Student Success - a broader definition.

What really constitutes success in life? Is it wealth? Power? Fame? What about happiness, or freedom, having useful occupation, or fulfilling personal relationships? There are many possible answers. In the end, it must be answered by each of us individually. Too many students reach the end of high school and have no idea what success means to them, or have someone else’s idea and think it their own. This is a poor foundation on which to build a life. A broader definition of student success must include insights obtained through a reflective process of self-discovery.

Here are three principles from which we can construct a framework for student success:

1. Diversity must be recognized as a fundamental principle – each snowflake, each fingerprint, each grain of sand, each student is a unique expression of the universe.

2. Intelligence is diverse. Each child develops an array of intelligences that are expressed in multiple ways of being smart.

3. Students must be supported in a process of self-discovery that enables them to make sense of their world, and helps them to achieve their personal visions of success.

Much work remains to be done in shaping these principles into a tangible vision of student success. Inherent in the principles are the seeds of social justice and transformative design that will situate the student squarely at the center of the educational universe.

One Laptop Per Child

Nicholas Negroponte is a professor, former director of the MIT Media Lab, and founder of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project. He wants to build the $100 laptop - a sturdy, wireless, Internet-ready, hand-cranked computer and deliver it to millions of children in the developing world.

He believes that:

• Children are our most precious natural resource.
• The solution to poverty, peace, environment is education.
• Teaching is one but not the only way to achieve learning.

Hear Negroponte's 18 minute address to TED 2006 conference attendees.

"Goodbye textbooks, Hello Open Source Learning!" - Richard Baraniuk

Another TED talks inspiration is Richard Baraniuk, electrical engineering professor at Rice University, and founder of Connexions - a free open source online clearinghouse of educational materials.
Baraniuk has developed a digital peer-to-peer sharing system for course materials. Think back to Buckminster Fuller's recipe for change. If the academic publishing industry doesn't put up any roadblocks, and Baraniuk pursues his vision, traditional textbooks may well follow the horse and buggy.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality." R. Buckminster Fuller

One day in the library stacks, I was searching for a book by Howard Gardner, author of Multiple Intelligences theory. Coincidentally, the book next to it was a slim volume entitled, R. Buckminster Fuller on Education edited by Wagschal & Kahn (1979). I had read his Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth in the 1970's, and visited one of his geodesic domes in Montreal at Expo '67.
I took it home and read it in one sitting, then reread it and went back to the library for 6 more books by Fuller. His ideas are probably 100 years ahead of his time, and long out of favor in the popular imagination.

But consider this in the context of education reform...

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - R. Buckminster Fuller

This is sound advice. Recall what happened to horses and buggies, iceboxes, vinyl records, 8-track cassettes and slide rules.


Wagschal, P. & Kahn, R. (Eds.). (1979). R. Buckminster Fuller on Education. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press.

"How is it that little children are so intelligent, and men so stupid? It must be education that does it." Alexandre Dumas

I have been on a sabbatical this year studying about Special Education at Acadia University. It has been a great experience! I have spent countless hours reading, thinking and writing about education reform. I thought I'd share with you some of what I consider to be the highlights of my journey...
One is this video presentation of a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson at the 2006 TED conference. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It is an annual event for 1000 invited guests held in Monterey, California. The registration fee is about $4400.00 US. With travel, accommodation and other expenses on top, it's not cheap, but the event is always sold out a year in advance, and people come from all over the world to be a part of it. Why? To share ideas.

Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. He gives a brilliant talk on creativity and how schools are designed to douse every last spark of it in our students. If you can spare 19 minutes and 29 seconds, you should watch this. Robinson is mesmerizing - hilariously funny, yet poignant. It is one of those rare transformative messages. You will never think about education in quite the same way again.