In Praise of Elinor Ostrom

Does public education have to morph into more of a distributed rather than centralized system in order to become truly representative of the "public"? I have always thought so. But, how to make the case without seeming to overlook those who will be elbowed out? Recently, to my delight, my faith in the unconditional wisdom of everyone was scientifically and economically validated when  Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel for her "new science of governance for a new age" by applying  the "practical economics" ("A Nobel for Practical Economics" of voluntary associations and communal ownership to protecting the shared common good. I apply her logic to education.

No. Ms. Ostrom doesn't mention education per se. But, given that an exuberant, well-loved, and healthy childhood is a common good that deserves shared protection, allow me to make the leap from the governance of our shared natural resources like fisheries and grazing grounds to the governance of our shared human capital like teachers, parents and students.

Ms. Ostrom's research finds that natural resources and the common good are best protected by local, knowledgeable, voluntary associations with rules designed by enlightened locals to fit a "local ecology".  Distant, publicly regulated entities or privately owned for-profit markets do NOT protect the shared common good better than local enlightened and invested associations. Ms. Ostrom's work lays to rest "the tragedy of the commons", the long-held justification for distant authorities to regulate locals for the sake of the common good because, so the theory goes, locals can't be trusted to protect the common good due to greed, politics and ignorance. Hmm.

The opposite turns out to be true.  Locals actually are BEST at protecting the common good because local knowledge leads to rules that make sense and work for local conditions.

The solutions proposed by the WSJ education task-force assume the opposite of Elinor Ostrom's conclusions. The CEO's of the WSJ education task-force assume that the social and moral responsibility for the public education system rests solely with government and business. No teacher, parent or student is on the task-force.  The only references to teachers, parents and students are as distant, problem-persons to be "rewarded", "denied", "removed", "educated about consequences", and "mobilized". The overriding belief of the moderator and the task-force appears to be that government and business are wiser, more responsible and more innovative and productive than the single teacher, parent or student.

This is not true. Government and business are NOT wiser, more moral and more entrepreneurial that the single individual teacher, parent or student. The single individual is at least as, if not more so, wise, moral and entrepreneurial than government-regulated authorities and privately-owned markets. Systems, in modern times, have to be designed around trusting the individual, not to make the individual dependent on a system.


Looking through the lens of Ms. Ostrom's research that small & local is wisest, more moral and more protective and entreprneurial, we see that the WSJ moderator and task-force solutions assume "the tragedy of the commons". Our current education system thinking assumes that the single, individual teacher, parent or student are lazy unless prodded with "high expectations" and matching rewards and punishments made up by distant authorities.

Applying Ms. Ostrom's research, I invite the WSJ task-force to consider five alternative recommentations.

An Educated I N D I V I D U A L: The Top Five Alternative Recommendations

1. INDIVIDUALIZING EDUCATION IS OUR TOP PRIORITY. Given that 25 years of standardized. "outcomes-based" education has given the nation and business "alot of subprime ... human capital", "dismal graduation rates", "teachers bailing out of the profession", "parents frantic", "student performance [that] pales next to competition abroad", and "business [that] can't find the talent it needs in the work force that our education system produces" let us stop and think about policies to support small, local enlightened associations of teachers, parents and students instead doubling down on more of this obviously failing strategy. If what's working are small, "pockets of excellence" then let us create a system that encourages a network of many small pockets of excellence.

2. LOCAL COUNCILS OF ENLIGHTENED INDIVIDUALS. Invest resources in cultivating local wisdom, social responsibility and entrepreneurship.  The charter movement is a perfect example.  One law allowed for many flowers to bloom and then it began self-organzing.  The only hold-up is distant regulators creating bottle necks and stalling improvisation. When Districts start to support schools, rather than schools propping up Districts, change will be here.

3. CREATE EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION.  Invest in the input and you have to invest less in crying over the output. Schools of education need to tie research into children's cognitive, emotional and physical development into how to teach and what to teach and when to teach it.  Working with the child, rather than against the child, will prove to be the magic bullet. Schools of education ought to connect with schools to create feedback loop of ongoing learning and experimentation between teacher education and teacher classroom experience.

4. TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF EDUCATION FROM GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS TO SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION & WORLD-CLASS CORPS OF TEACHING PROFESSIONALS. As long as distant authorities treat teachers, parents and students as threats to the shared intellectual commons, this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Business has demonstrated these last 25 years or so that flattening the governance and trusting in the brilliance of the individual makes the business smarter and faster and more fun.  And it makes the trusted person actually brighter! Instead of going backward and dreaming up more layers of regulation, let business ring the bell for a local, distributed network of entrepreneurial and self-organizing networks of teachers, parents and students linked up with universities.  Then we will be a collective, national "learning organization".

5. INITIATIVE TO TELL THE EXTENDED PRE-NATAL - HIGH SCHOOL STORY OF ENLIGHTENED PARENTING. Get IDEO to think of a way to do this. Youtube, social networking, neighborhood meet-ups - Make "Parent For America" part of the "Teach for America" agenda -- brainstorm, brainstorm ... Get IDEO together with Po Bronson' Nurture Shock, Waldorf early-childhood educators, others. Make if fascinating and entertaining like Annie Leonard's "Story of Stuff". 

If government and business continues to make and recomment policies that empower distant authorities over empowering individual persons, we will not only not evolve as a social organism, we will go backwards. Witness this summer's eruption of mental and emotionally-challenged town-hall meetings. From this point forward, we evolve one enlightened person at a time.  We get enlightened by being personally responsible, not just being "held accountable" with carrots and sticks by external and distant authorities.  The days of distant authorities getting between the wisdom of the local parent, child and teacher unit is over.

25 years of Big Standardization, Big Education Industry, Big Union Outcomes-Based Education, RIP.
25 years of Small, Local Personal Responsibility-Based Education, Hello.

Dial back the bubbling machine!

 Ever on the prowl for signs of the times and openings for Waldorf education to be of impact, an FYI:

Edutopia is producing a "webinar" with Linda Darling Hammond next Tuesday on the subject of assessment, "The Race to the Top is on, and it's being driven by the next generation of standards. Learn about how top-performing nations assess student learning and examine its implications for the next generation of U.S. assessments." 

I've signed up for both the morning and afternoon sessions in order to get Linda's latest thinking and her behind-the-scenes perspective on how to proceed with a more human approach to that ol' devil assessment. 

Even though I don't share the exact values expressed in Obama's "Race to the Top" strategy, whatever gets the subject of evaluation on the table is fine with me. Here in Hollywood that's called "I don't care what you say about me, just spell my  name right".  

A move to evaluate for learning and reflection and innovation instead of ONLY for quantitative numbers and statistics, is, I think, central to transforming education around the child and the human spirit.  I believe the sooner Waldorf education counters the prevailing winds with the Waldorf education approach to evaluation and assessment the better. Criticism is not enough. People need concrete ideas to examine and try out.  

And of course, the more of us merging our energies the merrier, so, if you have time to check in on the webinar .... follow the yellow brick road ... 

Rest assured, we in Waldorf education have many like-minded souls looking at a human-centered approach to evaluation: A recent example: At "Sustaining Innovation in Evaluation"  http://www.good.is/post/sustaining-innovation-in-evaluation/  GOOD magazine and the "design thinking" company, IDEO, pair for a "bloginar" on this question. 

3 Game-Changing FACTS about public schools "inspired" by Waldorf education:

http://www.edutopia.org/waldorfinspired-public-schools-are-rise

Some MYTHS about Waldorf education continue to straggle on ...

By Joan Jaeckel

((1))MYTH: Waldorf education is based on religion or some new age notion of spiritual truth (and did I mention quackery?). FACT: Waldorf education’s curriculum, methods and attitudes are best described as based on objectivity that comports with the most interesting and useful research questions and ideas of our time. Waldorf education is based on evolutionary consciousness, humanly-moral values and social and environmental ecology.

Yes, (shockingly) Waldorf educators like many if not most people who care about people and the planet hold a “spiritual” worldview. Simply means that there are things going on in the universe that affect us, which we account for, even if we don’t (yet) fully understand how it all works or why. Not afraid to say this since, obviously, concepts like “ideas”, “morality” and ”ecology” are not material objects but words for spiritual concepts. Heck, even gravity is an invisible force which we don’t understand. How does consciousness work? Cognitive scientists want to know. Let’s not pretend in our schools that all the questions have been settled once and for all by either traditional religion or traditional science.

As a matter of fact the process of being “educated” is inner development. Even when we try our damndest to pull the education rabbit out of the Scranton hat we know we’re only fooling ourselves. The real deal is invisible.

Furthermore, the institution of public education itself is based on a spiritual worldview. Public education holds the spiritual worldview that every child has the right to an education. Waldorf education holds this same worldview. In a nutshell, the contribution that Waldorf education wishes to make to 21^st Century learning could be described like this:

“We hold this truth to be self-evident that every child is a mysterious and unique individual hell-bent on manifesting the gift he or she wishes to give to the world. Education’s job is to help him or her know that this is so, to find it, and to acquire the mental discipline, the social-emotional sensitivity and the practical skill-sets to become fit to be it, live it, give it”.  

Scarrreeeee. Really?  

((2))MYTH: Waldorf education violates the principle of separation of church and state, when it is practiced in public schools, because its spiritual world view of evolutionary consciousness, humanly-moral values and social and environmental ecology interweave every lesson. FACT: And this is bad, why? U.S. institutions, ideally, embody a spiritual worldview or truths. Our spiritual worldview or truths include “all men [humans] are created equal” and the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The principles of freedom, democracy and equality interweave all of our U.S. institutions. Despite this spiritual worldview we continue to consider ourselves a secular society. As a matter of fact these spiritual truths are so fragile and evaporative that they don’t even really exist at all … except in practice. We do freedom, do democracy, do equality.

With the claim, “these truths are self-evident”, America took an objective, moral and evolutionary stance about the value and dignity of human existence, human life and human aspiration.  These are “spiritual” truths, a spiritual worldview, because they were not discovered in a lab using the traditional scientific method.  No one sat in a bathtub, noticed his ass displacing water and yelled “Eureka!”  These spiritual truths became suddenly obvious.  It simply occurred to a critical mass of humans one fine day that “we hold these truths of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident”. Self-evident = obvious, “proof” not possible. No one can convince you of their truthfulness and reality.  You either see it or you don’t. If we wish, we could say that Steiner had his eureka moment when he realized that every human has the capacity for a Eureka moment. Everyone can expand their mind, develop an inner moral compass, and live to give their gift - regardless of their social station in life.

Our current victories and crises are all victories and crises of the spirit. Human beings possess the capacity to evolve through personal inner spiritual effort. Best of all, anyone can do it and it costs nothing. Waldorf education proposes that having an inner life going on in your head is simply human and not religious any more than “the pursuit of happiness” is religious. Viewing each student as a gift to unwrap rather than a problem to solve is the educational magic wand we have been looking for these 25 years since “A Nation At Risk”.  Committing to personal inner development of our innate human intelligence is Waldorf’s big eureka-moment idea. Scientists call it neuroplasticity. Is that so wrong?

((3))MYTH:  Steiner’s so-called “spiritual science” is an oxymoron and his anthroposophy is a cult.  FACT: Describing what he does, Rudolf Steiner repeatedly said “I don’t teach. I relate what I have inwardly experienced”. He called his process of investigation “spiritual science” because he used the invisible tools of thinking, imagination, inspiration and intuition to explore the invisible properties of reality. That’s all Steiner’s anthroposophy is. Him bad. No wonder Steiner so admired Albert Einstein (that very very bad religious nut) and his theory of relativity which equates invisible energy with visible matter. 

From this perspective, every human being who thinks, who has feelings, and who does stuff is a spiritual scientist – especially if we stop and look back at moral consequences. That’s not religiosity. It’s being responsible.  Waldorf education is part of a larger societal evolution towards “stumbling on happiness” and living “lifestyles of health and sustainability”.

We have safely landed in supra-consciousness land. The story of human moral aspiration and the story of material evolution have met up. It is no longer controversial to see science and spirituality skipping down humanity’s ongoing quest for meaning and knowledge together. It’s time our educational system mirrors this relationship. We need an educational HYBRID that allows the smarts of both science and life's mysteries to co-exist and co-evolve. Given that public education has given all children a right to an education, how will we shift public education in modern times to give all children a meaningful education?  That is THE question.