Anyone for the internet delivering on moral purpose?

I was inspired by yet another experience on the internet yesterday. I came across an article talking about a remarkable Harvard University political philosopher - Michael Sandel. He has one of the most popular coursed at Harvard called Justice, where he hones students' understanding of moral philosophy. He is also a strong exponent of open learning, and the Justice in moral reasoning web site is has years of his lectures in video and text, for all the world to see. There is another very good example of Sandel in full flight in a TED talk last year, The Lost Art of Democratic Debate  (20 min)


The article that led me to Sandel was one by Tom Friedman in the NY Times which featured the huge following Sandel has in China and Japan, where his lectures are widely translated and viewed. So there is clearly a demand for discussion of moral issues, which is what partly inspired me about this story, but the more important inspiration for me, for this blog, is how the great teaching of this man is so widespread and accessible all around the world at quite modes cost. The internet makes this extraordinary communication reach possible, at a relatively low cost. I think one would need an educational heart of stone not to be moved by this story. Partly because helping young people develop a sense of morality is so important, partly because Professor Sandel involves the a thousand students in a genuine discussion, and partly because I, like anyone else in the world with a computer, could locate and enjoy this experience in a matter of minutes. At the end of the TED talk Professor Sandel was asked what his goal with this technology is, and he said to have American, Chinese and other young people engaging in these discussions simultaneously, no doubt exposing fascinating cultural similarities and differences.

This is at the high end of internet communicating, but it is not different in kind with what we can do with students in school. That's impressive.

Why are we really doing this stuff?

The other day I was talking with a teacher with a leadership role in a large school to implement '21st Century Learning' with the aid of ICT and she is wrestling with the complexity of the issues involved. Learning beliefs, staff training, infrastructure building, student take home policies, parent information, student supervision and safety and a dozen other significant issues. It is easy to be overwhelmed by this elaborate set of interlocking issues. 

My instinct is to identify a few fundamental purposes of the planned change and focus on these, pushing all the topics listed above to a second level of importance. These core issues for me, and my conversational partner, are some variation on this short list: student independence in learning, high level learning, creativity, problem solving and collaborative skills. 

If we identify purposes like this for our school and recognise that ICT plays a big role in achieving these, then all the myriad of issues related to ICT development can be judged in relation to these. The leaders' task is much clearer. If, for example, we are discussing whether students should have admin rights to manage their take-home laptops or iPads, then it is very clear to me that Independence, Creativity and Problem Solving at the very least will be strongly enhanced by students having as much control (and responsibility) as possible. Seems to me, high level goals can make decision making much easier because they can clear away distracting detail by saying, 'This is really why we are doing this stuff.'

Cowboy doctors? Cowboy teachers - surely not!

A delightful and interesting essay in the New Yorker, Cowboys and Pit Crews by Atul Gawende, who is a surgeon and staff member at Harvard among other amazing achievements, says that medicine is practised according to its cowboy roots in the 1930s and now in a much more medically complex environment should work more like a pit crew. A pit crew is a highly coordinated team working on a task rather than the individualistic cowboy approach that he says still exists. Gawende says that in the 1930s a doctor could carry around his patient records in his head and his treatments were quite limited in number and complexity. He says this leads to a cowboy culture, where highly individualistic doctors act according to their own judgements when in fact they depend on a growing team of fellow professions and specialists. In other words he is saying a lack of team work is damaging health delivery. He says, "A structure that prioritizes the independence of all those specialists will have enormous difficulty achieving great care."

Well, isn't this the same criticism that is being made of our traditional school culture, where the classroom teacher is in almost full control of her methods of teaching and the tradition of privacy blocks accountability? It seems that from every quarter there is more evidence that intelligent collaboration works better than

By the way, Gawende points out, in conclusion, that modern cowboys are very sophisticated in their cattle management and work in well coordinated teams!