[It's only lately that things are speeding up, but these gurus have been greasing the skids for a long time — embedding their "expertise" and predictions for the future. Two such names, Michael Fullan and Andrew Hargreaves, have just been appointed to a team of 4 to help steer Ontario's education "transformation". This 37 pg Report — Towards a New End: New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (2013) — http://www.newpedagogies.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/New_Pedagogies_for_Deep%20Learning_Whitepaper.pdfmay help see the "shift" from basics to "competencies" explained. Below is a second post I made to Invisible Serfs Collar, a blog alerting the public to global efforts to change society through schools.]
The 6 Cs, The 3 Es Of 21st C Learning = Welfare Statism
From Professor Michael Fullan, Special Advisor to the Premier of Ontario, we see the 6Cs outlined : http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/reports/FullanReport_EN_07.pdf
- Character education
- Citizenship
- Communication
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Collaboration
- Creativity and imagination
From the Wales paper with Andrew Hargreaves involved we get 3Cs: http://www.oecd.org/edu/Improving-schools-in-Wales.pdf
- Engaged thinker
- Ethical citizen
- Entrepreneurial spirit
But now, given the name of yet another related Global Change Agent (GCA), Jal Mehta, we are getting closer to the REAL AGENDA, without all the fancy rhetoric and alphabetic mnemonics. The latest book by Jal Mehta is — The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling.
From the Amazon.com site, we read Mehta’s intent:
“The larger problem, Mehta argues, is that reformers have it backwards . . . Our current pattern is to draw less than our most talented people into teaching, equip them with little relevant knowledge, train them minimally, put them in a weak welfare state, and then hold them accountable when they predictably do not achieve what we seek. What we want, Mehta argues, is the opposite approach which characterizes top-performing educational nations: attract strong candidates into teaching, develop relevant and usable knowledge, train teachers extensively in that knowledge, and support these efforts through a strong welfare state.”
A strong welfare state — exactly what does that mean? It means an enforced, delegated, coerced welfare state with compliant residents. Throw “citizenship” as we know it out the window!
Much as I see the need for improved teacher training, what I see here is intense inculcation of new teachers, not necessarily in the basics but in things like 6Cs and 3Es and other social-emotional learning AND means to police and enforce that transmission both to teachers and to our young people.
Bye, bye liberty. Did you read my earlier post about Rip Van Dinkle?