(un)Inspiring Education, or using social media to give the illusion of input

With the exception of Bill 44, a great buzz and hope has been over the blogosphere that Minister Hancock’s “Inspiring Education” plan would generate some meaningful input from the Albertan public into the future of education in this province.

With a mission statement to:

What are your hopes, dreams and aspirations? For your children and grandchildren? If we are to be successful individually and collectively as a province, we need to consider how to help all Albertans realize their potential. Inspiring Education: A Dialogue with Albertans is an opportunity to shape the future of education in Alberta and we want to hear your perspective. Tell us your story. Share your opinions. Join the conversation!

The discussions will be based on five key values – opportunity, fairness, citizenship, choice and diversity – which are critical to the success of Alberta’s education system. Inspiring Education seeks ideas, suggestions and points of view from all parts of our province, from large cities to remote and rural communities; from inner-city neighbourhoods to expanding suburbs; from towns and cities experiencing the pressures of rapid growth to those dealing with the challenges of declining population.

Inspiring Education is different from a public consultation. It’s a dialogue – an exchange of ideas to change each other’s thinking about what education is and what education means. It’s about looking to the future and deciding what education in Alberta should be in twenty years. No matter who you are or where you live in Alberta, we invite you to listen and contribute to the conversation. One of the primary goals is to reach a clear understanding of what it will mean to be an educated Albertan 20 years from now. To reach that goal we need everyone’s voice.

Sounds exciting right? Who doesn’t want to have a say in the next 20 years of education in this province.

With a website of videos and media, a blog, and a twitter account, the only thing missing for a full “Web 2.0” presence is Facebook. In the community they’re holding forums at each major city.

Clearly, this must be a meaningful dialogue that can only result in substantial policy documents.

So what does the dialogue look like? We can use their convenient “Community Conversation Kit” and a story (I received by email, but was given permission to republish) from Dr. Jim Linville, who frustratingly sat through an entire session in Lethbridge (his relevant quotes on each session will be in bold).

So let’s analyze the basic structure of the “3-hour model”:

Introductions by Facilitator (10 min)

This portion is supposed to outline the goals of InspiringEd, and emphasizes the following rules:

Everyone has wisdom.

We need everyone’s wisdom for the wisest result.

There are no wrong answers.

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Everyone will hear others and be heard.

This included the usual greetings and BS and a video “Welcome” from the minister of education. And a video of some Japanese (actually mostly white folk) drum group from Edmonton playing some thing called “Harmony”. On drums. I wonder if the irony was noticed by anyone else. Anyway, the guy introduced the video with a 10 minute BS spiel about drums, heartbeats, healing, spirituality, and associated touchy feeling crap. After the video everyone (but me) applauded.
The Outcomes of the whole process was to be: 1) The awareness of the importance of education, especially for a prosperous society. 2) Development of a long term vision for education, 3) And the development of a policy framework governing the goals for the delivery of education.
Sounds pretty specific and good, eh? Well, then they showed another fucking video with more tear-jerking kids are our future crap.

Table Introductions (10 minutes)

Then we had to talk to our neighbor for 10 minutes and then introduce him/her to the rest of the people at the table.

Table Activity: Picture Activity on Past and Future Learning (20 minutes)

Then we had a section called “Past Learning–Its place in our lives” Now, this was NOT a discussion on the history of education or education policy in Alberta. No, not even close. It was “all about us”. So, the facilitator got a big chart and had us talk about “how” and “where” we learned what we know. Did you know that some people have learned things in classrooms? And from the news? And that some people have learned from their mistakes. Wow.
All of these things were put on the big chart by the facilitator and duly noted by the note taker.

Then there was the section called “The Beginning of the Story for Your Hopes, Dreams and Aspirations for the Next 20 Years”.
OK, at this point we get to say what we thing students need to know, right? WRONGO! WE GOT TO LOOK AT BIG 8×10 GLOSSY PHOTOGRAPHS WITH NUMBERS AND TITLES ON THE BACK OF EACH ONE, AND TELL THE GROUP HOW THESE MADE US FEEL ABOUT EDUCATION.

That is right, kiddies, we had to sort through a whole pile of photos: Everyone got to pick 2, that told the “story” of our own education… but some people picked 3 (bastards). Let’s see, there was a picture of a flower, a boy playing a guitar, 2 kids on a beach, kids finger painting on a wall. A group of people fixing dinner, a newly hatched baby chicken, pyramids, that kind of thing. No slinky babes (bastards).

The jargon, “accomplishment”, “hopes” “achieving”, “leadership” “victory” “dreams” etc etc were bandied about.

Table Activity (Optional): Creating and Sharing Collective Stories about Learning (10-20 minutes)

After coffee, we had to make a synthesis out of all the selected pictures, to make, as the agenda said, “Your Hopes, Dreams and Aspirations – A Collective Story”. ??? Of course, by this time, the whole affair was reduced to finding the right abstract buzzwords that could link the different pictures. I’ll bet you didn’t know that a picture of baby chicken with the remains of its egg nearby represents the same frickin’ thing as the frinkin’ pyramids, did you. Bet you didn’t want to know. And I bet you didn’t want to know your tax money was going to pay to find out.

Then we got to see the pictures 2 other tables had and then compare buzzwords (they were much the same).

Dr. Jim’s group then broke for lunch, and while I assume he followed a similar format to the rest of the 3-hour model, he describes it fairly bleakly:

We were promised that after lunch more detailed and practical discussion would take place, which is the only reason I went back, but the facilitator made sure this didn’t happen. There was another videos and this actually had some promise but nothing was made of it. In the video, a U of C education prof linked the old school system to the need to mass produce people for a newly industrialized society. Rather than just give information, education today must help students evaluate mass produced information. Very interesting. But nothing came of it. Another guy said we have to rethink the meritocracy of the old system (new forms of assessing learning etc). Again, lots of fodder for thought, but again, the fascilitator kept everyone well away from specifics (which may have ended up criticizing the government, I was beginning to suspect). The third person on the video was a big advocate of NGOs sharing the burden of education. Lots for me to get pissed off about this, as she would have had every half brained self-interest group being equally involved in public education. Again nothing happened.

Final words from Dr. Jim:

At some point the facilitator/obstacle-ator) wanted to know what we missed talking about, and I mentioned curriculum, but no one wanted to talk about that and we were shepherded away from that anyway.

Looking through the InspiringEd website, it’s easy to be impressed at first. But digging through, with some actual effort, I have to ask: Where is the substance? Where is the actual commitment to look at anything beyond the bare minimum in buzz words?

And so it starts to dawn on me: Social media, while supposedly powerful (other than supposedly electing Obama in the USA, what public policy has social media actually influenced), may in fact be more likely yet another tool that can be used by powers that be to convince the populace it has input in governance.

Think about it: if Alberta Education gave a shit about your opinion for anything that matters, wouldn’t you have heard about Bill 44’s controversial provisions before they were put before the Legislature (or any number of other controversial bills that this provincial government has put forward)?

Just because the internet is flashy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t question it.