{"id":1506,"date":"2010-10-04T16:21:46","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T21:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2010-10-04T18:59:31","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T23:59:31","slug":"resources-related-to-edutopia-webinar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=1506","title":{"rendered":"Resources related to Edutopia Webinar"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 4, 2010, I had the great privilege of participating in a webinar sponsored by Edutopia and featuring a stunning panel of experts charged with addressing alternative visions of school reform.<\/p>\n

It is this freedom of the teacher to decide and, indeed, the freedom of the children to decide, that is most horrifying to the bureaucrats who stand at the head of current education systems.<\/strong> They are worried about how to verify that the teachers are really doing their job properly, how to enforce accountability and maintain quality control. They prefer the kind of curriculum that will lay down, from day to day, from hour to hour, what the teacher should be doing, so that they can keep tabs on it. Of course, every teacher knows this is an illusion. It\u2019s not an effective method of insuring quality. It is only a way to cover ass. Everybody can say, \u201cI did my bit, I did my lesson plan today, I wrote it down in the book.\u201d Nobody can be accused of not doing the job. But\u00a0this really doesn\u2019t work<\/strong>. What the bureaucrat can verify and measure for quality has nothing to do with getting educational results\u2013those teachers who do good work, who get good results, do it by exercising judgment and doing things in a personal way, often undercover, sometimes even without acknowledging to themselves that they are violating the rules of the system. Of course one must grant that some people employed as teachers do not do a good job. But\u00a0forcing everyone to teach by the rules does not improve the \u201cbad teachers\u201d\u2013it only hobbles the good ones. <\/strong>(Seymour Papert – Perestroika & Epistemological Pluralism<\/a>, 1990)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Please subscribe to my free newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are some resources related to my presentation:<\/p>\n