TJEd and the “French Way”
May 14th, 2012 // 7:46 am @ Oliver DeMille
A book review of Druckerman’s Bringing up Bébé
Many people around the world are discovering principles of great education that those using TJEd are already applying. The “conveyor belt” approach to learning has two big competitors in this second decade of the twenty-first century.
I Can Conform Better Than You Can
The first can be summed up as, “Don’t just participate in the conveyor belt — excel at it!” This is the idea widely popularized in the Tiger Mom book[i] and debate that swept through American education circles during the past two years.
The second approach, the one adopted by Montessori, TJEd and other highly-effective educational viewpoints, recently gained another proponent. In the enjoyable book Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman, we learn about core principles the author observed in the parenting philosophy and style of French parents. Those familiar with TJEd will hear a familiar ring to these “French” techniques, and all of us can learn from these ideas.
Les Sept Clés
For example, according to Druckerman, here are some of the “secrets” of effective parenting widely utilized in the French culture:
- A focus on parenting as a pleasure rather than a chore or grind
- An emphasis on helping children experience growing up as a joy rather than a job
- Taking it slow and enjoying the journey rather than rushing to stay ahead of the neighbors’ kids or meet standards set by unnamed experts
- “Establishing firm but gentle authority…”
- “Favoring creative play over lots of lessons…”
- “Never letting a child become the center of your existence”[ii]
- Realizing that children aren’t “projects for their parents to perfect. They are separate and capable, with their own tastes…”[iii]
“French parents just don’t seem so anxious for their kids to get head starts,” Druckerman tells us, but rather help them experience quality in growing up and learning.[iv] The focus is more on the current goal of being happy children and the end goal of becoming well-adjusted adults than on striving for adult goals as toddlers and young children.
Throughout the book, those using TJEd will find familiar themes couched in an evocative European experience. The following ideas show up repeatedly and in new and interesting ways:
- Classics
- Mentors
- Structure time, not content
- You, not them
- Simple, not complex
- Quality, not conformity
- Secure, not stressed
- Teach to the appropriate phase, not one-size-fits-all education
- Personalize, instead of joining the conveyor belt
Above all, Druckerman highlights the French emphasis on wisdom[iv] (rather than grades, gold stars, or other external accolades) as the central purpose of learning — and for that matter, of family and life.
The fact that Druckerman is an American who learned these principles while living in France adds to the flavor—it is practical in the “American” sort of way while being idealistic and even artistic in the French way. In short, it’s a great read, even if you don’t use TJEd but especially if you do!
[ii] See “Books: Bringing up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman,” Reviewed by Kim Hubbard, People, February 20,2012.
[iii] Pamela Druckerman, Bringing up Bébé.
[iv] Ibid.
Category : Blog &Book Reviews &Education &Family &Featured
A Truly Excellent Book on Genius and How to Develop It!
April 3rd, 2012 // 9:41 pm @ Oliver DeMille
Genius by Mike Byster
5 Stars
Reviewed by Oliver DeMille
I love it when a plan comes together. Okay, it isn’t really a plan. But I still love it when I read a book that says what we’ve been saying for years in Leadership Education.
I enjoy disagreeing with books too, which is why I love to talk about Lord of the Flies or 1984 with people who have read them repeatedly and given them a lot of thought.
But today I read a book that agreed with much of what I wrote about in A Thomas Jefferson Education and that I’ve been speaking and writing about for a long time.
I had the same experience when I read The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner, and A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink.
Today’s book was Genius by Mike Byster.
Those who have followed Leadership Education and Thomas Jefferson Education (TJEd) know that we have long taught that all people on the planet have genius within them, and that it is a fundamental purpose of good education to help them find and develop their genius.
Byster goes a step further, by teaching the reader how to develop one’s areas of inner genius, and the result is a truly excellent book.
Those familiar with Leadership Education will resonate with several recurring themes.
For example, Byster argues that a major problem with modern education is that we put too much emphasis on teaching subjects rather than helping students learn how to effectively learn and think.
He quotes Albert Einstein and Alvin Toffler, respectively: “I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn,” and “The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Most significantly, at least for me, Byster outlines a plan or pattern of teaching and learning genius.
Again, many of the themes are familiar to me, but they are couched in new ways and combined with new concepts, examples and ideas that make the book an instant classic for me. I’ll read it again and again.
Byster teaches the following “Six Skills of A Genius,” and gives suggestions and exercises for mastering them:
- Focus
- Concentration
- “Retaining Massive Amounts of Information Without ‘Memorizing’” (This is accomplished by making learning fun, exciting and otherwise engaging one’s own love of learning and areas of passionate interest.)
- Thinking Outside the Box
- Organization (This includes finding patterns in things and reorganizing information to better intersect with one’s own mind and world.)
- Forgetting
What a great outline. I especially like the last one, which reminds me of counsel I often gave to freshmen and sophomores: “Only take notes on things you deeply care about and want to remember, rather than just summarizing whatever lecture you attend.”
Not trying to remember things you don’t want to recall is a vital part of remembering the important things.
Again, this book resonated with me in so many ways that I was excited to go back and read it again.
The first time I just read it through, then I spent the evening and long into the night reading it a second time and taking copious notes.
Maybe the most enjoyable thing about this book is that many of the exercises are focused on math.
I hope that doesn’t stop anybody from reading it, because it was some of the most enjoyable and downright fun math I’ve done since…well, ever.
This was a very entertaining, pleasurable, amusing book. I learned so much! I recommend it everyone, whether you know anything about TJEd or not.
For those with a background in Leadership Education, I think you’ll love this book as much as I did. Principles of truth are principles of truth, after all, and this book is full of such principles.
I add it to A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider as one of my all-time favorite books on math, and also as one of the best books on “Leadership Education.”
Read it, love it, have fun with it. Enjoy!
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Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Book Reviews &Education &Featured &Leadership &Mission
Education Insights: Unschooling Rules (A Book Review)
December 14th, 2011 // 8:27 am @ Oliver DeMille
Once in a while a truly great book comes along that you just can’t wait to tell everyone else to read. Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich is that kind of book.
I started reading in the afternoon and couldn’t put it down until I finished.
My first thought when I completed the last page was, “I wish I had written this!” My second thought was, “I need to read this again.”
Those who have read and studied A Thomas Jefferson Education (TJEd) or Leadership Education will find this book especially enjoyable. It covers a lot of TJEd themes, but with its own interesting twist.
As I read it I kept saying, “Yes! Absolutely! Right on!” I haven’t seen a book so totally capture the vision of Leadership Education in home school in a long time.
But I’ll let this outstanding book speak for itself. Here are some quotes from this fabulous little book:
“In many schools across the world, children en masse get dropped off and enter buildings where they become the recipient of linear ‘teaching’ and tests. They go home, do homework, and start over again the next day—all for the goal of preparing them for the next level of school and meeting broad and dubiously constructed standards.”
A better “…type of learning answers such questions as: ‘What do I love doing?’ ‘What is my dream?’ ‘What gives me energy?’ ‘What are my unique strengths?’ and even ‘What is my role in a group?’”
“There are two reasons to learn something: either because you need it or because you love it.”
“Twenty-five critical skills are seldom taught, tested or graded….adapting, analyzing and managing risks…being a leader…gathering evidence, identifying and using boards of mentors and advisors…managing projects, negotiating, planning long term…”
“Don’t worry about preparing students for jobs from an Agatha Christie novel…”
“One computer + one spreadsheet software program = math curricula.”
“Five subjects a day? Really?”
“Maturing solves a lot of problems.”
“Grouping students by the same age is just a bad idea.”
“Tests don’t work. Get over it. Move on.”
“The future is portfolios, not transcripts.”
“Outdoors beats indoors.”
“The predominant academic milieu should be walking. When walking, children can talk. They can think.”
“Under-schedule to take advantage of the richness of life.”
“But it will not be the governments, or their school systems, or other of their institutions that will drive real innovation in reconstructing childhood education. It will be as it already is, the homeschoolers and the unschoolers.”
These are just a sample of the many wise things in Unschooling Rules. As I said, this book fits right in with the TJEd model of leadership education and home school. I highly recommend it book for every parent, teacher and administrator involved in modern education. It is a manual for great learning.
My friend Jeff Sandefer wrote in the forward to this excellent book:
“Each child has a spark of genius waiting to be discovered, ignited, and fed. And the goal of schools shouldn’t be to manufacture ‘productive citizens’ to fill some corporate cubicle; it should be to inspire each child to find a ‘calling’ that will change the world. The jobs for the future are no longer Manager, Director, or Analyst, but Entrepreneur, Creator, and even Revolutionary.”
This is a great book for our time — whether you home school or not. Five stars! I hope you’ll read it right away. If you are new to TJEd, read this great book right along with A Thomas Jefferson Education.
If you’re already familiar with TJEd, Unschooling Rules provides another excellent witness of what really works for truly quality education. This book belongs on every shelf, and its ideas need to be in every mind!
***********************************
Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Book Reviews &Education &Family &Leadership
The Big Debate on American Education
November 4th, 2011 // 4:39 pm @ Oliver DeMille
Home Schools, the New Private Schools, and Other Non-Traditional Learning
The current national commentary on American education is split by a major paradox.
On the one hand, nearly all the experts are convinced that our schools must find a way to effectively and consistently teach the values and skills of innovation and initiative.
If we fail in this, everyone seems to agree, the competitiveness of U.S. workers and the economy will continue to fall behind other nations.
As Gary Shapiro wrote:
“Our nation is looking into the abyss. With a blinding focus on the present, our government is neglecting a future that demands thoughtful action.
“The only valid government action is that which invests in our children. This requires hard choices…
“America is in crisis. What is required is a commitment to innovation and growth. We can and must succeed.
“With popular and political resolve, we can reverse America’s decline…. America must become the world’s innovative engine once again; we cannot fail.”
And education is the key.
On the other hand, many of the top education decision-makers seem committed to only making changes when there is a consensus among educators, parents, experts and administrators.
They adamantly criticize any who take bold, innovative initiate to improve the situation.
In the meantime, they wait timidly, albeit loudly, for a consensus which never comes.
Because of this view, the innovative success of many parents in home schools, teachers in small private schools and other non-traditional educational offerings go unnoticed or undervalued by the national press.
The reality is, as Orrin Woodward put it: “If everyone agrees with what you’re doing, it isn’t innovative.”
The growing Global Achievement Gap in our schools, as outlined by Tony Wagner’s book of this title, presents an ominous warning for Americans.
We can change things if we choose, Wagner says, by adopting the following values and skills in our school curriculum: critical thinking, agility, adaptability, initiative, curiosity, imagination and entrepreneurialism, among others.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan quoted Wagner in Foreign Affairs:
“…there is a happy ‘convergence between the skills most needed in the global knowledge economy and those most needed to keep our economy safe and vibrant.’”
He also foreshadowed the decades ahead by quoting President Obama:
“The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow.”
It is difficult to imagine our public schools meeting these lofty needs if our teachers are expected to be anything but entrepreneurial, innovative and agile, when they in fact work in an environment that discourages and at times punishes precisely such behaviors.
It is even more impossible to make the needed changes to our education system if we must wait for everyone to agree on a consensus of action.
Change always comes with a few courageous souls taking the lead, showing what can work, and helping others follow their innovative path.
The only way we’re going to see a burst of innovation and initiative in American education is to start paying attention to the myriad exciting educational innovations already occurring.
As Malcolm Gladwell suggests, the leadership right now in many arenas—including education—is occurring outside the mainstream, led by “Outliers” who just forget the experts and create new and better ways of doing things.
If you are one of these educational innovators—at home or in the classroom—keep taking the lead. You are the future of American success!
Category : Education &Family &Featured &Leadership &Liberty &Mission
Education Reform Won’t Work Anymore.
October 3rd, 2011 // 10:57 am @ Oliver DeMille
We Need a Transformation!
A Review of Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative
This is an excellent book. Here are some of Robinson’s main points:
We are living in a time of global change, whether we admit it or not.
“As the world spins faster and faster, organizations everywhere say they need people who can think creatively, communicate and work in teams: people who are flexible and quick to adapt. Too often they say they can’t find them. Why not?”
Young children think they are creative; most adults think they aren’t creative. What causes the change over time?
The truth is that our educational system does a lot of harm to some of our most needed abilities and qualities. “Some of the most successful people in the world did not do well at school…. Many succeeded only after they had recovered from their education.”
With education so vital to advanced post-industrial society, why is it that the legacy of education now seems to include a reduction in creativity, initiative and innovation in so many people? And what can be done about it?
Robinson addresses these questions head on:
“Current approaches to education and training are hobbled by assumptions about intelligence and creativity that have squandered the talents and stifled the creative confidence of untold numbers of people.”
I was interested to note that people haven’t lost their creativity or creative ability, just their “confidence” in these abilities. Many adults are also out of the habit of using their creativeness. In my view, the conveyor-belt model of learning has caused this result in the lives of most people.
Robinson:
“This waste stems partly from an obsession with certain types of academic ability [e.g. rote memorization, early academic success rather than lasting academic interest, etc.] and from a preoccupation with standardized testing. The waste of talent is not deliberate. Most educators have a deep commitment to helping students do their best….
“The waste of talent may not be deliberate but it is systemic. It is systemic, because public education is a system, and it is based on deep-seated assumptions that are no longer true.”
The challenge is that given this systemic, structural reality in our educational models, the time for reform is past. “The challenge now is to transform them.”
Robinson writes:
“As Thomas Friedman, author of the World is Flat, puts it, ‘Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait…. Those who have the ability to imagine new services and new opportunities and new ways to recruit work…are the new Untouchables. Those with the imagination to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies will thrive….
“Our schools have a doubly hard task, not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.’”
Top global business and public sector leaders “overwhelmingly agree,” Robinson notes, “that the single most important leadership competency for organizations to deal with [the] growing complexity is creativity.”
“All over the world, governments are pouring vast resources into education reform. In the process, policy makers typically narrow the curriculum to emphasize a small group of subjects, tie schools up in a culture of standardized testing and limit the discretion of educators to make professional judgments about how and what to teach. These reforms are typically stifling the very skills and qualities that are essential to meet the challenges we face: creativity, cultural understanding, communication, collaboration and problem solving.”
“The challenge now is to transform education systems into something better suited to the real needs of the 21st century. At the heart of this transformation there has to be a radically different view of human intelligence and creativity.”
Robinson’s solutions:
- Increase access to education
- Change the way we educate
- Help students learn to ask more questions
- Promote a diversity of subjects, talents and interests
- Increase exposure to the arts and sciences
- Rethink disability as deep ability in something
- Personalize and individualize
- Help students become their best selves rather than emphasize fitting in
- Stop penalizing individuality
- Stop penalizing mistakes; promote mistakes as essential to the creative process and positive to learning
- Teach across the academic fields and remove barriers between topics of knowledge
- Officially make feelings as important to learning as thinking
- Make authenticity a key part of learning
- Stop acting as if life and learning are linear
- Restructure schools and businesses to encourage creativity
- Fund creativity, and give people time to be creative
- Allow each school to be unique
- Use new technologies to help individualize the education of each student
- Help the student be the primary creator of her own program
- Be creative and flexible with the schedule; great learning is the thing, not some list of rules, schedules and plans
This is a truly excellent list of educational transformations. This book is as important to America as Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy, or my own book A Thomas Jefferson Education—or at least it should be. Every educator, political official and parent should deeply consider how to apply the reforms it suggests. This is more than a great book, it is a necessary book.
If Robinson’s book has a weakness, it is that he gives too little attention to the role of teachers. He mentions how important teachers are, but in my opinion he doesn’t go far enough. The reality is that teachers are the lynchpin in all education and educational reforms. If you have a great teacher in the room with your student, you’ll watch the young person experience improved and eventually great education. If not, you won’t. It really is this simple.
Great teaching results in great learning, because great teachers inspire students to engage the act of getting a great education for themselves. Such education always increases creativity, innovation, imagination and initiative. Great teachers bring great education. Period. Even with all the changes listed above, without great teachers, very little real change will occur. With great teachers, however, such reforms will naturally catalyze a genuine transformation.
Maybe Robinson’s next book will be on how to be a great teacher. If we implement the suggestions he made in Out of Our Minds, even in our homes or a school where we have influence, we will be ready when such teachers come along.
