What’s Wrong with Education in America?

Here’s more about the State of Washington’s proposal to standardize the curriculum at all schools throughout the state.

Standardized lesson plans irk some Washington educators
As Seattle considers standardizing its curriculum in every classroom, teachers in one Washington district log in to see what pages and subjects they must teach each day. Opponents of across-the-board standardization say it hinders a teacher’s ability to respond to the needs of a particular class, but Bellevue Superintendent Mike Riley says inconsistent curriculum is “at the heart of what’s wrong with education in America.” The Seattle Times (6/24)

The Superintendent is arguing that inconsistent curriculum is “at the heart of what’s wrong with education in America.”

I disagree 100%. What’s wrong with education in America is NOT inconsistent curriculum!

What’s wrong with education in America today is the way the majority of people in America think about education.

The concept of mandatory education – or public education – originated to develop factory workers for the emerging ‘industrial economy’ in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. The system of education we have today is nearly the same as the one conceived and implemented more than 100 years ago.

The desire to standardize education – the curriculum, the teaching, the timing, and the tests – flies in the face of what we have learned about how humans learn. AND, it flies in the face of the fact that the external world – the environment in which the learner lives and the learning should take place – has changed dramatically in the last 100 years!

Standardizing in the way the Superintendent is proposing is a natural and understandable outcome of the way of thinking that dominates our education system. The system has an underlying operating principle of compliance and control. Standardizing the way it is being proposed is a way to control the 100s and 1000s of people involved in the system in the State of Washington. The thinking behind this idea also presumes that learning can be stuffed into people at a particular time, in a particular way – and all the same time and same way – for every 8 year old or every 12 year old in the entire State.

So here we have a well meaning man, in charge of the entire public education system for the State of Washington, mandating a policy that more well meaning people will implement. All these well meaning people, with the best of intentions, will actually be doing harm and creating further problems. The solutions to the problems they create will be looked at through the same lens – that of control and compliance – so those solutions will NOT solve the problem either but continue to make things worse.

The solution is to change the way we think about education and learning.

To contrast what is happening in the State of Washington, here is something happening in the State of New Hampshire:

New Hampshire to develop personalized high school
New Hampshire’s Department of Education wants to develop high schools in which learning is tailored to students’ interests and teachers become mentors instead of lecturers. “If we do this right, why would any kid drop out of high school?” asked Fred Bramante, a state Board of Education member. Education Week (article free to SmartBrief subscribers)/Associated Press (6/26)

This is an example of changing the way we think about education.

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