas a year ago we could bury our heads in the sand when it came to financial issues, the growing financial crisis makes it critical that we know the financial ins-and-outs of our government and ourselves. and What does it mean on personal, state, and national levels to have a balanced budget?
- Technological literacy: While I appreciate the applause given to my generation for its usage of the internet and social media, that’s only a small step. We not only need to increase access but also increase awareness of the different ways technology can be used: math support, foreign language support, and allow us to design, connect, and think differently. What software and hardware are changing how we live both online and offline?
- Media literacy: When ever it comes to making any kind of personal change– the first suggestion is to cut out the media. Why? Because we are encouraged to consume and be, well, ignorant. What images impact how we view ourselves and interact with others?
Each type of literacy requires the creation of new knowledge that students must share with their community. Students will master the basic skills of reading and writing and build critical thinking skills. The emphasis is on hands-on engagement, collaboration, and creating new ways of looking at issues.
The literacies can be combined. For example media and technological literacies can combined so that students think critically and create new kinds of media using visual and audio recording and editing equipment.
I am currently doing a social media and social issues workshop with students that I work with. Students select a social issue of personal importance, conduct research, interviews, and community service to get different perspectives on their issue and make suggestions on how to solve their issue. They chronicle their learning on a blog which enables them to share their learning with others. Ami Dar, founder of idealist.org, was so impressed with this idea he offered to work with the kids to emphasize how young people can bring about social change.
I envisioned the literacies be implemented in Obama’s “Promise Neighborhoods”: modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities, to an entire neighborhood from birth to college.
I worked for the Harlem Children’s Zone in TRUCE, which is their media literacy program for high school students. The students examined media issues (I focused on presentations of manhood and womanhood) and had to create a video/audio response to what they were learning. So clearly this can be done!
So what do you all think? What are some challenges to implementation and scale?
If you like, please VOTE FOR THIS IDEA and if you have comments, start the conversation over at Change.org!
This is a very forward looking proposal that I would love to see make its way into education. I think the most important piece is not so much the bullet points (which are awesome), but the introduction to them: “prepare our students to become competent and competitive citizens.”
The United States doesn’t have national standards for education (even No Child Left Behind, as huge as it was, said everyone had to test, but didn’t proscribe what it is that they would actually be testing). Because of that, it’s not even clear sometimes what the purpose is of our education system: so kids know stuff. Why? so they get good grades. Why? so they go to college. Why? so they get good jobs. Why? so they can make more money. Why? …. and so forth. I happen to believe that the ultimate end-goal is self-realization, but not everyone need be so open minded
Especially in tough neighborhoods, getting a good education is viewed as a tool to *escape*, not as a way to give back and improve the neighborhood. That’s what I think the key message is, especially of the Promise Neighborhoods: it’s about creating new areas of hope and prosperity where people want to stay and live, not taking the very best and ejecting them elsewhere.
Wow. Great post!
@Ben: I LOVE that last point you made in your comment about education not just being seen as a tool to escape a bad neighborhood (which, I will admit, was the case for me) but rather a tool to enhance the neighborhood and make people want to stay. I never really thought of the Promise Neighborhoods in that way but as I reflect on my experiences in the Harlem Children’s Zone, I notice that many of employees were from the neighborhood and if not employeed, community members were directly involved in a great deal of planning. It’s a form of investment.
Great observation!
These are great ideas, and hands-on as you pointed out. You can have students participate in a rooftop garden (some architects are designing these right into schools), perhaps even measure energy costs compared to a building without… as for the rest, social media is already making a difference in democracy. Even apart from Change.gov, organizations like MomsRising.org make it easy to petition one’s elected representatives, etc.
The challenge I see, living where I do in the rural Northeast, is that education is seen as neither escape nor tool to enhance… it just isn’t trusted at all. Most families up here are from farming or mill stock, where kids have always been expected to go to work right out of school. Of course, farms have been turned into subdivisions and mills are shut down, but bad attitudes persist. I think that’s true in a lot of rural or formerly rural (now exurban) areas.
So the trick in these communities – in any community – is to relate these literacies to the prevailing culture, adapting curricula and approaches as needed so that they aren’t seen as “liberal nonsense.” Ultimately the differences aren’t so profound after all; you’re still giving kids tools to use FOR their communities, teaching them what they CAN do apart from what they think they can’t. It would just take tweaking IMO.
I like the idea a lot, but I also wonder how we find the time in the curriculum. I think they competencies have to be combibed with existing topics or something gets squeezed out one way or another.
@christa and alanna: Time and acceptance are huge barriers. However what I like about literacy is that it can be combined with other ideas and incorporated without necessarily becoming a whole new entity (although in best case scenario it would).
For example, Christa (I dont know much about rural areas so this is totally a guess) but I’m sure farmers may notice changes in the environment. Environmental lit can be designed to address those changes and ideas for action without using “liberal” language. The purpose is to challenge young people to create answers to issues affecting them on their level.
And Alanna, you are right on about combining literacies as a way to combat the time issue. For example, cant an understanding of history be bolstered using social media? And also, at this point, we cant afford to not train our students in technology, media, and financial literacies. We are weaker as a country because of it.
I think you still need to keep basic literacy on that list. . . Little Johnny needs to be able to read a book or a contract or a waiver etc. Basic literacy is still important.
What about some kind of linguistic literacy — as a player in the globalized economy, it’s kind of pathetic that more Americans aren’t at least bi-lingual.
@zak–of course. We wouldnt get rid of basic skills. They are the building blocks to these literacies I have outlined. My point is that basic is no longer sufficient.
Adding languages/cultural literacy is a great idea. There is a joke going around that Americans dont even speak English, we speak American highlighting how removed we are from other countries and cultures.
You’re getting at life learning vs. book learning, really. It’s the book learning that’s been mistrusted in communities like mine. Of course, with farms and mills gone, there is no opportunity for life learning left. But to bring it back into the classroom… that’s the key, as you said “to challenge young people to create answers to issues affecting them on their level.”
It would be amazing, for instance, to allow HS students to take “ownership” of a school by presenting them with energy costs, a list of solutions, and letting them figure out how to implement them. (Some architects are doing this with focus groups on college campuses.)
My question is… how do you implement these changes in public schools, where standards-based learning and process and bureaucracy are so entrenched? My husband recently left public school teaching for this reason – he basically could no longer teach history, which he loves and is incredibly gifted at. I almost think you’d have to dismantle the entire system and build it back from the ground up!