Comments on: Mission: Gather the best minds, ponder the responses to starting over, decide a course, begin.

By: Carole Brown

Carole Brown — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:13:17 +0000

For example the first person listed at sprout (http://thesprouts.org/) says …
“My name is Alec Resnick, and a few years ago I got fed up with school and decided to change it. The fundamental problems with education were the first domino for me in a long line of realizations about what was broken in society. I left MIT my last term to start sprout.”

By: Carole Brown

Carole Brown — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:09:09 +0000

Stephen, I just found a Cambridge organization that looks very interesting …but you may know them already …. http://thesprouts.org/who_we_are
Cheers, Carole

By: Delaney Kirk

Delaney Kirk — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:29:58 +0000

Great idea. You might ask Angela Maiers @ AngelaMaiers.com for her input. She teaches very popular workshops for public school educators that are focused on learning, not just teaching.

By: winchou

winchou — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:47:37 +0000

Hi Stephen — thanks for letting me know about this blog. And while I am not currently in the public education system (I’ve been an administrator and teacher in private schools for the last few years), I did start out there. Sad to say, that it is a boom time for private schools: the economic and regulatory advantages provided by the current Presidential Administration have thrown huge leverage toward the wealthiest Americans. This is particularly frightening given the function of education in a “true democracy”, which is the empowerment of the citizenry. So why independent private schools? Well, it is the one last outpost on the educational map where innovation, in scale, is actually taking place. I have these ideas in my head, and independent private schools is the only place I have found where I can test them out. IMHO, and generally, charter schools have proven to be colorful distractions rather than true incubators for forward thinking. I think you are correct to point to the funding and accountability mechanisms as two of the the top-level issues with public education, and I also think you are justified in comparing this educational mission to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The stakes for the individuals and the nation are similar: justice, equality, independence. I’ve worked in private day schools that are largely free of the financial and regulatory impositions placed on public schools; though technology is not always readily embraced (ahem), it is readily available and used to great advantage. And not just because technology enhances communications and productivity, but because it is technology that is often at the root of our new civic discourse: access to first-hand information, and expressions of true critical thinking is more in evidence on blogs and social networks than in the main-stream media. This doesn’t just *suggest*, but rather *demands* the kind of participatory educational models you’ve outlined. The kids know it, I’m sure of it. It’s really the teachers and parents that need to get in on it — that’s the participation that may trigger the sea-change I think we both agree is needed.

By: Sharon Terry

Sharon Terry — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:57:11 +0000

John Holt said something like: if our founding fathers came back today, the only institution they would recognize is our public schools. Interesting that with systems change abounding, we have allowed the status quo to rule in public education.