Forgiving Learning- Reform Begins in the Classroom
Rog
Lucido: Forgiving Learning: Reform Begins in the Classroom
By Anthony Cody
on April 6, 2013 8:02 AM
Guest post by Rog Lucido
It seems like education is on a never
ending quest to be 'reformed'. The message continues today: 'American students
are behind those of many countries. Our dominance of military and economic strength
is on the decline. We are losing our competitiveness.' The root cause of this
supposition is laid at the feet of our schools by the corporate world. With
many studies demonstrating that 80 to 90 percent of student achievement is due
to factors outside of school, how can we consider changes in our schooling as
the solution to our business problems?
If we are to improve student engagement
and learning, not for the sake of greater profits, but for the sake of our
children, we need to start in the classroom. It is here where the rationale
should be changed from other-centered to student-centered. Each student comes
to us with their own unique personal history. But they all share a common
humanity and are in possession of a human brain. This brain is the organ for
learning -- not their liver or spleen! If we understand how the brain's
neo-cortex works we will have a way of designing the classroom and school
learning experiences to be brain-friendly. In schools we should not develop a
learning system and then expect that all students will find learning
accessible. Rather, we should seek the healthiest way to cooperate with brain
functioning in learning and the best way to extract information from it.
We know the brain operates at peak
efficiency when it is free from threat, when the relational tone in its
surroundings are supportive and when food and shelter are sufficient. The
brain is a pattern seeker. It wants to 'connect the dots' in any learning
experience in or outside of school: "If I do this then the most plausible
result will follow." It anticipates the future based on past results. It
is continually experimenting, learning from its mistakes and stores those
results in expectation of the next opportunity to try.
I once took my five children to a local
lake which had a rocky shoreline. No sooner than they had exited the van did
they run to the lakes edge. There was a buoy about thirty yards from shore. For
over an hour they picked up various size stones and tried to hit the buoy. They
rarely did. But they persisted. When they came in for lunch I told them that I
was impressed with their desire to hit the buoy and asked them why they were
doing it. Their answer to a person was, "It was fun!".None offered an
'excuse' for missing nor did I suggest any. I told them I would like to join
them at the shores edge after lunch and record their hits and misses. They did
not want me to do that. They told me it would take all the fun out of it. You
see, they had accepted misses as part of their rock throwing process. Every
throw had an excuse for missing but none was expected and none was given. They
rejoiced whenever they got a hit.
In baseball a good hitter batting .300
gets a hit only 30% of the time. When he makes an out excuses could abound:
"I was fooled.", " I swung too soon." "I swung too
late". There is a lot of failure in baseball. Why do they still keep
coming up to the plate? Each time at bat the player has another opportunity to
have learned from their mistakes and improve. They have accepted failure as part
of the batting process. They make their reasons for failure, their excuses, the
motivation for progress. It is part of the game:
"I've missed more than 9,000 shots
in my career. I've lost more than 300 games, and 26 times I've been trusted to
take the game winning shot and missed. Throughout my life and career I've
failed and failed and failed again. And, that's why I succeed." -- Michael
Jordan
This is one of the major problems in
our schools. We spend much of our time recording hits and misses and subvert
the natural learning process. We do not make processing of mistakes the
centrepiece of the experience. One of my sons is a structural engineer. He
tells me of the many times he must submit his renderings to his superiors and
fellow engineers for review. He says they come back 'bleeding red'. He must
repair his errors and resubmit over and over until they are correct. If not
done properly the building could collapse. People's lives are at stake.
The common protocol for the classroom
from kindergarten to university is for students to submit their work, where
they are 'graded' and recorded. Then they go off to the next assignment
oftentimes oblivious to what should have been understood, but focusing on the
grade or score they received on that assignment or test. And so it goes over
and over again, embedding in each student's brain that learning from one's
mistakes is not the core value. They learn well that the resulting score on
each assignment and the culminating grade is what is really important.
So how can Forgiving Learning (see Educational Genocide-A Plague on our Children) become
part of the classroom environment? Begin by reducing the number of assignments.
This will provide an opportunity for students to resubmit their work and for
the instructor to evaluate it so that the final result is an assignment that is
completed up to the teacher's standards of performance. Students are to redo
their work until it is done satisfactorily without penalty, no matter how many
times it is resubmitted-their errors are forgiven. They do not have to worry
about being penalized but just focus on mastering the concepts. Use the same
process on tests, quizzes, projects and the like. They are given the
opportunity to master the concepts or procedure until it is done properly.
Have you ever attended the rehearsal of
a performance or a team installing a new athletic play? Does the 'coach' watch
them then walk up to each individual with a grade or score and then leave? Or
do participants do it over and over until they have mastered the scene or play
as the coach tells each one with words what they are doing right, what they are
doing wrong and how to improve? They do it over and over without penalty until
the coach is satisfied. This encourages persistence -- a critical life skill.
Our students need to be given the
freedom to learn from their mistakes in the classroom environment. The
classroom protocol must have forgiveness of errors with the opportunity to
reengage as a fundamental element of its process. Education needs to wake up
and teach to the human condition. Our children's lives are at stake.
What do you think about embedding
'Forgiving Learning' in the classroom?
Horace (Rog) Lucido, now retired,
taught high school physics and mathematics for over thirty-eight years as well
as being both a university mentor and master teacher. He is the California
Central Valley coordinator for the Assessment Reform Network and cofounder of Educators and Parents Against Testing
Abuse (EPATA). He is the author of two books: Test, Grade and
Score: Never More, 1993, and Educational
Genocide: A Plague on our Children, 2010. He has written
numerous articles on the impact of high-stakes testing as well as presenting
workshops on Forgiving Learning.