Educational Revolutionary?

I’ve decided that I want to be a revolutionary.  You know… one of those great inspiring speakers who rallies the masses to throw down the tyranny of the establishment – all Les Miserables and whatnot.  Sounds pretty cool, except I have a few problems:

(1)  All the revolutionaries at the end of Les Miserables wind up dead.  I definitely do not want to wind up dead.

(2)  The tyrannical establishment (for the purposes of this blog, that will loosely be defined as “the Educational Establishment,” most specifically in the province of Alberta, Canada and perhaps more broadly as education across many Western nations.  What is the Educational Establishment?  It’s really just a fancy way of saying “the way education is right now.”  “What part of education?” you may ask.  Pedagogy?  Sure.  Teachers?  Sort of, depends on the teacher.  Policies?  Some of them.  Curriculum?  Certain aspects.  OK, maybe this deserves to be its own number on this list…

                                         (3)     The thing/concept/people that I wish for the revolution to overthrow is/are not entirely clear.)

… really isn’t all that tyrannical.  In fact, for the most part, I think the overwhelming majority of people in education – whether teachers, administrators, divisional staff, school board trustees, or government officials – are pretty decent folks with their hearts in a relatively good place.  Most everyone wants to do the best we can for our kids with the available resources we have for doing so.  In other words, I don’t really have anyone to revolt against, or if I do they certainly aren't tyrannical or self-serving.

(4)  The outcome/goal/destination of said revolution is a little bit vague.  You can’t swing a dead cat in the realm of educational discourse (assuming it’s possible to swing anything in the non-physical space of “educational discourse”) without hitting some manner of recently produced book, article, TedTalk, Tweet, etc. espousing the importance of shifting educational practices toward progressive pedagogy.  Progressive pedagogy is also a pretty nebulous term, but let’s say for now that it roughly means some manner of engaging, hands-on, inquiry-based, project-oriented, anti-rote, anti-memorization, anti-“Drill-and-Kill” set of practices in teaching.  The buzz in educational circles is to encourage a massive shift toward individualized, discovery based, cross-curricular, real-world relevant, problem-solving, collaborative teaching and learning at all levels of K-12 education.  Cool enough.  I’ll make a declaration now that I’m on board with all that.  Except…

I’m not entirely convinced that progressive pedagogy is always the right call at every grade level for every curricular agenda.  I’m all for kids becoming great critical thinkers and fantastic problem solvers.  But you can’t think critically without a basis of knowledge from which to form rational and reasonable judgments.  And you can’t solve problems if you have no tools at your disposal necessary to tackle the problems that need solving.  The knowledge and the tool know-how needed to be the twenty-first century citizens we want our kids to be doesn’t necessarily germinate from a progressive approach.  In fact, behavioral psychology and neuroscience tell us that many fundamental skills are best developed using traditional practices that have reasonable cultural endurance (more on this in later blog posts).

In other words, I don't fully have a revolutionary destination in mind.

(5)  I’m just not all that militant or angry.  Don’t get me wrong… I can get pretty steamed when someone cuts me off in traffic or my hockey team blows a lead late in the game.  But I’m generally not the “Hell No! We Won’t Go!!” sort.  That alone sort of squashes any romantic fantasy of a Jean Valjean-esque crescendo being belted out at the front of an angry, yet harmonious revolutionary ensemble (to say nothing of the fact that I can’t sing in key to save my life). What good is a revolution without a commanding baritone to hold it all together?

To summarize:  I don’t want to die at the end of a musical, I don’t have a distinctly corrupt or evil body of power to revolt against, I’m not totally clear on what I’m revolting for or what things should look like at the end of the revolution, and I’m not exactly selling the “revolutionary” brand all that well in the first place.

So maybe in light of these gaping shortcomings, it’s worth considering an alternate descriptor for the transformations taking place in my own classroom and those of other classrooms as well.  “Revolution” connotes a degree of rebellious angst that probably doesn’t fit the mold of educational reform.  That said, the label of “revolutionary” may be apt in at least one important way:  I’m just a regular Joe teacher in a typically regular Joe high school – an ordinary peasant looking for a way to improve his lot in life.  Most of the great revolutions of history are borne from a movement within a society’s common citizens.  As citizens go, you don’t get much more common than Yours Truly.  So even if the title has at best a very loose fit, I’ve decided to call myself an Educational Revolutionary anyway. 

In this blog, I hope to explore the ways that positive change can come from the ground up.  One teacher changing his practice in one classroom does not a revolution make.  But if one teacher can inspire, inform, or encourage positive change in other classrooms, then a movement (whether revolutionary or otherwise) is under way.  

TL;DR: I'm going to blog about educational reform that starts with Yours Truly.  Some of it may ruffle a feather or two along the way, so just for kicks I'm going to call it a revolution.

Vive la resistance!