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Bascom Hill Defense

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Learning, Innovation & Tech

Bombs & Breakthroughs

The Flipped Class Manifest

December 1, 2011 9:58 PM

Photo: Document with Red Line by Dukeii (Editor's Note: The conversation and interest in the flipped class continues . . . From our very first post about this topic in January 2011 to date, The Daily Riff has received approx. 55,000 page views from the posts about this topic - which are linked below -  extending to over 100 countries.  Today's post is authored by eight notable advocates for the flipped classroom. Thanks goes to our contributors, and of course, our avid readers.  Disclosure: The Daily Riff is not financially affiliated in any way with the flipped class.  - C.J. Westerberg)

"The Flipped Classroom is an intentional shift of content which in turn helps move students back to the center of learning rather than the products of schooling." The Flipped Class Manifest

by Lucas W

I think what I like most about what you have to say is that it simply destroys the current conception of what a school really is. It accepts the fact that creativity and innovation are not things that you can teach, they are things that you cultivate. You cannot show someone how to innovate, you can merely present them with a situation in which innovation is necessary or possible and give them the resources to make such an occurrence happen and then simply support them.

I guess here is my only issue with your idea, and there is a good chance that this may one day not be an issue; I don't just want to start one school like this, I want all of education to look like this. Going back to some things I have previously said, we really need to be honest with ourselves about what the true goal of education is. Education has become a business in our country and one that has been focused on maximizing quantity at the expense of quality. It is the argument that has been waged since the beginning of man, the same issue Pirsig wrote about in what was probably the most influential book I have ever read (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) as well as a slew of other authors. Hesse even wrote about it in one of my other favorites; Beneath the Wheel. I encourage you to pick up both and give them a read.

The fact is, in any type of business there comes a point during growth at which a decision is made; continue on and mass produce at the expense of your resources and manpower, or give in to social forces and understand that your company was built on the backs of people who appreciate a quality product. Unfortunately, we have allowed this thinking to infect our educational system and fester in the areas that could really benefit from quality over quantity the most. The other issue is this paradox that we have seemingly created; we need more innovation and more success in the fields of math and science so we standardized everything and pushed "rigorous" curriculum in an effort to spark innovation. What we really did was flood the educational economy with people who all look the same and have no skills or worldly experience whatsoever (quantity over quality).

Now we are not only charged with changing this mistake but reversing its effect as well. How do we go back when such a large quantity of people were educated for the wrong reason. Our generation of investment bankers and Wall Street types were created with one soul purpose: maximizing profit at any expense. We are certainly seeing the effects of that now. We stopped reflecting and periodically assessing our progress to be sure we were headed in the right direction. We let people persuade us on misinformation and greed to run toward a goal.  Many think that if we had taken the time we could have seen this all coming. The truth is, we did. We have always known this would be the result; those of us who were paying attention. The rest of us were lulled asleep by the quiet whir of a machine that we helped build. "Go back to sleep, it's just standardized tests"... "Shhh, it's only a law to lesson the achievement gap backed with no science whatsoever..." I would also encourage you to listen to a song by A Perfect Circle called "Pet"

Quote from Pea, Practices of distributed intelligences and designs for education... from 1993...

Teachers out there, do you agree?