Tag Archives: educating for human greatness

Educating for Human Greatness

The title of this piece is the goal of my friend Lynn Stoddard, who has worked for over 50 years as an elementary school teacher, principal and consultant. His goal is to elevate the profession of teaching and inspire teachers to truly facilitate the development of a young human being rather than merely instruct them on standardized curriculum so they can pass the tests. I am aware of no greater contemporary champion for a holistic approach to teaching and education consistent with the great education innovators of the 20th Century like John Dewey, Waldorf founder Rudolph Steiner, and Maria Montessori.

From chapter 1 page 1 of his book Educating for Human Greatness, Lynn frames the challenges for the profession of teaching in the current US educational context…

In 1983 a National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a “Nation at Risk Report” and set in motion a series of government imposed reforms, all based on a false goal: student achievement in curriculum. One of these reforms, “No Child Left Behind,” put extra pressure on teachers to ignore the diverse needs of students and, instead, standardize students in reading, writing and math. More recently the U.S. Department of Education has installed a set of national standards for student uniformity. Subject matter specialists, along with major influence from business and industry, have decided what all students should know and be able to do at each grade level. Tests are administered to assess student learning of the prescribed material. In some cases the tests are used as an assessment of the quality of teaching. This top-down, misguided pressure is evidence that public school teaching is not regarded as a profession in our society.

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Issues with Educating Everybody

Lynn Stoddard
Lynn Stoddard, my friend and fellow participant in the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO), shared with me the text of a guest commentary, “Educating Everybody”, he wrote for the Ogden, Utah Standard-Examiner. Lynn is a now retired long-time teacher and founder of the Educating for Human Greatness Alliance. His commentary lays out clearly the vision of holistic education that has its roots in John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Rudolph Steiner and others. He is a great champion for a vision embraced by many alternative educators, and an approach to teaching that I acknowledge and respect. But with my emerging left-libertarian orientation to education, it is a vision that I have developed some issues with.

He sets the context in his opening paragraph…

The time has come to change the way we educate children in our public schools. There are signs that a vast majority of students are not even coming close to achieving their potential. A 27 percent national dropout rate may be but the tip of an iceberg of students whose potential for success are not being met. Many students never get an A or a B on a report card. Most students are educated at a low, C or D level of understanding. This is disastrous for those who drop out of school and too often enter the prison population. It is equally tragic for those who stay in school to acquire knowledge at a low level. Even those who get high grades may be deficient in understanding the real life application of subject matter content. They often aim for high grades rather than genuine learning and soon forget the material after the tests are given. The sad fact is that we do not have a public education system that aims to help all students master the knowledge they will need to fulfill their lives.

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A Parent’s Role in Transforming Education

Educating for Human Greatness Seven Principles
Educating for Human Greatness Seven Principles
There are a couple efforts I’m involved in, and others I am aware of, to try and make the practice of education in this country more humanistic and more closely aligned with our country’s democratic values. One such effort is currently called “Educating for Human Greatness” (based on a book by the same title by the group’s founder Lynn Stoddard) and is endorsed by a number of progressive educators across the country. Click on the links to see EfHG’s proposal (including bios of key supporters) for transforming our education system and the group’s networking forum on Ning.

If you check out the EfHG proposal you can see that it addresses the need to transform the role of teachers and schools in the educational process but really says nothing about the role of parents in that transformation. Some of the people that were involved in the email discussion around starting the group were concerned that this was an important omission. I have heard this in other educational forums, that you cannot transform education without transforming parents and parenting, since it is the expectations of parents that play a large role in keeping our schools untransformed. Continue reading →