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May 1, 1998
5 min (est.)
Vol. 40
No. 3

Liberating Children's Goodness and Genius

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      As the old order of competition and acquisitiveness yields to a new vision of human interdependence, we must "change the rules of the dance" between individuals and institutions, including schools. So contended Stephanie Pace Marshall, president of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and a former president of ASCD, at the Second General Session.
      Like other institutions, schools have been influenced by mechanistic science, which is "obsessed with analysis and disintegration," Marshall said. As a result, we have tried to manage schools by reducing complex wholes to discrete, measurable parts—creating structures such as hierarchies and isolated disciplines—while we have derided emotion as "interference." In the process, we have sundered children's minds and hearts. "Why did we make schools so antiseptically rational?" Marshall asked.
      Schools often send children the message that the emotional and spiritual sides of life are "messy," so we don't want them, Marshall said. In many schools, she noted ruefully, "expressions of awe and joy in learning are a source of embarrassment," and students' questions are discouraged if they don't dovetail neatly with the lesson plan. Such schools are "perfect models for dispensing information, but not for learning," she said. "They value cleverness, not wisdom."
      Marshall urged her audience to forge learning communities that are "comfortable with ambiguity and surprise" and that "offer multiple ways of knowing about the world." Healthy learning communities value inquiry and complex cognition, and "make children struggle with issues that matter," she said. By honoring the whole child, they help to bring about "the liberation of the goodness and genius of all children."

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