At this point I think that it's fair to say that most teachers like teaching (at least, in theory) and that most teachers dislike the educational institution (the bureaucracy). Competition can help, but only at the margins (because the institutions will suppress it as much as they can - after all, the bureaucracy enjoys its power as much as all bureaucracies do, and will seek to preserve itself).
So what do we do? How do we change to a better model? Immodestly, I have a suggestion: use the military model.
The sound that you just heard is the collective LOLwhut??? from the world's education colleges. Stick with me.
The military is very highly trusted, at least in America because of its competence. This is in great contrast to the militaries of other countries - cold war wargames of Soviet vs. NATO struggled to accurately map the rigidity of the Warsaw Pact command structures where (largely for reasons of political reliability) quite high ranking officers had very little tactical decision making authority. For example, a Soviet Colonel might not have any more authority for troop movement than a US Second Lieutenant (or even a senior NCO).
Sounds like the current educational establishment where the teachers are forced to teach to the test, right?
In contrast, the US military focuses on the objective. Units are given the goal and very often left to their own planning on how best to accomplish the objective. Since they know the lay of the immediate land and the situation on the ground, this has produced amazing results.
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| Your objective is to capture that hill |
We used to know the goal - you were expected to know reading, writing, math, American (and some World) history, basic science, and a sprinkling of art (music and theatrical, mostly). This was the "Canon" of Western Civilization, from Shakespeare to Darwin.
What's the "Canon" for the 21st Century? Alas, there is none, and will be none. There are far too many vested interests, political shapers, lobbying groups, and the various ticks and parasites attached to the political and educational establishment to ever define such. Any discussion of forming such a Canon would be undermined by the educational bureaucracy - can't have the lower level teachers showing up the managers, can we?
Of course, every company that is still in business has long left behind the old Industrial Revolution organizational structure. The ones that didn't are no longer in business. You see, survival means pleasing the customer when the customer can choose to buy someone else's product, or none at all. Public education is shielded from this sudden death.
Of course, education is likely not about education. As for education policy wonks, Galbraith described their adequate predictability: Among Progressives, the stated need for new ideas is often a replacement for new ideas.
Paradigm, unshifted. Maybe inshiftable.
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For a minute there I thought you were going to advocate running schools in general the way the military runs its schools. For some purposes, even that might be a good idea.
The first problem in redesigning education for the 21st Century - and the fatal flaw that will prevent it - is that there will be no acknowledgement that grades MUST be based on objective (not subjective) criteria, and those students who do not meet the criteria are not advanced to the next grade. It's simple: if you can't cut it, you aren't cut out for it.
The one facet of military "schools" (e.g. the Naval electronics training I went thru) is that failure is used to "weed out" those who cannot absorb the material. If they don't get it in school, they won't be able to do their jobs "in the field". And failure "in the field" is unacceptable in the military, whether at a squad, unit, aircraft, ship, or base level.
There is no such analog in today's schools today, nor will there be one in the future. "Little Johnny's mommy" wouldn't stand for her "Little Johnny" getting a grade that reflects his true performance in school... and her true performance in setting and enforcing parental expectations.
The public schools use "graduation statistics" as a gauge of success. Until their funding is based on individual student success, and until individual student success is based on objective and absolutely enforced grading criteria, the schools will continue to "graduate" students who can barely read, write, or think for themselves.
BTW: we're trying to find some qualified engineers at my company. Most of the new hires are grey-hairs (like myself). The current crop of college graduates may understand how to use social networking (Facebook et. al.) but not the technology that runs it (O/S internals, hardware, CPU microcode, microcontroller programming, etc).
This is a precursor of the future: an America that can't do for itself because we "taught" our young politically-correct subjects and gave them feel-good grades rather than teaching them the "three Rs" and how to think for themselves.
When I was a lieutenant in the Army (1973-77), the way we were told to train people was thus:
1. Tell them what they would be expected to know at the end of the training (knowledge and/or skill).
2. Teach that to them.
3. Test them on that knowledge/skill set.
No extraneous information, no trick questions, no propaganda. Simple. What's more, I have used that method in civilian venues (with adults) and it works there, too. The problem is that this method only works for people motivated to seek that particular knowledge or skill training.
With children, I believe (as opposed to think, because I don't have any hard proof) that the best way is to lead them to a means for finding out stuff and get the hell out of the way. They might not learn what you want them to, but they will learn.
I'm not convinced that this would work today. Perhaps even twenty years ago it would have worked but I don't see it today. Part of the reason military training does so well is there is accountability and measurable skills. If your troops are not getting what they need it shows. Leaders get replaced in theory. I don't see that happening with many of our teachers out there as they will say you can't measure what we teach or how well the students are doing.
The other side is little Jonny's mommie will not stand for the knowledge her son has to redo the 4th grade again if we can point out students that are not doing well. When kids are not allowed to win, or loose and instead get participation trophy's or grades we see the mess we have. As a society whole we have this idea that every kid needs to go to college. That is the ultimate goal now for students, just to get to college.
I'm using the insurgents model. I'm home schooling my daughter.
She will be better educated than I was by the time she's college age. Reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history, and the things that interest her, she will be a subject matter expert. And hopefully more on fire for learning. By the time I graduated from public school, I was so tired of the bullpuckey that I didn't even want a post secondary education. I have never gone to college. I want better for Progeny.
The first way to fix this is go retro, '50's style. It works, it's proven. We've been fixing what wasn't broken for over sixty years, and it's terribly broken right now.
The second way to fix this is go techno. Really utilize those expensive toys schools have been handing out to students. There are teaching programs for every age group and course of study, they are mostly being used by home-schoolers. The teacher would monitor progress, provide encouragement and alternative methods to solve problems, instead of reading from their instructor textbooks and writing on whiteboards.
Both ways require teachers to teach, instead of regurgitate information. The NEA would probably have to be broken for either change to occur. Win-win!
Baby steps. Eventually you'll get to reality.
I'd suggest reviewing the funding model, which requires asking "why is government - at any level - involved in the education industry?"
I suspect it's mostly because funding the Education Industrial Complex through property taxes is easy, and the intersection of bureaucrats, politicians who like making promises and teachers' unions figured out how much money there was in that deal.
Whatever happens afterward, first start with the money. "Dollars per student" numbers are tossed about with abandon, and in school systems' defense, the numbers are usually wrong. Reached by dividing number of students into total system cost, it ignores the real burden rate of each student and glosses over fixed costs (school building X with 3 janitors and 5 administrators for 300 students doesn't need to double the janitors and administrators when it goes to 600 students).
Once the true system-wide-average per-student burden rate is computed (we're initially talking about primary and secondary schools, colleges are a bit different, but this exercise could probably easily be applied to community colleges), those dollars go with the student regardless of where the student is: government-run schools, charter schools, parochial schools, home schooling.
Second, break out per-student burden rate costs for individual programs (ex: 10th grade chemistry classes, 9th grade algebra, etc.) which will vary somewhat by school, but can be averaged for system-wide data. Programs may be necessary (math, science, English comp) or nice-to-have (basketball, school newspaper) but each has a cost.
Third, develop feedback loops from the customers: businesses in the region which "buy" the finished product of the educational system (there's also room for an additional feedback loop from colleges RE: how much remedial work do incoming students need to meet minimum skill/knowledge levels for college; probably there's a different scale for 2-year tech institutions and 4-year colleges).
Measuring performance with grades doesn't work because, like everyone else whose livelihood is threatened (or enhanced) teachers will lie about grades. Standardized tests are suspect because, like grades, schools will "teach to the test."
"Time to hire" (graduation date to start work date) and "starting base salary rate" may be useful measures; there will be others, but they should be driven by the education system customers (businesses). Anything coming from schools or government bureaucracies is just henhouse-guarding by the foxes. (Ex: John Smith High School grads find jobs 2 weeks sooner and get 12% more starting pay than Fred Jones HS grads).
There's more, but IMHO the correct first step is deal with the money.
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