Meier,+Deborah+The+Power+of+Their+Ideas

Meier, Deborah The Power of Their Ideas

Book Name: The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons For America From A Small School In Harlem

Basic Summary: __The Power of Their Ideas__ opens with Meier reminiscing over her time at Central Park East and how her students education there affected them then and later in life. In the original preface, she describes events in her life that lef to her teaching career, and the ultimate formation of the CPE schools. The opening chapter, titled "In Defense of Public Education" expresses Meier's feelings on why America should embrace the public school, or common school, rather than look to private schools for a better source of education for our children. It introduces her personal views on education today, her philosophy of education, and an explaination on how she came to hold these views. Most importantly, Meier feels that education is a shared public responsibility.

Central Park East began with the opening of a public elementary school in district 4 in Harlem, which was one of the city's poorest communities. Educators of the school looked upon Dewey and Piaget's teachings for guidance and sought to create a democratic community that greatly focused on creating community-centered education. The goal of CPE was and still is, to offer a rich and interesting curriculum that will help to inspire students and will keep them continuously wanting to know more as they progress through school. CPE had no academic entrance qualifications, and was open to anyone who saw themselves fit for the school. The school was primarily run by the staff, and parents who chose to join them. The school's student body was made up of nearly half African Americans, a third Latino, and the remaining were White an other Races. Due to a huge increase in the amount of applications sent to the school, CPE eventually grew into four schools working close together under all the normal constaints of the normal public school system. Then, in 1985, Theodore Sizer started a Central Park East Secondary School. This school gives a lot of freedom to the teachers as well as the students. What makes this school so unique is that Meier incorporates what she knows about early childhood development as a foundation for this school for adolescents.

Meier's goal was to get the adolescents to be as focused in their school work, as young children are with their play. One way that this has to begin is by having small classroom sizes where teachers learn their students as learners well. Another topic discussed is that parents need to work with the teachers. The teacher has to have more control in the education of the child,but parents input is nessesary. Along with a good parent teacher relationship, the student must take responsibilty for themselves. Students are also encouraged to go beyond the boundaries of their community. Meier refers to Piaget's theory of learning when stating that children should "have the ability to imagine the world without oneselve at the center"(p63). Meier belives that CPESS is the best way to prepare students for high school and the real world.

Central Park East highly suggested that there is still hope for a good public education for all children. Meier shows how this hope has been lost over the years because so many people believe in myths, lies, and has forced people to look at all public education as bad and private education as the way to go. People need to be more open-minded and not just listen to what others say about public schools and stop dwelling on how the public schools were in the past. "False history thrives because our memories play tricks on us"(pg71). Meier wants everyone to see that no one can disifer what is right or wrong anymore and it is not doing anything to benefit the children of today. We need to focus and place our attention on the problems we have at hand. Private schools are looked at as such a positive thing that we actually put lower standards on them and place much higher standards on public schools which doesn't make it fair.

According to Meier, one of the most beneficial solutions in saving public education, is the power of choice. Choice is an effective tool for aspiring change in the public education system. Choice leads to new ideas, variety of ideas, and allows everyone (largley including parents) to be able to have a say on what they feel will help the public schools. CEP practiced choice in their schools and is an example of how choice brought the schools together and were able to come up with common focuses on what needed to be done within the public education system. However, many people were opposed to the power of choice becaus people felt that it was too risky and that in the end it would'nt help the schools to get better, but just cause a gap in between. Of course allowing people choice in their schools would be a risk; but Meier believed that choice in schools was the way to go. There would need to be more to the strategy than choice to make it adequate, but choice would be the main incentive in leading to a greater sense of membership as a whole.

For Meier, small schools can be seen as an essential today. They are more productive since the entire faculty can be directly involved in the decision making process. Teachers are also held more accountable for their work and performance, and can constructively criticize their colleagues. Small schools also give a better opportunity for teachers to better get to know their students and the way they work. It is also easier to prevent troublesome situations and maintain safety. Management in small schools is also close to their teachers and students, making them aware of problems and concerns much more quickly. These small schools also help to promote adult/adolescent relationships, in contrast with only peer relationships that are created in larger schools.

Meier eventually became the "principal" at CPE and made it a point to reshape her position. Because she had experienced so much direspect in the system previously by male bosses toward the mostly female faculty, she wanted to be able to run her school with an equal respect for everyone. She preferred thinking of herself as a fellow teacher and paid equal attention to her colleagues' thoughts and parents' views. Between visiting classrooms, holding frequent meetings to encourage staff development, and acknowledging the legitimacy of all concerns brought her, Meiers achieved her dream of running a school that respected all involved.

To make a change in education one must change the way one thinks. Schools should also educate teachers. An environment of intellectual growth is what needs to be strived for. Working with colleagues outside of the classroom helps them to learn from each other. Old ways of teaching must be respected while using it to add new ways on. When comfort is reached in changing, it will be a slow process, then changes in education will take place. Time is needed for reform. There are four principles for an effective learning environment. They are: 1) a feeling of being safe, 2) size and scale - small class sizes, 3) children want teachers to think they understand - relationship between teacher and student, and 4) “the natural drive to make sense of things is allowed to flourish” - allowing the child to learn by making mistakes. Humans are interactive learners. When children leave school, learning is ongoing and never ending.

We must build a “bridge” to teach students so they will understand what is being taught. Teachers must connect meaning to the students knowledge so the student can understand. People have a different reaction to various materials based on their passions, and others have difficulty understanding the passion one holds. What defines academics? Is it performance, facts, memorization, or statistics one must learn to achieve academic excellence? But it is important to study subject matter. Schools must teach so children will have information ready to use and know how to use it. Academia should be used for inquiries that a democratic citizenry determines, not what determines a democratic citizenry. A well-educated citizen should be curious, observant, playful, skeptical, open-minded, respectful of evidence, know how to communicate, caring, imagine how others think, and honor work ethic.

There are many obstacles that can cause problems in schools. In creating new courses no matter how much the teachers know there are bound to be mistakes made. One can always try something else to make a course better. Regardless of conditions, practices, and feedback many mistakes will be made in teaching students because of the changes in students. Expectations from teachers are high for students to be prepared to be in class. The author feels that there should be no graduation requirement that teachers cannot meet. Changes in education should not be left up to policymakers, but it will take “powerful citizenry” that is more caring. Education is like a puzzle, there is always one piece left to put into place.

Key Passages:

I knew that human beings are by nature generators of ideas, what I didn't understand was how it was that some children recognized the power of their ideas while others became alienated from their own genius. How did schools, in small and unconscious ways, silence these persistent playground intellectuals? Could schools, if organized differently, keep this nascent power alive, extend it, and thus make a difference in what we grow up to be? p. 3

The question is not, Is it possible to educate all children well? but rather, Do we want to do it badly enough? p. 4

The task of creating environments where all kids can experience the power of their ideas requires unsettling not only our accepted organization of schooling and our unspoken and unacknowledged agreement about the purposes of schools. Taking this task seriously also means calling into question our definitions of intelligence and the ways in which we judge each other. And taking it seriously means accepting public responsibility for the shared future of the next generation. It's a task for all of us, not just school people or policymakers or even parents alone. The stakes are enormous, and the answers are within our reach. p. 4

If we abandon a system of common schools-through apathy or privatization-we deprive everyone, not just the least advantaged, of the kind of clash of ideas that will make us all more powerful. p. 11

Each of the four schools offer a rich and interesting curriculum full of powerful ideas and experiences aimed at inspiring its students with the desire to know more, a curriculum that sustains students' natural drive to make sense of the world and trusts in their capacity to have an impact upon it. p. 16

...the staff (and the parents that chose to join us) continued to be central to all decisions, big and small, the final plenary body, directing the life of the school. p.25-26

The biases and prejudices of the larger society have more obvious effects as youngsters come closer to the "real thing- being adults". p. 31

Kindergarten teachers know that helping children learn to become more self-reliant is part of their task- starting with tying shoes and going to the bathroom. Catering to children's growing independence is a natural part of a kindergarten teacher's classroom life. p. 48

The main difference between the advantaged and the disadvantaged is that the latter need such flexible schools even more. When people think "those kids" need something special, the reply we offer at CPESS is, Just give them what you have always offered those who have the money to buy the best, which is mostly a matter of respect. p. 49

Children must take increasing responsibility for who they are and what they accomplish, which includes sorting out the unresolved tensions between school and family. p. 52

To create a staff-run school with high standards, the staff must know each other well, too, be familiar with eachother's work, and know how the school operates. p. 56

The capacity to see the world as others might is central to unsentimental comparison and at the root of both intellectual skepticism and empathy... but there is no tolerance without respect- and no respect without knowledge...such empathetic qualitiesare precisely the habits of mind that require deliberate cultivation-that is, schooling. p. 63

False history thrives because or memories play tricks on us. p. 71

Myths and practices played side by side without much attention to their contradictions. p. 73

We actually hold private businesses to much lower standards on these counts than we do out public schools. p. 77

Choice was a necessary prerequisite-not an end in itself, but a tool for effecting change. p. 93

To make choice an effective force for change we need to provide incentves to districts to break up large schools and redesign them into many small schools easily accessible to families on the basis of choice. p. 102

By using choice judiciously we can have the virtues of the marketplace without some of its vices, and we can have the virtues of the best private schools without underminding public education. p. 104

We cannot convince kids that we cherish them in settings in which we cannot stop to mourn or to celebrate. In our big-city high schools, numbness becomes our salvation, as it does for our children, and in the process we become passion- and //com//passion- imparied. p. 113

Smallness, to be effective, must be accompanied by at least one other element, this one so intimately connected that I've been taking it for granted: sufficient autonomy to use one's smallness to advantage. It doesn't do us much good to know each other well if we can't use that knowledge. p. 115

Schools, big or small, can't create local economies, provide people with decent shelter, or stop the drug dealers, but smallness combined with self-governance can help educate the young to better cope with the present and find solutions for the future. p. 118

All too often, what is emanded of principals, first of all, is keeping the ship afloat. The key word is "operator". Maintaining the daily imperatives---the doors open, the boiler operating, the payroll rolling, classes covered---consumes enormous energies. All steps to reform or restructure education risk the operational life of the school, which is often held together by the most makeshift arrangements. Under these circumstances it makes good sense to suggest that principals need not have ever been teachers. "People skills" may be valuable, but these can be generic. p. 128

Good teachers are, I believe, called to teaching because they really like people---as unique, unpredictable, complex, never fully knowable, and edlessly varied. They're glad that the real world doesn't come with built-in multiple-choice boxes, precoded and ready to score. At CPE our driving and motivating idea was to make the world available to our students in ways that made it appear every bit as interesting to them as it seemed to us. p. 135

So many onetime certainties now seem problematic. But we haven't for a moment ceased insisting that schools should be respectful and interesting places for ever one of us--- children, teachers, and even principals. p. 135

One cannot impose real change from above, at least not for long, nor isolate one generation from the next-not only because it is immoral or unpleasant, but because it doesn’t work. And the price paid for trying to wipe out the past by fiat is enormous. It is illogical to imagine that we can produce thoughtful and critical thinkers by rote imposition or that we can build strong intellectual understanding by imposing massive change from above and pretending that it doesn’t matter what the implementers of change think or feel. p. 146

If we intend to dramatically improve the education of American kids, teachers must be challenged to invent schools they would like to teach and learn in, organized around the principles of learning that we know matter. p. 154

The goal is not choice, school site autonomy, more resources, or more authentic forms of assessment. The goal is educating, and that means knowing what we’re educating for. Purposes must be decided upon. As long as we avoid defining “why,” our educational talk rings hollow. Even on the most practical level, until the kids know the destination getting there will be hard. And there’s no way they can know if their parents and their teachers don’t know. Too often we don’t. p. 161

…what our students think about our enterprise, whether it makes sense to them, is at the heart of the matter. If their schooling chiefly depends on their industry, then we must engage their industry. Until they see themselves as parties to their own education-they will not cross the divide. They need a bridge that connects their understanding of the meanings of the world to the ones being offered by “capital E Education.” p. 163

While teaching the traditional academic material well always helps and is only minimally harmful in a practical sense for students who take to it easily, the price for others-even with good teaching-is enormous. There’s no way to spend the time needed on strong intellectual habits if one is whizzing through academic terrain at the speed required to cover it, and no way to engage all young people when the choice of subject matter isn’t rooted in real inquiry on the part of teachers and students alike. p. 163

There are in the end, only two main ways human beings learn: by observing others (directly or vicariously) and by trying things out for themselves. Novices learn from experts and from experience. That’s all there is to it. Everything else is in the details. Until we create schools in which the ratio of novices to experts is lower and the opportunities for novices to try out what they see and hear the experts doing are more plentiful, we’ll be wasting much of our time. Until we, in whatever other roles we play in life, demonstrate, the intellectual seriousness and thoughtfulness we want for our young will not be a commonplace school phenomenon. p. 181

It would help, of course, if all our children had sound reasons to expect a decent and dignified job in the future, as well as neighborhoods and opportunities that offered them and their families a decent present. p. 183

It won’t come as a surprise that I think the conditions that foster good teaching are the conditions I’ve describes already: small schools, schools of choice, school autonomy over the critical dimensions of teaching and learning, lots of time for building relationships and reflecting on what’s happening, along with culture of mutual respect for others and a set of habits of the mind that fosters inquiry as well as responsibility. p. 184

Key Terminology: __CPESS- Central Park East Secondary School__."//This city school gives both teachers and students high amounts of personal freedom for development and sets the limit for class size at 20"// idiosycratic- unique to the individual. Students each have a unique way of learning, teachers should know that learning must be personalized. __"Open" or "Progressive" Education__ - to CPE, education was to be both child-centered as well as community-centered. (ch. 2) __Central Myth__ - Meier uses this terminology to describe the one cause of mischief on peoples notion that in the past public schools taught more effectively and children learned more throughly. (ch. 4) __Habits of mind__ - Meier uses this terminology to say that teachers must change their way of thinking and understanding to develop new ways to reach different children that they are teaching. (ch. 8) __Habits of schooling__ - this is used to state that school institutions are harder to change. Meier’s states that habits of schooling are deep, powerful, and hard to budge. (ch. 8) __Industry__ - this terminology is used by Meier to say how people learn best by their own ways. Teachers must enter a students industry to give meaning to what they already know and make it work for the student. ( ch. 9) __Humor__ - Meier uses the word humor to state that when teaching, one must have a sense of humor to get them through a difficult day when some children are understanding what is being taught and to use humor to laugh at themselves for a mistake made. (ch. 10)