Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University
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Linda Darling-Hammond Addresses Regional Forums
Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, addressed attendees at a number of the regional forums this month. Though varying slightly between the regions, the greater part of her remarks was the same. She reminded the groups of educators that they are devoted to opening up opportunities for our young people and, through them, strengthening our nation. The process of learning, she said, is unpredictable. It’s not merely opening up kids’ heads and dumping in information that they will just spit out, but it’s helping them to make sense of the world as we try to help them make sense of what we are trying to get them to learn.
A former high school teacher, Darling-Hammond evaluates the process by which children learn and considers how we must develop and support our students with a great deal of courage, sophistication and continual perseverance. This work, she says, is increasingly important to our democracy and the welfare of all of us, but it often goes unrecognized. It is critical for our survival as a leading economy in the world because 70 percent of jobs today require specialized knowledge beyond high school.
The rapid pace of change is transforming the mission of education. Citing a study from the University of California, Berkeley, Darling-Hammond reported that between 1999 and 2003, the amount of knowledge produced in the world was greater than the amount of knowledge produced in the entire history of the world preceding. This means that schools must do much more than simply offer education or cover the curriculum or get through the book. Teachers must enable all kids to learn in a way that will prepare them for a world in which knowledge changes rapidly. The facts can’t be divided into things we learn in first grade, others in second, still others in third until a student becomes an “educated person.” We have to teach them to learn how to learn — how to access information for themselves, to access resources, to develop ideas, to synthesize information and to move well beyond any set of facts of information that a teacher could present to them — which means changing the concept of teaching.
Darling-Hammond thanked the College Board for the tremendously important focus on excellence and equity and how we connect students to college success by breaking down the usual dividing lines of race and class. Recognizing Gaston Caperton and others at the College Board for their leadership, she said that the work that the College Board has done over many years has been vital for our nation. She spoke of her own transformative experience with the AP Program™, which changed her life’s trajectory. Darling-Hammond grew up in urban public schools in the Midwest during the post-Sputnik and early Civil Rights eras, and she said that the educational innovations being urged after Sputnik to drive our nation to a higher level of excellence converged with the set of policies that came about in the ’60s to increase access and equity. In her junior year of high school, she encountered AP® classes in English, French, U.S. history and math. She was challenged for the first time to think and analyze, to read great literature, to write about ideas and interpretations and to learn to behave like a member of a discipline. She caught fire intellectually and, because of this,
later took a dare to apply to Yale University the first year women were admitted.
That fire is alive and well inside Darling-Hammond today and evident to anyone who hears the passion with which she speaks about educating today’s children. She is one of the nation’s strongest advocates for students and their education, and her research, teaching and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring and the quality of teaching and education. She is former president of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education. She also launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network, serving as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. It is no surprise that Darling-Hammond is an educational adviser for one of the current major presidential candidates.
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