hold on . . .

Blogs are not for the busy, and it has occurred to me that I should get someone else to adopt this blog. I'm not ready to give up on it yet, though.

Every school I've visited recently reminds me of my high school. Maybe it's because fall is coming, or maybe it's because I'm in that pinch that comes regularly, almost seasonaly -- that pinch of realizing that you're in over your head, that things are changing faster than you are and you'll have to adapt fast. That's the pinch I was almost always in at the beginning of a school year. I tended to keep my summer job into the winter and join the drama club and debate team besides. Then I'd end up having to drop something.

I doubt, however, that I could have avoided the pinch by doing less. Life provides plenty of changes that tax our abilities to adapt.

Right now, it's that we have decided to begin developing the next generation of our products, which means hiring new curriculum developers -- and taking a gamble on new ideas. At the same time, Ellie is talking about looking for a new job. She's a musician by training, but she's currently working in an administrative role at a nonprofit. How to be supportive while not ignoring your own interests and perspective? I simply don't know if we, as a couple, have the resilience to cope with big risks and big changes in her professional life as well as mine.

"I just wish there were some connect-the-dots picture I could finish that would show me what to do ... or an equation I could solve," she said to me one night. "What do you think I should do?"

The trillion-dollar question. I changed the subject.

the republic

Last night we went to my parents' house in Chappaqua for dinner. We ended up staying late, as we usually do. My father, who has been a businessman all his working life, loves to talk about my company. He is also a great talker and I think even Ellie, who hears enough about the company as it is, enjoys these talks.

"Has running your company made you want to join the foreign legion yet?" he'll say. "What's the latest scandal?"

Then he will seriously listen to the issues I'm facing and often give me good advice.

I don't always talk about my goals for the company with my chief academic officer the way I do with my father. The fact is, in spite of my dream of reforming the classroom, I really want to preserve and revitalize the best parts of traditional education, not replace them, and it's hard to talk about this with modern educators.

For instance, while I argue for leading students to make discoveries for themselves through small lesson modules, I think that students should be able to comprehend and absorb larger narratives-and this is essential to any study of the humanities. My previous post against traditional education may seem to contradict this, but that's because I simply overstated my case.

What's more, modern educators don't give much thought to preparing students to decide how to live life. They are primarily concerned with making students more competitive as workers. This leads them not only to design narrow curriculum, but to read narrowly. I was surprised when my CAO admitted that he had never read Plato's Republic. He can tell you anything you'd like to know about Piaget or John Dewey, but he doesn't know the first thing about Plato's Republic.

"Dad, what do you think Plato would say about our educational system?"

He raised his brows and looked briefly towards his library, which was just on the other side of the hall.

"Well, I think he'd say it's a shame people aren't reading his books."

No doubt.

lose the tie

It must be obvious now that my agenda is a progressive one: we must give kids better educational tools. And you won't be surprised to learn that I am left of center politically. However, even I recognize that my tastes and lifestyle are on the conservative side.

So you can imagine how odd I looked having lunch with my sister and her new boyfriend, who wore a T-shirt and a baseball hat through lunch. I took off my tie when I saw them, but it didn't help much.
His money comes from a company he and a dorm-mate started in grad school - not Google, but actually connected. They help companies optimize adds placed in the side-bar of Google searches. They wrote and placed an ad for my company.

What my sister admires most about this man, I think, is that he is truly self-made. His father is a college professor and his mother is a psychologist. In general, I doubt whether such rapid successes can often be maintained; but in his case, I suspect that his energy and vision will continue to fuel it. Or maybe I just hope so for my sister's sake.

"I just can't imagine his life," Ellie once said. "He doesn't seem to have a passion for anything."

I wondered if she thought I had any passions.

"Of course! Education. No, trust me: you are passionate about education, whether you realize it or not."

Gratifying words.

a passing grade?

My post from last night surprised me when I read it again today. I'm not usually the type to give traditional textbooks a passing grade.

I was disturbed enough that I talked with Ellie about it. We were back in Valhalla, taking the beagle for a walk.

"Besides all the things we've known are wrong with old-fashioned teaching for fifty years, the way kids and people process information is different now. Nobody has time for huge chunks of information anymore-we're all multitasking and looking for the quickest answer to our immediate question. And that's not a bad thing: IQ scores keep going up, and people keep getting better and juggling masses of information."

Inquiry-type learning, especially when tethered to the power of computers, is much more appropriate to today's kids. Anyway, this is what I've been thinking about as my attention span is eaten away by answering a hundred e-mails everyday. This is not the kind of argument I would typically make for our approach in front of investors or fellow educators. Ellie was supportive, of course. I have to add that Ellie supports me as her companion first and foremost, and she doesn't need much convincing.

If it sounds like I think about learning more like a businessman than a teacher, there's a grain of truth in that. I find that I'm more effective guiding teachers than at teaching. But management and teaching aren't so different, especially if managers take care to hire the right people so that you never have to discipline or fire them.

In any case, I'm interested in how other people think that the peculiarities of the information age affect the way we learn. Do the old textbooks with their sustained and well-structured discussions fit with today's learning and thinking styles?

watching the river at midnight

I'm so tired I can hardly think, but I can't sleep. So I'll start a blog.

We're staying at a hotel on the 100 block of 60th street, and I can see the river out the window. Ellie's sleeping off some chocolate martinis that she drank a little too fast.

I like these times of unexpected wakefulness-even if I'd prefer to sleep-because I don't feel like I have to make any phone calls or send any e-mails. Tonight in fact I will release myself from the obligation of mentioning my company's name, and giving a link to the Web site, on introducing myself. If you want a reason,it's that I'll be able to speak more freely if I don't name my company. And when you start and manage a company, speaking freely becomes a rare treat.

I think I've worked more than 80 hours this week. Again. Sometimes I'm happy with this. But I have recurring doubts about my career. It often seems like my work doesn't exist to meet a real need-kids will get a good enough education with traditional textbooks and homework-but rather to satisfy duelling senses of obligation: the obligation to do something to improve the world, and the obligation to make sufficient money to give my kids the lifestyle that I had growing up.

I hear Ellie stirring.