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Eight Words for Education

June 7th, 2011 // 5:15 pm @ Oliver DeMille

Eight words can tell us almost everything we need to know about the failures of modern education. More importantly, they can teach us how to drastically improve education personally and as a society. Until we understand these eight words, and reapply their innate wisdom, our schooling systems will continue to struggle and mediocrity will continue to win the day. Even the most successful schools and teachers can improve themselves by applying the lessons of these eight words.

1: Autodidact

We have forgotten what it means to be an autodidact. Ideally, all students would be effective self-educators rather than dependents on experts.

When each learner deeply owns his or her education, the quality and quantity of study and overall education increases. Great teachers and schools encourage and teach their students to be effective autodidacts.

2: Polymath

Quality education helps each student become a polymath. This is not the same as a “jack of all trades, master of none.” A polymath is a true expert and master in more than one field. Indeed, unless a person is deeply educated in several topics it is practically impossible to be a real master of any one field.

As Dale Alquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, wrote:

“The affliction of specialization is myopia. As specialists we are under the delusion that our small area of expertise informs us about everything else. We know more and more about less and less. Truth has been carefully compartmentalized.”

However this impacts career and life, it is hurtful to education. All knowledge is related, and only deep understanding of multiple subjects allows real wisdom.

3: Philosopher

Each learner should adopt the attitude of a philosopher. This means at least three things:

• Passionately loving to learn and constantly seeking new knowledge and truth
• Thinking creatively, originally and “out of the box” rather than merely conforming to the accepted wisdom
• Arriving at one’s conclusions not by conformity to the ideas of the experts but by thinking deeply about all views and holding one’s own counsel. Emerson spoke widely on such topics, and Socrates, Descartes, Bacon, Einstein and others have shown that rigorous and unconventional thinking is the key to real advancement

Without real intellectual curiosity and independent thinking, little progress occurs for the individual student or man’s collective knowledge.

4 – 6: Leaders, Genius, Greatness

All education should train leaders, and therefore all education should be leadership education. Of course, this does not mean that the current conception of charisma as leadership is the answer.

At the deepest level, leadership entails discovering one’s inner genius and developing it to its full potential. This is the crux of great education, and anything less than greatness in education is disappointing. Every person has an inner genius, and the world is the loser when such potential remains undeveloped.

Leaders, genius and greatness are too often missing in our educational institutions and dialogues.

7: Risk

Education should make us wise, which means in part knowing how and when to take wise risk. Too often modern education does the opposite by teaching and even training us to avoid all risks. Success and progress are natural results of the right kind of risk, and without this lesson no education is complete.

8: Service

The highest purpose of education is to increase our ability to serve. Service should be the underlying lesson in everything we learn—in formal schooling and as informal learners in all settings of life.

Without service our successes are hollow and our societal progresses are mere facades. It is genuine service to others, especially service freely given for the right reasons, which determines the true character of any community or nation. Education must emphasize the central role of service in our lives, happiness and any success.

The Over-arching Goal: Wisdom

Our modern systems and institutions of education at all levels will continue to struggle until these ideals are re-matriculated into our everyday learning.

All these words could be summed up in one overarching goal of education: wisdom. We can all benefit from implementing these eight words and the principles behind each into our lives, families, schools and learning.

The good news is that we don’t have to wait for experts or big unwieldy institutions to make this change; every parent and teacher can implement these important ideas immediately.

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Oliver DeMille is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education, The Coming Aristocracy, FreedomShift, Leadership Education (with Rachel DeMille), The Student Whisperer (with Tiffany Earl), and other books, articles and audio products—available here.

Category : Blog &Education

The Senate Question

June 6th, 2011 // 4:53 pm @ Oliver DeMille

It appears obvious that most Democrats will support President Obama in the 2012 presidential election and that most Republicans will vote for the eventual Republican nominee. Independents, who will actually determine the election, are looking at things in a more complicated light.

Many independents dislike a number of the Obama Administration’s policies, as proven in the 2010 midterm election, but they remain unimpressed with Republican leadership since November 2010. Indeed, it was independents who threw Republicans out of power in 2006 and again in 2008.

While most pundits seem to believe that the 2012 election will hinge on issues of the economy, some independents are targeting the Senate as the hidden key to November 2012. Many independents would like to see the House remain Republican, the Senate swing Republican, and the White House remain Democratic—thus increasing the checks and balances on two sides which can’t seem to get it together.

A few Republicans are making the same argument, but for different reasons. When Republicans talk about winning the Senate in 2012, they are hedging their bets—they clearly want the presidency, but they’re lowering expectations so they can claim victory if they simply take the Senate.[i] Independents, in contrast, genuinely see split government as the best possible scenario.

The majority of independents support high profile policies from both the left and the right. For example, independents overwhelmingly want serious economic changes. They are deeply concerned with the spending increases of the Obama Administration, and they scratch their heads in bewilderment at the Obama team’s refusal to get serious about jobs and economic policy.[ii] On the other hand, most independents can’t grasp the Right’s seeming hatred of immigrants and frigid attitude toward the struggling poor. They dislike President Obama’s healthcare plan but feel that healthcare reform is needed. There are many other examples of how independents like and dislike views from both left and right.

In short, independents aren’t convinced that either party has the answers. If Republicans control all three houses, they predict, we’ll see more military spending and rising domestic social problems as funds shift from our inner cities to third world conflicts—and overall spending won’t likely decrease. If the Democrats run everything, in this view, there will be few checks on Washington’s spending and overregulation of practically everything. The answer seems to be the right kind of split government.

Independents have already supported various constructions of government:

• Republican White House, Republican Senate, Republican House
• Republican White House, Democratic Senate, Democratic House
• Democratic White House, Democratic Senate, Democratic House
• Democratic White House, Democratic Senate, Republican House

None of these have delivered what independents wanted. The worst results, many independents feel, occurred where government was not split, where one party controlled all three “houses.”

The key to overcoming this dilemma may be the Senate. The White House and House of Representatives are natural competitors based on the structure of the U.S. Constitution: the Executive is the Commander-in-Chief, while the House holds the purse strings. Thus by constitutional nature the office of the president puts a high priority on international affairs while the House’s primary focus is domestic policy. The Senate has a direct role in both domestic and international policy, and sits as the major check and balance on both the President and the House of Representatives.

Since the rise of independent power in the Internet Age, we haven’t seen the following structure of government:

• Democratic White House, Republican Senate, Republican House

The nuances in this formation are interesting. Such a model would keep a Democratic Commander-in-Chief in office, and the natural Democratic tendency to move conservatively in international relations would most likely limit American foreign policy to the most important international involvements—as opposed to the Republican proclivity for international power agendas.

On the home front, a Republican-controlled Senate and House would be inclined to downplay Democratic spending agendas and militate against spending too much, taxing too much, or over-regulating. In other words, such a model of governance naturally tones down the passionate agendas of both parties and puts the head, rather than the heart, in charge on both the domestic and international fronts. The potential of such governance by Washington is intriguing to many independents.

Moreover, “wisdom above passion” is not nearly as likely in any other governmental makeup. For example, the opposite structure (Republican White House, Democratic Senate and House) encourages more passion from both parties and little fiscal or ideological responsibility at home or abroad.

Right now it seems that Republicans will hold the House in 2012 (though much can happen between now and election night). The presidential election currently leans in President Obama’s favor, but things will inevitably tighten as November 2012 approaches.

The real key to America’s future may rest in the Senatorial election. This will not be the focus of the media, of course, which will emphasize presidential politics, but it may be the most significant national election of 2012.

From an independent point of view, the best-case scenario may be a Republican victory in the House complemented by victory in either the Senate or the White House—but not both. The worst-case scenario would probably be to give all three houses to Republicans or all three to Democrats.

If Republicans hold the House and gain the Senate in 2012, and if President Obama stays in the White House, we will experience a new type of government structure: 1) a moderate independent majority of voters empowered by the Internet in an era of daily activism and influence in national debates, 2) a conservative Congress focused on economic moderation and checked in its international agenda, and 3) a liberal White House checked in its domestic spending agendas and dedicated to international moderation. Many independents would like to give this possibility a chance.

Category : Blog &Government &Independents

The “Accountability” Problem

May 31st, 2011 // 1:21 pm @ Oliver DeMille

School Reform in 2011

Schools are typically infected by one fad after another, spreading teacher energy around instead of leaving it focused on teaching. One recent and particularly deadly fad has spread under the false name of “accountability.”

On its face, accountability seems obvious and positive. Who wouldn’t want schools to be accountable in such an important role as educating the next generation of young people? But the reality is more complex simply because there are at least two popular meanings of the phrase “educational accountability.”

Accountability has taken over much of our educational debate—accountability to parents, boards, administrators, accreditors, unions, voters, donors, alumni, the media, and various agencies in Washington D.C.

On the one hand, true accountability is a natural need; but false accountability has become a bane of modern education—false accountability has perhaps caused more harm to schools than anything else.

True accountability refers to results—the quality of student learning, pure and simple. Any and every educational institution and system should be accountable in this way. Their students should learn. And after completing a class or graduating from the institution they should exhibit initiative and genuine interest in pursuing more learning.

This is education, and every teacher and curriculum should be accountable to this result.

False Accountability

False accountability, in contrast, covers everything else—statistics, spreadsheets, cost centers, profitability, days and time in the classroom, teacher credentials, manuals, lesson plans, guidelines, athletic and fieldtrip budgets, and a thousand other things which have little correlation with how much and how effectively students learn.

Unfortunately, the term “accountability” as it is used today nearly always refers to the false kind, and in fact it is often wielded specifically to neglect and even directly undermine or attack the true type of accountability.

A teacher who consistently and demonstrably delivers graduates who have learned well and are excited to keep learning at high levels of excellence is told, for example, that she must change her classroom environment to meet the “accepted standards” of classroom time, testing or other arbitrary measures in order to be “accountable.”

Another teacher whose students show little interest in anything and whose academic performance is decidedly sub-par is held up as the example because she turned in all her paperwork on time and has the right master’s degree. These examples, and many similar, are far too often the norm in much of modern education.

In such an environment, false accountability is the nail used to seal the coffin of many of the best and most effective teachers and programs. Anyone who has spent much time in the educational system—unless they are part of the false accountability bureaucracy—can share stories of this sort.

Accountable to Whom?

“Being a teacher is all about politics,” one highly-awarded charter school English teacher told me the year she was asked to “retire” in order to make room for a new teacher with a more prestigious degree. The school had to meet government requirements and a prestigious degree on the new teacher’s resume would, in the estimation of administrators, make all the difference.

What were the results? Test scores went down through the entire school the next year; it is poignant to note that previously, all students in the small charter school studied with the outgoing teacher, and her influence was clearly missed.

If this were an isolated case, it would be sad. Unfortunately, such realities are commonplace to the point of a national tragedy. It seems that each time a new Presidential Administration attempts to legislate more requirements on teachers, the stack of paperwork grows, the percentage of education money going to administrators and their assistants increases, and quality learning slumps once again.

As Jacques Barzun, former Provost of Columbia University, wrote as far back as 1991:

“The lesson is plain. Children want to know how. Teaching helps them to learn how when able people teach. But they must be allowed to do it, with guidance and encouragement as needed, and with the least amount of dictation from outside.

“Teaching is a demanding, often back-breaking job; it should not be done with the energy left over after meetings and pointless paperwork have drained hope and faith in the enterprise. Accountability, the latest cure in vogue, is to be looked for only in results.

“Good teaching is usually well-known to all concerned without questionnaires or approved lesson plans. The number of good teachers who are now shackled by bureaucratic obligations to superiors who know little or nothing about the classroom cannot even be guessed at. They deserve from an Education President an Emancipation Proclamation….

“…the head of a department in a large state university, not a nostalgic elder, but a ranking scholar in mid-career [asked]: ‘Sitting on my desk is a four-volume institutional self-study filled with charts, figures, ‘mission statements’ and the paper from half a forest, but nothing about education except jargon and platitudes. Where have we gone wrong?’”

The “accountability” fad is unfortunately still spreading twenty years later in 2011. Yet the truth remains unchanged:

It is great teaching that creates great education.

Barzun wrote:

“The Army is not considered the most efficient of institutions, but when it finds a deficiency in fire power it does not launch a ‘Right to Shoot Program’ or a ‘Marksmanship Recovery Project.’ It gets the sergeants busy and the instructors out to the rifle range.”

It is time to stop the paperwork, the endless meetings and trainings, the constantly changing curriculum and standardized guidelines and lesson plans, and instead to put proven teachers in the classrooms and give them their head. As long as teachers deliver excellent educational results, we need to get out of their way.

Principal Teachers

The job of Principals (so named because they were originally the “Principal Teachers” in each school) should be to keep students and teachers safe and to keep all outside distractions away from teachers so they share their gifts and their passion, giving full attention to their students.

This would cause a revolution in American education, and the students and their parents would be the winners. It’s time for real accountability in American education, an accountability that encourages, rewards and settles for nothing less than great educational results—and which rejects every other type of “accountability” as mere distraction at best. This can hardly be stated in strong enough terms.

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 (among others) in our school curriculum:

• critical thinking
• agility
• adaptability
• initiative
• curiosity
• imagination
• entrepreneurialism

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.”

What if we had a different goal?

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. Entrepreneurial accountability is measured by the bottom line, the results, the outcome.

In contrast, bureaucracy frequently obfuscates the results to avoid losing budget share, instead defining “accountability” in myriad ways—none of which are directly tied to results. As former chancellor of the New York City school system wrote in The Atlantic June 2011 issue:

“Even when making a tenure commitment, under New York law you could not consider a teacher’s impact on student learning.”

Dozens, indeed hundreds of things are counted and accounted for in our schools—but not great teaching and its direct impact on learning. No wonder we have a failing education grade in so many places.

We need a widespread focus on real accountability in modern education, on the things that really matter: how much students are learning, how likely they are to keep learning, and how innovative and effective they are in the real world after they finish school.

This is the only real educational accountability. Everything else is something else, and until we reform education to focus on results we will fail to see the kind of education our children deserve or that our economy increasingly demands. It’s time to call for an accounting of our schools—and to redirect funds (without strings attached) to teachers and schools that are delivering what we want: great students who effectively achieve great education.

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the co-author of the 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 &Education

How to Win the 2012 Presidential Election

May 30th, 2011 // 1:11 pm @ Oliver DeMille

The Four Rules of Victory

For Both Sides

Rule 1. Get the Independent Vote. This one thing will determine the 2012 election. Most Republicans will vote Republican and most Democrats will vote for President Obama, but independents will determine the election. It is unclear how they will vote, but there are more independents now than either Democrats or Republicans. Independents overwhelmingly sided with Barack Obama in 2008 and with Republican candidates in 2010, but they are now unimpressed with the actions of both sides and their vote in 2012 remains to be seen.

For President Obama

Rule 2. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. We’ve seen some progress, but not enough. Independents overwhelmingly believe that small business success and economic growth, not government spending, is the way to boost employment rates and the economy for the long term. Independents keep waiting for President Obama to lead a major initiative that reduces regulatory red tape and encourages small business innovation and growth. So far he has seemed committed to doing the opposite.

It’s all about the economy. Many independents feel that President Obama gives lip service to helping small business and economic growth but that his heart doesn’t really seem to be in it. He has proven effective in leading major initiatives, such as the stimulus package and health care (which many independents dislike) and getting Osama bin Laden (which most independents admire), but he seems to be interested in almost anything rather than truly helping small business.

Many independents are beginning to worry that some of the conservative rhetoric is accurate, that perhaps the President really doesn’t care about small business, that he is in fact a big-government ideologue who arrogantly looks down on the free market and businesspeople. Independents don’t want a seemingly smug, entitled, or anti-business president. They want to see this genuinely change before the 2012 election.

For Republican Candidates

Rule 3. Stop focusing on issues that make independents angry at you, like personal attacks on the President, his citizenship, his past, and his friends. Independents dislike this. Most don’t support President Obama’s economic policies, and many would vote against him if they felt they had a real alternative. But Republican candidates who constantly attack the President on personal issues will drive many independents into the Obama camp. President Obama has shown leadership, courage, commitment and the ability to effectively push his agenda, so independents are frustrated with Republicans who continue to treat him with disrespect. He is a serious politician, however much some people may disagree with his politics.

Rule 4. Present a real candidate with a genuine plan to fix the economy, in a way that is respectful to leaders from both parties and to all Americans. Offer a candidate who convinces independents that he or she can be a real leader for the United States of America. The economy and the “leadership thing” are the keys to this election.

Summary

Right now Republicans have offered no candidate that independents feel they can support. Therefore, at this point Obama is far ahead in the 2012 election. There is, of course, a lot of time left in this race and the names and details will likely change many times before November 2012.

Barring major crisis on a huge scale, these four rules will remain the same throughout 2011, 2012 and right up to election night. Those who ignore these rules will find themselves on the losing end of the next presidential election.

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the co-author of the 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 &Current Events &Independents &Politics

The Little Fix

May 4th, 2011 // 2:45 pm @ Oliver DeMille

Sometimes small and simple things make all the difference. Malcolm Gladwell called this “the tipping point,” and an old proverb speaks of mere straws “breaking the camel’s back.” In my book FreedomShift I wrote about how three little things could—and should—change everything in America’s future.

Following is a little quote that holds the fix to America’s modern problems. This is a big statement. Many Americans feel that the United States is in decline, that we are facing serious problems and that Washington doesn’t seem capable of taking us in the right direction. People are worried and skeptical. Washington—whichever party is in power—makes promises and then fails to fulfill them.

What should America do? The answer is provided, at least the broad details, in the following quote. The famous Roman thinker Cicero is said to have given us this quote in 55 BC. However, it turns out that this quote was created in 1986 as a newspaper fabrication.[i] Still, the content of the quote carries a lot of truth:

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.”

Consider each item:

• Balance the budget. There are various proposals to do this, nearly all of which require cutting entitlements and also foreign military expenditures. Many do not require raised tax rates. But most Americans would support moderate tax increases if Washington truly gets its outrageous spending habit under control. Paying more taxes in order to see our national debts paid off and our budgets balanced would be worth it—if, and only if, we first witness Washington really fix its spending problem.
• Refill the Treasury. This is seldom suggested in modern Washington. We have become so accustomed to debt, it seems, that the thought of maintaining a long-term surplus in Washington’s accounts is hardly ever mentioned.
• Reduce public debt. This is part of various proposals, and is a major goal of many American voters (including independents, who determine presidential elections).
• Temper and control the arrogance of officialdom. This is seldom discussed, but it is a significant reality in modern America. We have become a society easily swayed by celebrity, and this is bad for freedom.
• Curtail foreign aid. The official line is that the experts, those who “understand these things,” know why we must continue and even expand foreign aid, and that those who oppose this are uneducated and don’t understand the realities of the situation. The reality, however, is that the citizenry does understand that we can’t spend more than we have. Period. The experts would do well to figure this out.

The question boils down to this: Is the future of America a future of freedom or a future of big government? Our generation must choose.

The challenge so far is that the American voter wants less expensive government but also big-spending government programs. Specifically, we want government to stop spending for programs which benefit other people, but to keep spending for programs that benefit us directly.[ii] We want taxes left the same or decreased for us, but raised on others. We want small business to create more jobs, but we want small businesspeople to pay higher taxes (we don’t want to admit that by paying higher taxes they’ll naturally need to reduce the number of jobs they offer).

The modern American citizen wants the government programs “Rome” can offer, but we want someone else to pay for it. We elect leaders who promise smaller government, and then vote against them when they threaten a government program we enjoy.

Over time, however, we are realizing that we can’t have it both ways. We are coming to grips with the reality that to get our nation back on track we’ll need to allow real cuts that hurt. The future of America depends on how well we stick to our growing understanding that our government must live within its means.

[i] Discussed in Gary Shapiro, The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore The American Dream.

[ii] See Meet the Press, April 24, 2011.

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the co-author of the 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 &Citizenship &Culture &Economics &Education &Foreign Affairs &Generations &Government &History