It’s Always a Good Day…

You know it’s a good day when UPS delivers a new book by legendary school leader, reformer and Constructing Modern Knowledge guest speaker, Deborah Meier!

Yesterday, I received a copy of Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground, co-authored by Deborah Meier, Brenda S. Engel and Beth Taylor. In the spirit of Vivian Paley and Jonathan Kozol (both of whom blurbed the book), Meier and co. give voice to the spontaneous voice and learning of children in their care.

Two particular passages jumped out at me:

In the process of turning schools into competitive institutions, “racing to the top,” we end up threatening the spirit of childhood. Because of our own limited histories and the generally accepted language around schooling – “grade level,” “ahead or behind,” “competent or deficient,” “differentiated learning,” – we begin to lose sight of what education means. These become the only words for describing children in school – children like those we observe playing in this book. “Knowing children well” becomes a matter of looking at test data. (page 107)

Leaving no time or space in education for children’s “playful” efforts to make sense of the world risks the future of only of poetry and science, but also our political liberties. The habits of playfulness in early life are the essential foundations upon which we can build a K-12 education that would foster, nourish and sustain the apparent “absurdity” of democracy. (page 68)

Check out all of Debroah Meier’s stunning books on teaching, learning and school reform here at the Constructivist Consortium Bookstore. If you haven’t already read the classics, In Schools We Trust or The Power of Their Ideas, put them at the top of your summer reading pile.

While we’re on the subject of summer, there is still time to register for Constructing Modern Knowledge, July 12-15, 2010 in picturesque Manchester, NH. There you can actually work, play and learn with Deborah Meier, Aflie Kohn, James Loewen, Peter Reynolds and a bunch of educational computing pioneers!

Gary Stager

Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.