Schools, Teachers, and Students Need to Disappear!

The Bob Marshal wilderness lies in western Montana and is vast and wild.  One can hike miles and miles into the wilderness and find themself alone, except for the deer, moose, elk, grizzlies, and occasional grey wolf.  The lakes you can hike to are crisp and cold melted glacier water filled with fish.  And at the western boarder of this beauty is a boarding school.

This school was created by five psychologists for girls who need a paradihm shift in their life.  Girls who are in trouble with the law, are addicted, or are self abusive are sent to live at this school year round, without parental contact.  They do not have a classroom, yet they learn the subjects required for school.  They do not work as individuals, they work as a community.  All ages help each other with certified teachers hired to assist.

Each morning, before studies, they do their chores together, such as feeding the pigs, collecting eggs, and cleaning and cooking.  They eat breakfast together then study together.  Each day after their studies, they have other chores such as milking the cows and feeding the horses, mending the fences, and weeding the garden.  Their meals are cooked from the meat they raise and vegetables they grow.

On the weekends, they set out for a what seems to be impossible trek.  It might be a 30 mile up the mountain bicycle ride, or a 10 mile snow-shoe trip in the winter, or a backpacking trip with a 30 pound backpack of their supplies into the wilderness.  The psychology is that each girl will at some point quit.  When they have quit, the rest of the group must wait for them.  In this moment, the group encourages her to continue and eventually they do.  This is when the real paradihm shift happens.  It is a psychological shift away from the individual and toward the group.  It is a shift away from the "I can't" and toward the "nothing is impossible".

It is once this shift has happened that the leaders say the studies make great strides.  It is once this shift has happended that in the evening group therapy sessions that the girls begin to work through their past demons that have lead them to the self destructive behavior they are exhibiting.

Schools, Teachers, and Students, as we know them, need to disappear.  Language is a funny thing. It is made of words, which are made of symbols.  Those symbols have meaning to each of us, a meaning that is often different in each of our minds. 

I believe each of us agrees that the school system needs to see change.  However, we each have preset notions of what the words mean that are used within education, such as school, teacher, and student.  Perhaps you picture a school as buildings.  Perhaps you picture a teacher as an adult standing at the front of a classroom.  Perhaps you picture a student as a child listening and taking notes.

If we continue to use the old language, then the system will never change because we have 20th century meaning applied to those terms.  We need to create a new vision, which will require new words.

I appreciate the converstation last night that we must mourn the old first.  The analogy of the changing of the command in the military was a great example.  In the past, I have used a fire ceremony to get rid of the past where I have asked youth group members of mine to write down their past regrets.  We ceremoniously tossed those old regrets into the fire and released them.  Only then could we move forward.

Here's another example.  What if car companies continued looking at the gasoline engine as their mode of change for the future?  They spend all their time and effort into trying to improve the gasoline engine.  But in the end, they are still burning fossil fuels, they still don't get good enough gas mileage.  We are experiencing a paradihm shift toward biofuels, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cells.  What I am arguing is that we need to stop trying to improve the gasoline engine known as schools, teachers, and students, but rather we need to focus our energy, our time, or money on the future, not the past.

Or, what about technology.  A computer was a new and powerful tool at one time.  The first computers did not have the internet, and did not have wireless technology, and did not have USB ports, and did not have bluetooth, and did not have cameras, and did not even have more than one color.  What if the hardware companies focussed all their energy on improving the old, but didn't even imagine these new technologies?  I believe we are in the middle of a paradigm shift where in the next 5-10 years, computers will be obsolute.  I believe this because now we have newer technologies that can do all of this in the palm of our hands.  Who will need a computer anymore?

Now, imagine schools, teachers and students are the gasoline engine or the computer.  Yes, they were great for their time.  But, there needs to be a shift.  Not a focus on making those things better.  We need new terms, new language, new meaning that seperates us from the old.  With i-Phones, the i-Pad, and the Droid, we don't use the terms monitor, hard drive, ethernet cable.  With the fuel-cell or electric vehicles, we don't use the terms catalytic converter, fuel injector, spark plugs, or carburator. 

Ironically, I visualize that as we move forward, we also become in touch with our past.  As we move toward learning in new ways, utilizing new technologies, that we also need to bring back the days when we broke bread together and learned while doing....together.  What if a group of 15 people were at Starbucks, learning together, writing, composing, typing?  What if a group of 12 people were on a boat together, using their technology, documenting and learning about the ocean, about marine-biology?  What if a group of 14 people were in the hospital laboratory, wearing white lab coats and goggles, observing technicians performing chemistry on blood, urine, and stool samples collected by nurses to diagnose disease?

Approximately 2000 years ago, thirteen people traveled the land, talking and learning together.  They broke bread together.  There wasn't a classroom.  There wasn't a school.  But learning happened.  And they called their leader, "Teacher".


<New Addition to Post Above>

These were found today in our library archives from 1898.  How much has school changed in 112 years?  One thing I do notice is less labs.  Labs aren't tested on standardized tests.  More theory, less hands on.  More of the same old, less positive change.