The phoenix metaphor is helpful in visualizing the future of schooling. We need not be alarmed, as Harry Potter is here, as the old schooling disintegrates. It is a waste of time and money to attempt to resuscitate it — and doing that just keeps the old bird whimpering along at high cost to students and budgets enduring its long, slow death.
Here, as Ovid wrote long ago, is what will happen to the phoenix of education if we quit trying to fix failing schools and look toward the bird that will be rising: Most beings spring from other individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. . . . dying, [it] breathes out its last breath amidst odors. From the body of the parent bird, a young Phoenix issues forth, destined to live as long a life as its predecessor.
In Medieval times it was said that: When it is old, it builds a pyre of wood and spices and climbs on to it. There it faces the sun and the fire ignites; it fans the fire with its wings until it is completely consumed. Some say it is the sun that ignites the fire; others say that the phoenix starts it by striking its beak against a stone, or that stones gathered with spices in the pyre rub together to create a spark. A new phoenix rises from the ash of the old.
I suggest sunlight or a stone strike are long overdue in finishing off education as we have tried for so long to breath life into it. It is foolhardy in the digital age to keep trying to keep alive the dying analog school methodology. When the analog education sprung to life its driving realities were printed books and delivery of knowledge to geographical locations where students could gather.
The new education creature will be formed around digital versions of knowledge that can be comprehensively carried in each student’s pocket wherever he or she may be. The new education phoenix of the digital, connected age will, or course still be education — still be a phoenix, just one more more beautiful and appropriate to our times.
Since I have started writing at Handschooling.com several people have written to me or placed comments here that are, in truth, about the new education phoenix. These suggestions have included:
So I will be advocating a “open learning center”: approach to schools and a ‘networked common school’ approach to metropolitan inter-district cooperation.
I believe that many can in the rich world of content and real world experiences collaborative learn with others and self-direct that learning.
The reason I included a major section on “nurture” in Handschooling.com is because there are many local, individual aspects of education that can be re-envisioned in the era of the new education phoenix.
Charles A. Findley says:
Thanks Judy for expanding the phoenix metaphor. We have a local charter school, the Phoenix Academy that has taken on many of the wounded and dying from the public school. As the boys in the hood say, ” I feel you……..”
16th February 2010 at 12:40 pm
leonard waks says:
Remember Harvard College and the other liberal arts colleges, c. 1850. From the 1820s most forward thinkers had been urging the inclusion of ‘useful knowledge’ in the college curriculum. A famous Yale report of the time said ‘no, thanks’.
But by the 1850s it was obvious that things were about to change big time. RPI and MIT had opened and shown that it useful knowledge would not be added to the college curriculum, those seeking it would go elsewhere. Then we had the land grant act to initiate colleges for useful agricultural and mechanical arts in the states, with money derived from the sale of fedeal lands.
After the civil war the states began their own experiments using that money to develop the new colleges. The Penn States and Michigan States and Iowa States and the rest set the new tone, with Cornell, New York States experimental public-private partnership, becoming the new paradigm.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown did not go away, but they were no longer in a position to say ‘no thanks’. They instead morphed into something that would have been unthnkable in 1820 and much too weird in 1850 — centers of useful knowledge. The Phoenix. Solution.
Don’t expect schools to disappear. expect them to change as home schoolers and charter schools lead the way and budget cuts force them to adapt. Today’s news is that the schools face a major funding crisis, and will adjust with fewer electives and larger classes. Tomorrow this will be outsourced electives and cyber classes (at a discount of 40%) and open source text books.
The next logical step will be the gradual transition to blended environments and open learning centers where kids can get as much or as little as they want and need. The Phoenix Solution.,
16th February 2010 at 1:09 pm