Freedom Philosophy

For my graduate program we were asked to address school ranking based on test performance in a forum discussion. I got pretty fired up about it and venting just to the people in my program didn’t have enough impact so I am sharing it on freedom philosophy as well.

Question – What concerns would you have about school rankings like those of the Fraser Institute based on achievement test results? If you are passionate about education and feel like you need some quick adrenaline check out this video by the same organization. Holy not educators Batman…

Here are some thoughts I expressed on this.

Point 1 - Academics are only a fraction of what makes a good school. As a parent and an educator, I am most concerned that my own kids and my students learn how to learn and how to love learning. While some fundamental skills are undoubtedly necessary, I would argue a case for the “intangibles” of a school as making the key ranking differences.

Such typically unconsidered factors would include: how interested are students (yes even high school) in going to school. How all school community members would rate the rapport between faculty and students. How satisfied the teachers are with their jobs. The quality and number of the extracurricular activities offered. The access the school provides to technology and web 2.0 tools. How varied the classroom practices are. Among others…

Point 2 - If the goal of education is to create people who perform well on standardized tests, then a system that is oriented toward that outcome is exactly what should be created. Performing well on standardized tests, however, is a near useless life skill as far as I am concerned. At this point, I am almost sick of the hype around 21st century education but considering the arcane nature of ranking schools based solely (soulessly) on test performance doesn’t the following make more sense?

“21st century education is flexible, creative, challenging, and complex. It addresses a rapidly changing world filled with fantastic new problems as well as exciting new possibilities” (Possibilities for 21st Century Education, 2008).

I am not worried about professional evaluation. I can teach students to do well on a test or I can help people develop into imaginative, motivated, voracious learners who know how to learn what they will need to know when they create the future. Unfortunately the differences between the two with regard to style of teaching, learning, and what it means to perform do not work well in tandem. One is teaching people how to succeed in a box that was created in the past. The other is teaching people how to succeed outside the box that hasn’t been created yet.

Possibilities for 21st Century Education. (2008). Retrieved July 05, 2010 from 21st Century Schools: http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/​what_is_21st_century_education.htm.

Images: As far as I could tell these images are open source. If I am mistaken please post a reply to this post indicating that and I will take them down.

Counselling Study, Editorial, Education Assessment, counselling, Education, Ranking

Our increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies makes communication both more intimate and distal at the same time.  The news of this article, a video or a useless fb status telling you that a former high school classmate is out of yogurt instantly invades your consciousness all without the physical presence of the person who created it.

One potential impact this holds for counselling is that we are possibly more attuned to each others’ subtle shifts in mood but further removed from an actual experience of each other. This mode of existence may leave a therapeutic domain that relies on such fundamentals as empathy and understanding deficient in the millions of opportunities to practice and hone these skills.

Bergum & Dossetor (2005) proposed that:

While not obvious in this short quotation, this comment was primarily a response to a detached pathological view of therapy work. I offer that it is also a useful response to an expanding interpersonal culture with increasing rates of interaction but arguably decreasing intimacy. To me, the idea of deep and meaningful interaction is akin to “presence” as pointed to over two thousand years ago by the questions of Lao Tsu in the Tao-Te-Ching.



Can you coax your mind from its wandering
 and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
 supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
 until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
 without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
 by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
 and thus understand all things?

Counsellors must work to be more and more helpful amidst a decline of certain forms of intimacy.  A look at modern day idea of embodiment against a backdrop of a Taoist interpretation of presence offers us meaningful direction and insight into where we should be placing our emphasis.

Bergum, V.,  & Dossetor, J. (2005). Relational ethics: The full meaning of respect. Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group.

Lao, T. (1995). Tao-Te-Ching (S. Mitchell, trans) Retrieved June 01, 2009 from Academic Brooklyn, academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/ taote-v3.html. (Original work published 6th Century BC)

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Shadow Climbing in Grass Valley

Because outcomes are so influenced by the nature of the therapeutic relationship, counsellors and counselling related research pays close attention to the development of the working alliance. To that end, Gerald Corey (2009) defined “therapy at its best is an active collaborative process of working with the client as an active self-healer” (p 18). This week for GCAP 671 Course – Developing the Working Alliance we were asked to post a response to this question.

The working alliance can be said to exist in nearly every relationship, counselling or not. Are there any situations where you might not find a working alliance?

I enjoyed this question and appreciate the responses that preceded mine citing vast differences in value systems and beliefs. I chose not to go that path with this, below is my answer to my classmates. I look forward to seeing what kind of responses I get on the grad school forum.

(Please don’t read too much emotion into this post. I wanted to present my dissent as convincingly as possible but am not on a mission about this.)

If I can take a respectful oppositional stance, I disagree with the premise of this question. Isn’t the title of this course, “Developing a Working Alliance”? If working alliances were so commonly available why would we be spending an entire unit of this program (conceivably more) on how to create them? I would argue further that to state it this way cheapens the process of cultivating an effective working relationship and denigrates our professional skill-set.

A more accurate premise for me would be to say that “nearly every relationship has the potential to become a working alliance”. In absence of that addition, I would offer in response to this question that, semantics aside, any relationship that lacks Corey’s (2009) starting eight behaviors of the therapeutic relationship would not fall into the category of a working alliance.

I’ve heard things in North America have changed since Obama came on board in the US but I can’t believe they have changed to the point where nearly every relationship contains these qualities. Prove me wrong, please. ~ Adam

Corey, G. (2008). The art of integrative counselling (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks Cole.

Counselling Study counselling, therapeutic alliance, working alliance