pixelperfectdigital.comI’ve been thinking and studying a lot about primary and secondary education recently. Much of it has been spurred by the fact that in less than 4 years I will have a child entering the system. [Entering the system...sounds a bit criminal]
What I have learned is that public education is, for the most part, broken. The only thing that keeps it from completely crumbling is the heroic effort of teachers.
The problem is we are educating our children in the same way we educated children 10, 20, 50, even 100 years ago. While the world around us has dramatically changed, the way we educate has remained roughly the same.
Imagine if Coca Cola still conducted its business in the exact same way it did when it was first started in 1892. It actually wouldn’t be that hard to imagine since Coke would be out of business.
We intrinsically understand that business must evolve and adapt to the changing environment. Yet for some reason we don’t think the same thing about education. Many have the opinion that “if it was good enough for me then it’s good enough for kids today”. Or “this is the way things were run when I was a kid and I turned out all right”. While that may be true it does not mean that it will continue to be true. The world is quickly changing. For example, many kids today are raised by a single family. This fact alone changes the rules.
I see five fundamental challenges and problems with the current system.
- The breakdown of the family unit. Schools are tasked with an ever growing responsibility of educating children in areas that were once the duty of parents. Likewise schools are being required to make up for the fact that a single parent simply does not have the capacity to spend the needed time with a child to help them learn to read and write before they start school and to supplement the learning that is taking place once they start school.
- Schools teach students to memorize information rather than learn information. I think Alfie Kohn says this best in his book The Schools Our Children Deserve, “Knowing is a process not a product and when we get that backward – when teachers or parents lead student to believe their task is to produce right answers – those students are less inclined to talk with one another, to try out possibilities, to play with ideas. They may get answers because they have memorized facts or formulas but with no understanding of why or under what conditions it’s true” Memorizing facts are easy. Understanding them is not.
- Schools graduate students who have little to no understanding of the basic economic principles of our economy. It is a shame that a majority of students today graduate with out even a basic understanding of economic principles. They do not understand investing, the miracle of compounding interest, or how wealth is created. Students simply lack understanding of basic monetary principles. Love it or hate it money is a major part of our everyday life. If you do not understand how money works how can you make money work for you?
- Students are graduating with little to no understanding of America’s history or knowledge of the great western thinkers. While the good old days are never as good as we romanticize them to be schools in the early days of our country did one thing right. They required their students to study and understand the writings of Cicero, Socrates, Plato, Locke, and other great philosophers. The studying of these great thinkers helped our founding leaders create the system of government that literally changed the world. The less and less our populace understands the foundations upon which our society is built the more fragile that foundation becomes.
- The education system is living a lie. As Charles Murray points out in his book Real Education, the education system “still lives by the code that every child can be anything they want to be. Nobody actually still believes this but the education system still operates like it is true...We have idealized images of the potential children bring to the classroom and of our ability to help students manifest that potential. Even though the cold hard truth is student abilities vary...When was the last time you ever saw a report stating that one of the reasons some students did not excel academically was because of low intellectual ability.”
Even though there are challenges facing our public education system there are wonderful things happening in small pockets around the country. The responsibility of our politicians, leaders, and even our children is to leverage what is happening in these innovate schools to move our system of education from a 19th to a 21st century system.
UPDATE: After some thinking I wanted to add two more to the list.
- Factories not Schools. We will never be able to properly educate our children if we are shuffling them through factory style schools. The ability to make a difference in someones life comes in those quiet moments with someone you trust. It is almost impossible to create a trusting culture in a school of 3,000. Our schools should be no more that 400 students. Createing small schools will do more for improving our education than almost anything else
- Schools need the control. One of the major issues facing schools is a top down hierarchy. Schools need to be allowed to educate their kids the way they feel best. They need to have flexibility to run the school in the manner that they know will have the biggest impact on their students. The more the government tells schools how to do things the more they strangle the schools. Governments should set outcomes and tell schools we dont' really care how you reach these outcomes just reach this. By doing this it will unless a tidal wave a creativity.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 12:56PM 
Charles Bennett/Associated PressAccording to the New York Times Obama has selected his new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
