Independent Schools, Common Perspectives
Peter Gow was an administrator and teacher in independent schools for nearly 40 years. As the Executive Director of the Independent Curriculum Group, he wrote about the relationship between private and public education and how the two sectors might draw upon each other’s strengths. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: private schools.
Education
Opinion
In Praise of Building-and-Grounds Staffs Everywhere
Sometimes working understaffed and just about always working on tight if not strangled budgets (and thus probably often underpaid), buildings and grounds crews are unsung heroes of the educational programs we deliver.
Education
Opinion
A Letter to New Teachers, 2013
Somebody started your school because they believed in something worthy, and the school has evolved in certain ways because of those beliefs. Sometimes the beliefs get lost, sometimes they get transmogrified, and occasionally a school has had to stop and then start all over again in a new direction. But believe me, those worthy beliefs are fundamental to the enterprise.
Education
Opinion
If Independent Schools Had to Go Away: A Thought Experiment
I undertook this experiment with some trepidation, but it seemed worthwhile to try to play out the independent schools skeptics' position, just to see where it might lead. I can't say that I'm sold on the idea. I still believe there are plenty of ways that St. Basalt's School and its kin can and do serve the public good.
Education
Opinion
The Fragility of Children and the Strength of Counselors
I once again find myself wishing that our society had the courage and good sense to commit itself to looking after kids' personal growth in our schools as thoroughly as we seem determined to look after their ability to take standardized tests.
Education
Opinion
What Very Small Schools Can Teach Us
As the son of a tiny town I like to think we can learn from small rural schools just as we learn from big urban and suburban ones. I know that these schools are already places of pride--just watch Hoosiers if you need a reminder--and we should not forget that our most rural areas (think: Alaska) produced the techniques of "distance learning" on which today's online and blended teaching and learning cultures are being built.
Education
Opinion
Wonder Years: Schools and Teachers Catch Up With the 21st-Century
Behaviorism is in our rear-view mirror, and now Constructivism is riding shotgun. But the road ahead appears to be Connectivist. What we are seeing nowadays is the confluence of all these trends and the great, onrushing stream of technology, which is really only the great onrushing stream of connected living, connected thinking, and connected learning.
Education
Opinion
Educational Inequity: Trying for a Globalized Perspective
As an educator, a parent, and a human being, I'm sickened by the ways in which children around the world are made pawns in political and cultural battles. But when I go through the exercise of trying to "globalize" my own perspective, I see plenty of things at home to inspire tears and anger.
Education
Opinion
A Glorious Fourth
It was hard to look at all those sweaty kids with candy-smeared cheeks at the Fourth of July parade and not think about what the planet's going to be like when they're grown up. Maybe such little faces are turning out to be a real incentive for those who are already grown up to do a little less arguing and a little more compromising, less accusing and more empathizing, less retrenching and more really strategic thinking.
Education
Opinion
When Nonprofits Go Corporate: Cautionary Tales
I've lived through, and paid in memories for, what happens when corporate mindsets takes over an enterprise--Scouting and the camp movement, in my case--whose mission and goals are about children's learning and well-being, when business-bedazzled "reformers" perform their special, misguided magic.
Education
Opinion
Country Day Schools Redivivus?
Design thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, and creativity can all be taught and take place in contexts that keep the door open between the schoolhouse, the home, and the natural world. Today's good ideas are just as applicable to learning in a world defined by the natural environment as they are to learning that happens indoors or online. We have only to turn our serious and concerted attention to the question of "nature-deficit disorder," and we could make easy strides toward erasing it.
Education
Opinion
An Open Letter to John Chubb
But the great opportunity, perhaps even the great imperative, for independent schools over the next five years will be to establish ourselves as a legitimate and positive voice in the national and indeed global conversation on education. Although many far-sighted and even courageous individual schools and school leaders have sought engagement with the larger, primarily public school community, as a body we have taken only baby steps.
School & District Management
Opinion
Independent School Governance: How It Works
In years past board members were said to be chosen for their ability to contribute one of the "Three W's: wisdom, work, or wealth."
Education
Opinion
Where Independent School Voices Can Matter
A great educational system in a great society values school as a place where hopes and dreams are strengthened and refined and where children acquire the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind to achieve them. It values teachers as key actors in making this happen.
Education
Opinion
On the Outside Looking in: Teacher Training
Simply put, as a society we're not going to inspire vast numbers of our top college students to enter the field of teaching until we've figured out a way to make teaching as attractive as financial services or high tech.