PierreAntoine Ullmo

Author: Pierre Antoine Ullmo

  • Can we still educate for the world as it is?

    Recently a controversy opposed environmental NGOs and the BNP Paribas bank regarding the bank’s investment into fossil energies. The CSR director tried to close the controversy by explaining: “we finance the world as it is.”

    If we do so, then how can we reasonably expect to change it? The same could be asked for education: are we educating children to live in the world as it is in the same way we (the banks) are financing the world as it is? in other words, can we still educate for the world as it is?

    This question resonates with the latest actions undertaken by young people all over the world against climate change or feminicides. Aren’t young people claiming for being educated / financing a world as they want them to be?

    (all rights reserved)
    (all rights reserved)

    Our incapacity to listen to them is certainly deeply rooted in the practices of BNP Paribas and all other banking and political institutions, i.e. using people’s deposits and votes to finance the world as it is.

    Martha Nussbaum once said (Cultivating Humanity, 1998) that “we produce all too many citizens whose imaginations never step out of the counting house”. How do we step out? According to Nussbaum, we need Socratic citizens who are capable of thinking for themselves and arguing with tradition. It goes back to key questions raised by Margaret Mead back in 1969 (Culture and Commitment): Can I commit my life to anything? Is there anything in human cultures as they exist today worth saving, worth committing myself to?

    In their Capability approach theory, Sen and Nussbaum stated that freedom to achieve well-being is a matter of what people are able to do and to be. Young people think the same. In a recent poll a 51 percent of Americans ages 18-29 said their generation can change the world. The same result was registered in France.

    This is certainly a good moment to listen more carefully to what young people say and more importantly do (or can do).  One of the key principles of child participation, elaborated by Roger Hart, was that the highest level of child participation (*) should be “Child initiated, Shared Decisions with Adults (Children’s Participation, 1997). This is what Greta Thunberg and her friends worldwide are claiming for.

    (* At this level of participation, banks shouldn’t be authorized any longer to finance the world as it is…)

  • “Legions of idiots”

    Do you know the difference between a liar and a bullshitter? According to the sociologist Eva Illouz in an article published in Haaretz, “a liar lies because he cares about the truth not being known, whereas a bullshitter […] does not care about the truth, because he knows that whatever he says, true or not, will make an impression on the listener.”

    Where does bullshit comes from? In a report commissioned by the Rand Corporation, Truth Decay, Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael Rich mention the role of social media platforms allowing anyone to become a source of information. They conclude that there is an increasing blurred line between opinion and fact.

    Umberto Eco wrote about it in 2015 : “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community … but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.”

    We increasingly live in a world in which, according to Stephan Lewandowsky in an article about the post-truth era (jointly written with Ullrich Ecker and John Cook), it is not expert knowledge but an opinion market on Twitter that determines what is right and what is wrong.

    These legions of idiots are everywhere. According to the Wellcome Global Monitor 2018, 28% of Americans and 33% of French do not agree that vaccines are safe. In a 2019 Eurobarometer survey, it was found that nearly half of people in Europe believe — incorrectly — that vaccines often cause severe side effects.

    Legions of idiots
    Legions of idiots

    So, who should we trust?

    We already know about the continuing decline in public trust in institutions such as the government and the media. But scientists are also seen as untrustworthy. In an article, Cary Funk wrote  that although many more people reported to the Pew Research Center in 2016 their trust in information from medical scientists, climate scientists and food scientists than information from industry leaders, the news media and elected officials, no more than about half of people hold strongly trusting views of scientists in any of these domains.

    And the same exists in school, where it is more and more difficult to argue about objective facts and topics despite having data and evidence that have been produced in a scientifically proven way. Luana Maroja, Professor of Biology at Williams College, explained in an article the hard time she has in fighting “biological denialism that exists about nearly any observed difference between human groups, including those between males and females. Unfortunately, students push back against these phenomena not by using scientific arguments, but by employing an a priori moral commitment to equality, anti-racism, and anti-sexism.”

    Can we be optimistic about the future of knowledge? Let’s hope that those millions of students around the globe that participate in marches against climate change and trust scientific facts are strong enough to defeat these legions of idiots.

  • Happy birthday to children’s rights?

    How can we “celebrate” another year the anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child? Nine chilean teenage girls do it on stage on our behalf and denounce the violation of children rights in Chile … and all over the world.

    “Lissette Villa was 11 years old when she died of suffocation because a 90-kg caregiver sat on her for minutes. Tania Águila died at age 14 when her boy friend crushed a stone on her head. Florencia Aguirre was 10 years old when her stepfather choked her with a bag, burned her and buried her in the woodshed of her house.”

    These were some of the cases that prompted the La Re-Sentida Theater team to create Paisajes para no colorear (‘Non coloring landscapes’), a work in which a group of female adolescents tries to make visible the vulnerability to which they are exposed by being “women” under age in a male-dominated society.

    Paisajes para no colorear © GAM – Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral i Compañía de Teatro La Re-Sentida
    Paisajes para no colorear
    © GAM – Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral i Compañía de Teatro La Re-Sentida

    These girls force the spectators to listen to their experiences of daily violence in their school, in their homes, in their cities in Chile and South America. No one remains immune. When at the end of the play, the audience stands up and burst into applause, each of us  is also rethinking how they behave in their daily lives with children.

    For years, we thought that UNICEF and all children NGOs were speaking for them. No one listened. Did anyone speak?

    These girls – and all the girls – are changing the rules. They will speak for themselves and for all the girls. They will become – in their own words – ‘the stars of an unrivalled cultural revolution.’

    And this revolution is already happening. Last October, Chilean children took the streets to protest the government’s announcement of an increase in the price of public transportation but also of all the other violation of human rights taking place in the country. At the same time petitioners – aged between 8 to 17 –  have filed a legal complaint against 5 countries, bringing the climate fight to court as it constitutes a violation of child rights.

    And the others will follow. In Afghanistan where at least 546 boys from six schools have been abused by their teachers, in the US where 13 million children are living below poverty line, in Yemen where 2 million children are out of school.

    Youth are no longer ready to wait “to be involved in the “governance” of  the settings of their everyday lives.”  They are standing for their rights.

    Here and there and everywhere.

    Happy birthday!

     

  • Jazz and samba will rock education

    Learning is nowadays increasingly seen as a mix of formal and informal experiences. What we call “social learning” refers to the degree of interaction between learners of different levels of competence. Learning from the others, learning with the others are fundamental elements of the learning experience and essential for students to get full ownership of what they learn.

    Samba and jazz tell us more about this new learning revolution.

    An article by Seymourt Paper identified two innovative features in the learning process that takes place at a samba school: learning together and learning from the other.

    “At a Samba School the dominant activity is dancing. But it has another purpose related to the Carnival at which each Samba School will take on a segment of the more than twenty-four hour long procession of street dancing. While people have come to dance, they are simultaneously participating in the choice, and elaboration of the theme of the next carnival; they are engaged in a common activity – dancing – at all levels of competence from beginning children to superstars. The fact of being together would in itself be “educational” for the beginners; but what is more deeply so is the degree of interaction between dancers of different levels of competence. What counts is the weaving of education into the larger, richer cultural-social experience of the Samba School.”

    Another article by Joan Talbert and Milbrey Mclaughlin tells us how professional jazz musicians are committed to building communities through which young musicians learn to perform and through which their collective practice develops.”

    As in the artisan communities of teachers we studied, communities of jazz musicians work together to develop their improvisational skills to create new compositions and arrangements, and to build and sustain commitment to jazz among musicians and the public.” A jazz ethnomusicologist describes musician communities : “Experts guide younger members in applying their technical knowledge by constantlt rehearsing and performing with them, thereby transmitting their deep sense of responsibility for the music… With time and experience, newcomers gradully accept greater responsibilities within bands, not only serving as soloists, but contributing original ideas for reperptory and musical arrangements”. (Berliner, 1994)

    This makes me think of my nephew Guillaume, that just released his first jazz record – Sketches of sound – as a magnificent proof that talented learners can achieve incredible goals when they feel that learning is theirs!

    © Guillaume Muller
    © Guillaume Muller

     

     

     

     

  • The art of posing (the right) questions

    Reading Martha C. Nussbaum’s Not for Profit gives us a new understanding of what education means. Nussbaum shows how the use of Socratic values produces a certain type of citizen: active, critical, curious, capable of resisting authority and peer pressure.

    “Dewey’s socratism was not a sit-at-your-desk-and-argue technique; it was a form of life carried on with other children in the pursuit of an understanding of real-world issues and immediate practical projects, under the guidance of teachers, but without imposition of authority from without.” (Page 66)

    “Tagore’s students were encouraged to deliberate about decisions that governed their daily life and to take the initiative in organizing meetings.” (Page 71) “Tagore’s school developed strategies to make students global citizens, able to think responsibly about the future of humanity as a whole.” (Page 84)

    “The problems we need to solve – economic, environmental, religious and political – are global in their scope. They have no hope of being solved unless people once distant come together and cooperate in ways they have not before.” (Page 79)

    Not for profit

    Nussbaum and others help us understand the importance of posing the right questions. Gaston Bachelard wrote in The Formation of the Scientific Mind: “All knowledge is an answer to a question. Nothing is given. Everything is constructed.”

    Having the ability to pose the right questions is fascinating. Listening to Stephen Hawking helps understand how the need to explore and settle on new planets is linked to fundamental questions about the origin of the universe and the future of the human race. Asking the right questions is also what economist and Nobel Prize Esther Duflo recommends to fight poverty, insisting on the need to come up with accessible solutions to concrete questions and problems.

    Education is all about the art of posing the right questions. It requires a lot of factual knowledge and the ability to think critically: what Nussbaum calls “global citizenship”.

  • How do we learn to love reading?

    Nancie Atwell teaches English as a writing-reading workshop in a rural school she created in Maine (USA). Some years ago she was awarded with the Global Teacher Prize. In her book “The Reading Zone”, she explains her lifetime mission. “The good teachers I know from every grade and subject are in the classroom because they want to influence kids for a lifetime, to make a difference over the long haul, to inspire students to become thoughtful, productive grown-ups.”

    So everything that could constrain teacher’s inspiration and freedom –like the obligation to follow the Common Core curriculum and assess students’ performance with standardized tests – will go against teaching as an inspirational and aspirational profession.

    the reading zone

    Atwell defines reading instruction as a process that “brings knowledge, joy, purpose, skill, personal preference and a sense of community”. This is a powerful definition of reading that makes knowledge only one component of the reading experience. As she puts it: “No child ever grew to become a skilled, passionate, habitual, critical reader via a fat, bland textbook.” Questioning “fat, bland textbooks” is another way of highlighting the importance of the reading experience as both a unique personal experience and, at the same time, one that is shared with peers.

    Atwell understands reading as a personal art and defines the key for learners’ engagement: “every day they engage with literature that enables them to know things, feel things, imagine things, hope for things, become people they never could have dreamed without the transforming power of books, books, books”.

    No such thing as competition to read better and faster; as Atwell puts it: “the passions aroused by stories and characters are the prize”.

  • Teaching about climate change?

    “We call France, the country of the Paris agreement, to launch a major project to make the fight against climate change a priority of national education and higher education, and make the school a laboratory of the transformation of society.”

    This vibrant call made by Valérie Masson Delmotte, vice president of the IPCC workgroup 1 and Laurence Tubiana rightly questions our capacity to act upon climate change from an educational perspective.

    Why should we believe in the overwhelming power of education to act upon climate change? Why would climate change education succeed in raising awareness and changing behaviours when environmental politics have been a dismal failure?

    The New York Times asked a simple key question in one of its surveys:

    Do you think schools should teach about climate change? Why or why not?

    That is the first question we must answer!

    Others follow: Should students learn about the natural and human causes of global warming? Should they learn about solutions? Should they learn about the politics related to it? Why do you think these topics should or should not be included in science curriculum?

    Once the questions are raised about students, come the questions about teachers and their ability to teach climate change.

    The NCSE/Penn State survey found a robust correlation between ignorance of the level of the scientific consensus on climate change and willingness to use pedagogical techniques:  10 percent of the teachers declared rejecting human responsibility over climate.

    © Yale Climate Connections
    © Yale Climate Connections

    More dangerous, is the tendency to use fallacious pedagogical arguments such as encouraging students to “debate the likely causes of global warming” or “come to their own conclusions” on the topic to foster doubt or denial about climate change.

    The following question was raised on a debate platform (see here): Should climate change be taught in schools?

    We can read answers from climate deniers such as: “Climate change is a myth. God is the great and merciful and we have to act accordingly to his emotions. Acid rain is simply God crying angry tears at the reduction in the burning of forests.”, Much more worrying is the following answer: “All theories, whether they be evolution, climate change, or any other kind of theory should be taught in school. As long as they are backed up with facts and great minds behind them, I do not see why climate change would be any different. Of course, there should be a counterpoint to any theory which should also be taught.”

    The pedagogical argument for debate in the classroom is in that case the starting point of climate change denial. And denial is at work on many more issues that we now consider as part of what must be taught in school. It happens with climate change and also with evolution, sexual abuse, gender, antisemitism…

    Even if we rightly believe that education is part of the answer on climate change, we may question the efficiency of teaching in this matter. Ivan Illich criticized the “illusion on which the school system rests (assuming) that most learning is the result of teaching”. For him, “most learning happens casually”.

    Margaret Mead argued that fighting back the dangers facing our planet should begin by understanding “the immense and long-term consequences of what appear to be small immediate choices”. Is it the responsibility of schools and teachers?

    Protecting nature can’t be reduced to an educative challenge. French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, once argued that “protecting nature is a right of the environment in regard to man”. Enforcing this right is maybe first a matter for lawyers and not for teachers.

     

  • Why should I learn?

    Children’s participation on environmental issues has been at the core of innovative pedagogies. Roger Hart in his book “Children’s participation” argued that sustainable development will need to be achieved locally by thinking citizens and that children will need to help us go beyond the environmental dictum and  “think globally, act locally”. Martha Nussbaum in her book “Not for profit” reminded us of John Dewey and Tagore pedagogies to support children in the pursuit of an understanding of real-world issues and immediate practical projects. Practical results remain debatable.

    These pedagogies aimed at shaping a certain type of citizen: active, critical, curious, capable of resisting authority and peer pressure. Though environmental education has been a priority for years, it is however ironic that the more children gained a greater understanding of global environmental issues in the classrooms, the less they were able to influence decisions to be taken on these issues in real life.

    Resisting authority is however exactly what 16-year-old Greta Thunberg decided to do with her #schoolstrike movement to protest against politicians unwilling to sustain their commitments to fight climate change as agreed to under the Paris climate accord.

    Greta tells us that the problems we need to solve require much more than a traditional approach where children learn in schools about the environment and wait for adults to take decisions in line with what they are told to learn. In a period of social urgency, there is no time left for learning in a traditional way. We must all engage in a new type of learning against the clock. Getting together is the first step and the streets are a starting point.

     

    © A. Papillault & J.F. Dars
    © A. Papillault & J.F. Dars

     

    She echoes Nussbaum that think that the problems we need to solve – economic, environmental, religious and political –have no hope of being solved unless people once distant come together and cooperate in ways they have not before.

    But Greta goes one step further and asks: “What am I going to learn in school? Facts don’t matter any more, politicians aren’t listening to the scientists, so why should I learn?”

    She is not only questioning our collective capacity to act against climate change. She is not only questioning the “what should I learn” but also the “why should I learn”, and the “where should I learn”.

    Learning in school or deserting the school? Which option will guarantee social change?

    Greta’s dilemma challenges our understanding of education.

     

  • How to innovate in school? Prohibition or interaction?

    We have now an increasing set of data (and indicators) to assess the impact of technology in education. John Hattie provided a complete analysis framework of what works in education and the impact of specific technology appears to be significantly less than collaborative ways of learning for instance.

    What happen when politics (and politicians) come into play and ask the one million dollar question: is technology good for our schools and our students? Let’s have a look at three very different countries: China, France and the US.

    In the past months, China’s education ministry banned harmful apps in schools and France banned smartphone use in schools. In the same period of time, Silicon Valley tycoons founded a smartphone free school.

    Captura de pantalla 2019-02-13 a las 18.47.27

    The prohibition – ban smartphone use – or the subjective interpretation – what is “harmful” and what is not– can’t be considered as a scientific approach to assess the impact of technology in learning.

    But what if politicians could be trusted? Shall we consider with them that use of apps and smartphones must be banned or restricted for the sake of learning and learners? Is it a signal that innovation in education has gone too far?

    A recent study by the London School of Economics found that “in schools where mobiles were banned, the test scores of 16-year-olds improved by 6.4%”. The main variables in this study seem to be on the one hand “distraction” and its impact on “impressionable” students’ attention and on the other hand “danger” represented by potentially harmful contents.

    In France an experimentation that took place in a lower secondary school came to a more drastic conclusion:”on ne pouvait pas vivre sans, maintenant on se parle” (we couldn’t live without it, now we talk to each other). Talking to each other is in that case the chosen indicator to assess student’s quality of learning (and quality of life).

    Talking to each other or improving test scores are two (very different) indicators of learning achievements. And it would be simplistic to attribute better learning achievements to the smartphone ban or limitation.

    But we will all agree that concentration on tasks, quality of dialog between students and teachers, students mental health, are essential indicators to design successful (and pleasant) learning paths.

    This is what I call the “Art of interaction” i.e. the capacity of teachers and students to engage into a continuous and granular conversation about learning.

    And the role of technology should be redefined (and not banned) in this context with digital tools specifically designed for true interaction and genuine participation between students and with the teacher.

  • Edtech magicians on stage in London

    We just finalized our fifth edition of the GESA Awards and edtech magicians are more alive than ever. Startups from all over the world joined in London to address the future of education with a mix of creativity, vision and candors. They tell a fascinating and some times frightening story about the impact of innovation in education from the very beginning of our life cycle.

    gesa 2018

    A baby is born. More than one million new neural connections will be formed every second. The newborn is a genius! Enough to raise attention of smart entrepreneurs that create the perfect baby app to make sure that each of these precious seconds are used for learning. https://babysparks.com/

    Your baby is growing smart and joyful. Already time at preschool to be acquainted with maths and language, get a sense of proportion and syntax, thanks to algorithms based on a mix of neuroscience and artificial intelligence that will enrich and personalize the learning path. https://www.hanamarulab.com/en

    You may ask : why does a 3-year old kid need adaptive learning when socialization is essential at that age? Magicians will tell you that your child as every child is unique!

    Time to go to the big school and learn for good! Core contents, core knowledge, core standards! From day one, it is all about skills and competences. Because our challenge as educator is clear and ambitious: to prepare a 6-year kid for a job that has not been invented! Impossible? Not for our magicians. They come to the classroom on their magical carpet with a box full of apps and robots to make our daily life fun, interactive and successful.

    Learning maths remains one of our core objective because what was learned in early age was good but not enough. A new app combined fun exercises and artificial intelligence to get out of the black hole. https://www.maphi.app/ A smartphone will make us a mathematician, and a physicist, and a biologist, and an artist, and an historian, and a reader. A reader? Or at least an “easy reader” that can now read a book in a matter of minutes thanks to Natural Language Programming. https://www.onovation.co.il/startup/mist/. No more excuses for no readers: our magicians can convert every book in a smart book. How could we ever think of learning without a smartphone or a tablet?

    Companies are complaining about how well prepared our kids for professional life? (as if they had no role in it!) Our child must be prepared for a future job that doesn’t exist yet. No programming, no future. Magicians brought robots in our classrooms ready to be programmed by 6-year old kids. Nicely designed or made of recycled waste, they remind us of a future job that not yet exists. http://khalmaxsoftwaresystems.com/krc.html

    Education authorities watching us from their PISA tower are relieved: solutions do exist for every education problem and even to educate children as citizens! Media literacy in a click https://gutennews.com.br/ or citizenship education with a 360º perspective www.lyfta.com are only a few examples of what digital innovation is also about: respect for diversity and grassroot cultures.

    But parents are worried. They always are and always will be! They dream of being in touch with teachers, at any time and from any where. Magicians make it possible.  https://www.classtag.com

    And what about teachers? Are they dreaming with parents? At least, they dream with better training and this can also be as magical as a smartphone. http://www.millionsparks.org/

    Education everywhere will be transformed thanks to the power of chips, processors, networks, artificial intelligence and… people. Even in Africa! Or maybe before all in Africa. https://solutions.snapplify.com/

    And education goes on as a continuous journey! Skills, skills, skills are needed once we left school as if our (long) stay in school had been useless. Learning is deconstructed to be constructed again. Online courses – https://bedu.org/ – enable skills acquisition that will immediately be connected to the job market – https://www.skillist.co. Simulation tools will help future doctors to cope with future illnesses – https://insimu.com/ – because our reality is also virtual!

    And in this magical world where we have a hard time separating virtual and real worlds, the winner is immersive learning. And for those who don’t believe in true magics in education, have a look at https://www.uptale.io. One last thought, isn’t “immersive” the final goal of learning, i.e. feeling completely involved?

    All winners of the 2019 GESA edition are to be found on the GESA website.

    Thanks to Avi, Cecilia, all MindCET team and all GESA partners to make magic come true once again!