Archive for the ‘Leadership Books’ Category
Monday, May 21st, 2018
You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education by Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica will help parents get the education their children need to live productive, fulfilled lives. If you or anyone you know has children in or approaching school, this is a must-read. Be sure to get a copy and perhaps some gift copies for parents you know. This is a sequel to Creative Schools. See my summary here.
1. Get Your Bearings
- As a parent your worry list includes too much testing, a narrow curriculum, individual attention, learning problems, medication, possible bullying, college costs, and finding a good job. Schools also might not value a child’s strength as they magnify their weaknesses, and make grades so important that students lose a sense of self. Children love to learn and are natural learners. For most of human history, children educated themselves as they learned from others. With today’s focus on test scores, children are more likely to dislike learning as they become less healthy and more sedentary.
- A focus on things like STEM is often done to the detriment of other subjects that are none the less important to our economy and society. Ken argues for ditching the acronyms. Current reforms have not budged achievement levels as they cause enormous stress and loss of enjoyment. Businesses want employees who are adaptable creative team players as the support reforms that suppress these very attributes. Vocational courses are also squeezed out as too many college graduates can’t find appropriate work.
2. Know Your Role
- Regardless of your family structure, the adults in a child’s life are responsible for meeting a variety of needs. Here Ken uses Maslow’s hierarchy, which includes physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The final need means becoming meaningfully fulfilled as a person. As for esteem, children need praise, but it shouldn’t be endless and it should be tempered with constructive criticism. Children know when they have worked hard. Parents should set boundaries and provide moral education. Help them learn how to make decisions and to find a sense of direction and purpose. This shows why one-size-fits-all education is wrong.
- Ken defines five parenting styles. It seems that the authoritative style is usually the best as it involves setting rules that can be justified to the child and the willingness to alter the rules it conditions permit. Students should be allowed to struggle at times so as to work to solve their own problems. Such rules are more like guidelines that are a work in progress, and they tend to produce the happiest children.
3. Know Your Child
- Research indicates the one’s genes and one’s environment have about the same impact on what one becomes. This means that parents have about half of the responsibility. The culture surrounding a child has a huge impact. Usually, money has a big role as poverty brings with it a great deal of stress for many reasons. Poor kids are six times more likely to be neglected or abused, live in neighborhoods that are less safe, have lower birth weight, learning disabilities, and emotional and behavioral problems. There is no single definition of intelligence and each child’s potential needs to be unlocked if they are to be successful.
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Monday, April 30th, 2018
Reach for Greatness: Personalizable Education for All Children by Yong Zhao argues for a transformation of our schools from a focus on deficits and remediation to a focus on strengths and making every student great in their own way. It makes a short and compelling case for giving students more control and more responsibility for their learning and their futures. Please grab a copy and send one to any policymaker you know.
Introduction
- Yong uses his own story about how he wasn’t good at farming chores and that his father had the good sense to send him to school. At the time he was also able to avoid subjects he wasn’t good at or not interested in. This allowed him to leave China for the US and to become a college teacher. He compares this to our system that rather than focusing on student strengths focuses on their deficiencies. The system assumes that every student should learn the same knowledge and skills (standards) and that they should all demonstrate the same level of proficiency.
- While federal mandates have changed a bit, there is still an unreasonable focus on closing achievement gaps. He maintains that achievement gap mania has changed America for the worse. Changes in society continue to redefine the knowledge and skills that will be useful as some skills become obsolete. Humans are differently talented so we need to stop preparing students to become a homogeneous group of average individuals who are mediocre at everything but great at nothing. We need to begin helping everyone become great.
1. The Ambitious Pursuit of Mediocrity: How Education Curtails Children’s Potential for Greatness
- Our education system is a meritocracy that rewards students who do the best on the tests they take in a limited number of subjects. If you can jump through the required hoops on schedule, you will do fine. If your interests and talents don’t fit the curriculum, it will damage your confidence and self-esteem, and your talents are likely to be wasted. Ironically, meritocracy leads to mediocrity.
- The tests are norm-referenced so if one student goes up another goes down. (Doug: This is known as a zero-sum game. If you see percentiles, that is what is happening.) The tests only assess the ability to take the tests. As a result, Einstein and your top physics student both get the same grades. (Doug: There is no way to spot outliers.) Merit is defined a one’s ability and interest in performing well on tests in a few subjects. Thankfully, a growing number of schools have begun to implement programs such as genius hours and maker spaces, but they are still limited in scale and reach.
2. All Children Are Above the Average: The Potential for Greatness
- While all children cannot be above average on any single scale, there are so many ways to be above average on something that Yong believes that all children can be above average at one or more things. It is up to the adults in their lives to help children find out just what their individual strengths and weaknesses are. Since everyone is unique, there really isn’t any such thing as an average person.
- Yong mentions a number of ways to judge ability. There is Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, Dan Pink’s left and right brain directed thinking, Goldberg’s personality traits, and Reiss’ passion and intrinsic drives desires. Talent, personality, and passion are foundational sources of strengths and weaknesses and they are enhanced or suppressed by experiences. As you look for potential for greatness, avoid applying a predetermined set of criteria to all students. This includes curriculum standards as a student’s strength may lie outside their narrow definition.
- All human beings possess creativity. This is the ability to come up with new ideas, methods, theories, concepts, and products. Every student has a combination of innate qualities and environmental experiences that helps turn her or him into a unique individual. When you look hard without preconceived views, you will find them in all children.
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Wednesday, April 18th, 2018
How luck Happens: Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life by Janice Kaplan and Barnaby Marsh lays the groundwork for the new field of luck studies. This is a fine piece of qualitative research that can help you and your kids understand how to lead a luckier and happier life. Parents and leaders alike should read this groundbreaking book to help themselves and everyone they touch.
Preface
- We start with the legend of Harrison Ford who was working as a carpenter at the home of the young director George Lucas who was working on his first film American Graffiti. George got to know him a bit and gave him a small part. The rest is history. Certainly, Mr. Ford got lucky so the big question is how do we make our own luck? The idea is to put enough of the right pieces in place so you can take some of the onus off of random chance. Time to join the thrilling journey of discovery that Janice and Barnaby took during the last year that they claim will help you learn the approaches they uncovered that are almost guaranteed to bring more luck your way.
Part One – Understanding Luck – 1. Prepare to Be Lucky
- Shortly after their research began, Janice realized that real luck happens at the intersection of chance, talent, and hard work. Chance is never enough. You also need a bias towards action. You have to be willing to try as you focus on the things that you can control. Since this field is brand new, Janice and Barnaby couldn’t comb through existing research. They had to do their own.
2. Some People Have All the Luck—And You Can Be One of Them
- Most people (67%) think that working hard contributes to lucky outcomes. They (67%) also think that you can get lucky by being curious. Here we have a story about a girl who found a four-leaf clover, a one in 10,000 chance. Her friends told her how lucky she was, but she made her own luck by being persistent and knowing that there would be a lot of failure along the way. Getting the right information is also necessary, which might mean just asking one more question. The most important ability may be to pay attention and notice opportunities. Good attention is also flexible, which allows us to switch between narrow and open focus.
3. Pick the Statistic You Want to Be
- While about one-third of Americans are obese, this doesn’t mean that your odds of being obese are one out of three. This is a clear example of where you can make your own luck depending on the diet and exercise program you choose. It’s important to take risks, but not all risks are worth taking so you must size up the risks prior to forging ahead. Improbable things are likely to happen and they are not likely to happen to people who don’t spend some time outside of their comfort zone.
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Monday, April 2nd, 2018
Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative by Sir Ken Robinson explains how much of today’s education is standardized and how we need to make it much more personal in nature. He believes that everyone has a creative capacity and that it’s the schools’ job to facilitate imagination, creativity, and innovation for all. Leaders and teachers in education and all in walks of life should read this book.
1. Out of Our Minds
- As change becomes more frantic, the more creative we need to be. Most organizations recognize this. Unfortunately, while most children think they are creative, most adults think they are not. In this book, Sir Ken takes on why it is essential to promote creativity, the problems with doing so, and how to do it. First, we rely on our imagination to bring to mind things that are not present to our senses. Creativity then is the process of developing original ideas that have value, and innovation is the process of putting new ideas into practice. Everyone has creative capacities. The challenge is to develop them.
- There is a consensus among people in business that they want people who are literate, numerate, who can analyze information and ideas; who can generate new ideas and implement them; and who can communicate clearly and work with other people. Unfortunately, they have worked to impose a culture of standardization and testing that stifles the creativity of students and teachers alike. This may be no surprise as corporate history is littered with the wreckage of companies and industries that were resistant to change. Meanwhile, parents and kids want education to help them find work and become economically independent; and to identify their unique talents that will help them lead a life that has meaning and purpose. Real life is not linear or standardized; it is organic, creative, and diverse.
2. Facing the Revolution
- Ken starts with reviewing the histories of transformative inventions, communications technology, and computers. This gives you a clear notion that the rate of change and innovation is speeding up. It also shows that what was impossible yesterday is routine today. He then takes a look at some possible futures involving things like nanotechnology. In order to deal with the increasing pace of change, Ken feels that our best resource is to cultivate our ability to imagine, create, and innovate. Doing this has to be one of the principal priorities of education and training everywhere. In short, education is the key to our future.
3. The Trouble with Education
- Employers say they want people who can think creatively, who can innovate, who can communicate well, work in teams and are adaptable and self-confident. They also complain that many graduates have few of these qualities. This is not surprising as conventional academic programs are not designed to develop them. We are creating more college graduates than we need and many end up taking jobs for which they are overqualified. The system has intensified programs of standardized testing in language and math with many harmful side effects. Achievement in literacy and math has scarcely budged and subjects viewed as nonessential have suffered. Students who fail to graduate or who graduate but aren’t ready for college suffer even more. It is clearly time to rethink some of our basic ideas about education. Reform is not enough. Education needs to be transformed.
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Monday, March 12th, 2018
The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life by Anya Kamenetz reviews the scant research on the subject and provides others’ stories and her own experience and advice. In short, she advises you to enjoy screens not too much and mostly together with your family. Parents and educators are well advised to read this book.
Part 1. Kids and Screens – 1. Digital Parenting in the Real World
- How worried should we really be about kids and screens? Where is all of this heading, and what should we actually do about it—now, in the “real world,” a phrase that as of the early twenty-first century still has some meaning? These questions have resulted in this book. Anya belongs to the first generation of parents who grew up with the Internet. Now she is raising two members of the first generation growing up with screens literally at their fingertips. For this book, Anya surveyed over 500 parents along with as many experts on the subject that she could find. While real research is lacking, this looks like the best effort to date to define the problem and propose answers.
- The best evidence we have currently suggests that if you are functioning well as a family otherwise, there is a huge amount of leeway in the screen radiation your kids can absorb and still do just fine. The children of lower-income, less-educated parents, however, are both more exposed to screens at younger ages and are more subject to a host of other ills. Hypocrisy and inconsistency in boundary-setting makes for confused, sometimes angry kids—and lots of conflict. A better approach is to discover and unleash the joy of screen time with your kids. Particularly when shared, screen time can have meaningful benefits: creative, emotional, and cognitive. In a nutshell, enjoy screens, not too much, and mostly with others.
2. The (Sometimes) Scary Science of Screens
- The federal government hasn’t funded media research since 1982, and needless to say, many questions have presented themselves since then. The research on kids and screens is in its toddlerhood at best. It may seem that experts are just as confused as parents. It’s important to note that in order to get published, research tends to focus on the harms, and you can’t randomly assign babies to watch television or not. What’s happening all over the world is a giant experiment, and there is essentially no control group.
- The bulk of evidence we have about kids and screens concerns television. That’s all right because children still do more passive video watching than any kind of interaction with screens. Interactive media is different, but is it more harmful or more benign? What further confounds the research is that well-to-do parents are more likely to limit screen time and their kids will probably do fine anyway. Poor kids, however, are more likely to live in homes where the TV is on all the time, even if no one is in the room. Wealthier parents can hire sitters to entertain the child while the TV is off.
- Young children are obsessed by repetition. It helps them learn new words and concepts and provides touchstones of predictability within a chaotic and sometimes scary world. Electronic media satisfies this need for repetition. For tweens and teens, electronic media is a lifeline to the experiences they crave most: thrills, a space to explore independently, and 24/7 access to peers. Excessive screen time can interfere with sleep, which is necessary for allowing the brain to repair itself. Kids who give up exercise for screen time are prone to obesity.
3. Emerging Evidence
- Now we take up the matter of low probability, high-risk issues. Some of the worst cases of video addiction stop hanging out with friends, stop talking to their families, stop coming downstairs for dinner, even stop going to school. Poor hygiene and obesity are also common. At some point, they become candidates for residency rehab programs like those offered to drug addicts. Reintegration after such programs can also be difficult.
- Here are the questions that doctors ask to determine if there is an addiction. 1. How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended? 2. How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online? 3. How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend online? 4 How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online? 5 How often do you lose sleep due to Internet use or game playing?
- If it is recognized as a stand-alone disorder, it can be covered by health plans and schools may have to treat it as a disability as they increasingly hand every student a laptop. Screen addiction is usually associated with other disorders like Autism, OCD, and ADHD, but so far we don’t know which causes which. Removal of screens, however, has caused symptoms of disorders to lessen in some cases.
- No screens at all before age two, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics was first uttered in 1999. The AAP now says that video chat, and other social purposes like looking at family pictures together, is probably okay for children younger than age two. While there is no evidence of harm caused to kids by screen time. the general consensus is that parents should strive for moderation. Two hours a day or less is a common recommendation.
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