I have blogged about Google's unique philosophy in the past in a discussion of Google's idea of 20% time where every employee gets 20% of her time to work on her own pet project- an idea which might be fascinating in the educational setting. My colleague Tikvah Wiener has been blogging about a similar idea in her musings on the MIT Media lab described in the book Sorcerers and Their Apprentices. She describes how our schools should be designed to provide students with "hard fun", where students are encouraged to bring their most fanciful ideas to fruition, and "serendipity by design", where students and teachers are encouraged to have accidental encounters to share and grow creatively.
However, at the same time, I wonder if this Google paradise might be too much for the overwhelming majority of our students. As another colleague of mine Dan Rosen noted in a recent posting, there are many kinds of students. One student said during the Google visit, "I could never work here. There are too many distractions." Google is a self-selected group. They take the most intelligent and creative young engineers, self-starters by nature, and place them in an environment to maximize their autonomy and creativity. But would this work in a regular working environment or a school where there are many different kinds of learners? How do we, on the one hand create a Google-type of environment for those students who would thrive in this atmosphere, while creating a more structured environment for those who would only be successful with more direct instruction and rules? (I know rules have been given a bad rap among creative folks but my experience as a Jew tells me that most of us thrive when given the opportunity to express ourselves within the structure of set rules. See David Brooks, The Orthodox Surge for a well reasoned presentation of this position.)
So I am at an impasse. While I ask myself, how can our schools be more like Google? I also wonder, should our schools be more like Google? I welcome your feedback in the comments to this posting.
Nice post Tzvi. Thanks for presenting these vital and valuable reflections and questions.
ReplyDeleteWhile I accept the premise that there are many different kinds of learners, I don't agree that this means that some learners would not benefit from an environment that afforded them a meaningful degree of autonomy and the ability to express themselves independently and creatively.
Virtually all children, even those that may have significant special needs, are born with natural curiosity and they learn a great deal without any kind of direct instruction or structured environment.
Many different research studies have shown that kindergarten children see themselves as creative and highly engaged, but that this diminishes over years of formal schooling.
The people at Google have managed to retain their independent or creative spirit either in spite of their education or if they were lucky, they went to a progressive form of schooling that nurtured them.
Google is like Montessori. and that is not just my biased opinion.
“You can’t understand Google,” vice president Marissa Mayer says, “unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids.”
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/
Steve Levy's excellent book at Google, "In the plex" further explores the connections between Montessori and Google.
Please come visit in Edison and you can see for yourself an approximation of a "day school" like Google at Yeshivat Netivot Montessori.
These are great points, Tzvi, and I understand the reservations involved in creating a more open and creative platform for students. We can also see, from reading about the MIT Media Lab and from looking at IDEO, which employs Design Thinking (see RealSchool's most recent blog post about IDEO: http://frischrealschoolblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/david-kelleys-design-thinking-at-ideo.html), that students must learn rigorously in a field before they can be put in an open lab environment. If schools want to incorporate Design Thinking and more Montessori methods into their curriculum, then they must have discussions about how to do so in careful, but creative ways. I agree, though, with "Unknown's" point that all children are born naturally curious and are adventurous when they first learn. Why should school squash that out of them? Why shouldn't school be like kindergarten, but crafted in a thoughtful way that ensures learning goals are met?
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post and you bring up some VERY important points. For me what we need in our day schools are more options for different kinds of learners, so that doesn't mean coming in with just one more new method and molding kids to that method. We need to provide Media-lab/google like environments to challenge all of us and provide an environment for those whom will be thrive in it. We also need to provide more structure and quiet learning time to challenge all of us and create an environment where others can thrive. One of the main issues with our schools is that we keep getting stuck in a one size fits all model; this is what is fundamentally flawed. We need more diverse learning within our schools and between schools, we should have schools that provide different options so that families can choose the best learning environment for "each" of their children.
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