Pendulums

Pendulums have been on my mind lately, and not just because my middle school science students are repeating Galileo's famous pendulum experiments.

I've been thinking about pendulums in education.

When my parents were teaching one of the big pendulum swings happening was the phonics vs whole language conversation. Education seems to constantly have pendulum swings where we move from one extreme to another. (Read these two articles if you feel like reviewing more pendulum swings. 1 and 2.)

I worry that we're in the middle of another series of pendulum swings.

My experience tells me that in almost every case the middle road has been better than swinging to one or the other side. It's not either/or but both/and. To use the example above, the best way to learn to read is with phonics and whole language not just one or the other.

The two pendulum swings that are on my radar at the moment are the use of technology in the classroom and PBL.

I know that I can easily swing too far to the side of using technology too much. In fact, for one year I even deliberately did just that. The very first year I had a 1-1 classroom I chose to do everything digitally. I knew it was a bad idea even when I started it. But I wanted to find out firsthand which places the technology would prove to be a bad idea. (Colouring maps using the fill tool in a paint program does not help you learn the shape of the country of France anywhere near as well as colouring it with pencil crayons!) I very quickly began to swing back toward the middle trying to find a balance between using digital tools and more traditional tools which is where we should be. The problem that I see now is a growing reaction against technology. We have been discovering and experiencing the negatives that come with using technology. This has led to a reaction where we are sometimes avoiding the use of technology when we can and even should be using it.

The other pendulum I wonder about is how quickly the Christian school community that I work in is adopting PBL. (If you aren't familiar with PBL I highly recommend the Buck Institute for Education. They do a great job of explaining and supporting PBL.) I loved when I was first exposed to the PBL model. It gave me a language and structure to begin to understand some of my own stumbling experiments in trying to make education more relevant to my students. There are so many of the ideas and processes around PBL that are fantastic. But as we rush to an all PBL, all the time style of schooling what are we leaving behind? I really don't know the answer, and I could easily be wrong. Perhaps it isn't a pendulum swing at all. But it feels like it to me.