Participants: Shelley Quinn (Host), Randy J. Siebold
Series Code: IAA
Program Code: IAA000424
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00:01 Perhaps you've heard the name John Taylor Gatto.
00:04 He was the New York City and New York State teacher of the year. 00:07 He had something very interesting to say and I want 00:10 to read this statement. He said, Slowly I began to realize that 00:14 the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age 00:18 segregation, the lack of privacy the constant surveillance and 00:22 all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were 00:27 designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children 00:32 from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction 00:37 and dependent behavior. What is this wonderful teacher 00:43 speaking of? Well today we're going to be taking a look at the 00:47 problem with education. Please stay tuned. 00:51 Music being played. 01:13 Hi, I'm Shelley Quinn and we are so glad that you could join 01:17 us today. Let me introduce right away our very special guest who 01:21 is Dr. Randy Siebold. He is the Vice President of Education 01:26 for the Weimar Center of Health and Education. That's a long 01:31 title. That's a lot to say. It is a lot to say. 01:33 Very good to be here. Randy we're so glad that you are here. 01:36 Now let's let our audience get to know you a little bit better. 01:40 Your Ph.D. is in what area? 01:46 Well, it's in the field of education, instructional 01:49 systems technology. It's from Indiana University. 01:52 Okay, that's interesting. We won't even go into what that 01:55 means. But now how did you become interested in education 01:59 because I personally know you and know that you made a switch 02:03 from being a building contractor and you went into education. 02:06 How did you get led in that direction? 02:08 Well, I actually had just completed my masters in art and 02:13 started teaching photography at the college level and just 02:16 started doing some reading because I wanted to teach well 02:20 and I found a book called Education by Ellen White. 02:24 I started reading it and it really impacted me. At the same 02:28 time our children grew up and we started watching them grow, 02:33 doing a little home schooling. So I really started digging into 02:37 education. So that's really what turned it for me. 02:40 Then before you went to Weimar give us a little fast track of 02:45 what you've done over the last 20 years as an educator. 02:49 Well, most of that was teaching at Andrews University as a 02:54 professor and I enjoyed that experience a lot. After my Ph.D. 02:58 which was completed in the middle of that I really sensed a 03:04 need for helping education to change. My Ph.D. really helped 03:09 me think about that. About educational reform? 03:14 Yes, yes, thank you. So with this building passion about 03:18 education and how do we do it differently and how do we make 03:22 it really built around the way people learn, I took a position 03:27 as a principle of a high school, moving from the college 03:30 professor to high school principle and we went into sort 03:34 of a more radical reform because of the situation of the school 03:39 and really just enjoyed the education process. I went on to 03:44 also be a superintendent of education for a few years before 03:48 I picked up the position at Weimar. 03:51 Yes. Well I know that I met some of your students. When I first 03:55 met you, you had come down with a group of students and talked 03:59 with each one of them individually and they all really 04:02 had developed a very close relationship with you and had a 04:06 deep admiration for you and some of the things that you had done. 04:08 Well, we're glad you're here and actually we did a live together, 04:12 you and I and Dr. Nedley and this topic was just touched on, 04:18 so we wanted you to come back and talk to us about education. 04:24 It seems that if you're watching the national news of late, and 04:28 it's been more of late, it seems over the last number of years 04:31 people are talking about educational reform, but some of 04:36 it seems like they are short term solutions rather than long 04:40 term solutions. What do you see is the greatest problem and how 04:46 do we even begin to look at fixing it? 04:48 Well the problem with education from a public school and 04:53 national scope is debated in lots of different arenas. 04:58 The difficulty with education is it's such a long term fix. You 05:04 don't just fix something and see immediate results. It's not a 05:08 pill. In a health scene, it's less like a pill and more like 05:12 a lifestyle change. That's the difficulty of trying to address 05:19 education. But now I've heard you speak 05:21 when you were here before you talked about some of the 05:24 problems particularly in the United States and I would say 05:29 probably in most industrialized nations, are that there is kind 05:33 of a system that's in place and it's a cookie cutter, almost a 05:37 factory model type system. Explain to us what that 05:43 terminology means and how does that fit? 05:47 Yes, well, most of the people who have been in public schools 05:50 and most people have, they're dealing with an education that 05:56 takes... Think of it this way; what I call the curriculum cloud 06:00 what you're going to teach. So it's not really very clear and 06:05 crystal, it's sort of fluffy. What are we really teaching? 06:08 Do you know what I'm saying? Okay so there's this fluffy 06:11 cloud and we take it up and we divide it up into discrete 06:14 segments of math and science and English and so we have one 06:19 person who deals with math, one person deals with science, so 06:22 they can do their job well. I mean, that's the theory, that 06:25 they'll teach each person well. So it takes and it divides up 06:30 this educational experience into components rather than seeing 06:35 the development of a child as a whole, as a whole piece, it 06:40 primarily focuses on these components rather than the child 06:46 as a whole. But explain that a little bit 06:48 more because obviously... I'll just tell a quick experience I 06:52 had when I was in the 8th grade and we moved several times in 06:56 that school year. I ended up in this geometry class and the 07:01 professor, the teacher I should say, was a basketball coach and 07:06 he knew less about geometry than I did and I'm kind of coming in, 07:11 I hadn't learned all the reasons that they had to memorize. 07:14 Isn't there a benefit to having a teacher who is specializing in 07:19 an area or what is the problem of compartmentalizing our 07:24 education? Well we can look at it this way. 07:28 If you think of education purely as academic studies, that works 07:34 really well. If you're dealing with math and you want to teach 07:38 math really well, that works really well. But we sometimes 07:46 equate education with school and education is a lifelong 07:51 experience. It's not something that is from a six-year-old to 07:57 an 18-year-old and we box it in and the students get to the spot 08:01 where they can't wait till they don't have to learn anymore. 08:04 They've mistaken learning for school and because they are 08:11 frustrated with school and pieces of what school's about 08:14 and they think they don't like to learn. 08:18 Okay, I'm going to do this. Let's bring out John Taylor 08:21 Gatto's quote. I want to dissect this quote that I started the 08:26 program with because John Taylor Gatto is the teacher of the year 08:33 for New York City and New York State as a whole and he has the 08:36 most interesting comments. Let's look at this and you can read it 08:39 to us. It's on the screen here. 08:42 Slowly I began to realize that the bells, the confinement, the 08:47 crazy sequences, the age segregation, the lack of 08:51 privacy, the constant surveillance and all the rest 08:54 of the national school curriculum were designed exactly 08:58 as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning 09:03 how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and 09:07 dependent behavior. The fascinating thing about this 09:11 is if you think about bells, just for instance... What we 09:17 know about the learning process is it's very intuitive, I mean, 09:22 children, young children, know how to learn. They grow and they 09:26 learn more, walking and running and doing different tasks and 09:32 that growth process isn't compartmentalized and learning 09:38 is difficult when it's regulated by bells. 09:43 You mean like the school bell when it's ding-a-ling-a-ling 09:47 and the period's up. Think about this: You're in math 09:49 class and you're just getting a concept and the bell rings and 09:54 it's time to stop learning math; now it's time to start going 09:57 down the hall and learn English. There's good pieces that come 10:04 with education system, there's good things that are happening 10:07 in it. We have very dedicated teachers and lives are being 10:12 changed in our current system. It's not all bad. There are 10:15 things we could do better. 10:16 So when you think about our school system and I think as 10:20 I read what John Taylor Gatto was saying, following along on 10:25 that quote, it seems that he is essentially saying we are not 10:31 really developing critical thinkers, problem solvers, 10:34 we're just developing kids who can learn certain formulas to 10:39 take a math test, for example, but not maybe how to apply 10:42 algebra. He's basically saying the way this school system 10:46 itself, our system of education, has been set up so that we 10:52 we are actually thwarting the effort of the natural 10:57 intuitive ability of a child to learn. Is that what you're 11:00 saying? Well, I think what John is 11:02 saying is he senses that the whole education process is 11:07 centered around the content, not centered around the child. 11:12 There's a huge difference there. If we were to take the whole 11:18 child and then let's say divide that up into mental, physical 11:23 and spiritual for example, okay? Then we take the mental and we 11:28 divide the mental up into components like creative 11:33 thinking, problem solving and then one component of the mental 11:39 is memory, when in fact we spend a lot of time enhancing and 11:46 testing, some students would say torturing, the memory and we 11:52 have a quote on that as well. Let's bring a slide up here 11:55 on that. This is from this book that I told you about, Education 12:01 For ages education has had to do chiefly with the memory. This 12:06 faculty has been taxed to the utmost while the other mental 12:09 powers have not been correspondingly developed. 12:12 That's what we're talking about. Rather than doing the whole 12:16 mental thing, we're doing just that one component. 12:21 So would this be fair to say that, for example, memory... 12:26 I loved math. J.D. hated algebra but he's so intelligent. I told 12:32 him, Honey, if you had understood how it applied you 12:36 would have liked it, I think. Are you saying that what we 12:39 do is that we teach children theory and we don't let it 12:43 become a practical problem- solving or have any application 12:49 to their life? Well, I'll tell you what, 12:51 honestly teachers are trying to do that more and more. 12:56 You know, as we go in teacher education programs teachers 13:01 going for advanced degrees, teachers in their pre-service 13:05 programs in college, that's what they're trying to do. What's 13:09 happening is I think one of the big problems is we have a system 13:14 that's set up that teacher's have to fight to do that. It 13:20 doesn't just naturally occur within that class period. You're 13:23 building up the motivation and trying to build something up and 13:27 then it goes away because the class period is ended. That 13:33 quote that we read continues on. I want to get back to that. 13:36 Because in this quote she talks about this: 13:40 Students have spent their time... Now remember she's 13:43 talking about this memorization ... Students have spent their 13:47 time in laboriously crowding the mind with knowledge very little 13:51 of which could be utilized. 13:55 Look at this, and this is amazing: 13:57 The mind thus burdened with that which it cannot digest and 14:02 assimilate is weakened... so we're talking about this idea of 14:08 making sure that we're dealing with things that strengthen the 14:12 mind, okay let me continue... it becomes incapable of vigorous 14:18 self-reliant effort... and here is the amazing thing to me... 14:24 and is content... now this is the mind... is content to 14:26 depend on the judgment and perception of others. 14:29 So what she's saying here is when we focus primarily on the 14:34 memory this is causing problems with the way the mind works. 14:38 Focusing purely on the memory with that which it can't use 14:43 weakens the mind. You're singing my tune here 14:49 because even that not only is in education in school but I would 14:55 say education in the Bible or if you want to call it religion is 14:59 that I believe I believe when we just call texts memory texts, 15:05 and it's something just devoted to memory and it's not made 15:08 applicable to our life it doesn't do us any benefit. All 15:12 it does is begin to overload up here and pretty soon people... 15:15 you know, some people can quote some scriptures that they've 15:18 heard from of old, but basically we're saying the same thing. 15:22 As we get older we say that we've forgotten more than we've 15:26 every learned. But basically that is what one of your 15:32 premises is, not yours, but in general, the reform that needs 15:37 to be made in school is to get away from just a straight 15:42 memorization, teach children to be problem solvers, critical 15:46 thinkers, teach them to become learners. 15:50 If you think about the 21st century, this new context that 15:55 we have, MSNBC had an article written on their website and I 16:00 was reading through it. It talked about like the future of 16:03 what learners need to have. It was fascinating because... 16:07 Let's explain what a learner is first because I use that 16:11 terminology and I may have left somebody. You define: What is 16:16 the difference between the average student and one who is 16:19 a real "learner. " Well, let's take a look at great 16:24 learners, children, young children. If there was one 16:31 standing here it would be just this little boy, just his finger 16:34 would be in here. He'd be all over the place, just looking. 16:37 He's very inquisitive. Here's my frustration. I don't like 16:46 critiquing schools, because there are good people that work 16:50 in those schools and they do a great work every day. I think 16:56 the bigger problem is in the structure, the overall structure 16:59 the way we have organized it. You're talking about the system. 17:01 I don't want to mislead anybody and have anyone think that I 17:07 don't like schools and I don't like teachers. I do. I've had 17:11 amazing experiences, but I also know that there are difficulties 17:15 with it. So this learner idea is someone who is just naturally 17:21 inquisitive, wants to know, and, in fact, needs to know, can't 17:26 not know. I just had an epiphany, because 17:31 what you've said is we are born basically to be learners and we 17:36 see this exhibited and manifested by the behavior of 17:40 young children. Is it possible that when we get to school and 17:46 we're put in these areas of confinement and suddenly we're 17:52 taught to just memorize, are we actually squelching that 17:56 intuitive ability to learn. There's some really fascinating 18:01 people that have lectured on this and research and theorists 18:05 are doing this. There's an author that has a book out 18:10 called Punished by Rewards and his point is saying that when we 18:17 reward people for good behavior we actually are ending up to 18:23 demotivate them. It ends up reducing their intrinsic 18:30 motivation because we are rewarding their extrinsic 18:33 motivation. That makes sense to me. That 18:36 makes perfect sense to me. 18:37 And so with that what happens is creative thinking... so think 18:43 about this. Our schools, the way they are designed we have right 18:49 answers and we've told the teacher here's what we want 18:52 you to tell the students to learn. So here's the content, 18:56 make sure the students know the content; that's your job. 18:59 So there are right answers. Here are the right answers, you 19:02 know them and so now you teach those right answers to the 19:07 students. But then a student goes out into life and there 19:12 aren't always right answers. It's a bit frustrating because 19:16 well what should I do. How many times have people landed in jobs 19:22 nowadays that there isn't a clear job description. They walk 19:26 into the position and it's like well what do I do? Well here's 19:31 your job, do that. And here's the computer and go figure that 19:35 out. That's not part of the content, the training, 19:39 that curriculum cloud. 19:41 Okay, so what is the purpose of education then? And if you 19:47 will divide this. We see what we believe the public schools feel 19:52 the purpose of education is and what do you believe Christian 19:56 schools see as the purpose of education. 19:59 Well they sort of go in two different directions. 20:04 Take public education; basic socialization giving students 20:09 the ability to socialize, make friends, know their neighbors, 20:14 understand social skills and things like that. Then learning 20:20 in knowledge and content skills, having the content, all of these 20:26 subject areas that the teachers are to teach and basic skill set 20:34 That's roughly framed. You know there's discussion, but by and 20:41 large that's the skill set. For Christian education what has 20:47 been impressed to me is that our goal of Christian education is 20:52 to move much more into the image of God, to have the image of God 20:57 recreated in man. So think about it this way in the general men 21:02 and women, the general sense. If God created man in his image, 21:08 right as we read in the beginning of scripture in 21:11 Genesis and then Genesis 3 happened and Adam and Eve fell 21:18 from that; their image is marred and so now we've been through 21:23 all of this degradation. His goal to be educated is to be 21:28 recreated in that image. That's the goal. 21:32 Now you're not saying though, I won't say what you are saying, 21:37 are you saying that academic achievement is not as important 21:42 for Christian schools as it is for public or are you simply 21:46 saying that the focus is different, that the priority is 21:50 on spiritual development, is your top priority, I should say 21:55 and then academics are equally as important? 21:59 Well, it's a component and it's a component. Now there's a spot 22:04 in scripture where it says, you know, they wondered about Jesus 22:10 having not had letters. He did not have the rabbinical 22:14 education and so they wondered how could he know scripture 22:19 without having the rabbinical education. Jesus was certainly 22:25 very knowledgeable of content of the day. That was clear. So I 22:30 think that seems clearly to be a part of what God wants for us. 22:36 The problem is in Christian education is when we make that 22:40 the paramount thing that we are trying to make. So what we do 22:45 often in Adventist education is we take our public school 22:51 counterpart academic realm, we add a Bible class perhaps and 22:56 Christian teachers and then we call that Christian education 23:01 and by and large that's most of what we do with Christian 23:06 education. That's not necessarily the ideal or God 23:09 would really have us as I read what he's told us through his 23:15 prophet. So basically it's a good system 23:18 but it's got a lot of area for improvement. All right, you 23:23 know we are obviously going to have Dr. Siebold come back 23:29 and join us for some other programs because what we are 23:34 doing today is just taking a quick look, a very brief soiree 23:41 into the problems of our educational systems in this 23:47 world and hoping that we kind of pique your curiosity, maybe 23:52 jar you loose a little bit to think about the area of reform. 23:57 We are going to have you come back and talk about reform and 24:01 some of the things that the Lord has been leading you in and 24:07 obviously is with many other people. Your children are now 24:11 older, but you do have a daughter that's in her senior 24:16 year in high school, right? Were they always educated in 24:20 Christian school or did they start out in public schools? 24:25 Well my oldest daughter went into a Christian school for her 24:31 first grade year and then after that we ended up just through 24:36 a series of events planning to do one year temporary home 24:41 schooling and then we moved into the second year. 24:45 And did you notice any significant difference in the 24:49 curriculum... I mean, we're talking in theory here so I want 24:52 to bring this down to the real thing...did you notice any 24:56 significant difference when your children started going from 25:00 public school into Christian school or did you find what you 25:05 just said is that basically what happened is that now she had a 25:09 Bible class and Christian teachers? 25:11 Well I've dealt with Adventist education a lot and there's a 25:16 significantly different product, I think we'll find in Christian 25:21 schools as you'll find in public schools. But there's so much 25:25 variety and individuality, too. I mean, you go from one school 25:30 to another school, there's so much. The teachers are different 25:35 the books they use are different even in the same county there 25:40 can be some pretty great variance between those, but I 25:43 think we've found Christian education to be a really 25:47 valuable product and I think what the Lord has impressed me 25:51 with is we need to keep pushing it. 25:54 Amen. So basically what we are saying, the premise that we are 26:02 laying today is that the problem with the system... if you're a 26:07 teacher or a principle, please we love you and we know that 26:11 you're doing the best with what you've got...but we are 26:15 looking at and we're going to evolve in this matter on our 26:20 next program. But the main problem with the school system 26:24 is that it is one that is teaching children more, 26:29 or drawing more on memorization rather than actual application 26:35 and may in some ways be killing off, or smothering, I should 26:41 say, the intuitive seeking and learning ability that God put 26:48 into little babies. So what happens is when we have 26:53 great teachers they're able to pull that out of young people 26:58 even in the system we have. That's a difficult thing to do 27:02 with the time limit and the bell 27:08 Yes, when you have a child for, what is it, 50 minutes a day or 27:13 whatever. Yes that would be. Well I was just going to say 27:17 One of the common sayings of trying to help kind of set this 27:22 in memory is having the teacher move from the sage on the stage 27:27 to the guide on the side. It tries to help keep it away from 27:31 content and move back into the idea where you're helping them 27:36 become learners. Well, you know, Randy, I can't 27:39 wait for you to come back because we've just kind of 27:42 cracked open an egg here, if you will, and it may seem a 27:45 little bit scrambled to you right now, but I hope that 27:48 you'll be able to join us next time because we're going to get 27:50 into this a little bit deeper and look at some of the 27:53 solutions. Randy thank you so much for being with us here 27:55 today. I appreciate it, thank you. 27:57 For those of you at home I do encourage you to come back and 28:01 watch the next program because this is going to get quite 28:04 interesting and now our prayer for you is that the grace of our 28:07 Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father and the fellowship 28:10 of the Holy Spirit will be with you always. Bye, Bye. |
Revised 2014-12-17