But how do you keep track of all the resources people you meet and the great ideas they have to share? I thought I’d offer this quick post about a tool that has worked for me. Please don’t hesitate to share your successful strategies in the comments too. I might like to borrow them!

I’ve tried a number of web tools for tracking interesting pieces I’ve found on the web to increase the likelihood of finding them again. At one time I thought posting the link on Facebook would be sufficient but that stream is too crowded now. And, let’s face it, most of our friends and families aren’t particularly interested in a new take on teaching the Gettysburg Address. So, a tool I keep returning to is Tumblr. It’s a quick and easy way to throw a link, a quote or a book title someplace where I’ll be able to find it again. I consider it my online moleskin. I don’t promote it as my blog or try to cultivate any kind of readership. I follow a few friends on Tumbr but it’s all about sharing interesting web content. It isn’t necessary to spend an excessive amount of time managing your profile or wading through all the family pics or Farmville achievements.

I just added this great question from Rakove’s book Original Meanings to my tumblog and thought I’d take a few minutes to share both ideas with you. Enjoy the question and let me know if you’re on Tumblr too.

The next day, however, we discussed how many questions students had to answer correctly to achieve this success. Less than 50%. They wanted to know why so little was expected of them. This is my concern… if we don’t find a way to resist the most virulent pieces of the testing regime, we’re robbing our students of knowing true success. Erica Goldson, Valedictorian at Coxxackie-Athens High School, knows this ugly truth too.

Her full remarks are available at Sign of the Times. Here’s just an excerpt to show what she thinks of the success she achieved:

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker.

And, in the effort to partner criticism with constructive ideas, watch this short video from Professor Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard. He saw the dark shadow of memorization of facts with little understanding of concepts in his classroom and decided to do things differently. One of my favorite pieces in the clip shows students talking to one another about torque to identify the right answer to Professor Mazur’s questions. A young man asks., “how do you know that?” Our students need to know the answer to that question as well as have the drive to ask it of themselves.

Without that question, what we know is shrinking each day and it’s happening in our classrooms too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And everyone wants to know what you wrote! To kick off what we hope will be a season of sharing here’s my first attempt at writing Thomas Kuhn as a Dr. Seuss styled story for kids. Let me know if you need help getting your work posted….

The Original: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Normal Science

“it [a paradigm] is an object for further articulation and specification under new or more stringent conditions.

To see how this can be so, we must recognize how very limited in both scope and precision a paradigm can be at the time of its first appearance. Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute. To be more successful is not, however, to be either completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number. The success of a paradigm—whether Aristotle’s analysis of motion, Ptolemy’s computations of planetary position, Lavoisier’s application of the balance or Maxwell’s mathematization of the electromagnetic field—is at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise, an actualization achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm’s predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself…

The existence of the paradigm sets the problem to be solved; often the paradigm theory is implicated directly in the design of apparatus able to solve the problem. Without Pincipia, for example, measurements made with the Atwood machine would have meant nothing at all.

A third class of experiments and observations exhausts, I think, the fact-gathering activities of normal science. It consists of empirical work undertaken to articulate the paradigm theory, resolving some of its residual ambiguities and permitting the solution of problems to whit it had previously only drawn attention. This class proves to be the most important of all, and its description demands its subdivision. In the more mathematical sciences, some of the experiments aimed at articulation are directed to the determination of physical constraints. Newton’s work, for example, indicated that the force between two unit masses at unit distance would be the same for all types of matter at all positions in the universe. But his own problems could be solved without even estimating the size of this attraction, the universal gravitational constant; and no one else devised apparatus able to determine it for a century after the Principia appeared. Nor was Cavendish’s famous determination in the 1790’s the last. Because of its central position in physical theory, improved values of the gravitational constant have been the object of repeated efforts ever since by a number of outstanding experimentalists. Other examples of the same sort of continuing work would include determinations of the astronomical unit, Avogadro’s number, Joule’s coefficient, the electronic charge, and so on. Few of these elaborate efforts would have been conceived and none would have been carried out without a paradigm theory to define the problem and to guarantee the existence of a stable solution.”

Kuhn, Thomas S. “The Nature of Normal Science.” The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.

I first attempted to infuse the text with the political through elaboration. I had no intention of using the mode of a genre shift but it all made sense after working on the elaboration. Then I had to find a third mode that could be completed in a relatively short amount of time because I nearly ran away with the People of Penelope!

Re-Write #2: Genre Shift

Once upon a time in a small faraway place there lived the People of Penelope. The men, women, and children of Penelope did all the normal things that men, women and children do like laugh and sing and work and play, but all of this was done in a very special way. These laughing and playing people of Penelope believed that walking on their hands was the only way, so they wore boots on their fingers and caps on their toes! This all came to be when Penelope first began and its people had tiny little feet. As silly as it may be, living with tiny little feet proved to be no small feat for it took 837 steps to get from the bedroom to the bathroom and walking to school could take all week.  Now the persistent people of Penelope continued to plod along but they couldn’t help but notice that they got very little else done.

Horses, cars and even St. Bernard’s couldn’t provide relief. The tiny feet didn’t fit the stirrups or reach the pedals, and the poor dog barely escaped. A few children at play one day discovered what perhaps could be a brilliant new way. They think they may have seen it on T.V. or maybe it came to them in a dream, but walking on their hands got them to school with time to play. People watched with interest and fantasized about possibly cutting the trip to the refrigerator from 795 steps on tiny little feet to 5 simple strides on great big hands. The excitement grew and people wondered what other great things they might now accomplish and if this could really work.

With this promise in mind, an engineer designed a car that one could steer with tiny little feet while working the pedals with great big hands and looking out to the road from under the dash. Traffic coordinators decided they could move traffic lights to the fire hydrants so they could be seen this way, and Penelope grew more and more productive! There were great new plans to make walking on your hands the very best way from here to there and everywhere. A few older folks, however, were most unimpressed. You see they had never walked on their hands or even stood on their heads. They didn’t think they would be able to keep up and they were certain they wouldn’t like living in the world upside-down. The local gym saw a need and started classes to instruct the people on the proper form and strategies for speed and stability while all the local posters and signs were re-designed. They even decided to hang trees where the traffic signals used to be! Slowly the world upside-down began to look like the world upside-right as though this is the way it was always meant to be.

So now in the land of Penelope people laugh while they “talk with their feet” and sing when they feel “light on their hands.” Every now and then someone will insist that a world upside-down is simply bizarre, but the people of Penelope are quick to extol how grand life became when they started doing things this way and slow to see any reason to be back on their feet.

The Creativity Crisis on Newsweek.com

Read the whole article but here’s a clip to consider the scope of the problem…

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Teachers & the Temple

Adjusting to the real world after a week at Montpelier can be challenging. There are real pressures to be ready for the next school year but an equally real mission to teach the substance of the ideas present in our curriculum. Several participants have shared their gratitude via e-mail or the Facebook group. I wanted to share those ideas here and invite you to add your own thoughts.

Whether you left Montpelier last week or two years ago, how will you use it to super charge your teaching?

Sherry Willis wrote this poem to commemorate our time together. I especially like that last line…

They came from everywhere all across this great land
…West coast, east coast, the north, and the south
Dark hair, light hair, young and mature
All thrown into the Madision melting pot
Scholar, teacher, and student
Listening, discussing, thinking, and learning
All in the Madision way
Laughing, walking, feasting, and fellowshiping
Honoring not only the man but the work he had done
Revived, renewed patriotism and passion
Diverse yet joined in the Spirit of the Union that is greater than themselves

The James Madison Workshop June 20-25, 2010

From the second week, Paige forwarded her thoughts on the week by e-mail:

I realized to an even greater extent than before that we really have to find the time to focus more on the founding using primary source documents.  Perhaps by empowering our students with that “maker’s knowledge” we can best fight the cynicism and lack of political efficacy that seem so prevalent today.

Works in progress are welcome too… so, alumni from previous years, tell us what you did and how it worked.

In all the branches of knowledge and in every kind of craft the end in view is some good. In the most sovereign of these, the capacity for [leadership in] political matters, the end in view is the greatest good and the good which is most to be pursued. The good in the sphere of politics is justice; and justice consists in what tends to promote the common interest” (112).

The course of the National Academy then pursued a series of questions for the sake of political knowledge.

From Aristotle, How do you know?

From Cicero, How do you see?

From Hobbes, How do you make?

From Deuteronomy, how do you judge?

And here’s a big question for National Academy alumni… how are you using these questions or these texts to promote an inquiry of political knowledge in your classroom?

A Federal Teacher shared his Path to Description with us in February. He provoked his students  to better examine what they know by describing what something is as well as what it is not. It took a year after the Academy but Hobbes21 unpacked the National Academy’s boxes to share them with his students. The Constitution became a protagonist in the story of We the People as Hobbes21 wove together the We the People text and his National Academy notes. His three part series, My Serial of Boxes, chronicles his concerns as he plunged into the depths of political philosophy in his Montessori classroom and the brilliant achievements of his students as they worked together to make order of this brave new world. You’ll want to check out the fantastic photos in the final post too!

Politicolor is a place to share your success and talk through your concerns. The healthcare debate still struggles to emerge from a summer of what believe was politics at its worst. As teachers and National Academy alumni we have the ability to share the story of politics at its best… how people organize themselves to achieve the good life.

If you have topics you’d like to discuss here… drop a line in the comments. We can also get you set up to write a post of your own.

For Alumni, what do you remember most about this assignment? Have you now utilized this text or this mode of academic inquiry? Share your reflections… and well wishes for 2009 participants… in the comments below.

For those of you attending the Academy (in real life)  and submitting your work today, feel free to share your reflections on the assignment too. If you still have a few words left in you, please share them!

This institute is a way not to just learn about polity and community, but to also build our very own community and polity. As I climbed  the mountain behind Occidental,with a few of my friends, to watch the beautiful California sunset, I finally figured why we were here at Occidental. We are Scipio, climbing to the top of our own little world, looking down to see the wholeness and order that is so clearly there. We are here to build a republic, a group of citizens of common interest, putting the theories that we are learning into practical applications. But we will be building our own community on the foundations of all the former institutes. Because the institute’s whole is truly greater then the sum of one of its years part.
It is really interesting to watch a group of people, with no more then a common interest to learn and living on the same floor of a building, in just a few short days turn into a community.  I just hope my initial optimism wont give away to the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

After speaking to Shellee, and  her wanting to try to include the former institutes by tweeting her experience. I thought that I too had an obligation as citizen of this world to build common interest between  all members, past and present.  I hope to blog every few days about what is going on in the institute, I just hope, you will all join in with comments.

Below is the section related to citizenship…

Now you know that no love letter written to you from me would be complete without my wishes for you as citizens of our community, our country and our world.  And you may think that it is slightly strange that I would transition to the topic of politics in a letter about religion and spirituality as most see them as completely unconnected, or even the antithesis of one another.  But I actually see them as very connected.  You see when I think of our membership in a democratic society, I consider it to be a covenantal relationship.  Each one of us enters this sacred compact and agrees to jointly protect and defend one another’s freedom and liberty.  The preservation of this covenant ought to be the principle business of our work as citizens.

While I don’t want to put an undue amount of pressure on you, I do think you all should know that I fundamentally believe that the survival of our democracy rests on your shoulders.  Our Founding Fathers designed our unique form of democracy as a “Grand Experiment.”  They naively believed that the people, yes the people, could be trusted to guard their liberties and build a society based on justice and the common good.  And though they borrowed their ideas from the great thinkers of antiquity including Aristotle, Cicero, Locke and Hobbs, their ideas were revolutionary and a clear departure from the past.

Although the system they created is less than perfect, I would venture to say that you enjoy more security, more safety, more opportunity, and more freedom in the United States than people in any other part of the world.  If you want this experiment to succeed – your energy, enthusiasm and service is required.  George Marshall, an American general, once said that, “Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual.”  You, the individual, the citizen, are the most crucial component of our nation’s survival. Just as it has been suggested that your teachers are not teaching you enough about religion and spirituality, it has also been suggested that they are not teaching you enough about the foundations of government and your role in its upkeep.  There is some irony in this phenomenon, as the original purpose of public education was to educate the citizen for it was feared that without an educated and virtuous citizenry, no republic could survive.  Until last summer, I would have considered myself to be a teacher that Thomas Jefferson would be proud of, as I always taught my students about their government.  However, after attending a three week long academy sponsored by the Center for Civic Education, I learned that I had been going about this study in my classroom all wrong.

You see, government is not about checks and balances and rules for elections….it is much more than this.  It is about a compact, a social covenant, where people voluntary bind themselves together with the goal of attaining what Aristotle characterized as “the good life.”  Without government man can be left in a brutish state of nature.  Aristotle even went as far as to say that, “He who is without a city is clanless and lawless and heartless who at once plunges into a passion of war…”  Because of this, people agree to unite and form a common bond for the mutual protection of their life, liberty and property.  Many trace this concept all the way back to the covenant the Israelites made with God when Moses led them out of Egypt.  God promised the Israelites that He would lead them to safety if they agreed to be obedient to His higher law.  So, whenever you think of the government, don’t think about it in terms of some abstract machine removed from the people.  Think of it as a sacred bond created and entered into by the people.

And in our government, you need to know that you – yes you – play the most critical role in its functioning.  The citizen is the foundation of our democracy.  Aristotle defined the citizen as one who participates in power.  I hope that each of you takes this charge seriously and shares in the power that you already hold.  Don’t for one minute think that you are insignificant in this system.  Justice Louis Brandeis once said that, “The only title in our democracy superior to that of the President is the title of citizen.”  Think of people in the government as the actors but you are the author of their scripts.  Remember that it is you that consents to be governed and it is you that grants government officials the opportunity to serve on your behalf.

Many recent studies have shown that young people, such as you, are much less likely today to follow politics and take an active role in the political process than any previous generation.  In fact, since the 26th Amendment extending voting rights to 18 year olds in 1971, voter participation in the 18-24 year old category has actually decreased by 15%.  I don’t believe this is due to laziness on the part of our youth but rather a systematic alienation of young people from civic discourse by those who currently hold power.  If we do not take steps to right this wrong in your generation, I have great fear that our nation’s posterity will not have the opportunity to enjoy the great freedoms and liberties we are each afforded today.  The French philosopher Montesquieu once quipped, “The tyranny of a prince is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.”  In short, good men will be ruled by evil men if they collectively choose to be indifferent to public affairs and the political process.

In order for you to fulfill your role as citizen, I wish that each of you pursue every opportunity to continue your education for there is no freedom without knowledge.  You must engage your mind in as many ways as possible.  Read the great works, study the story of our past, discuss your thoughts, questions and wonderings with people that stimulate your thinking and consider ideas from a variety of perspectives.  So many adults are stuck in the here and now and are therefore unable and uninterested in learning the lessons our history has provided.  Don’t be one of them.  Cicero would tell you that, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”  Make him proud. Learn as much as you can from our past and carry the teachings forward in your thinking.  And, as you read from multiple perspectives and traditions, don’t feel the need to embrace everyone.  Consider all viewpoints but think for yourself.  Aristotle would tell you that, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”  So ponder all perspectives but rely on your own intellect and understanding to determine your position.

When considering your role as citizen, it is my true hope that you will dedicate your time to the service of others.  Marian Wright Edelman once remarked that, “Service is the rent we pay for living.”  I hope you are able to think of it in this way.  I hope you wake each day considering what you might be able to do to make the world a better place.  Take the opportunity each and every day to do something for another.  Jackie Robinson, my favorite baseball player, ever famously said, “A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.”  Make your life significant.  I have found that for every act of service I have given, much more has been returned to me.  Gandhi believed that, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”  I could not agree more with his statement.  For every moment I have served you as your teacher, I have received an exponential amount of blessings.  Cicero said that, “As you have sown so shall you reap,” so consider the kind of bounty you wish to receive in your life and give accordingly.

It is also a dream of mine that each of my students works to eradicate the world of injustice in their coveted roles as citizens.  Thomas Jefferson said that, “Government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.”  And if any man or woman is made to feel unequal in the eyes of the law, our covenant is broken and must be repaired.  Historically, we have many blemishes.  It embarrasses me to think that originally only white, rich men were viewed as worthy of the title of citizen.  Or that our Founding Fathers who espoused equality owned slaves.  Or that black children were systematically separated from white students and forced to endure a second class citizenship.  But thankfully, some of these past injustices have been corrected through collective vigilance and determination.  If citizens had not risen up these same injustices might still have continued.  Horace Mann once stated that, “A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.”  Take this to heart and never allow yourself to contribute to injustice in any form.  Plato believed that, “He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.”  Never let someone suffer on your watch.

As you ponder your role in our democracy, I challenge you to think of your service as citizen not just to the town or city you currently reside in but rather as a member of the global community.  Even Cicero subscribed to this philosophy.  He stated that you are not a “resident in some particular locality surrounded by man made walls, but a citizen of the whole world as though it is a single city.”  I hope that you view injustice and inhumanity in any corner of our universe as unacceptable.  Ridding the world of cruelty and injustice must be a cornerstone of our work as citizens.  As Gandhi said you must, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Now I know that routing out injustice might seem like a difficult task as just one citizen.  But the good news is – you are not alone.  We are all part of this sacred covenant and together the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  Margaret Mead is famous for saying that we should, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, commited citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”  And just as the Buddhists believe that the gem is in your pocket, so are all the tools you need to do this work.  No matter how rich or poor you are in mind, spirit and material, you have all that you need to do the work of citizen.  Teddy Roosevelt urged citizens during his presidency to, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”  Although his words are very simple, the message is prolific.  Use the talents, the gifts, the resources and the knowledge that you have today to make our world a better place. And though the business of preserving our compact is difficult work, Cicero would tell you that, “The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.”

When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention he was asked by a group of people what type of government had been created.  His reply, “A republic, if you can keep it.”  Albert Einstein theorized that, “The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.”  It is my sincere hope that each one of you feels that you play a vital role in the preservation of our compact and therefore possess the determination to protect and defend this fragile covenant.  In order for this “Grand Experiment” to succeed, your energy, enthusiasm and commitment is required.  The good news is I have total faith and confidence that you have all that is needed to do this difficult work.  You are all well on your way to becoming noble and virtuous statesman and woman and I know our covenant is in excellent hands.

Now no letter from me would be complete without some words of Irish wisdom.  To
close, I share this blessing with you:

An Old Irish Blessing

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!

With Great Love and Affection,

Miss Reen

P.S. Isn’t it great to be alive?

A few words from my fourth-graders (non-speakers) when asked today by the panel what they had learned from the experience: “I learned what private domain is.”  “Compromise.”  “Better research skills.”  “How a bill becomes a law.”  “How long it takes to pass a bill.”  “A lot about pollution and landfills.”

In our first few sessions, my 4th-6th grade students narrowed their choices for the project to these rough ideas: Save Bears, Clean-Up Michigan’s Rivers, Fix the Litter in Detroit.  The more we delved into the text, students discovered that those topics really weren’t clear proposals for public policy.  They also gained a ton of knowledge regarding sovereignty, as well as private sphere/civil society/ government.  The more they learned, the more focused their idea became, and their eventual choice–EXPAND MICHIGAN’S BOTTLE LAW–ended up as a wonderful combination of the early favorites.

The four areas of the portfolio–PROBLEM, ALTERNATIVE POLICIES, OUR SOLUTION, and ACTION PLAN–serve as a fantastic outline for anyone of any age attempting to bring about change.

The panel presentation in a committee room at the state capitol was the pinnacle of the experience.  Having misjudged time, our project came down to the wire (lesson learned: start early!); as a result, the kids didn’t first benefit and learn from a local session.  However, they could not have done any better than what I witnessed today.  Thorough preparation pays dividends, and I was so proud of my students for presenting without reading from a page.  (It does make a difference, I can tell you, as we were able to observe a high school group who did just that.)

We will be participating in Project Citizen next year, and in the years after!  Sincerely, the entire process has been one of the most valuable of my entire teaching career.

If you have any questions about Project Citizen, right down to the tooth ‘n’ nails, feel free to contact me at montessorinorth@comcast.net, or pose your questions here.