Baeten says, "We all came together and decided what we wanted our graduates to look like, what qualities we wanted them to have. So, things like: respects women, flexible, resilient — all of these."This school is in Berkeley, California, and the report is from NPR.
One of the ways that the school is trying to upend tradition is by re-inventing shop class for the 21st century. In fact, they don't even call it "shop." At the East Bay School for Boys, it goes by a different name: "work."
David Clifford, the school's director of innovation, explains why: "We moved away from the language of shop because it has a history behind it, where for decades now, shop has been considered second or third tier in education, where first tier is academics."
July 28, 2014
"The East Bay School is not a traditional boys school, aimed at reinforcing typical ideas of what it means to 'be a man.'"
"The school's director, Jason Baeten, says that the goal is instead to create an educational space where boys can make mistakes, be vulnerable and learn to be self-reliant."
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Quote: David Clifford, the school's director of innovation, explains why: "We moved away from the language of shop because it has a history behind it, where for decades now, shop has been considered second or third tier in education, where first tier is academics.
I think Mr. Clifford is exactly right. Go the link and read the follow-up paragraphs.
As an academic track kid in high school I've wondered since why my art class electives were always blessed, but no one ever suggested that I take drafting. That was in another wing of the building. It was physically apart as well as socially.
and learn to be self-reliant
How is that upsetting the male apple-cart in a country that loves it's individualism. Well, half of it does, anyway, and not the Berkeley/NPR half.
As an academic track kid in high school I've wondered since why my art class electives were always blessed, but no one ever suggested that I take drafting. That was in another wing of the building. It was physically apart as well as socially.
How much of that was the building or the word "shop", and how much the attitude of your "academic" and "artistic" teachers/advisors/administrators? In my high school?
Lance wrote: How much of that was the building or the word "shop", and how much the attitude of your "academic" and "artistic" teachers/advisors/administrators? In my high school?
It was all about attitude, of course. Language is the errand-boy of attitude. Althouse's quote encourages us to get hung up on language when what it is important is the attempt to change attitude.
This attitude continues into higher education. It's utterly bizarre how divorced the academic fine arts education is from graphic and industrial design.
The main issue with the professional educators running schools is that they've separated academics from most everyday, real world hands-on practical application. Math and science should be tied into and made mandatory with the hands-on in shop, drafting and making things via long term projects.
How do you think the shelters got built at Jonestown?
Just kidding, up to a point.
For the Bay Area, and the hyphenated-name crowd at NPR, this is probably a win for the boys..
The 'Patriarchy' and traditional Christian notions of man, women, nature and human nature are sufficiently suppressed, and loony hippie communalism and more virulent Leftist ideologies don't seem too strongly expressed.
I'm guessing a lot of folks would be happy with this kind of less intrusive, Europeanish tiering and 'aimed' maleness.
As long as they run the school and the budget...
Problems arise when, unsurprisingly, given human nature, they want to tell you how to run your house, schools and your budget.
At least they can see self-reliance from where they stand.
PRINCIPAL MOSS: We don't have money for all these fancy teaching aids, like wood.
HANK HILL: You know, the Carl Moss I knew wouldn't --
PRINCIPAL MOSS: Give it a rest, Hank. All parents care about these days is zero-tolerance drug policies and literacy. "Why can't Johnny read? Why can't Johnny read?" God, that gets old.
HANK: But Carl, shop is the foundation of all learning. And I tell you what, a youngster with a tool in both hands has no hands left to do drugs.
PRINCIPAL MOSS: They can put the tools down if they want to do the drugs bad enough.
Just think: Maybe if Billy Jeff and young Barry Soetoro had had this kind of supportive environment while growing-up, they wouldn't have had to fill the dad-hole with higher office-ambition later on.
Happy workers in the hive.
Then again, maybe not. Maybe it just makes men dependent on collective principles for longer who resentmmore deeply, delaying many other true things about the world they'll come to find out.
Is that kind of speculation Althousian enough?
"The real important part about being a man is taking accountability for your actions, living your life really fully in a really present way and loving people fully."
What the frack does that mean?
And really fully... really present...people fully
I really hope this guy really isn't really one of the teachers fully...
We want to teach normal American values by getting away from traditional normal American values. I see how that works, in a reverse psychology kind of way. No, I take that back...I think it's drivel.
If blue collar trades are called "work", what do they call the white collar vocations?
SGT Ted said...
The main issue with the professional educators running schools is that they've separated academics from most everyday, real world hands-on practical application. Math and science should be tied into and made mandatory with the hands-on in shop, drafting and making things via long term projects.
The reason for that is simple - most academics have little or no real world experience outside of the classroom. This isn't new - I noticed the same thing 40 years ago in high school. Almost all of my teachers had never worked in the field they were teaching. They couldn't tell you how or why something was used in the real world because they didn't know.
Tim,
I think you may be looking for pink-collar work. Light pink and/or light green collars.
A New Class of people conceivably going to schools like these, maybe to Berkeley, then to the Kennedy School, then the bureaucracy and in and out of universities and perhaps even the media.
Generally pro-progress, feminist, environmentalist, but tempered by realpolitik and some realism. Supporting global wellness, human rights, private-public partnerships, international cooperation and global leadership.
It's already here, pretty much.
We created industries, won world wars, put people on the moon, invented the internet. The educational system that produced the men who produced those advancements was what we would today view as primitive and unfair and reliant on rote memorization.
The new ways are not working as well as hoped.
Traditional boys schools aimed at reinforcing typical ideas of what it means to "be a man" were actually highly successful in molding boys into actual men.
Language is the errand-boy of attitude.
You've spent too much time in the library, and not enough in the shop.
"We all came together and decided what we wanted our graduates to look like,…"
Then The Crack Emcee handed us a box of tissues and called us pervs,...
We created industries, won world wars, put people on the moon, invented the internet. The educational system that produced the men who produced those advancements was
... largely not the American public school system.
Honestly, if you subtract out the European-born, self-taught, and/or privately-educated men and women from 20th century American history, there isn't all that much innovation left. No Thomas Edison, no Henry Ford, no Manhattan Project or Apollo program, etc.
"As a private school in the Bay Area, though, East Bay is not cheap. Families pay more than $21,000 a year to send their sons here. But they've also made an effort to make sure their vision of masculinity isn't just for the privileged. More than half of students here get some type of tuition assistance. More than 70 percent come here from public schools. And nearly half of the boys here identify as non-white or mixed race."
My Window Dressing alert went off with that.
And believe me, to the extent I ever learned what masculinity is, my education started after I finished my all male private high school.
I notice the very first thing the director mentions as a goal of his school is to teach the boys "to respect women." Another school for boys defined in terms of its relationship to women. We would go nuts if someone started a school for girls whose primary goal was to teach the girls "to respect men."
If we are going to teach the boys anything, how about teaching character, courage, responsibility, a work ethic, self-reliance? Why do boys' schools have to be all about girls?
tim maguire said...
If blue collar trades are called "work", what do they call the white collar vocations?
Soul crushing servitude.
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