Month: June 2018

Schools focus on civics to bridge political divides, engage students in government and community

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Civics is making a comeback in schools, sparked in part by the 2016 election.

“This town is liberal and I thought that was the way of the world,” Mamaroneck High School freshman Jacobi Kandel told The New York Times. “I totally thought Hillary was going to be the first female president. Then I woke up and said, ‘What’s going on?’”

Kandel is among dozens of students at the New York school who were inspired by the 2016 election to sign up for a new four-year program called Original Civic Research and Action, which tasks students with developing a useful solution to an ongoing problem in the community.

The initiative is part of a broader push in schools and statehouses across the country aimed at engaging students in government and service. Only Maryland and the District of Columbia require community service and civics classes for graduation, while 11 states have no civics requirement. Nine states and the District of Columbia require a full year of civics instruction, and 30 states require a half-year, the Times reports.

Experts said a laser focus on core subjects like math and English have consumed class time previously devoted to civics, and the result is reflected in the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, which showed only 18 percent of 8th graders scored at or above proficient in American History in 2014. Only 23 percent of students met the threshold for civics, according to the news site.

The disengagement seems to continue after high school, with less than half of 18- to 24-year-olds voting in the 2016 election nationwide, the lowest turnout among all age groups.

The renewed focus on civics in schools aims to both boost engagement and counter the divisive political culture. Lawmakers in several states are also considering legislation to increase civics requirements for students, in some cases with mandatory citizenship tests.

Mamaroneck High School government and history teacher Joseph Liberti told the Times he attempted unsuccessfully to launch the Original Civic Research and Action program in the past, but “launching it became much easier in 2016,” when Americans elected Donald Trump president.

“The energy was there and I was able to ride that wave,” he said.

Officials in other schools like Chicago’s Polaris Charter Academy are also helping students better understand the intersection of government and community, while encouraging them to work together and consider opposing opinions. A student-led campaign at Polaris last year focused on gun violence, and it required students to research the Constitution and Second Amendment, and work with police, lawmakers, activists and gang members, the Times reports.

“This is not just about a high school civics class. – It’s not to prepare students for tests, but to prepare them to be active, contributing citizens,” said Ron Berger, who oversees academics for Polaris’ parent company EL Education. “We’ve forgotten about that as a nation.”

In his book “The Death of Character,” Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture founder James Davison Hunter points to esteemed sociologist Charles Moskos’ perspective on the importance of developing a shared sense of civic virtue.

“… (A)s Charles Moskos put it, ‘because of the relative weakness of other forms of community …., our cohesion depends upon a civic ideal rather than on primordial loyalties.’ In this way, service-learning as a vehicle of civic education can be a means by which communities are drawn together again,” Hunter wrote.

Educators who want to bridge political divides and help students engage in their communities can find a wealth of resources through CIVITAS, a comprehensive K-12 model for civic education developed with the help of dozens of leading scholars and classroom teachers from across the country.

OECD’s Schleicher: Ethics for an Age of Acceleration

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Andreas Schleicher is Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

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This is the age of acceleration, a speeding-up of human experience through the impact of disruptive forces on every aspect of our lives.

It is also a time of political contestation. For the last 72 years, the wider international community has prioritized balancing the needs and interests of individuals, communities, and nations in an equitable framework based on open borders, free markets, and a sustainable future. But where the disruptive forces of these changes have brought a sense of dislocation, political forces have emerged that offer closed borders, protection of traditional jobs, and the promise to put the interests of today’s generation over those of future generations.

How should countries equip young people to understand, engage with, and shape this changing world?

In this accelerated, politicized age, we can no longer teach people for a lifetime. In this age, education needs to help students cultivate a reliable compass and other navigational tools with which they may find their own way through an increasingly complex and volatile world.

Future jobs will pair computer intelligence with human knowledge, skills, character qualities, and values. It will be our capacity for innovation, our awareness, our ethical judgement and our sense of responsibility that will equip us to harness machines to shape the world for the better.

This is the main conclusion drawn by OECD countries working on Education 2030, a new framework for curriculum design. Not surprisingly, then, schools must increasingly recognize the need for fostering ethics, character, and citizenship. They must also develop in their students a range of social and emotional skills, such as empathy, compassion, mindfulness, purposefulness, responsibility, collaboration, and self-regulation.

At the center of the Education 2030 framework, OECD countries have placed creating new value, dealing with tensions and dilemmas, and developing responsibility as desired competencies. What do these mean? And how are they connected to ethics, and to social and emotional skills?

Young people’s agency to shape the future will partly hinge on their capacity to create new value. Creating new value is a transformative competency. It refers to the processes of creating, making, bringing into being, and formulating. It imagines outcomes from these processes that are innovative, fresh, original, and contribute something of intrinsic positive worth. It suggests entrepreneurship in the broadest sense—being ready to venture, to try, without the crippling anxiety of failure. The constructs, attributes, and virtues that underpin this competency are imagination, inquisitiveness, persistence, collaboration, and self-discipline.

Dealing with tensions, dilemmas, and trade-offs will also be necessary for young people in the age to come. In a structurally imbalanced world it is necessary for them to reconcile diverse perspectives and interests in local settings that sometimes have global implications. Striking the balance between competing demands—of equity and freedom, autonomy and community, innovation and continuity, and efficiency and democratic process—will rarely lead to a simple choice or even a single solution. Individuals will need to think in a more integrated way that avoids premature conclusions and attends to interconnections. The constructs, attributes, and virtues that underpin the competence include empathy, adaptability, and trust.

The third transformative competency—developing responsibility—is a prerequisite of the other two. Dealing with novelty, change, diversity, and ambiguity assumes that individuals can “think for themselves” with a robust moral compass. Both creativity and problem-solving require the capacity to consider the future consequences of one’s actions, to evaluate risk and reward, and to accept accountability for the products of one’s work.

These, in turn, require a sense of responsibility, and also moral and intellectual maturity.  With these, people can reflect upon and evaluate their actions in the light of their experiences, their personal  and societal goals, what they have been taught and told, and what is right or wrong.

Ethics is the thoughtful perception of what is right or wrong, good or bad, in a specific situation. It asks questions related to norms, values, meanings, and limits. Central to this competency is the concept of self-regulation, in the spheres of personal, interpersonal, and social responsibility. It rests on constructs, attributes, and virtues of self-control, self-efficacy, responsibility, problem-solving, and adaptability.

The challenge for educators is not to defer these dimensions to new school subjects, but to embed them in everything that is taught and learned at school. Supporting countries in this effort is the goal of the OECD Education 2030 project.

 

Students’ racist video sparks immediate reaction from NAACP, school officials

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When leaders of Alabama’s Russell County/ Phenix City NAACP received a tip about a video of local students chanting racist lyrics, including the phrase “to hell with the NAACP,” it didn’t go over very well.

“We are here to serve notice that this type of behavior will not be tolerated,” local NAACP president Rev. Alfonza Seldon said at a press conference in front of the Phenix City School District last month.

“A lot of the things we see on the national news today, the hate crimes, the killings … it derives, I believe, from things such as this not being immediately addressed,” he said.

Seldon told the Ledger-Enquirer and other media outlets that he received a copy of the shaky 32-second video from a source who he wouldn’t revel. He contends it was circulated among students on the messaging app Snapchat, and he immediately reported it to school officials.

“The Phenix City/Russell County NAACP has been made aware of a racist video on the social media site Snapchat. The site showed five or six teenage white males spelling out the word N.I.G.G.E.R. then shouting this word out followed by a chant/song that included: ‘… to hell with the NAACP,’” the group wrote in a prepared statement to WRBL.

School officials identified five of the males in the video as students at Central High School or Central Freshman Academy, and WRBL also identified at least one as a student athlete on the baseball team.

Seldon said the NAACP wants the students to face a “multi-tiered discipline approach that includes measures beyond suspensions,” including “sensitivity and diversity (training) for all students, faculty and staff, as well as made available to parents, community stakeholders and also representatives of the NAACP.”

Phenix City Schools superintendent Randy Wilkes told the Ledger-Enquirer that while the video is “terribly offensive,” and “not something that we can tolerate within our school system,” it’s not something he can punish students for because the video was recorded off campus.

Other than the fact that the teens are students in Phenix City Schools, he said, the incident “appears to have no affiliation with our school system.”

Wilkes said he met with the parents of the students involved, and is “working with the parents individually on” extra sensitivity training for their children, though he noted that the district already conducts sensitivity training as part of its character education program.

The incident is one example of local school and community leaders working to address racism and promote tolerance, understanding, respect, and good citizenship.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, highlights the importance of the unified message against racism and intolerance as part of effective moral education in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America.”

Moral education can work where the community, and schools and other institutions within it, share a moral culture that is integrated and mutually reinforcing; where the social networks of adult authority are strong, unified, and consistent in articulating moral ideas and their attending virtues; and where adults maintain a ‘caring watchfulness’ over all aspects of a young person’s maturation.

These are environments where intellectual and moral virtues are not only naturally interwoven in the distinctive moral ethos, but embedded within the structure of communities.

Educators can challenge students to behave respectfully by providing examples of people who have courageously resisted their peers when they face pressure to discriminate against others. A lesson about civil rights activist Rosa Parks from the Jubilee Centre offers an excellent example that could be adapted for all ages.

GA cheating scandal highlights importance of character education

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Dozens of students at Gwinnett County, Georgia’s Dacula High School were busted for cheating after school officials discovered answers to countywide final exams posted to social media in late May.

School officials issued a statement to Fox 5:

Dacula High School addressed a cheating issue during the last week of school. It appears that answers to final exams were posted on social media and used by students. School leaders became aware of the social media postings and were able to actively review exams for potential cheating.

Based on a preponderance of evidence, it appears that approximately 80 Dacula students used the answers posted when taking their finals. The school has addressed the issue with the students, providing them with appropriate discipline consequences. As the exams involved were for 10th grade language arts, chemistry, and world history, no seniors were involved and this did not affect graduation.

Officials would not elaborate on the disciplinary action against students, but said they believe the answers likely came from a student at a different school who already took the tests. It remains unclear whether students at other schools used the answers.

The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture examined cheating in 10 types of American high schools as part of a broader look at character and citizenship summarized in “The Content of Their Character.”

Analyzing cheating in rural schools, education researcher Richard Fournier noted:

… While teachers might be fully able to articulate the moral ideals behind their disciplinary decisions, their explanations typically varied, which presumably sent mixed moral messages to students. Similarly, although teachers, students and parents offered similar examples of bad student behavior – cheating, bullying, selfishness, etc. – they either were unsure or gave different answers when pressed for insight into why these things were bad or how students should be disciplined. (Page 67)

Students often face temptations to cheat in school, and too many of them give in to it. Without a solid reason why students should put honesty ahead of their personal gratification, they struggle to resist the temptation to cheat.

But teachers have numerous opportunities every day, in every class, with every student, for every subject to infuse discussions about integrity, and the motivations for behaving honestly.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers ways to start the conversation with the guide “The Virtue of Truthfulness,” which encourages educators to prompt students to think about “the benefits of acting out” truthfulness.

“Acting truthfully guarantees social relations: we are who we say we are. This enables stability; it also enables us to think through how and where we need to improve as people,” the guide points out. “Truthful people grow in virtue much quicker than those who struggle to be truthful about who they really are.

“It’s also worth thinking through what human relationships would look like were they to be based on presenting ourselves in a false light: hypocrisy, deceit, lying and the breaking of promises would all dissolve social bonds.”

 

Cade Museum aims to ‘spark wonder, invent possible’ with exhibits that blend science and art

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A “26,000-square-foot intellectual oasis” opened in Gainesville, Florida in May after more than a decade of fundraising, and it aims to inspire visitors to “spark wonder, invent possible.”

About 100 visitors attended the grand opening of the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention last month, the culmination of a 13-year, $9.2 million fundraising effort by the Cade Museum Foundation.

A tribute to Gatorade inventor and University of Florida medical professor Robert Cade, the sprawling two-story facility hosts exhibits like a working 160-year-old Gutenberg printing press, regular talks from leading scientists and inventers, and interactive facilities like a “Fab Lab” and “Creativity Lab” to inspire visitors to design and create.

“Our tagline is ‘spark wonder, invent possible,’ and I think we want people to come in, be curious and to walk out having learned something new or been inspired by something,” Stephanie Bailes, the museum’s executive director, told WUFT.

The museum’s mission is to “transform communities by inspiring and equipping the future inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries” with what it takes to develop great ideas, particularly those that blend art with science.

“We believe that great ideas happen when disciplines intersect in novel and exciting ways,” according to the museum website. “Many famous inventors are also musicians and artists, and report that their inspiration often comes when engaged in the arts.”

Robert Cade – a scientist, poet, musician and “collector of violins and Studebakers” – “exemplified joyful creativity with a purpose,” as did other noted inventors like scientist and accomplished violinist Albert Einstein, according to the site.

“Why is creativity our passion? Studies show that it is a better predictor of success and happiness in life than the intelligence quotient,” the website reads. “The good news is that everyone has creative potential and that creativity can be taught.”

“Our whole goal here is to help people find an inventive mindset. So maybe they don’t need to become a scientist or a researcher, but now that they’ve been sparked by going through the Cade museum they can eventually leave with that mindset and feel like, ‘maybe I can create something, or maybe I can do this,’ just changing their perspective,” Elizabeth Gist, the museum’s inventor coordinator, told WUFT.

Research from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues identifies four distinct types of character: moral, civic, performance, and intellectual, and illustrates that teaching and modeling each is equally important to developing truly good people.

Hands-on learning experiences and creative spaces like the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention help to nurture and support youngsters as they develop intellectual virtues like curiosity, critical thinking, reasoning and reflection.

Combined with other “building blocks of character” – moral, civic and performance virtues – the creative experiences contribute to a “practical wisdom,” which the Jubilee Centre describes as “the integrative virtue, developed through experience and critical reflection, which enables us to perceive, know, desire and act with good sense.”

The Jubilee Centre offers a lesson for educators to help foster creativity in the classroom that breaks down the virtues of learning, explains how the brain works, and discusses the impact of mindsets in the process.

The exercise prompts students “to think about the relationship between curiosity and learning” and “to develop a very clear picture of how continuous, lifelong learning will benefit them.”

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‘Culture coordinator’ connects students, family, school and community to build ‘positive environment’

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Esek Hopkins Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island “culture coordinator” Carina Monge is working to connect with students, parents, and local officials to bring her Rhode Island school community closer together.

She’s one of seven culture coordinators hired by the district to help address chronically low academic performance. At Esek Hopkins and other district schools, the culture coordinators are inspiring students to re-engage with their studies, and to work through life’s struggles, the Providence Journal reports.

Culture coordinator Monge, who is bilingual, spends much of her days building relationships – with students, faculty and families – in a variety of different ways, from connecting with Spanish-speaking parents who may be leery of officials, to working with students with excessive absences, local police, and teens dealing with trauma.

Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture strongly support this emphasis on culture. A students learning environment also includes the student’s mental state, home life, and after school community. James Hunter writes, “The form of character is one thing, but the substance of character always takes shape relative to the culture in which it is found” (The Tragedy of Moral Education in America, p. 6). Shaping this culture positively is crucial.

Monge launched “power lunches” and hands out Hula-Hoops to get kids moving, and invites officials like Providence police officer Taylor Britto in to chat with students and offer encouragement.

“When I first got here, school lunch was kind of sad,” Britto told the news site. “Now the kids are smiling. They’re engaged.”

“She has created such a positive environment,” officer Britto said.

Monge helped students launch an LGTBQ club and find an advisor, connected local musicians with the school band, brought in processionals from the community to speak at Career Day, and linked students with summer jobs programs. She also offers her office as a “quiet room” reprieve for overwhelmed students, and works with others to settle disputes and determine discipline.

“She exudes positivity,” music teacher Marilyn Russo told the Journal. “I see kids coming out of their shells.”

“By the time they leave her office, they’re smiling,” Britto said. “To have someone who makes them feel safe … it’s so important.”

Students seem to agree, with one girl telling the Journal her life has changed since she joined the LGTBQ club.

“It made me feel more comfortable,” she said. “Miss Russo and (Youth) Pride have given me a confidence I never had before.”

It would be great if every school had a person like Carina Monge on staff to help students face exceptional challenges and adversity in their lives.  Many schools do not have such a staff member.  However, teachers can help students flourish despite their circumstances by getting help from the UK’s The Jubilee Centre by looking at the Centre resource for teachers about Flourishing From the Margins.

 

Principals fight ‘losing battle’ against negative influences of social media in schools

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A new Education Week survey of principals across the United States shows many are struggling to control the negative impact of student social media use on the learning environment.

Principals report a growing number of social media sites – from Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram to lesser known sites like WhatsApp, Kik and LINE – are complicating the fickle social relationships of teens and causing a steady stream of disruptions in schools, including nude photo scandals, shooting threats and cyberbullying, among others.

Students’ social media use outside of school is at least a moderate concern of 79 percent of principals overall, while 78 percent of middle school principals are “extremely concerned” about the issue. At the same time, 38 percent of principals told the education site they’re unsure where to find strategies to help students use social media responsibly.

Only 14 percent of principals contend they’re “very prepared” to broach the subject, while 45 percent said they’re “somewhat prepared” and 32 report saying they’re “a little prepared.” Ten percent are “not prepared at all.”

The situation puts principals in the position of working to control the fallout of social media issues that spill into the school day with no clear guidelines to follow. Many also have a limited understanding of the social media sites facilitating the conflicts, experts told Education Week.

“I think our expectations of principals have become increasingly unreasonable,” Amanda Lenhart, deputy director for the Washington think tank Better Life Lab at New America, told the news site. “They’re fighting a losing battle.”

It’s a battle that’s waged in what the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at The University of Virginia calls a “moral ecology” that includes many factors beyond their control.

Institute researchers examined character formation in a variety of different schools and outlined their findings in “The Content of Their Character,” edited by James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson.

“When social institutions – whether the family, peer relationships, youth organizations, the internet, religious congregations, entertainment, or popular culture – cluster together, they form a larger ecosystem of powerful cultural influences. None of these is morally neutral. Indeed, all social institutions rest upon distinctive ideals, beliefs, obligations, prohibitions, and commitments – many implicit and some explicit – and these are rooted in, and reinforced by, well-established social practices. Taken together, these form a ‘moral ecology,’” according to Hunter and Olson.

“Moral ecologies can vary by how coherent or incoherent they are, how thick or thin, how well-resourced or impoverished, how articulate or inarticulate, and the like. Character is invariably formed in these moral ecologies and is reflexive of them.”

The fact that school officials recognize the power of social media influences points to the importance of a moral ecology, yet many principals and parents feel powerless to control social media influences, likely because they’re rarely around when students navigate their virtual worlds.

“The Virtue of Self-Mastery” and other lessons from the UK’s The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues can help students learn to limit their own technology and social media use by prompting them to think through how it impacts their lives and others before it’s too late.

Positive Coaching Alliance works with schools to help students become ‘Better Athletes, Better People’

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Coaches at Verona High School in Verona, New Jersey are preparing for workshops in June aimed at helping students become “Better Athletes, Better People” – training provided through a national non-profit called the Positive Coaching Alliance.

Verona High has partnered with the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) for the last three years to help coaches, parents, student athletes and administrators get the most out of athletics by ensuring school sports are first and foremost an experience in character building, TapInto.net reports.

PCA’s work with the New Jersey school is one of about 3,500 partnerships with schools, conferences, youth sports groups, and parks and recreation departments aimed at creating a sports culture that develops “Better Athletes, Better People” – the PCA motto.

“Our job is to provide an amazing educational and athletic experience to our student-athletes who work so hard year round to perfect their craft,” Verona High School Director of Athletics Bob Merkler said. “By providing the life lessons that are so valuable in athletics, we believe we can help them acquire the tools and traits that will help them to be successful adults.”

That’s what the PCA is all about, and the focus of more than 1,800 free multimedia tips and tools at the group’s website, PCADevZone.org. Other resources include online courses and books by PCA Founder Jim Thompson, as well as specific lessons tailored to coaches, parents and players.

The materials are developed with the support of PCA’s National Advisory Board, which includes 11-time NBA champion coach Phil Jackson, NBA legend Joe Dumars, Cy Young Award winning pitcher Barry Zito, and numerous other current and former professional athletes, Olympians, coaches, managers and business leaders.

“We look forward to working with Verona High School to create the best possible experience for the student-athletes,” PCA Founder Jim Thompson said. “Our researched-based materials combine the latest in sports psychology, education and practical advice from top pro and college coaches and athletes that help improve athletic performance while also ensuring kids take life lessons from sports that will help them throughout the rest of their lives.”

After school activities and sports are a powerful venue to character formation. Researchers from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture suggest that such instruction needs to bear the marks of the particularity of each community. Professor James Hunter of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia writes, “Spartan and Athenian cultures prescribed different content for character, not least because they had different ideas of the common good…. In other words, moral cultures and the communities in which they are established provide the reasons, restraints, and incentives for conducting life in one way rather than another” (The Death of Character, p. 21, 22). Effective character formation works best when it is grounded in a shared community.

 

Vermont’s ‘Good Citizen Challenge’ inspires students to engage history, government, community

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Students in Vermont are signing up for a summer of civics – a new program designed to educate students about their shared civic heritage while connecting them with local government and historic sites.

The Good Citizen Challenge is sponsored by Seven Days, a Vermont newsweekly, and the Vermont Community Foundation.

“The self-guided Challenge encourages young Vermonters to explore historic sites, engage in conversations with neighbors and elected officials, develop media literacy skills and learn about the rights and duties of U.S. citizenship,” Seven Days reports.

“Geared toward kids ages 9 to 14, the Challenge is open to all Vermont K-12 students. Activities include visiting the Calvin Coolidge Homestead, attending a city council or selectboard meeting, reading a community newspaper and drawing a cartoon explaining how the three branches of government work.”

Students earn points for each activity with the goal of reaching 251 – the number of towns in the state. Students who meet the threshold and send in their scorecards receive a Good Citizen medal and T-shirt, as well as an invitation to a special reception at the Vermont Statehouse where elected officials from across the political spectrum will recognize the “Good Citizens,” according to the news site.

Seven Days deputy publisher Cathy Resmer said the Good Citizen Challenge is modeled after Vermont State Parks’ 10-year-old Venture Vermont Outdoor Challenge, which is aimed at motivating youngsters to take advantage of the state’s natural resources.

“My family loves Venture Vermont. It gives a little structure to our summer adventures, and inspires us to try new activities,” said Resmer, editor of Seven Days’ free monthly parenting magazine, Kids VT. “We hope the Good Citizen Challenge will do the same thing, but for civics.”

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, and Secretary of State Jim Condos offered support for the program at a press conference announcing its launch in late May. Ethan Sonneborn, a 14-year-old Democrat candidate for governor, also applauded the effort.

Resmer told Seven Days the program is designed to focus on the democratic values that unite at a time of divisive politics. And with recent studies showing a majority of the public struggles with basic civics, it’s more important than ever.

“How can Americans participate in their democracy — or defend it — if they don’t understand the principles on which it rests?” asked Resmer. “As former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, ‘Civic knowledge can’t be handed down the gene pool. It has to be learned.’”

There is wisdom in this program as it has provided a low-cost means to help structure students’ summer vacation with a civic purpose. But it is more of an onramp toward civic education than an ending point. It is unlikely that these self-directed learnings and experiences will expose students to the most pressing questions of contemporary civic life: How do we live with our deepest differences in society of expanding pluralism or to the ideas that are the pillars of democracy? James Hunter and Ryan Olson warn, “Only the particularity of moral community can bind our natural feelings of empathy with the substance and direction of what we ought to do.” Civic knowledge without a communal basis in “oughtness” will prove inadequate to contemporary life.

Notwithstanding the challenges in engaging students in meaningful civic learning, efforts to generate interest in and enthusiasm for learning about government and our democratic institutions must ensure student engagement .  Teachers interested in fermenting student interest in civics education can find information and ideas by looking at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.  The Jubilee Centre features teacher lesson plans for teaching students how to prepare for adulthood here.

Survey: Principals worried about student technology use at home, but embrace it in schools

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Principals and school leaders across the country have mixed feelings about technology, with concerns about devices distracting students at home and optimism about personalized learning and computer science enhancing education at school.

A recent Education Week Research Center survey showed 95 percent of principals think their students are getting too much screen time at home, while 64 percent believe student screen time at school is about right.

Over half of principals – 55 percent – are also extremely concerned about social media use outside of school. Most are also at least moderately concerned about other issues like cyberbullying, sexting, social media at school, and students’ ability to gauge reliable information online.

“Technology, used wisely and appropriately, can be an excellent resource for learning,” James Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that promotes responsible technology use, told Education Week. “But there is also an arms race for our kids’ attention going on. It’s being led by certain tech companies, and there are really significant downsides. Principals need to understand that.”

The education site points out that most principals view the “computer science for all” movement in schools in a positive light, with 15 percent who believe it’s a “transformational way to improve public education,” 23 percent viewing it as a “promising idea,” and 28 percent reporting it as “one of many school improvement strategies available to me.” The vast majority also support technology driven personalized learning programs.

In some cases, principals are pinched between tech companies pushing more screen time and parents and teachers pushing for less.

“Notably, principals responding to the Education Week survey said they feel the most pressure from technology companies and vendors to increase student screen time (58 percent), embrace personalized learning (55 percent), and spread computer science education (47 percent),” the site reports.

Meanwhile, more principals report teachers are pushing for less screen time than those who claim teachers want students to use more technology at school.

The uneasy balancing act is something parents know well.

Research from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia shows many parents are struggling to control technology use at home, and they’re worried about the negative influences it’s having on their kids.

“Many parents feel their attempts to control the home environment and to keep external influences at bay are nearly futile in the face of new communication and entertainment technologies,” according to the Institute’s “Culture of American Families” report.

“These technologies introduce a host of unknown and often unwelcomed influences into the private space of the home. The overriding concern is the negative influence that parents are unable to keep out,” the report continues. “Many feel helpless in the face of these technologies and uncertain about how, or if, to limit them.”

Fortunately, the UK’s The Jubilee Centre and other organizations offer lessons to help parents, teachers and principals guide students to develop appropriate and healthy relationships with technology.

The Jubilee Centre lesson, “Using Technology More Wisely,” for example, encourages students to reflect on whether social media and mobile technology are good or bad for them personally, for their relationships and society.

 

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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