"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." - Thomas Jefferson 1820

"There is a growing technology of testing that permits us now to do in nanoseconds things that we shouldn't be doing at all." - Dr. Gerald Bracey author of Rotten Apples in Education

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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Rethinking Reform

Current education reform discussions revolve around modifications to the existing system of education delivery.  They rarely touch on what is being delivered. Though there is a big push to develop a set of "Common Standards" which would cover the "what", those standards still really on focus on creating efficiencies in the delivery of education. If everyone is learning the same things, from the same source materials, we get economies of scale and measurable production line improvements. This is why charter schools are under tremendous pressure to teach the same thing as public schools, so only the delivery method is modified. Efficiency. Even discussions like linking teacher pay to student performance still focus on evaluating how well a particular cog is working in an existing system and not evaluating whether the system itself is working to produce the best product.

If you have just under twelve minutes to spare, this video is a creative way to show the rut we are stuck in and a different way of looking at education.  It is worth the time to get your head out of the box the so called experts and bureaucrats want you to remain in when thinking about education. Even thought the video is two years old, the narrator covers many of the terms we use on MEW; school-to-work, standardized assessments, 21st century skills readiness, globalization. He also spends a bit of time looking at the increased incidence of ADHD and offers his own theory which does have some support in expert papers.



There is also a longer video of Sir Ken Robinson's speech on changing the paradigm in education.  See it here.

School has become an extension of business.  That's why the Clayton high school  principal who recently resigned over her creation of a fictitious Facebook page is receiving $140k in severance pay. She works in the business of education and had a business  contract.  What she did was not illegal and not covered in that contract, so she is still, under business rules, entitled to severance pay. Gates, Google, the DOEd all want to gather data about future consumers, (I mean students), because it is a valuable business tool. Using the school system to gather that data just makes good business sense.

The question no one is even asking now is, do we even have the right goal for education?  Is the business model the right one for education? After watching the video, what do you think?

3 comments:

  1. "They rarely touch on what is being delivered. Though there is a big push to develop a set of "Common Standards" which would cover the "what", those standards still really on focus on creating efficiencies in the delivery of education. If everyone is learning the same things, from the same source materials, we get economies of scale and measurable production line improvements. This is why charter schools are under tremendous pressure to teach the same thing as public schools, so only the delivery method is modified. Efficiency."

    I'm not able to see the video at the moment, but your first paragraph nails it just fine. It's as if we've produced an extremely efficient method to deliver unimaginative trivia and uninteresting factoidial drivel, which because some lab analysis says it contains lots of intellectual vitamins, it should be healthy for kids to learn from.

    The only problem is that it tastes like @#$!. When kids are unable to digest it, or refuse to swallow it, the educational systems go back to their planning sessions and make the delivery of it even more efficient.

    ARGHHH!

    "The question no one is even asking now is, do we even have the right goal for education? Is the business model the right one for education? After watching the video, what do you think?"

    No one?

    "...What would you think of those excuses?

    Do you realize how close and fitting an analogy this is to our schools today? This is the situation we are in. We have allowed ourselves to become so focused upon the textbook preparation, the administrator and teaching staff, operational costs, etc, so focused upon improving the delivery of our children's intellectual nourishment... but no one, NO ONE, has been asking about anything more than the form and style of textual hot dogs that we've been serving up!

    You know that you'd want to grab all of those politicians, parents and experts and... slap some sense into them and tell them to "Put something other than hot dogs on your menus!", wouldn't you? If so, then please, slap yourself as well, because that is as near to an exact comparison to our world of education, as you are going to find.

    Choice is important, but what you choose, and what you're willing to accept as a choice, is even more important.

    Early on, our educational 'x-spurts' began recommending a prefabricated educational food be served to all, replacing the tried and true classics of Western Civilization, with the textual equivalent of a hot dog, and the modern textbook, was born..."


    ;-) If nothing else, I've been heartened to see that the field of all us no one’s has been steadily growing year after year.

    Keep it up!

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  2. I think every teacher needs to watch this video. As a teacher, I can say what we all already know, making a school a business is exploiting children and simply writing off any student who does not learn quickly/efficiently the 'mandated' material...how will we have a productive society when everyone is programmed to think and act THE SAME?

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  3. Linda R. said "...how will we have a productive society when everyone is programmed to think and act THE SAME?"

    Worse yet, how will we have an intelligent society, when everyone is taught that a particular set of facts is the same thing as knowledge?

    What reply do we have for the first kid who points out the idiocy of this with "My phone has a calculator that tells me all the math facts I'll ever need to know. It also has Google and Wikipedia, which can tell me any other fact I ever need to know. So why should I bother with your school?"

    When we tell our kids that having that knowledge means that you are educated, why should they not point to their phones and say "I have that knowledge. I'm educated. I'm outta here."

    The fact is if that is what we pass off as an Education, they are correct, and they would be infinitely better off getting outta there.

    Knowing the facts or getting the answers is something that can be had quickly and for free by anyone with the most basic smartPhone.

    Knowing what questions are worth asking, and how to ask them, and more importantly, Why to ask them... that's another matter altogether. Understanding how some facts are integrated to other facts, and why, and why you should care, is also another matter. Knowing that some ideas lead to other ideas, and that somethings which appear pretty, are in truth hideously ugly and give birth to pure evil; that what is actually beautiful is good and true to the core, and of supreme importance to your life and ability to live it... that's something that refuses to be caged in a multiple choice or True/False exam.

    An education that is in fact concerned with Education, won't be aided by quantifying exam results or mandating approved curriculum.

    The truth is that we had a Common Core at one point, and it wasn't mandated, it was simply understood to make up the heart of Western Culture and to be worthwhile; it was something which school enabled you to, and led you to, enter into, and which people then re-entered, considered and discussed for the rest of their lives.

    Our ever more modern system of education has, or is, putting an end to that. And it has the accumulated and quantified test scores to prove it.

    ReplyDelete

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