Taking the Measure of Democratic Education and Rockaway College Concept Against Lynn Stoddard’s New Paradigm for Formal Learning, Educating for Human Greatness

(Note:  This paper is divided into three parts so readers are unburdened with having to sit with it for the time it would take to read the entire piece, that is, unless the reader wishes.)

Introduction

Our education systems should develop great human beings contributing to society, declares Lynn Stoddard in his Educating for Human Greatness, http://www.efhg.org/.  To do so, he maintains, requires a paradigm shift in formal learning:  from valuing student uniformity to valuing student differences, from standardization of teaching, learning and outcomes to developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities, from teachers’ direct instruction ­of basic skills and subject matter disciplines as ends in and of themselves to teachers using their knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement, from student achievement being in the mastery of a core of essential knowledge to the growth in seven major qualities/powers of greatness: Identity, Inquiry, Interaction, Initiative, Imagination, Intuition and Integrity,.  Thus, to ascertain if any system has so shifted requires it to be placed against these standards.  Let us see, then, how Democratic Education, generally, and the Rockaway College Concept, specifically, measure up to the Educating for Human Greatness standards. 

Democratic Education (see http://www.democratic.co.il/en/ and http://www.yaacovhecht.com/) may be defined as formal study controlled by the learner where the individual takes full responsibility for his and for her own course of learning and as schooling controlled by the learning community collectively where the school body as a whole takes responsibility for governing itself through The Democratic Process.  While the standards as enumerated above do not directly speak to who controls what in formal learning, one can infer an apparent approval of the learner-decision-centeredness and school community self-governance defining Democratic Education and, thus by extension, any school so constructed such as Rockaway College.

Rockaway College (detailed on this blog in consecutive entries starting on 2/16/12, ending on 3/19/12, including an overview of design on 3/17/12 and an annotated index to entries on 3/19/12) is conceived to utilize the learner-decision-centeredness and school community self-governance of Democratic Education in the service of the Twice-Exceptional, also know as the Gifted and Talented Learning Disabled.  The school represents an integrated progression in social, emotional and cognitive development from pre-school though early college established in two major units:  Rockaway College School-containing the early childhood and the primary education programs; and Rockaway College-holding a personal growth intake for a secondary education, the secondary education program and a liberal arts early college program. Graduates of the early college having gone through the College’s secondary education would earn both a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree.  On the surface, at least, it appears there just might be a sustainable correspondence between Educating for Human Greatness and Democratic Education and its expression in Rockaway College.  But, we’ll dig down to really see.

Valuing student differences standard

Democratic Education is driven by the individual social, emotional and cognitive needs of its students as manifested by them, not by an interpretation of them by the adults in the classrooms or the main office, where the child is the definer of his and her own need and the decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need.  Indeed, this system of formal learning fully acknowledges that children possess different neurological constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments, learning and communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive and social development and that the needs generated by these natural instincts and individual differences drive differentiated knowledge seeking, acquisition and use.  Thus, Democratic Education systems are organized, at least, to provide students with the choice on how they meet common expectations such as graduation requirements whether they be personality, skills or content performance, at best, to provide students with the choices yielding quality differentiated outcomes in personality, skills or content.  So much for student uniformity!

As it turns out, Dr. Susan Baum has developed a highly compatible learner-decision-centered process, “Talent Development”, for the student population of Rockaway College. This institution, quite naturally, would infuse Talent Development in the Democratic Education for each schooling level. 

Talent Development is derived from Dr. Baum’s research and practice demonstrating that when above average neuro-diverse youngsters concentrate on topics fitting their strengths and are not forced to engage academic achievement through weakness, they develop the self-confidence and skills allowing them schooling success, and to eventually, when ready, engage those areas which challenge weakness.  In Rockaway College, then, each student would be free to choose what to learn, when to learn what has been chosen and how to learn what is chosen based on the individual’s cognitive strengths and innate compensated weaknesses, that is, on the individual’s Neuro-Learning Style.  Only when the youngster demonstrates a very positive self-image, borne from successful work through his and her Neuro-Learning Style, and only when the child feels the immediate need to move through an area of deficit would the student be encouraged to undertake learning through deficits.  And when learning through deficit is done, compensatory strategies would be first used and then remediation only if the child wishes to tackle deficit learning that way.  Working through different Neuro-Learning Styles is projected to yield quality differentiated outcomes in personality, skills and content performance. Thus, acknowledging biological difference in structure and in functioning, Rockaway College Concept certainly demonstrates that foundational EfHG change from valuing student uniformity to valuing student differences.

The standards of developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities and of using teacher knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement

Actually, education planners within the conventional, dominant schooling paradigm, whether they be district teaching, learning and curriculum specialists or building principals or the teachers themselves, use their knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement.  This is called “student motivation”.  However, these folks employ their inner strengths and professional knowledge to organize and arrange experiences to motivate students to acquire a common curriculum and to generate a greater uniformity of learning outcomes. 

Thus, it is not the presence of inventive pedagogical motivation of student learning which marks a paradigm shift. Rather it is in the movement to a wholly different set of objectives to which all the motivational activity is in pursuit.  The ends of the conventional, dominant schooling paradigm is the placement in ready recall memory of the uniform, mandated, circumscribed state curriculum standards; the ends of the EfHG shifted paradigm is in the cultivation of differentiated knowledge seeking, acquisition and use based on students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities.  Therefore, this standard should be seen as a corollary in valuing difference and should be combined with the standard of developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities to be stated as:  using teacher knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students nurturing different knowledge seeking, acquisition and use emanating from the exercise of their unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities.  And in this, Democratic Education excels.

Democratic Education school constructors have organized their learning communities purposefully using individual student natural inclinations and individual differences to drive base learning decisions of each student.  These range across a spectrum of child decision making.  At one pole there is Sands School, www.sands-school.co.uk/, a closer to the conventional academic oriented school, but where students choose how to meet common graduation expectations.  Sands’ youngsters initially work with “tutors” exploring the kinds of academic knowledge available and the many possible learning programs for self-selection and then are let to choose the course of their study.  At the other end of the spectrum is Sudbury Valley, www.sudval.org/, opening knowledge to any and everything a youngster can think up, where immediate impulse, curiosity and biological inclinations self-direct whatever the child wishes to do, and where learning is informal and mostly accidental, rather then being formal-as in lessons-or intentional-as in directly purposeful.  And then in the middle is Summerhill, www.summerhillschool.co.uk/, which offers a conventional academic course of study along with a variety of projects and activities of interest, but provides a non-compulsory lesson and project attendance and a self-selected, individualized exit outcome. 

And then there is the Rockaway College Concept which moves along the spectrum the higher the schooling level.  Its early childhood and primary education programs start in the middle like Summerhill in that there is a formal and purposeful learning set for youngsters but there is also a broad self-selection of when and how the intentional aspects are acquired.  To paraphrase a sentiment on Summerhill’s website:  Rockaway College School (wherein these programs are housed) is a school of intelligent choice based on an intrinsic motivation of individuals toward different aspects of school behavior, where students decide each day how they will use their time…they can play, they can involve themselves in a variety of constructive social situations, they can be by themselves to read or daydream, they can engage in self directed group projects and activities, and they can choose to attend to the learning materials and activities of the Montessori-like prepared environment.  Rockaway College’s construction of student choice is solidly premised on allowing the free play of the individual’s Neuro-Learning Style which includes how each student will meet readiness expectations enabling him and her to move on to the next schooling level.

The secondary and early college programs of Rockaway College draw closer to Sands in that there is a definite set of formal and purposeful leaning from which students can self-select and like Summerhill, in that, they offer a self-selected, individualized exit outcome.   Here, as in the early childhood and primary education programs, the individual Neuro-Learning Style of each student emerging as an intrinsic motivation toward different aspects of learning content and skills would drive selection of curriculum elements.

“Free Academic” is the curriculum for the secondary program.  It is Academic in that the universe of knowledge open to engagement would be that from written tradition, Western and Eastern. It is Free in that the intellectual curiosity and the natural differences of each youngster would drive engagement with the academic world rather than that of uniform mandated core and elective curricula.  The “Great Question Curriculum” is the course of study for the early college.  It is an integrated, contemporary Great Books curriculum utilizing the Great Books as the sources from which Great Questions would be derived and the resources from which students would turn to answer these questions.  The selection of Great Question to be inquired into would be the choice of each student. 

In the expressions of Democratic Education-Sands, Summerhill, Sudbury Valley, and Rockaway College Concept-is the fulfillment of the standard as it is the paradigmatic shift from the placement in ready recall memory of the uniform, mandated, circumscribed state curriculum standards through student compliance with individual teacher inventive pedagogical motivation to the intentionally constructed ecology of the routine, daily exercise of students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities nurturing their different and individual knowledge seeking, acquisition and use.

To this point it has been demonstrated both Democratic Education and its expression in the Rockaway College Concept have met the Educating for Human Greatness standards considered.  However, we shall see if either grows students in the seven major EfHG qualities/powers in the second and third parts of this posted paper.