culture – wax

April 19, 2018March 12, 2022 C von Lersner assumptions, attention, culture, education, identity, prejudice, productivity, purpose, self-construction, self-organization

Space for that

One of the ways we cripple our children is to assume that there's nothing going on inside their heads …

March 3, 2018November 22, 2022 C von Lersner accountability, assessment, culture, education, standardization

Public education: mass producing the indolent consumer

I have a friend, a teacher educator, who alternates between amusement and despair: at the chasms between teacher training curricula and current research on teaching & learning, on the one hand … and between research on teaching & learning and the school quality measures that drive teacher education curricula, on the other. Climate change ain't … Continue reading Public education: mass producing the indolent consumer

March 2, 2018March 2, 2021 C von Lersner culture, self-organization

Human culture as murmuration

I've begun to consider the starling murmuration as a metaphor for human culture. It's a spontaneously self-organizing group comprised of individuals that appear to be completely autonomous but nevertheless both respond to one another and contribute to the shape and flow and direction of the whole. The individual's behavior doesn't make sense outside the context … Continue reading Human culture as murmuration

January 23, 2018January 24, 2018 C von Lersner assessment, culture, education

Self Directed Learning: liberation or neglect?

Opponents of Self Directed Learning sometimes liken SDL to abandonment, but it is nothing of the kind.

January 4, 2018January 25, 2018 C von Lersner culture

Guilt and Shame, Science and Society, and the Tiny, Little White Man on your shoulder

Young people, in 2018, American society, are embedded in multiple, overlapping, yet often completely incompatible and incoherent layers of cultural experiences characterized by a panoply of incompatible and incoherent Standards, Rules, and Goals.

December 1, 2017February 4, 2018 C von Lersner adolescence, culture, mental health

Sovereign teens

Every day, new and disheartening reports of the poor mental health of American adolescents roll across our social media feeds. In numbers never before seen, American teens are experiencing inconsolable anger, anxiety, and depression. We want to believe that emotional downturn is an unavoidable and universally experienced aspect of a normal developmental stage: adolescents have … Continue reading Sovereign teens

February 14, 2017February 6, 2018 C von Lersner adolescence, culture, identity

i’m brown, too, dammit!

I have a lot of concern (bordering on obsession) for the people in this country whose equal status is theoretically guaranteed by the law, but who continue to experience discrimination and rejection, to which persons of more privileged status often stand in silent witness. As the blind and the ignorant among us slowly awaken to the widespread injustice … Continue reading i’m brown, too, dammit!