Catching the Wave

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Catching the Wave

The Professor was just sitting around one lonely afternoon on the castaway island working on turning his AM radio in to a two way communication device when Gilligan came by, huffing and puffing; obviously out of breath,

Professor: Gilligan, what's wrong with you?
Gilligan: I've been exercising.
Professor: Why?
Gilligan: So I can die healthy.

Why was Gilligan exercising? Easy. A visitor had just been brought to the island by massive tsunami. While I’m not sure why the tsunami didn’t rake over island drowning the castaways, it did deposit a sexy shirtless surfer named Duke, dressed only in a loincloth, onto Gilligan’s fishing line. With glitter-eyed Ginger and even the most moral Mary Ann flipping out over Duke Williams’ physique, Gilligan became jealous and decided to try to instantly sculpt his body into a surfer dude’s body in a few short, easy exercise sessions. Little did he know, however, the futility of his pain. Because no matter how much he tried, he never seemed to look any better than Dobie Gillis.

Just as Gilligan’s Island, there’s a tsunami approaching our mainland. It’s moving rapidly across the sea, radically altering the seascape and reconfiguring the landscape, too. It’s unstoppable, speeding up, and growing exponentially.

If you were able to observe it from above, you’d immediately see that there is a growing group of cowboy surfers tangling with that wave. Some get the royal dunking, but others have managed to make it to the curl and are being propelled through the most massive tube ever imagined. It’s hard to predict just where the ride will end.

I’ve just returned from Raleigh, North Carolina and the NCAEACTTEATACIC Conference at the Research Triangle Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center. I must say that my experience at this technology conference was most illuminating. Over the course of the two days, I camped myself in the auditorium and heard presentation after presentation by two leaders in harnessing the power of the Internet for today’s learners, Will Richardson and David Warlick. Both of these gentlemen are strong proponents of education by conversation and collaboration using something many call “The Read/Write Web.”

I’ve been around in the education profession as a classroom teacher and now an instructional technology resource teacher for the past 25 years. My whole view of my profession and world was radically altered when Education Secretary T. H. Bell released the staggering report, A Nation At Risk, back in April 1983. That report is most famous for the following passage…

Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.[emphasis added] What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

This stunning document wasn’t really analyzed in depth on the blogosphere back then since the Web was only a twinkle in the bitnet. Walter Cronkite really didn’t have time to delve in to it on the CBS Evening News. The New York Times probably looked at it closely, but no one in rural Greene County, Virginia had access to that big city paper. All I got from it at the time was that our educational system was failing with “a rising tide of [scary] mediocrity” and I felt like everyone thought it was all my fault.

If the Internet were available to me back then, easy access to the full body of the text would have awaited me. Had that happened I would have uncovered an amazing document that carries a message for us today as we attempt to surf a rising technology tsunami.

Three key points leapt off the screen at me as I reread the document from the government’s handy website. It stated that we needed to reaffirm our country’s overall goal of demanding genuine high standards.

Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest. Attaining that goal requires that we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of their capabilities. We should expect schools to have genuinely high standards rather than minimum ones, and parents to support and encourage their children to make the most of their talents and abilities.

In my estimation this point alone has sent our schools spiraling out of control. It was shortly after that statement began filtering through political channels that reform movements began in my home state of Virginia. At first, the reforms began as teacher initiated curriculum development tanks but over the following ten years they gradually devolved into a political football. In Virginia, the 1994 gubernatorial election where Senator George “Macca Man” Allen was elected radically changed the direction of education reform. Swept in with him was his vision of education reform that looked only at the high academic standard component of A Nation At Risk. He squashed the incredible collaborative “World Class Education”(p.27) initiative that had been in development for years in favor of a test driven standards based program. It was like two dimensional instruction in a three dimensional world, like trying to surf a wave off of Myrtle Beach when it’s the tsunami that is coming ashore. While the organizational structure mandated by Allen was welcomed by educators, the content fell prey to petty politics. The General Assembly began dictating content, and the art of teaching began to be repressed. Free thought and collaboration were squeezed out. Our children became individually wrapped Little Debbie Oatmeal Cakes. Same every time and sometimes a little squashed.

The report makes the strong case for equal opportunity.

We do not believe that a public commitment to excellence and educational reform must be made at the expense of a strong public commitment to the equitable treatment of our diverse population.

At the time, schools were still bombed out in many inner cities. I remember in 1985 driving past a neighborhood school in Bridgeport, CT. It was surrounded by a high chain-link barbed-wire fence, surrounded by a broken glass playground, and framed by peeling paint and boarded windows. Not a single window was unboarded. I thought the place was abandoned, but later learned that was not the case. What kind of opportunity was that? Today, I suspect that form of child abuse still exists. Denying technology to these already impoverished schools only magnifies a growing social and economic disconnect.

Yet buried in this document was the most amazing gem, often forgotten and left by the wayside. I’m moved by it every time I read it because it’s a pure vision of what should be in education. If it had been accepted, our educational system would have been in position to ride the technology tsunami with which we now struggle.

In a world of ever-accelerating competition and change in the conditions of the workplace, of ever-greater danger, and of ever-larger opportunities for those prepared to meet them, educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a Learning Society. At the heart of such a society is the commitment to a set of values and to a system of education that affords all members the opportunity to stretch their minds to full capacity, from early childhood through adulthood, learning more as the world itself changes. Such a society has as a basic foundation the idea that education is important not only because of what it contributes to one's career goals but also because of the value it adds to the general quality of one's life. Also at the heart of the Learning Society are educational opportunities extending far beyond the traditional institutions of learning, our schools and colleges. They extend into homes and workplaces; into libraries, art galleries, museums, and science centers; indeed, into every place where the individual can develop and mature in work and life. In our view, formal schooling in youth is the essential foundation for learning throughout one's life. But without life-long learning, one's skills will become rapidly dated.

Those words are just as powerful and relevant today as they were a quarter of a century ago.

The Professor found a way for Duke to catch a return tsunami back to Hawaii, you know…like a five o’clock train. Again, I don’t understand why the tsunami didn’t rake over the island or how the professor even figured that the tsunami would boomerang back across the Pacific, but that’s what happened. Gilligan stopped exercising. Lifting coconut dumbbells had been just a waste of time anyway.

Ten more years or so passed when one day a Russian satellite crashed onto the island (Return From Gilligan’s Island-1978) which somehow prompted the castaways to lash their huts together to make a raft and set sail. Gilligan, always overeager to help out, managed to burn the raft huts down as they were bobbing in the ocean, but a military helicopter saw the smoke and rescued them. They returned to Hawaii where they felt ill-at ease. Times had changed. Technology had progressed. It was no longer an AM world; FM had taken hold.

Fifteen more years passed and each of the seven former castaways were growing increasingly unhappy in this world that they didn’t really understand. That’s when an insurance company settled with the Skipper for the loss of the SS Minnow. Celebrating his good fortune, Skipper invited all seven to take another three hour cruise. As fate would have it, another storm arose from the sea, the tiny ship was again tossed. If not for the courage of the crew that night, the Minnow would be lost again. It struck ground on the shore of the very same deserted isle, Gilligan’s Isle. Fate had taken them back exactly from whence they came.

They were rescued again in 1979 ("The Castaways on Gilligan's Island"), but found the world even more confusing before they voluntarily returned to the island to open a Fantasy Island-styled resort. They were even visited by the Harlem Globetrotters in a bizarre development in 1981 ("The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island"). To the best of my knowledge, the resort failed, and they were left to live their lives in peace and tranquility. They live there to this day, I suppose, completely disconnected from a world that passed them by in a tsunami-like rush.

We need to know more than just how to surf. We need to know how to catch the big wave.