One blog I link to regularly is Sharp Brains: "Your window into the emerging field of science-based Brain Fitness, its implications for Health & Wellness, Education, Leadership, and more." It challenges me to think 'outside of the box' of my prejudices and much, much further than my intellectual "comfort zone".
With the stimulating Author Speaks Series Sharp Brains is seeking "to provide a platform for leading scientists and experts writing high-quality brain-related books to reach a wide audience". So far, six guest authors have contributed essays or interviews.
One such contribution is "The First Step Is Failure" by Joanne Jacobs. I was hooked the moment I read: "It’s OK to start school not knowing how to read. It’s not OK to stay that way." In other words, if education, learning, schooling is not transformational, it's nothing. Joanne Jacobs message is that: "Schools won’t improve until administrators and teachers can admit the problems, analyze what’s going wrong and try new strategies."
These couple of sentences chase all sorts of thoughts round my brain. Not least, I minded of those reported first contacts with conductive education by disability activists who rejected conductive education on the grounds that it did not accept disable children for themselves but sought to challenge them to change, when what the disabled activists would have everyone do is see the need for change only in our environment and culture. (I will try to search out a link).
The quote above, about reading, follows: "I remember a children’s book about a badger (or suchlike) starting school who’s afraid to tell his teacher he can’t read. In the denouement, the teacher assures the badger that she “loves” him “just the way he is.” Surely not. Teachers can’t love all their students in any meaningful way. And the whole enterprise of schooling is about changing children from what they are, such as illiterate, to something better, such as literate."