fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Clearing the educational decks

by John Burdick
June 9, 2020
in Village Voices
1
Remote student teaching at SUNY New Paltz

Student teacher Krysten Masztal of Catskill, works on word and letter recognition remotely with Noah Oles, age 5, at his home in Gardiner.

I interviewed two teachers this week, a married couple working from home while their elementary-school-age children pursued their own remote schooling under foot — a caged family in a house full of devices throbbing with data as the world scrambles to reconstruct itself online and educational reform opportunists like Mr. Gates use the occasion to insinuate and annex, to mulct, to stake or to solidify claims to huge chunks of the public education system.

I was fishing for some upsides. Is it possible, I suggested, that people will perforce learn to conceive and execute creative projects as never before? Will we see a renaissance of independent, self-directed, and self-validated learning, an ideal of pure learning to which most educators pay lip service at least but lack the resources and administrative and community buy-in to wholeheartedly pursue?

My child spent some years at a school that attempted to eliminate the dangled carrots of external adult approval and validation from its model of learning — grades, benchmarks, assessments, curricula. None of the above. Instead, the kids were placed in a resource- and material-rich environment with a staff there to help when asked but otherwise unobtrusive. The school itself was run by radical democracy, with students involved in hiring decisions and all matters of discipline and everything else.

Whether it was the right place for our child, going there after years in the public system, is a subject for another day. What impressed me most about this school was the independent, self-directed, and outlandishly productive spirit of its youngest students, the ones who had never known another model, taking on and executing vast projects and works of a kind one never sees in other schools, never wasting a moment’s thought on gold stars or an A+. The locus of authority was internal. Anything was possible.

If you feel you are coming undone in Covidia, at least hold out the chance that good can come of the undoing. Someday, will we look at this bizarre, economically devastating interlude of 2020 as a clearing of the decks, a reset of values and priorities, a weaning off of external validation and the discovery of new or refreshed faculties of doing, of seeing through, of finishing, whether the project is a book or a record or vast social reform?

It’s a hopeful thought, at least.

Read more installments of Village Voices by John Burdick.

Tags: John Burdick Village Voices
Thank you for reading Hudson Valley One. We rely on your support to continue providing local, substantive news. Please check out our subscription options to keep local journalism alive in the Hudson Valley.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

No haircut for me

Next Post

New Paltz News & Notes (6/10/20)

John Burdick

Related Posts

Village Voices are on hold
Village Voices

Village Voices are on hold

November 17, 2020
A liberal education
Village Voices

Keeping it all together

August 24, 2020
Writing about oneself
Village Voices

I need a day off

August 24, 2020
Saugerties initiative combating addiction and suicide adds more events
Village Voices

Time travel

August 24, 2020
Where to buy face masks locally
Village Voices

A story of three states

September 2, 2020
The kids talk politics
Village Voices

Stories on the ballot

August 23, 2020
Next Post
New Paltz News & Notes (6/10/20)

New Paltz News & Notes (6/10/20)

Please login to join discussion

Trending News

  • SUV drives into Sunflower Market in Woodstock 13.3k views
  • Homeless in Woodstock doc draws crowd as officials seek answers 1.2k views
  • AutoCamp Catskills brings fleet of Airstreams to former Saugerties KOA 1.1k views
  • Small freedom convoy makes its way through the streets of Saugerties  1k views
  • Saugerties highway department saving with oil and chip road surfacing 715 views







Latest HV1 Podcast

Weather

Kingston
◉
63°
Clear
5:22am8:35pm EDT
Feels like: 63°F
Wind: 0mph NE
Humidity: 90%
Pressure: 30.1"Hg
UV index: 0
MonTueWed
81/55°F
79/54°F
84/59°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Ulster County COVID-19 Active Cases

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In

© 2022 Ulster Publishing