Svein Osterud hopes to write about Postman's relevance for students who seek "world citizenship."

How about this?

================
"From   svein.osterud@iped.uio.no

Thank you very much for your initiative. I feel honored that you have used my 2005 conference paper which I did not even know  was available on the net. The poster is great and summarizes my interpretation of Postman´s legacy.

Next term I hope to embark on a  chapter about curriculum development in Norway around the turn of the century. Then I will definitely return to Postman´s books, and I may be able to publish a text about his relevance to "education for the world citizenship".
I tried to remind my research colleagues about the importance of Postman´s perspectives on education in the last decades of the 20th century, but they are far more technology-oriented than me, and they hesitate to engage in a more humanistic project like the one you invite us to participate in.
I would be very pleased if you could keep me informed about what is happening in the project.

S. Osterud

svein.osterud@iped.uio.no

=================================

YOU CAN WRITE TO Dr. Osterud at   svein.osterud@iped.uio.no   and you can post notes to encourage his colleagues to take a look at Neil Postman's warnings about the effect of electronic technologies on the mind.   See also "Dimitri Christians media child mind tedx"  and click LIKE   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoT7qH_uVNo

NPR report  http://www.npr.org/2015/09/11/439192407/when-it-comes-to-kids-is-all-screen-time-equal

http://www.rootsofaction.com/are-we-over-stimulating-young-children-dimitri-christakis/

EXCERPT:  The impact of media is a growing topic of research. And for good reason.  

In 1970, the average age at which children watched television was four years old. Today, the average age is four months. The typical child before the age of five is watching 4 ½ hours of television per day, 40% of their waking hours!

Recent studies on the impact of media have linked television to the over-stimulation of an infant’s brain, leading to the development of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in young children.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, says that in the first two years of life, the brain triples in size. Connections that form in the brain, or synapses, are based on early life experiences. Prolonged exposure to rapid image changes during these first years of critical brain development preconditions the mind to expect high levels of stimulation. This, in turn, leads to inattention in later years. Studies on the impact of media have shown that the more kids watch TV before the age of three, the more likely they are to have attention problems in school.

CLICK HERE to download the POSTMAN QUESTIONS from TAASA

Neil Postman died in 2003. His questions about the impact of technology on our minds continue to echo

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 
                                
• • • • • • Whose problem is it?
• What new problems might be created by solving the original problem?
• Which people and what institutions will be most seriously harmed by this new technology?
• What changes in language are being forced by these new technologies?
• What sort of people and institutions gain special economic and political power from this new technology?
• What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBlfPhsrvtw

This video was recommended by Mario Llorente Leyva.

To communicate with Mario, write to MarioPatriot@yahoo.com

This is an online ongoing conference and you, as a visitor, are encouraged to participate by contacting posters and by sending responses and original blog posts to ManyPosters@gmail.com.

go ahead, read the book.   www.TINYURL.com/50taasa

Use this procedure when you present the Postman Questions to your students

The procedure used by Mario Llorente to distribute the Postman Questions in September 2016.

DO NOT announce the project to the whole class.   The purpose is for the students to discuss.  This is a "whisper campaign."  Let the students know individually that their responses to these questions is VERY IMPORTANT and you are planning to put their answers into a book and on websites, either with their names or anonymously, whatever they want, or their responses can be kept off the Internet.  But you can whisper that "this is very important."
Start by downloading the Postman Questions.  
www.TINYURL.com/postmanquestions
Step 1:  Print the questions.  For a class of 20-30 students, make two copies of each question.
Step 2:  Find the sheet that reads "Rules for Replying to the Postman Questions"  The sheet has these points:

[1]  You can decide to do this now, or you can wait until later next week.   
[2]  You can write now or you can take the question home with you. 
[3]  If you want, you can look at the internet to get some more ideas before you start replying.   
[4]  I can send you the full list of questions if you want to see them. 
[5]  If you want to do this, please take your time and there is no time limit.

Step 3:  Spread the questions on a desk.  Assign classwork so that the students are occupied.  Ideally, you already use projects in your class and the students are working as if you don't exist (Maria Montessori's goal).  Call one student at a time to your desk and speak quietly.  Inform each student with the following message:  

"This is an optional activity.  you don't have to do it.  If you put effort into your answer, I'll give you academic credit.  The purpose is to introduce you to questions that a great teacher asked me to give to you.   You can decide to do this now, or you can wait until later next week.   You can write now or you can take the question home with you.  If you want, you can look at the internet to get some more ideas before you start replying.   I can send you the full list of questions if you want to see them.   If you want to do this, please take your time and there is no time limit.  If you don't see something that you want to write about, you can write about anything that you want to write about.   I'll give you academic credit for your essay."

Step 4:  When the students submit their answers, then you take photos of each piece and insert the answers in a book.  Collect the answers and create a book of "Responses to the Neil Postman Questions."   You can see examples of the first edition with writings by Mario's students by going to TinyURL.com/BoiseWorkbook2.

Noah Kagan's book report captures the essence of Neil Postman's message and shows why Postman's questions from Chapter 5 remain useful.

Noah Kagan's book report is an excellent summary about WHY Neil Postman remains relevant.  

Book Report: Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman

APRIL 15, 2008 - GET FREE UPDATES OF NEW POSTS HERE

With so much discussion about my education post last week on education I thought many people would enjoy reading my summary of Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman. I got this book from Jared and must say it’s one of my favorite books of all-time. I included a lot of details because there was so much juicy stuff from this. If you make it all the way through I promise you it’ll be worth it.   (A SECOND BLOG post appeared a week earlier)

CLICK HERE to read the full report

The poster here is inspired by an incident.
Isa Greppi's son texted this message to her in 2012 go tohttp://www.50YearsofsubversiveTeaching.blogspot.com and download the free ebook. www.TINYURL.com/postmanquestions

These questions appear in Chapter 5 of Postman's book

Reflect on these questions - and others that these can generate. Please do not merely react to them.
What do you worry about most?

What are the causes of your worries?
Can any of your worries be eliminated? How?
Which of them might you deal with first? How do you decide?
Are there other people with the same problems? How do you know? How
can you find out?
If you had an important idea that you wanted to let everyone (in the
world) know about, how might you go about letting them know?
What bothers you most about adults? Why?
How do you want to be similar to or different from adults you know when
you become an adult?
What, if anything, seems to you to be worth dying for?
How did you come to believe this?
What seems worth living for?
How did you come to believe this?
At the present moment, what would you most like to be - or be able to do?
Why? What would you have to know in order to be able to do it? What would you have to do in order to get to know it?
How can you tell 'good guys' from 'bad guys'?
How can 'good' be distinguished from 'evil'?
What kind of a person would you most like to be? How might you get to
be this kind of person?
At the present moment, what would you most like to be doing?
Five years from now? Ten years from now? Why? What might you have to
do to realize these hopes? What might you have to give up in order to do some or all of these things?
When you hear or read or observe something, how do you know what it means?
Where does meaning 'come from'?
What does 'meaning' mean?
How can you tell what something 'is' or whether it is?
Where do words come from?
Where do symbols come from?
Why do symbols change?
Where does knowledge come from?
What do you think are sane of man's most important ideas?
Where did they come from? Why? How? Now what?
What's a 'good idea'?
How do you know when a good or live idea becomes a bad or dead idea? Which of man's ideas would we be better off forgetting? How do you
decide?

What is 'progress'?
What is 'change'?
What are the most obvious causes of change? What are the least apparent?
What conditions are necessary in order for change to occur?
What kinds of changes are going on right now? Which are important? How
are they similar to or different from other changes that have occurred? What are the relationships between new ideas and change?
Where do new ideas come from? How come? So what?
If you wanted to stop one of the changes going on now (pick one), how
would you go about it? What consequences would you have to consider?
Of the important changes going on in our society, which should be encouraged and which resisted? Why? How? What are the most important changes that have occurred in the past ten years? Twenty years? Fifty years? In the last year? In the last six months? Last month? What will be the most important changes next month? Next year? Next decade? How can you tell? So what?
What would you change if you could? How might you go about it? Of those changes, which are going, to occur, which would you stop if you could? Why? How? So what?
Who do you think has the most important things to say today? To whom? How? Why?
What are the dumbest and more dangerous ideas that are 'popular' today? Why do you think so? Where did these ideas come from?
What are the conditions necessary for life to survive? Plants? Animals? Humans?
Which of these conditions are necessary for all life
Which ones for plants? Which ones for animals? Which ones for humans? What are the greatest threats to all forms of life? To plants? To animals?
To humans?
What are some of the 'strategies' living things use to survive'? Which unique to plants? Which unique to animals? Which unique to
humans?
What kinds of human survival strategies are (1) similar to those of animals
and plants; (2) different from animals and plants?
What does man's language permit him to develop as survival strategies that
animals cannot develop?
How might man's survival activities be different from what they are if he
did not have language?
What other 'languages' does man have besides those consisting of words?

What functions do these 'languages' serve? Why and how do they originate? Can you invent a new one? How might you start?
What would happen, what difference would it make, what would man not be able to do if he had no number (mathematical) languages?
How many symbol systems does man have? How come? So what? What are some good symbols? Some bad?
What good symbols could we use that we do not have?
What bad symbols do we have that we'd be better off without?
What's worth knowing? How do you decide? What are some ways to go
about getting to know what's worth knowing?

It is necessary for us to say at once that these questions are not intended to present a catechism for the new education. These are samples and illustrations of the kinds of questions we think worth answering. Our set of questions is best regarded as a metaphor of our sense of relevance. If you took the trouble to list your own questions, it is quite possible that you prefer many of them to ours. Good enough. The new education is a process and will not suffer from the applied imaginations of all who wish to be a part of it. But in evaluating your own questions, as well as ours, bear in mind that there are certain standards that must be used. These standards may also be stated in the form of questions:
Will your questions increase the learner's will as well as his capacity to learn?
Will they help to give him a sense of joy in learning?
Will they help to provide the learner's with confidence in his ability to learn?
In order to get answers, will the learner be required to make inquiries? (Ask further questions, clarify terms, make observations, classify data, etc.?)
Does each question allow for alternative answers (which implies alternative modes of inquiry)
Will the process of answering the questions tend to stress the uniqueness of the learner?
Would the questions produce different answers if asked at different stages of the learner's development?
Will the answers help the learner to sense and understand the universals in the human condition and so enhance his ability to draw closer to other people?

If the answers to these questions about your list of questions are all. Yes, then you are to be congratulated for insisting upon extremely high standards

in education. If that seems an unusual compliment, it is only because we have all become accustomed to a conception and a hierarchy of standards that, in our opinion, is learner's simultaneously upside-down and irrelevant.


From Neil Postman's book   Teaching as a Subversive Activity

QUOTES from a SUBVERSIVE BOOK: Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business

ADVISORIES

I saw this question, asked as if I would get a reply: “Why do these people at school care so much?”
I wonder now why I would ask such a silly question. The answer was shown to me every day at The Met. I had a family at school. The same stu- dents were in my advisory for the full four years. We built a close bond with each other and with our advisor, Charlie. (It would have been awkward to call him “Mr. Plant,” like students do at traditional schools. It just wasn’t The Met way.) All of us referred to our advisor by his first name, and our advisory was “Charlie’s Angels.” We would have dance sessions together, celebrate birthdays, do mock trials, and reflect on what we accomplished over the course of each week. It was a support network that couldn’t be broken. I felt comfortable letting my advisory know about what bothered me or how I felt, and our relationships with each other grew throughout the years.
My family is amazed at how I am still involved with The Met. I am in col- lege now, an alumna from the first graduating class, and even today, I get phone calls from Charlie, letters, care packages, and even access to my old school. I feel that I am always welcome there.
I sometimes wonder where I would be now without the support I got from my high school. I was fortunate enough to have people who believed in me. My attitude changed toward myself and toward others. At The Met, I learned that to make my learning real, I had to do something. And I did.
The Met gave me the opportunity to shine. The people there saw me as a kid with potential. In a traditional school setting, I would have been given low scores . . . or I might have even failed out. Truly, I think that The Met helped me develop the strength to persevere through the hardships I’ve faced in my life. It feels good to know that there, I mattered as a student and as an individual, and that the people cared too much about me to leave me behind.
Mareourn Yai
The Met, Class of 2000
Lesley University, Class of 2005



=============== 


pages 62-66   SKIP TO THE BOTTOM

Hello students

1.  if you want to be published on Amazon, reply to one of the questions listed in the tinyURL.com/postmanquestions    or just send me an email message.

2.  here is a sample of how I blog about student responses.

https://medium.com/@stevetlamacrae/cariann-e-f47236eb77c0#.edyswchwl

Thank you for giving me your email addresses.

TODAY, I ask you to click on DAVID BROWN

www.TINYURL.com/davidbrownschool.

https://50yearsofsubversiveteaching.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-postman-questions-at-oxbridge.html

If you want to join the revolution happening at High Tech High (which is almost a PARENT to Oxbridge), then visit these youtube videos

Oprah and Bill Gates at High Tech High

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF06lpwC-ho

please click

==============  

If you want to be part of the book, the third edition of the book, then visit www.TINYURL.com/boiseworkbook2  and see what the questions look like

here is a list of "JUST THE QUESTIONS"

www.tinyurl.com/postmanquestions

here is the book that Dennis Y gave me in 1997.

Here is the info that got my attention.  Chapter 12

www.TINYURL.com/50taasa

3. Try listening to your students for a day or two. We do not mean reacting to what they say. We mean listening. This may require that you do some  role-playing. Imagine, for example, that you are not their teacher but a 

psychiatrist (or some such person) who is not primarily trying to teach but

who is trying to understand. Any questions you ask or remarks you make would, therefore, not be designed to instruct or judge. They would be attempts to clarify what someone has said. If you are like most teachers, your training has probably not included leaning how to listen. Therefore, we would recommend that you obtain a copy of On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers. The book is a collation of Rogers's best articles and speeches.

Rogers is generally thought of as the leading exponent of non-directive counseling, and he is a rich source of ideas about listening to and understanding other people. You probably will not want to read every article in the" book, but do not overlook 'Communication: its blocking and facilitation'. In this article Rogers describes a particularly effective technique for teaching listening: the students engage in a discussion of some issue

about which they have strong feelings. But their discussion has an unusual rule applied to it. A student may say anything he wishes but only after he has restated what the previous speaker has said to that speaker's satisfaction.

Astounding things happen to students when they go through this experience. They find themselves concentrating on what others are saying to the point, sometimes, of forgetting what they themselves were going to say. In some

cases, students have a unique experience. They find that they have projected themselves into the frame of mind of another person. You might wish to make this special listening game a permanent part of your weekly lessons.

YOU HAVE A REMARKABLE TEACHER>  .... he is my mentor and I learn everytime I talk with him.

He has made an error.  He replied to me, "Students won't read books."   So I'm attaching a second book, the book about Advisories.

ADVISORIES

A letter about Advisories form page 54

I saw this question, asked as if I would get a reply: “Why do these people at school care so much?”

I wonder now why I would ask such a silly question. The answer was shown to me every day at The Met. I had a family at school. The same stu- dents were in my advisory for the full four years. We built a close bond with each other and with our advisor, Charlie. (It would have been awkward to call him “Mr. Plant,” like students do at traditional schools. It just wasn’t The Met way.) All of us referred to our advisor by his first name, and our advisory was “Charlie’s Angels.” We would have dance sessions together, celebrate birthdays, do mock trials, and reflect on what we accomplished over the course of each week. It was a support network that couldn’t be broken. I felt comfortable letting my advisory know about what bothered me or how I felt, and our relationships with each other grew throughout the years.

My family is amazed at how I am still involved with The Met. I am in col- lege now, an alumna from the first graduating class, and even today, I get phone calls from Charlie, letters, care packages, and even access to my old school. I feel that I am always welcome there.

I sometimes wonder where I would be now without the support I got from my high school. I was fortunate enough to have people who believed in me. My attitude changed toward myself and toward others. At The Met, I learned that to make my learning real, I had to do something. And I did.

The Met gave me the opportunity to shine. The people there saw me as a kid with potential. In a traditional school setting, I would have been given low scores . . . or I might have even failed out. Truly, I think that The Met helped me develop the strength to persevere through the hardships I’ve faced in my life. It feels good to know that there, I mattered as a student and as an individual, and that the people cared too much about me to leave me behind.

Mareourn Yai

The Met, Class of 2000
Lesley University, Class of 2005

page iv.

Page 62 to 66

The Advisory System
I used to think that creating an advisory system was the core of my vision for changing the way schools are structured. I now see there are a

61

Atmosphere and School Culture

The Big Picture

number of critical things that must be in place if we’re really committed to creating effective learning environments for kids (see this entire book). But I am still committed to the idea that an advisory system is the best structure to improve a school’s atmosphere and culture and make an already small school feel even smaller and more personalized.
George Wood talked about advisories in his piece on Thayer in Schools That Work. Here’s an excerpt I love:
Don Weisberger, a special education teacher at Thayer, describes the sys- tem’s effect this way: “Advisory in one word is communication. It makes the school smaller. . . . [Students] know someone’s there for them, they are not getting lost among all the other students. . . . In advisory we don’t talk at kids, we talk with kids.”11
There are many variations on the advisory system, from the way we did it at Shoreham-Wading River, where kids met with the same small group of students and adult every morning to “check in,” to the way we do it at The Met, where the entire school is divided into advisories of small groups of kids (I like 14) and one adult who stay together much of the day through all four years. I know that the way we do things at The Met is unique and may not be possible in all schools. But I also know that setting up a system where students have a consistent environment where they are able to truly connect with a small group of kids and one adult can radically change their entire schooling experience. It was a shy and awkward but very bright kid who told a visitor to The Met, “I have 14 friends here. At my old school I wouldn’t have had any.” That was his advisory. An incredibly strong community of 15.

The advisory also becomes, as a lot of Met kids have described it, a second family. (Or, for some, their first true family.) At this critical time, just when most adolescents are pulling away from their own families, the high school advisory and the advisor can take on some of the roles that are necessary, literally, for the kids’ survival.
On a practical level, an advisory system provides a way to use a school’s resources more efficiently. It increases the range and kinds of communication among students and staff, and by spreading out the counseling function, makes problems more manageable and better solu- tions easier to come by. But most obviously—and most importantly—an advisory system includes an adult advisor who becomes that one true advocate every student (and every student’s family) deserves. As the (at least) one adult in the school who really knows the kid as a person and as a learner (as “the whole child”), the advisor can make sure that all the other school structures are meeting that kid’s personal and educational needs. With an advisory system, parents know exactly who can tell them how their kid is doing; they don’t have to chase down six or eight differ- ent teachers, each of whom only knows a small, subject-specific part of the big picture of their child’s education. It is no surprise that most par- ents lose interest in “parent participation” as their children reach middle school and, especially, high school. There are too many people to keep in touch with and none of them knows their child very well. With an advi- sory system, parents can be certain not only that one specific person at school is looking out for their child, but also that that one person is put- ting it all together. At a family meeting one night at The Met, one of our moms got up to introduce herself and her husband and added, “We’re in Sam’s advisory.” We, she said. The whole family was in the advisory, not just the kid. The sense of ownership and belonging she was expressing over the school and her child’s education almost made me cry.

When everyone—parents, children, and teachers—knows that the advisory is the number one priority in the school, it reinforces the notion that it’s the child that’s important, not single subject areas. In my experi- ence, having advisories affects everything, from reducing vandalism to increasing parent participation to decreasing dropouts.
The power of the advisory system has always been obvious to me, which is why we developed the entire Met structure around it. I started using advisories when I was at Shoreham-Wading River Middle School in the ’70s. Every staff member was responsible for a group of around 13 to 15 kids for a small part of the day and responsible for keeping up with them individually throughout the year. Everyone had an advisory, includ- ing the school nurse and the custodian. This system stayed in place for many years after I left Shoreham. When Joan Lipsitz visited there in 1984, she noted, “When teachers are asked what the most important aspect of their school is, they invariably point to the advisory system. As one teacher says: ‘If everything else were traditional, we would still have teachers really knowing students and being advocates, helping with everything confronting them as they become adolescents.’”12 What this says to me is that the advisory system in its most basic form really could work anywhere, if people believe in it and value its ability to ensure that every kid is known well by at least one adult in the school.
It was the advisory system that really saved me during my first year as principal at both Shoreham-Wading River and Thayer. There were so many issues to deal with, but every time something happened and I had to figure out what to do, I was able to call on the advisor and learn more about the kid involved and his or her situation. At Shoreham, we had a kid, Jake, who kept misbehaving on the bus. I thought the answer might be to remove Jake from the soccer team to show him that there were con- sequences to his actions. But talking with his advisor changed my mind. I learned more about this kid, about how important being on the soccer team was to him, and about how much it had helped him improve even to this point. Once I knew this, figuring out how to continue to improve his behavior was much easier.

As principal at Thayer, I had my own advisory. Spending my mornings with those kids just talking about their lives and their learning was the best part of my day. It was the most significant way I was able to use my time to get at the heart of what my role as principal was and how I could best support my staff and students.
I love advisories the same way I love integrated curricula and extended periods. When I got the chance to start a school from scratch (The Met), I still relied on the advisory structure, but I expanded it and my thinking to get at the real core, which is building relationships with kids. It frustrates me how few schools use the advisory system today, in whatever form, despite its documented success and obvious benefits. But then I think about what happened one year at Shoreham-Wading River, when three of our children and three of our teachers were invited to speak in another school district. These other teachers were think- ing about adopting an advisory system as a way to reduce discipline prob- lems and decrease vandalism (as Shoreham’s advisory system had been proven and reported to do). One of our kids told us later, “Those teachers said there was no time for an advisory system.” She then asked us, “No time to talk with kids!? Isn’t that the main thing about being a teacher?”

Those teachers, like too many, saw the concept of teaching as being strictly about subject matter, not about knowing who kids are, how they learn, what they want to learn, and how they feel. If a school is truly focused on creating an atmosphere that is best for kids, then an advi- sory system might not be necessary. But if a school needs to institute a structure to help put the focus on kids, then advisories are the best option.
As much as I love advisories, though, I have learned that advisories alone aren’t enough to change our education system. For example, even if every school in the United States started using advisories, most would still have to deal with a standardized curriculum. Today, teachers who are working hard to cultivate powerful, supportive relationships with their students (with or without advisories) can’t fully leverage these relationships to help students become better learners because all the other traditional structures of education, including the size of their schools, get in the way. 

Happy reading.

Steve McCrea

you can follow me on Instagram.com/manyposters

and  www.Facebook.com/theGuideontheside  

The Postman Questions at Oxbridge Academy in West Palm Beach: What will happen?

I visited the Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches.   oapb.org
They have a first class football team.

Fifteen students gave me their email addresses.

they want to know what could a visitor have to show?





Their school has ADVISORIES.  I coulnted more than 12 students ... all males ... in a class of about 30 mintues.  The teacher told students about a prediction by Tony Wagner



I couldn't believe this quote.  So I googled it.

https://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/04/rise-machines-future-lots-robots-jobs-humans/

QUICK LINK      TinyURL.com/oxbridgefuture

READ THE BLOG

By the way

Football highlights.   Look at these plays

NICE Ankle tackle

ARE YOU GOING TO ATTEND Nov. 11?

Pass at 3rd down and 5 to go

Will the field goal attempt be blocked by IMG?

Field goal went wide LEFT

David Brown gives the best description I've seen of Sudbury Schools (with a mention of Montessori and a roasting of Kanye West)

How about Sudbury Schools as subversive (contra cultural)?

David Brown has some quotes from talks with student from Sudbury and her parents.   David should have an honorary Journalism degree because he asks questions that "readers want to know."

Here is a future PARKOURS champion
from Sunset Sudbury in Florida

LINK TO VIDEO

Hilarious:  "Generic American Bald Eagle"

A parent's view:  Minute 13

What would parents think about a school where there are mixed ages in classes and students don't have to use books or bring home report cards?

What does a parent think?   "It's all about being
respectful of the student."

RESPECT   LINK   "Where do you have to get
written permission to go to the bathroom?  The only
other place is prison."

LINK

THE PIT in Stonefields, New Zealand

What would parents think about a school where there are mixed ages in classes and students don't have to use books or bring home report cards?