REDESIGNing Education..by including design in curriculum

If there is any truth to the notion that male students are being turned off in schools, colleges and universities, perhaps the curriculum needs to be amended to become more fitting to the needs, aspirations and intellectual capacities of male students.
Curriculum design based on the Aristotelian model of naming aspects of a subject, and then learning through memory to repeat those facts, or even to be able to replicate the equations at the base of each mathematical inquiry, or chemical or physical experiment, while interesting, is not likely to stimulate the imaginations of many of the students whose goals differ from those targetting medecine, law, accounting or economics.
While making money is an interesting and perhaps worthwhile avocation, the creation of new approaches, or new ways of doing things is far more interesting and exciting in and of itself.
Most industrial designers will say that they never talk about design to a client who hires them. They speak only about increased efficiency, or decreased costs but never about design. The reason, according to Lionel Tiger who writes about conversations with industrial designers, is that they believe the society generally is illiterate about the subject of "design." And that includes both the theory of design and the practical applications of that design theory.
As we move ever more intimately into a knowledge-based economy, with the processes that enable, and then drive and then store and recall whatever it is that we are "knowing" designed by an ever diminishing number of design engineers, it is the applications of those new designs that we are going to have to "create" and to implement.
In the industrial society, according to Lionel Tiger once again, we lost focus on the reproductive capacity of the society, while focussing exclusively on the productive capacity. And, in the process, we turned the reproductive capacity of humans into another "productive" capacity, through the birth control pill, and other choices for females to make regarding whether or not they wished to procreate thereby "industrializing" procreation.
Today, we need to re-capture the male intelligence through an intimate and rigorous education into the processes, theories and capacities of creating and designing.
We need to raise our general and societal knowledge and appreciation for the goals, theories and processes of design, through a curriculum that introduces students to new societal needs, and also newly designed, and evolving design processes.W can no longer count only on the economists to turn the economy around; we need a concerted collective political and intellectual movement that understands where the economy fits in the larger picture. We can no longer count on the medical schools to bring about an optimum human wellness; they are so stuck in the "disease" model of diagnosis and treatment that they cannot see beyond it to prevention, without pharmaceuticals. We can no longer count on the lawyers to write the laws in our legislatures, because they write them for their profession, and we can no longer afford to give up our democratic access to the political levers to accountants and lawyers. We need generalist thinkers who are familiar with change, with change theory, with design theory and practice, to provide leven to the society of specialists that have "left" the rest of us behind.
We need people trained in thinking outside the box, and the one thing the Canadian, and perhaps to a little lesser degree the North American education system is not is, "outside the box." The system is a traditionalist, conserving, preserving and repressing system run by people who are addicted to the perfection of the system, both men and women. And that repudiates the intellectual and aspirational needs of, especially, male students.
And while female students are and will continue to be compatible and compliant with such a system, male students will not comply. Nor should they.
We have the capacity to create individual curricula for every student, witness the recent story in The Atlantic of one male student who dropped out of college, because he could not withstand the monotony of the routine. Becoming a professional writer is only one of the clear indications of his intelligence.
We need to harness every student's innate capacities, cognitively, creatively, socially and industrially.
And we are not doing that. We do not need to conduct labour market needs surveys to determine what those who are hiring need, because those needs will be obsolete before the students whose curriculum meets those goals graduate. We need to truly democratize the curriculum, including everything we know, and everything we do not know, about the dangers our planet faces, our bodies and spirits face, and the potential for creative imagination inherent in each student and demanded by every force contending against our well-being.
And we need to stop trying to replicate the past, with our "standardized testing" to make the politicians and the replicators happy, and returned to office. We must stop holding our schools, colleges and universities hostage to the needs of the "establishment" because they have proven conclusively that they cannot be trusted to even consider goals, in both content and pedagogy, that are appropriate to the individual student, not to mention to the long-term aspirations of the society, exclusive of its need and desire for money.
And that is another reduction "up with which we will not put" nor will the students.
We fail our students by reducing "sex" education to "morality" and "body parts."
We fail our students by reducing the management of money to economics 101 without showing, first, how the economy must serve the students and citizens, and not the other way round.
We also fail our students by refusing to design and deliver a wholistic curriculum around the creating, sustaining and adapting to changing circumstances in RELATIONSHIPS! Little wonder there is at least a 40% failure rate in our fmaily relationships.
If that were the rate of failure in our schools in the subjects they are currently teaching, there would be ratepayers tearing down the school doors in every town and hamlet across the country.
And yet, that is one of the measurements of today's schools: we fail at least that percent of students who have no idea how to communicate, how to read symbolically, how to negotiate with both peers and with authority, how to create and improvise with raw materials, for any project, and how to capture their dreams in a cogent and creative manner.
And so they wander about "connecting" with digital instruments that serve primarily as distractions, and certainly not as provocateurs of new ideas. While they also remain the most alienated, and isolated generation yet to appear. And that's not THEIR fault; it is our's. We have failed them!
An influential statement of the classical position was made by William Morris in a famous lecture on The Beauty of Life given at the Town Hall, Birmingham, (Alabama) in 1880. He spoke of the 'danger that the present course of civilization will destroy the beauty of life,' and that 'the civilized world' will forget 'that there had ever been an art made by the people for the people as a joy to the maker and the user'. He struck the populist note that 'You cannot educate, you cannot civilize men, unless you can give them a share in art.' (Lionel Tiger, The Manufacture of Evil, p. 304)
Here is a comment from one who has taught secondary school and has gone through the conventional school system, including undergraduate and graduate schools (obviously a male!):
The problem is the school system itself: the Classroom setting is no good. Sitting, staring at the front, being lectured. It doesn't work. Especially for boys who in general are very high-energy and filled with hormones. Perhaps some kind of curriculum designed to take that into account. I a not a someone with a myriad of academic qualifications to suggest the best way to design curriculum, but I think the general schema would be to make it more experiential, more physical and more dynamic (in that the classroom isn't locked into one place).

Thanks to an unforgettable male mentor, WHG!

Although my male teachers were extremely important, male supervisors in summer, part-time work were also significant, as they are to the development of most young men. Dominion Stores provided store managers, who were both demanding and fair. Canada Packers offered more money for a summer sales job, under the supervision of two exemplary salesmen, one covering the "Muskoka" side of central Ontario, the other the "Georgian Bay" side.
And then there were four summers in a local law office, supervised by one of the most intelligent, compassionate and respected human beings of my life, until then and since then. William Howell Green distinguished himself sartorially with red plaid shirts, high-cut winter boots, a cocked hat and a permanent pipe (using a permanent supply of Wakefield tobacco) and smile. He not only smiled in his face, but his voice smiled too. He was open to others, kind to all, supportive of children whose lives had been less than "wonderful," and brilliant.
Never did I notice him miss a specific detail in a file, although his demeanour would indicate his disdain of the finer points. There were times when he would, with both sarcasm and restraint, poke fun at other barristers whose courtroom deportment was excessively micro-managing, because to "Bill" this indicated a failure to distinguish "the forest from the trees."
Fortunately, he employed an outstanding senior secretary who kept his books, and diarized every single date and detailed appointment for his diary, long before anyone had ever heard of Blackberries, except those growing among the rocks along the shores of Georgian Bay.
A life-long Liberal, no doubt he would be chagrined at the current state of the Liberal Party of Canada, whose leaders included St. Laurent and Pearson in the 50's and 60's, but they were always supported by a significant team of competent, and perhaps even outstanding cabinet ministers whose egos did not prevent their seeing the big picture. Men like Mitchell Sharp, Paul Martin Sr., Edgar Benson Paul Hellyer, Robert Winters were not only competent; they were also focussed on the needs of the country, and three future prime ministers came from Pearson's cabinet. Before the days of the 24/7 news cycle, and the press's self-reduction to gossip and platitudes, the news did not have to be reduced to a 30-second sound bite. And there were opportunities to learn, at least the basic outline of a party's platform, without all the noise about silly, and inconsequential incidents, like the breakdown of Liberal Leader Ignatieff's bus on the first day of his summer tour, yesterday.
Back to Bill: he once took a case of an accused murderer, for the purpose of both defending the man and of potentially appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada, something most small-town lawyers never get the chance to do. He served as counsel to the town, to the local general hospital and as chair of the local "Yes" committee on the town's plebescite to permit alcohol to be served with meals in public dining rooms. Parry Sound was, I believe, the last town to hold such a vote, the results of which were favourable to the 'yes' side.
It was Bill Green who unceremoniously hired an excellent secretary from the local first nations band, demonstrating his conviction to social justice, to equality of opportunity and to the local band council.
His home was only a few feet on the mainland side of the 'swing bridge' connecting Rose Point with Parry Island, the first nations reserve. Bill never attracted or sought the limelight and never fell victim to the anger of racist bigots who would consider him an appropriate target for their venom.
A progressive, in what many have called "the most conservative town in Ontario," Bill Green epitomized decency, integrity, good humour, intellectual rigour and vigour, maturity of both mind and spirit and left a legacy of friends/clients/colleagues, of all groups in the community. His capacity to embrace all individual members of his community was unmatched by many in his profession, while he practiced. I have no idea what my life might have been without his understated influence. To all the members of his family, I owe deep debt of gratitude, humility and reverence for sharing this man who fathered, husbanded and shepherded all whom he met.

Male Teachers mean everything to male students...a mini bio!

There is an irony that may not be obvious to some, about the process males go through to learn. For all the talk about the absence of emotions, and the absence of compassion and empathy in males, it is precisely the trait of "connecting" with a teacher that can be counted on to stimulate and to motivate a male child to learn.
Male children watch their male role models with intense scrutiny, examining their shoes, the way they tie their ties, the way they comb their hair, their walk including its 'swagger' or its bent shoulders, the way they hold their finger at their lip when they speak, especially when they are at the front of the class.
Men who are curious, and ask a lot of questions will generate profound (if unrevealed) admiration among their male students or players on a sports team. That admiration may alsoreveal itself in good-natured dissing of the very quality they admire most, the penetrating curiousity of the male mentor, teacher, coach.
Having experience female teachers from grade one through six, I confronted my first male teacher in grade seven and only months ago, while purchasing gas in that same town, I ran into him at the pump, after fifty years, for the very first time. And we reminisced about the trip he and another male teacher organized to Toronto's Royal Winter Fair, to Simpson's restaurant, to the gaping hole of the under-construction subway, around which the Toronto Telegram photographer took the picture of all 91 of us, who have travelled all night, by train for the adventure.
And every other male teacher is fully inscribed in my memory in a similar manner, indellibly. The grade nine history and english teacher, who later transferred to Phys. Ed. and became a highly successful basketball coach, who deeply humbled me the night before he died, by requesting that I brush his hair, while visiting with another of his students, from a different era in his career. The grade nine and ten math teacher whose suits, hair and shoes were, in a word, impeccable, as was his command of his subject, and of his classroom. Everyone there will never forget the moment he had had enough of public address announcements invading his classroom, through the speaker mounted high on the side wall, above the blackboard. Although a mere 5'7", in climbed on his chair, reached his arms as high as he could and ripped the box from the wall, smiling surreptitiously, with the words, "That should keep them quiet for a little while!"
The grade eleven physics teacher who, while returning the Christmas exam papers, commented ever so quietly, without causing embarrassment to me as he handed me a mark of 74, "When are you going to start to work?" When he returned the Easter papers, he uttered not a word, only smiled, as he passed me the 87. You see, he had struck a note, by ever-so-slightly embarrassing me, privately. "I'll show him, I pondered for the next several months, whenever there was a physics experiment, test or exam to get ready for.
And there were the grade eleven, twelve and thirteen English teachers, all male, and so different as to make a veritable cast of a play...the first a thespian, in Hardy Amies suits, a six-foot-four wacy blonde haired elocutionist who not know knew his literature and his composition, but enjoyed every minute of every classes' attention and growth; the second (grade twelve) a house-mate of the first, a rumpled five-foot-seven or eight, half bald, with a smile as wide as the St. Lawrence, and eyes that danced from student to student, flirting momentarily with the sight of a bird landing on the limb just outside the classroom, at which moment, he would stop his examination of the Shakespearean play of the day, and utter his amazement at the sight and musical lyricism of the bird. And the third, a six-foot-two former military officer, who spoke in clipped words, phrases and telegraphic sentences, as his prepared his charges for their departmental examinations.
It was a cosmic gift to have spent so much time with those men, all of them, because they informed my gestalt of what it means to be a male. I did not even know the word "gay" in 1959 when I left high school and wandered the campus of Western, in London.

And there I was blessed, once again, by another English scholar, a protege of Northrup Frye, having completed his doctorate by the age of twenty-four, on Virginia Woolf.  His name, John Wichello Graham, originally from Winnipeg, son of another university professor, who, because of a birth defect that left his one arm permanently bent, was unable to engage in the sports of his heart's desire, turned instead to books, to literature and to a life of teaching at the university. He, boldly and bravely, rejected the "publish or perish" mantra that hung around so many of his peers' necks, insisting instead, that this full attention be dedicated to his students, his lectures and his shepherding of those students, of which I am proud to say I was one.

Statscan Reports Drop-out Rate Declining

High school drop-out rate High school drop-out rate falls to less than ten percent

•Drop-out rates have declined significantly in Canada. During the 1990/1991 school year, the first year for which drop-out rates can be calculated using the Labour Force Survey, the rate was 16.6% for 20- to 24-year-olds. By 2006/2007, the drop-out rate had fallen to 9.3%, representing 205,000 people aged 20 to 24 without a high school diploma, and who were no longer attending school.
•Dropping out is becoming less common in all parts of Canada, but the decline has been most apparent in Eastern Canada. In Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as in Prince Edward Island, the drop-out rate over the most recent three school years averaged 9%, among the lowest in Canada, while it used to be among the highest in the early 1990s, at around 20%. Drop-out rates also fell sharply in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
•Although drop-out rates have declined in recent years, there are still pockets where rates remain relatively high. Rural areas, for example, tend to have higher drop-out rates than urban parts of Canada. Boys are still more likely than girls to drop out.