Edu-punked: Is the Edupunk Movement Helping or Hurting the Educational Reformers Cause?
by
Erin MacMillan-Ramirez
I finally rented, and watched, Waiting For Superman. I’m embarrassed to admit it took me so long to see it except for the fact that I was earning my Masters degree online in the MAT@USC program and therefore I was really busy when it came out in theaters and on DVD/Blu Ray. I received a free rental at my local Redbox and thought it was something interesting to watch on a Monday night. The good news is that I forgot to return it the next day so I ended up paying for it, although I don’t technically know if the filmmakers get paid for free rentals, or if late fees go to Redbox directly. To relieve my guilt I am buying a copy of the film on DVD, and a second on BluRay, and I am organizing a viewing party in my neighborhood. We will discuss what changes can be made to the educational system in order to improve the graduation rates in our community and to ensure that the children in our community receive a quality education, no matter which public school they attend.
In doing the research to find a place to hold the screening party and the people to invite to the party I’ve been talking to the people in my community. I’ve spoken to a couple of people from my church. I asked if I could use the church space for this event and I was asked to email one of the members of the Board of Trustees and then speak to our head Pastor. Not a firm no, but not the open arms of the community I was hoping to instantly receive. Then there is the “community” building at the front of my subdivision that I can rent any night of the week for a hefty fee plus a deposit. I was hoping not to come out of pocket for this event. Then there is the invite list. I can’t simply hold this event in my living room if I want my local State Representative and the Principals of the local public schools to attend my event. I really can’t even fit more that six people into my living room comfortably for a screening that will last 120 minutes and a discussion that will hopefully last just as long afterward.
Now I understand I think a little bigger than the filmmakers intended. They were thinking more along the lines of getting a few of my friends together to watch the movie and make small talk about it over some smoked Gouda and a fine wine. I fail to see how this kind of action would effect any change in my community. How would this approach help me to better understand other points of view, or hear from my public officials or the administrators of our public schools? How would watching a movie in my living room and simply talking about it do any good other than to make me feel better about a very difficult problem facing my country?
By now you’re wondering how this has anything to do with the Edupunk Movement. Well here’s the link: what do I want out of public education that I am not currently receiving? The Edupunk Movement is attempting to ask this question about K-12 and beyond. It is daring to take matters into it’s own hands and attempt to educate people for free and ask people to actually go out and do things with their knowledge rather than talk conceptually about it. This is also Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural learning theory, but we’ll leave that for a future blog.
So that’s when I realized that what I am attempting to do by organizing a rather large and ambitious screening party of Waiting For Superman is in fact an act of Edupunking the education system. I’m going to ask those in power and those who are served by public education to clearly define their goals for education. I will not be satisfied with overly simplified answers such as: “We want our children to receive a “good” education,” or “We want our kids to be able to get “good” jobs after they graduate,” or my personal favorite, “We want every student to go to college after they graduate high school.”
I was reading a fantastic blog called “Half An Hour: A place to write, half an hour, every day, just for me,” written by a man named Downes (http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-edupunks-guide-by-anya-kamenetz.html) about a review of The Edupunks’ Guide, by Anya Kamenetz and a lightbulb went off inside my head. Education is not preparing students to do anything in the real world. This erroneous education of American youth must stop if we’re going to go somewhere new. We are all experts within our own lives. We know what we know about what we know when and how we need or want to know it. So what makes people believe that school is any different? What exactly are we asking children to “know” these days and what will they be doing with all of this “knowledge” after they leave school?
I wrote a blog last month about the value of a Liberal Arts degree. Now I’m asking, “What was the value of my high school, middle school and elementary education and how does all of my school learning compare to my education in the working world after leaving school?” What did I learn and how did I learn it?
The concept behind Edupunk is to deconstruct learning, teaching and education then empower the students to re-construct it in their own way, through their own filter system by actually doing things within that discipline with the help of mentors. This sounds exactly like the education I received from the MAT@USC, the most effective learning I’ve ever experienced.
My cohort embarked on a new way of learning, through a new online platform and with the help of “more learned adults” we muddled our way through experiential and experimental learning whereby we tested the theories we were reading about in class. Dr. Sylvester, the head of Spring ISD’s Human Resources department said it best when he said, “You’re going to close your books, walk into a real classroom and those theories are going to grow legs, walk around and throw things if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
I’m willing to take this theory one step further. In life, if you attempt to do anything without knowing how to do it, you’re going to fail. What you do after you fail determines your overall success. If you choose to ask for help, find experts to mentor you, pay for classes, do extensive research, practice until you approach perfection and give yourself several thousand chances to do it right, you’re going to succeed. If you look for a “quick-fix” you’ll find one and then you will fail to get what you really wanted in the first place: to become something you set out to become (Downes). This is the best message of the whole review of the Edupunk Guide. Only through supported effort can we accomplish our goals, but first we have to know what our goals are.
Therefore, I will be setting some very clear goals for what I want out of my upcoming town hall screening party. I will also require my guests to clarify their goals for reforming education before we grab the pitchforks and torches and take to the street. My community might be surprised to realize that we all want the same thing, to feel like we matter, our voices are heard and our actions count, no matter who we are, or which school we attended. If America hopes to reform education, then we all have to be a part of knowing what kind of change we want and why we want it. The why may be the most important part of our answer. The most powerful motivation a person can have is a great reason why they want to do something, everything after that is simply something they have to do to get what they want.
As for me, I want to make sure Mother Theresa and Ghandi are honored everyday. Mother Theresa once gave the advice to find someone who has no hope and convince that person they have a reason to live. And Ghandi suggested that we become the change we want to see in the world. I’ll get back to you on the details of how a person can live by these guiding principals in the real world. In the meantime, it’s just nice to know I have some.
