Big Ideas from Carl Rogers VI

Rogers, Carl and Freiberg, H. Jerome.  (1994).  Freedom to Learn, 3rd edition.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice-Hall.

Using the “Guiding Essential Questions” from the EDCI-886, Philosophy of American Education, Fall 2009 syllabus, I describe some of the “big ideas” from Freedom to Learn.

A Moratorium on Schooling?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, Transforming schools:  a person-centered perspective

“If we do not engage our youth at a very early age in the experience of solving complex problems, we will fail to prepare a generation for its future.  By solving problems together today we can prevent other problems tomorrow.”  (p. 332)

Transforming the Box

“In the cities along the East Coast and throughout the Midwest and across the United States, schools, factories, and prisons look remarkably alike and often function in the same way.  They were built out of the same materials at the turn of the century and served the purpose of responding to the industrial development of the country. . . . The public school became an oasis from a very oppressive environment for many children. . . . The public school schedule was adapted to the needs of the work environment, not the learner.”  (p. 332)

“Although modern architecture and engineering could create schools on a human scale, schools continue to be built today like boxes — only much larger and more impersonal versions of their earlier counterparts. . . . Schools still operate like factories, with changes in shifts. . . . How many adults can complete any important activities such as writing, thinking, or discussing in forty-two minutes?”  (p. 333)

“Schools are unnecessarily stressful places. . . . schools operate without real thought for creating positive and peaceful environments. . . . Even if they don’t eat in the cafeteria, most teachers dread after-lunch classes.”  (p. 333)

“The factory-like atmosphere is also very difficult for teachers.  At times teachers are like ticket agents at a busy bus terminal, giving slips for students who are coming or going to class.  Teachers feel like police — conducting hall sweeps, breaking up fights, and standing guard outside their doors during change of classes.”  (p. 333)

BIG IDEA

• How do we move from this antiquated model of the box to the present and on to a more productive future? (p. 333)

Mass-Produced Learning

“Based on the most recent information about the well-being of our children, the need for change is greater today than in any time in the last fifty years.  Education remains the primary opportunity for success and well-being in life.  There is growing evidence that high school and college graduates live longer and have a better quality of life than their counterparts who never finish school.  However, our nation is headed in two directions:  one toward poverty and one toward wealth.  The disparity is becoming more evident with each new round of statistics.  Nearly one child in four is poor, with children under five years of age representing the greatest level of poverty.  One teenager in five also lives in poverty.  The institutions with which these children have contact — family, community, and school — do not function as supportive and protective agents; rather, they are in themselves risk factors for many children.”  (p. 334)

BIG IDEA

• How do we radically and permanently change the patterns of interactions between students and teachers to improve the capacity and joy of a child’s learning?  (p. 334)
• What support efforts are needed to create meaningful learning communities?  (p. 334)
• How does the box known as school become transformed to respond to the needs of the person?  (p. 334)

Moratorium on Schooling

“There is a need for a moratorium on these schools [beyond repair and needing to be transformed] because they can’t be fixed while school is in session.  Presently these dysfunctional schools are a hazard to the intellectual and social-emotional health of children and other people who work there.”  (p. 334)

“But what will happen to the students while the schools are being transformed?”  (p. 334)

BIG IDEA

• students could learn at community centers
• students could work in business apprenticeships
• students could study at museum and library centers (under-utilized during the day)
• students could learn at local community colleges and universities
• students could attend other schools
• teachers and administrators from the dysfunctional, broken schools could work with other educators and community leaders in rethinking education
• teachers and administrators form the dysfunctional, broken schools could visit, work, and learn in schools that are person-centered during this moratorium

Moratorium on the Bureaucracy

“All rules and regulations need to be sunseted and rethought:  that is, be reviewed to see if the regulation really protects or inhibits the people they are supposed to benefit.  The bureaucracy needs to be reformed to allow principals, teachers, parents, and students to change the way schools function from the inside.” (p. 335)

BIG IDEA

• rethinking and reconfiguring learning environments for physical, emotional, and educational needs
• regulations and laws driven by the needs of the child and his or her facilitators
• focus on the needs of all persons
• schools as energizers of the community
• dynamic learning communities that foster resilience in children
• reform from the inside out

A Learning Community

“Taking the necessary conditions as a starting point, what would be the elements of a person-centered community of learners?”  (p. 349)

BIG IDEA

• partnerships and networks that include parents, teachers, administrators at all levels, and other adults who have a direct and indirect investment in the learning process
• caring communities that focus on the needs of all its members — learners and facilitators alike
• active communities that solve complex problems today and build from what we know today to what we need to know tomorrow
• just-in-time learning that changes where and how facts are accessed; information is acquired from multiple sources not just teachers and books

Big Ideas from Carl Rogers V

Rogers, Carl and Freiberg, H. Jerome.  (1994).  Freedom to Learn, 3rd edition.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice-Hall.

Using the “Guiding Essential Questions” from the EDCI-886, Philosophy of American Education, Fall 2009 syllabus, I describe some of the “big ideas” from Freedom to Learn.

The Philosophical and Value Ramifications (cont)

CHAPTER 15, Freedom and commitment

“Freedom to learn or choose; self-directed learning:  these are completely untenable concepts in the minds of many behavioral scientists, who believe that humans are simply the inevitable products of their conditioning.  Yet they are terms that I have used freely in this book, as though they have real meaning. . . . I do not pretend that I resolved the age-old problem of freedom and determinism, but I have, for myself, formulated a way of living with it.  I hope my statement will be clarifying to those who are perplexed by differences between the mechanistic-behavioristic point of view in education and the humanistic approach to learning.”  (p. 295)

“One of the deepest issues in modern life is the question as to whether the concept of personal freedom has any meaning whatsoever in our present-day scientific world.  The growing ability of the behavioral scientist to predict and to control behavior has brought the issue sharply to the fore.  If we accept the logical positivism and strictly behavioristic emphases that are predominant in the American educational scene, there is not even room for discussion.  But if we step outside the narrowness of the behavioral sciences, this question is not only an issue; it is one of the primary issues that define the modern person.”  (p. 296)

“One might ask, ‘Why do teachers and other educators need to know these things?’  If we take a mechanical view of teaching, then one skilled teacher is the same as any other skilled teacher.  When a teacher leaves, we replace her with another person called ‘teacher,’ and all is well. . . . In this system, teachers are interchangeable parts.”  (p. 296)

“From the way students are disciplined to the way teachers are evaluated, the method is one of control, reward, and punishment.  So writing both as a behavioral scientist and as one profoundly concerned with the human, the personal, the phenomenological, and the intangible, I should like to contribute what I can to this continuing dialogue regarding the meaning of and the possibility of freedom.  For if we see teaching as a facilitative process in which the individual is valued, then the words freedom and commitment take on very vital meanings.”  (p. 296)

The Individual is Unfree

“In the minds of most behavioral scientists, humans are not free; nor can they as free humans commit themselves to some purpose, for they are controlled by factors outside of themselves.  Therefore, neither freedom nor commitment is even a possible concept to modern behavioral science as it is usually understood.”  (p. 297)

“This view is shared by some psychologists, educators, and other who feel, as did Dr. Skinner that all the effective causes of behavior lie outside of the individual and that it is only through the external stimulus that behavior takes place.”  (p. 297)

The Individual is Free

“The need to have choices in the classroom is just as important in the evolution of healthy individuals.  If all part of a child’s life are controlled, then control becomes the driving force in decisions about teaching and learning.  What is taught and how it will be taught become controlling issues.  After the child’s learning life is controlled for thirteen years in school, suddenly at age eighteen he or she is free to choose.  The newfound freedom comes with little or no prior experience.  If experience is the best teacher, then choosing and freedom are alien experiences for too many students in our schools.”  (p. 302)

BIG IDEA

• a sense of free and responsible choice on the part of teachers and students in schools

The Irreconcilable Contradiction

“I trust it will be very clear that I have given two sharply divergent and irreconcilably contradictory points of view.  On the one hand, modern psychological science, and many other forces in modern life as well, hold the view that the person is unfree, that she is controlled, that words such as purpose, choice, commitment have no significant meaning, that the individual is nothing but an object that we can more fully understand and more fully control.”  (p. 308)

“So I am emboldened to say that over against this view of the individual as unfree, as an object, is the evidence from therapy, from the schoolhouse, from subjective living, and from objective research as well that personal freedom and responsibility have a crucial significance, that one cannot live a complete life without such personal freedom and responsibility, and that self-understanding and responsible choice make a sharp and measurable difference in the behavior of the individual.  In this context, commitment does have meaning.  Commitment is the emerging and changing total direction of the individual based on a close and acceptant relationship between the person and all of the trends of his or her life, conscious and unconscious.”  (p. 309)

“What is the answer to the contradiction I have described?  For myself, I am content to think of it as a deep and lasting paradox. . . often frustrating . . . very fruitful.”  (p. 309)

BIG IDEAS

• personal freedom and responsibility lead to self-understanding and responsible choice
• purpose, choice, and commitment have significant meaning in the classroom to both students and teachers

Big Ideas from Carl Rogers IV

Rogers, Carl and Freiberg, H. Jerome.  (1994).  Freedom to Learn, 3rd edition.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice-Hall.

Using the “Guiding Essential Questions” from the EDCI-886, Philosophy of American Education, Fall 2009 syllabus, I describe some of the “big ideas” from Freedom to Learn.

The Philosophical and Value Ramifications

CHAPTER 14, A modern approach to the valuing process

“The work of the teacher and educator, like that of the therapist, is inextricably involved in the problem of values.  The school has always been seen as one of the means by which the culture transmits its values from one generation to the next.  But now this process is in upheaval, with many of our young people declaring themselves ‘dropouts’ from the confused and hypocritical value system that they see operating in the world [1964].  How are educators — how are citizens — to orient themselves in relation to this complex and perplexing issue?”  (p. 277)

Some definitions of values

“[Charles Morris] points out that value is a term we employ in different ways.  We use it to refer to the tendency of living beings to show preference, by their actions, for one kind of object or objective rather than another.  Morris called this preferential behavior operative values.”  (p. 279)

“A second distinction might be called conceived values.  This is the preference of the individual for a symbolized object. . . . A preference for ‘honesty is the best policy’ is such a conceived value.”  (p. 279)

“A final distinction might be called objective values.  People use the word in this way when they wish to speak of what is objectively preferable — whether or not is is, in fact, sensed or conceived of as desirable. . . . I am, instead more concerned with operative values and conceived values.”  (p. 279)

Some introjected patterns

“Introject is a psychological term that best describes the internalization of another’s characteristics without a conscious effort. . . . Let me list a few commonly held introjections:” (p. 282)

1. sexual desires and behaviors are mostly bad
2. disobedience is bad
3. making money is the highest good
4. learning an accumulation of scholarly facts is highly desirable
5. browsing and aimlessly exploratory reading for fun is undesirable
6. style and fashion are important
7. dictatorships are utterly bad, except when they support our goals
8. to love thy neighbor is the highest good
9. competition is preferable to teamwork and cooperation
10. cheating is clever and desirable
11. Coca-Cola, MTV, chewing gum, video games, American jeans, and automobiles are utterly desirable

Common characteristics of Adult Valuing

1. most of our values are introjected from other individuals or groups significant to us
2. the source or locus of evaluation lies outside the self
3. criterion by which values are set is the degree to which they cause us to be loved or accepted
4. conceived preferences are either not related at all, or not clearly related, to our own process of experiencing
5. wide and unrecognized discrepancy between the evidence supplied by our own experience and these conceived values
6. because these conceptions are not open to the test of experience, we must hold them in a rigid and unchanging fashion; otherwise, our value system would collapse
7. because they are untestable, there is no ready way of solving contradictions
8. because we have relinquished the locus of evaluation to others and have lost touch with our own valuing process, we feel profoundly insecure and easily threatened in our values

The Fundamental Discrepancy

“The fundamental discrepancy between our individual concepts and what we are actually experiencing, between the intellectual structure of our values and the valuing process going unrecognized within this, is a part of the fundamental estrangement of the modern person from his or herself.  This is a major problem for those in the helping professions:  teachers, social workers, and therapists.” (p. 284)

BIG IDEA

• restoring contact with experience (for both the teacher and the learner)

Big Ideas from Carl Rogers III

Rogers, Carl and Freiberg, H. Jerome.  (1994).  Freedom to Learn, 3rd edition.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice-Hall.

Using the “Guiding Essential Questions” from the EDCI-886, Philosophy of American Education, Fall 2009 syllabus, I describe some of the “big ideas” from Freedom to Learn.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN, Researching person-centered issues in education

“Traditional schooling worked for me.  Why can’t kids today sit still and listen to the lecture?”  (p. 247)

“The major reason for the importance of this chapter is that it presents research, documented over time and in different contexts, that students learn more, attend school more often, are more creative, and are more capable of problem solving when the teacher provides the kind of human, facilitative climate that has been described thus far in this book.”  (p. 248)

• students who have been socialized to accept a passive approach to learning is dwindling
• level of expertise needed for an adult in today’s world is significantly more complex and demanding
• knowing is no longer enough:  knowing why and how is of greater importance

“It is also more important for students to develop their potential than to adjust to dysfunctional settings.”  (p. 248)

“What happens to school attendance when all the teachers in one school decide to increase the amount of direct interaction through eye contact they will have with their students?  What percentage of average classroom time is taken up by teacher talk:  20 percent?  40 percent?  60 percent?  80 percent?  How often do students in elementary, middle, and high school select their own learning activities?  What are the differences between open and traditional education on student learning, attitudes toward school, and creativity?  What does research on the brain show about experiential learning and brain development in children and adults?  What effect does cooperative grouping have on learning and self-esteem?  What are adults like today who were raised in families that spared the rod with their children nearly forty years ago?  Can schools foster resilience in youth who face a daily barrage of non-facilitative conditions?  What proportion of student time involves actual thinking?  What percentage of teacher time is spent in thinking:  10 percent?  1 percent?  or less?”  (p. 248)

• person-centered learning is a process first and an outcome second
• person-centered learning focuses on the whole person — individual values, beliefs, and attitudes — not a few skills or actions

What works:  direct or indirect teaching?

National Center on Education in the Inner Cities, 1993:  99% activities selected by high school teachers; 98% by middle school teachers; 100% by the elementary school teacher.  78% of instruction in elementary, 88% in middle, and 81% in high school classrooms took place in whole- or large-group settings.  The smallest percentage of small-group work was in high school classrooms:  3.17% compared to 5.20% in middle, and 12.20% in elementary.

Brain development and rich environments

• student input into selection of learning activities are necessary if rich environments are to be created in the classroom

Facilitators can make a difference

• students learn more and behave better when they receive high levels of understanding, caring, and genuineness than when they receive low levels of support

Facilitative conditions and student learning

David Aspy and Flora Roebuck, 1977, Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like

• students miss four fewer days of school during the year
• students have increases scores on self-concept measures, indicating a more positive self-regard
• student make greater gains on academic achievement measures, including both math and reading scores
• student in person-centered classrooms present fewer disciplinary problems and commit fewer acts of vandalism to school property
• students are more spontaneous and use higher levels of thinking

Other studies that support person-centered learning

“What happens when the system of learning is freed and opened to the students’ need for active involvement?”  (p. 260)

How effective is open education?

• greater self-concept, creativity and positive attitude toward school (in students)

Caring:  a protective shield

Amy-6 in Philadelphia; HSPVA and Milby High School in Houston; O’Farrell Community School in San Diego; The Dett School and Montefiore School in Chicago; New Orleans Free School are examples.

Big Ideas from Carl Rogers II

Rogers, Carl and Freiberg, H. Jerome.  (1994).  Freedom to Learn, 3rd edition.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice-Hall.

Using the “Guiding Essential Questions” from the EDCI-886, Philosophy of American Education, Fall 2009 syllabus, I describe some of the “big ideas” from Freedom to Learn.

Responsible Freedom in the Classroom

CHAPTER FOUR, A sixth-grade teacher experiments

• experimental, unstructured, non-directive
• work contracts
• teacher-directed group (small) plus undirected (self-directed) group (large)
• commitment (i.e., self-direction, freedom)
• internal locus of evaluation
• group problem-solving
• experience
• support from principal and superintendent
• introspection and questioning

CHAPTER SIX, Administrators as facilitators

• principal teacher (Robert [Bob] Ferris, New Orleans Free School)
• collective solution finding
• self-assessment
• internal locus of assessment

Big Ideas from Carl Rogers I

Rogers, Carl and Freiberg, H. Jerome.  (1994).  Freedom to Learn, 3rd edition.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice-Hall.

Using the “Guiding Essential Questions” from the EDCI-886, Philosophy of American Education, Fall 2009 syllabus, I describe some of the “big ideas” from Freedom to Learn.

Difficulties and Opportunities

CHAPTER ONE, Why do kids love school?

• person-centered learning communities (i.e., HSPVA in Houston, TX)
• teachers as facilitators (guide on the side vs. sage on the sage)
• a community of learners (teachers, students, administrators, parents)
• alternative assessment (i.e., portfolios)
• innovation (Graham and Parks School, Cambridge, MA)
• non-competitive environment (The New Orleans Free School, Bob Ferris)
• shared responsibility (City Magnet, Lowell, MA; Tanglewood Open Living School, Jefferson, CO)

CHAPTER TWO, The challenge of present-day teaching

• listen to students (i.e., what is school?)
• what is learning?
• whole-person learning
• “the locus of evaluation resides in the learner” (p. 36)
• left-brain versus right-brain teaching and learning

CHAPTER THREE, As a teacher, can I be myself?

• can we be human in the classroom?
• how can I (teacher or student) become real?
• the search for identity
• the lifetime journey of self-discovery