Three Things I Used to Think About School Reform
A couple of years ago, Deborah Meier, whose thinking frequently encourages me to slow down and go deeper,was musing about changing one's mind. Her reflections were inspired by a meme frequently used in workshops by Richard Elmore, who asks participants to write down what they used to think--and how those beliefs had changed. Elmore's first example of a "used to" totally blew me away:
I used to think that policy was the solution. And now I think that policy is the problem.
Stirred by Meier and Elmore, I wrote my own "used to/but now" contribution, and posted it. About an hour after it went up, I got a concerned e-mail from a good friend, wondering if maybe I needed a listening ear--or a stiff drink. Wow, he said. That's the most depressing thing you've ever written. He may have been right--it was a chronicle of my broken educational dreams, pretty much.
Elmore has now edited a book in which 20 revered educators go through the same assignment. It's an exercise in learning, he says: "It strikes me as ironic that in a field nominally devoted to the development of capacities to