Discuss: Unplugged Schools

I have a chapter from my thesis, a memoir on this very topic.  It is called, “Snow Jobs” which refers to the ways in my childhood that we played.  I am 71.  Not all was better, and I make this clear as well in my memoir, but this aspect of free play was I think.  Children were “released” to the school yard, to after school pursuites into the outside world to find friends and pursuits with
much, much less notice from their
elders, and as a result learned
self motivation, self soothing and
social integration strategies that
did not have to get so intense
since the adults were, in effect
“not in the room.”

Thank you for this piece Mr. Monke.  I agree with the need to engage the natural world in our classrooms.  I would also say that we can engage simpler and more organic methods as well.

I teach at a historically black college in urban Jacksonville.  While we are realistically trying to “catch up” in getting 21st century technologies and teaching and learning aids on campus, I have chosen also to go back to early society community and leadership practices as the primary method of instruction: sitting in circle/council together.

This focuses attention, requires daily practice of listening and speaking, and gradually builds a core that is more and more present to ourselves and our surrounding.

The circle has been called humanity’s oldest gathering and teaching form.  The ancient wisdom that may emerge in its practice is being reinvigorated as a modern wisdom tool by several mentoring organizations I have been privileged to learn from including, Parker Palmer’s The Center for Courage and Renewal,Christina Baldwin and Anna Linea’s Peer Spirit, and The Berkana Institute’s (Meg Wheatley) The Art of Hosting.  Larger and more complicated circle patterning has been successfully utilized by The World Cafe. 

I gently yet strongly encourage all educators and organizational leaders to experiment with this form in their work.  And would happily share more with anyone of Orion’s readers on the practice.

All best to you.

What has happened to education in America, began happening a few centuries ago during the “Enlightenment”. Thus began the standardization, domination and institutionalization of human perception. I suppose that period could of course be deemed the natural response to the dominating oppressive influence of religious dogma becoming corrupted by its own institutionalization. The common threads in either case, were and still are the loss, rejection and fear of being receptive to the direct experience of the natural diversity of life.

The effect of attempting to globalize, standardize, nationalize and institutionalize human perception has trained us to live our lives conceptually rather than organically. It is difficult to “relate” to the ‘actual Life’ of a place when we are so preoccupied and programmed into creating and seeking security in the sameness of our surroundings.

I was never actually ‘taught’ how to actually appreciate diversity and difference. I was given a concept, a rule, that I (should) tolerate differences, but my experience was that discrimination, competition and rejection was more satisfying, more acceptable, even powerful. Of course tolerance is a valuable virtue, but it is not as nurturing and wise and insightful as appreciation.

No institutional educator in my formative years had the freedom to actually teach anything about real life. The American ‘system’ of public education succeeded remarkably in detaching me from being human, having any sense of self or place.  It was constantly about becoming something I wasn’t and a place was not a place, it was only where you could make money, fit by being like everyone else.

Shifts in the paradigm of what education is has been creeping into our institutions. It’s good to see.  I do appreciate many aspects of my formal education - from a back door perspective I can credit it for what matters to me today.

I loved this piece and was fascinated by the fact that it was included in Orion, an ‘environmental’ magazine. Of course, our environment includes our digital tools and our subjugation to screens, but very few people see things this way. The problem is perhaps larger than Mr. Monke suspects. It is enormous. Children now interact with screens in various areas of their lives to a greater degree than they do with other human beings. Yes, it is more convenient to use an ATM than to visit a branch, because of course it is much faster. But it also appeals to us because it is a much safer interaction. We will not encounter peevishness or bureacracy in an online experience...We trust machines and screens much more than we trust other human beings, and our machine experiences, --iPods, MP3s-- are more satisfying and safe than chance encounters with humans. To this we owe the devotion of our leisure time to mechanical devices. Our consumption of the prefabricated entertainment they offer us and the end of the human investment of leisure time in developing ‘personal skills’ like learning to play music or learning to dance, to tell a good story, to cook a good meal, to develop a real hobby, or to acquire a body of knowledge over time… No wonder, we have spent most of our time interfacing with screens. I believe this single fact is responsible for the radical decline of social capital in global society. Schools might/could/should be used to supplement this deficit. After all, do we need to train children in technology, an aspect of society that is already ubiquitous? Instead of additional technological training, schools could be bastions of interaction and ‘people skills’. They’d better do this fast, however, because administrators at the post-secondary level are discovering that with the disappearance of physical classrooms, the low overheads of online education make the prospects for profitability much better. How long will it be before public schools make a similar connection? In any case, thank you Mr. Monke. This and the excerpt from Alan Weisman’s ‘World Without Us’ are the best things I’ve read in ORION in recent months. Unfortunately, I do read the magazine online and have chosen here to respond to it in the same way. :-) Still, if we were in a room together, Mr. Monke, I would stand and clap. The best I can do is to promise now to buy and read your book, Digital Walls. Thank you. Giles Slade

For readers who enjoyed this article, you might check out an author (and former teacher) John Taylor Gatto, especially for more history, answers to WHY things have gotten to the way they are, and what can be done differently.

He developed and implemented very “unorthodox” curricula which embodied many of the characteristics of “unplugged schools” AND he got away with it.

Gatto has countless stories that serve as PROOF that “unplugging” is more successful.

It does take more than schools to solve this problem. Schools in northern Michigan are cutting out field trips to nature preserves. We are raising money to subsidize the bussing costs.  We are using to model of Chicago Wilderness to encourage the total community to collaborate to solve the “nature deficit disorder” No one seems to do it better than “Chicago Wilderness.

I read this in the print edition right after Rebecca Solnit’s “A Fistful of Time” and while I certainly enjoy the writing for the gorgeous sentences, I have to say I’m shocked and profoundly disappointed in the Monke’s (& Solnit’s) conclusions.  This is classic neo-Ludditism and I want nothing to do with it.  I remember the pre-tech school era and it was an oppressive ordeal, not a liberative experience.

Let’s throw out ADA while we’re at it, shall we?  Consider for a moment, the tech-free school’s meaning for people with “disabilities” or for those of us who are not wired like you.  As someone with Tourette’s Syndrome, technology--depersonalized, evil, nasty, bad, decontextualized as it has been deemed and adjudged--has allowed me an occupation in fiction writing.  Before techology, writing anything from a shopping list to a short story was unadulterated torture thanks to the uncontrollably tics in my hand, arms and the rest of my body.  Notetaking in school was a nightmare and the pre-computer classroom constrained me and my exploratory-prone brain to mediocre performances and frustrating expressive ordeals.  I endured ridicule and intense shame being forced to write by hand and deprived of the hours and hours needed in libraries to locate and document support for my creative insights. The Web changed all of that, opening the world within minutes. In Monke’s school-universe people like me would be relegated to the “undeveloped potential” label I wore like an albatross around my neck.

Those terrible, evil computers allow my two attention-different children to engage in the world neo-Luddites take for granted.  Before bad nasty technology my children were deemed misfits, juvenile delinquents by the “normals.” Technology allowed the “normals” to finally recognize my kids’ genius as they now have a means to express themselves fully, creatively and impressively with few limitations.  They are finally taken seriously and accepted for their genius, because there is a tool--for that’s all technology really is, contrary to Monke’s philosophy--they could use to overcome their developmental delays, gaps and other so-called “challenges.”

Mr. Monke is right that there needs to be a progressive nature-interaction in schools, and generally I like the mediation model for communal schooling.  But that’s as far as I’ll agree.  The solution lies not in eliminating tech from schools, but in fully and holistically educating people how to use tools and that education necessarily should embody what tech does to people and for people, free of Monke’s moralistic judgment and neo-Ludditish cult boundaries.

As for free, unstructured play, that works for attention-different children only when that play isn’t subjected to the oppressive yet highly idealized expectations “normals” place on children.  Then again, my kids would simply avoid the “normals” children anyway during such free play because they already know that normals see them as criminals or ferals.  Without the room to make numerous and multiple social errors free from fear of militarized consequences, attention different kids desperately need mediative interaction during play with others.  Monke’s solution sounds to me like a return to the 1970’s hell that was school for me and other attention differents.  Tech isn’t the problem, ignorance is.

I would be interested in learning more about the methods Ms. Masturzo uses, as I also work on a Historically Black urban campus.