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Schools
That Learn A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Parents, Educators, and Everyone Who Cares About Education |
| by Peter Senge, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Bryan Smith, Janis Dutton, and Art Kleiner | |
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Doubleday/Currency |
| Schools That Learn | |
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Authors of the best-selling Fifth Discipline Fieldbook describe how institutions of learning can become learning organizations, in a way that promises the revitalization of schools, classrooms and even communities around the world. "Schools may be the starkest example in modern society," says MIT educator and bestselling management writer Peter Senge, "of an entire institution modeled after the assembly line. This has dramatically increased educational capability in our time, but it has also created many of the most intractable problems with which students, teachers, and parents struggle to this day. If we want to change schools, it is unlikely to happen until we understand more deeply the core assumptions on which the industrial-age school is based." At a time when people around the world see education as the highest form of leverage to improve society, and when more people than ever are concerned about the ability of today's institutions to live up to that goal, Senge and his colleagues have released Schools That Learn. This book of almost 200 pieces of writing from more than 100 educators, parents, and students Ð represents the first coherent effort to apply the principles of the "learning organization" to institutions of learning. Schools That Learn is, in part, a kind of Whole Earth Catalog of approaches to effective school change, developed by some of the most innovative educators in America. But it is also a new and compelling twist on the debate about education in our time. Amidst arguments that schools need more money, more choice, more discipline, more standards, more experimentation, and more compassion, Schools That Learn suggests that no cookie-cutter answers will suffice. Schools are complex systems, grounded in industrial-age assumptions about learning; trapped by these assumptions, neither teachers nor administrators nor parents have the ability to change the system alone. Nor can policy makers (or the media) wreak effective change by setting standards and giving tests. Effective change can only happen by conducting long-term conversations among teachers, administrators, parents, and students Ð and by giving people the chance to act on what they have learned through those conversations. |
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The book Schools That Learn came into existence because educators demanded it. The story goes back to 1990, when Senge published The Fifth Discipline, a book on building learning organizations that has sold more than 600,000 copies since, and that the Harvard Business Review would later call "one of the five most significant business books of the 1980s and 1990s." The follow-up The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, put together by Senge and five coauthors, was a guide to hands-on implementation of the "learning organization" idea. It, too, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But in the years since, Senge and his colleagues discovered that as much as twenty-five per cent of their audience was composed of teachers and school administrators. These were people who recognized the importance of school change, and the difficulty of making it work from just a top-down orientation. Ever since, educators have regularly requested a book that focuses specifically on schools and education, and that can help reclaim schools even in depressed or ill-managed districts. Created by Senge with educators Nelda Cambron-McCabe and Timothy Lucas, "learning organization" expert Bryan Smith, and writers Janis Dutton and Art Kleiner, the book brings together practices, exercises and case studies that have been used in the field around the United States and around the world. Some articles were written by prominent educators such as Howard Gardner, Jay Forrester, and 1999 "Superintendent of the Year" Gerry House; others describe specific stories like these:
In a fast-changing world where school violence is not uncommon, the value of standardized tests is questioned, where rapid advances in science and technology threaten to leave students woefully unprepared, and increased pressures cause many teachers to burn out before retirement age, Schools That Learn offers much-needed grist for the dialogue about the future of educating children into the next century. |
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| Advance Praise for Schools That Learn | |
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Today, more than ever, all the forces within society must join together
to prepare our children to meet the challenges of our rapidly changing
world. Schools That Learn is an important resource for all those
wanting to tackle the challenge of integrating family, school, faith community,
and policy makers into one coalition on behalf of children. I don't know of a country that is happy with its educational system.
That is because most schools are crafted for the mass production ethic
of industrial society. Changing this obsolete state of affairs is the
best investment that a government (or a parent, for that matter) can make.
This book can help; it shows how schools can reorient themselves to emphasize
humanity, adventure, entrepreneurship, leadership, teamwork, problem-solving,
and experimentation, instead of rote learning. I plan to read long passages to my daughter. Whenever I think about
the world in which she (and her children) will grow up, the educational
system seems to be the locus of both hope and despair. Reading this book
is like opening the curtains and letting in rays of hope, illuminating
an entire, systemic, detailed, map for change. |
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| School Systems and Institutions of Learning | |
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from which stories are told in the book include: ARIZONA
CALIFORNIA
CONNECTICUT
FLORIDA
ILLINOIS
INDIANA
IOWA
KANSAS
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LOUISIANA
MAINE
MASSACHUSETTS
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MISSOURI
MONTANA
NEW JERSEY
NEW YORK
OHIO
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OREGON
PENNSYLVANIA
TENNESSEE
TEXAS
VERMONT
VIRGINIA
OUTSIDE U.S.
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