Competition Is NOT the Purpose of Education!
How about a more enjoyable life?
Ever notice how many old folks like to start with ‘Back in MY day …’? Being an ‘old folk’ myself now, I’m far more empathetic to the urge. I have wonderful memories of what I have come to understand was an incredibly privileged upbringing as a middle-class, white male in the South. The reality today bears no resemblance, for reasons both good and bad, to the world back in MY day. Thirty-six years of teaching equally spaced in public and private schools, preceded by fifteen years of mixed schooling and coaching swimming; learning and teaching has been my life. Any wisdom I could offer from my experience would be equal parts of astonishment at the new knowledge, ways and resources now available; and befuddlement at the detrimental practices we cling to or in some cases abandoned only to bring back in different attire.
Vouchers are another in a long line of school segregation ploys. At one time teachers were considered faithful public servants who actually wanted the best for our children and were trusted to know good methods for teaching the students entrusted to them – without the constant surveillance of Congressional oversight and ‘accountability’. IF our attempts to turn back the clock could be restricted to the few positives there would be value there; but that idea runs counter to DC logic, where the over-riding concern is either how does this help my re-election or how much money is in it for me – depending on your level of cynicism.
MAGA has done an excellent job of pointing out the defects in public education, which stem from two primary sources: The first is a dogged insistence on teaching ‘like we’ve always done’, despite the dramatic difference of today’s world and its increasingly rapid evolvement from the world in which what ‘we’ve always done’ was created. Second is the meddling of Congress in educational matters for which politicians have zero training or knowledge while being advised by ‘experts’ whose primary expertise is in cadging money for their employer. The ‘failure’ of public education is thus the self-fulfilling prophecy started by Reagan and enthusiastically promoted by the GOP ever since. Wish I could say the Democrats are fighting the good fight, but the opposition party is as married to DC logic as the GOP. No Child Left Behind – by far the most damaging education legislation ever enacted – was a very bi-partisan bill.
Clearly expecting Washington to clean up the mess is a fantasy. The only ‘solutions’ will be bought from salesmen who will suggest any ‘accountability’ you want because it will occur after the check clears. What will work is a return to local control of education; provided that control is free of congressional ‘accountability’ (read Standardized tests). Local does NOT mean state, which is worse than federal – if such be possible. Local would be the school boards, with the caveat that the superintendent and a local principal from a high school, middle school and elementary school should be full, voting members; making sure at least somebody understands how actual learning happens! The clear lesson from the past several decades is that policy setters know neither what IS going on nor what SHOULD BE going on in the classroom. The true experts in how to educate our children – the teachers who have trained in and practiced what is more art than science – have not just been ignored, they have been belittled, insulted and accused of results over which they have NO control.
Finland has the best education system in the world. Every time I have pointed this out I have been told: “Maybe so, but it would never work here.” The reasons given have always left me feeling like I’m listening to the joke about the neighbor who asked the farmer to borrow his rope, to which the farmer replied: “Nope, using the rope to tie up the milk.” When the neighbor complained you can’t tie up milk, the farmer replied: “Maybe so, but when you don’t want to do something, one reason’s just as good as another.” Certainly, there are problems and peculiarities the Finns faced that have no counterparts here, but the change that undergirds Finland’s rise to prominence from 1985 to the turn of the millennium was simply entrust the methodology and principles of learning to the teachers!
What? TRUST the professionals who trained for this career and have been piling up practical experience – some for decades – with having some notion of a good method for doing what all that preparation was for? If this ‘would not work here’ please explain your thinking. IF you have never stood before 30 students, solely responsible for their progress in education, then before you start let me tell you the response of every teacher alive if it wouldn’t cost them their career – you don’t have the foggiest notion about which you speak. It worked in Finland; it will work here. What WILL NOT work is politicians setting educational policy, and the US has half a century of evidence! The problem is the American public has heard a lie repeated so often it has become accepted as truth. The specific lie to which I refer is that teachers do NOT have the best interests of our children at heart, but rather some nefarious ulterior motive that runs counter to everything good about America. The list of logical fallacies pushing this lie could not be more obvious to this mathematician, but anyone who actually knows any teachers recognizes the lie.
Fortunately, the MAGA solution of vouchers and privatization is so inept, expensive and self-serving that the realization that we can’t afford it and the ‘opportunity’ to escape the ‘failing’ public schools actually only exists for a privileged few spells its doom – but the demise will be neither quick nor without substantial damage. The more important question is what will replace public education as we know it. MAGA has found a highly effective tool for eliminating public education – defund it! Once their solution is rejected it doesn’t take a prophet to predict the ‘let’s turn back the clock to how it was in MY day’ movement – which would be the worst possible alternative!
Everyone pays lip service to the importance of education but the reasons for that importance are NOT the same. Businessmen, and thus many if not most politicians, see education as providing a better workforce. Psychologists, and thus many if not most teachers, see education as providing a better life – after all how much does a knowledge of Shakespeare improve one’s employability. These two views have always been at odds even though there is agreement that education is important. Because businessmen and politicians hold far more sway in society than psychologists and teachers, public education has always been more about preparing for the workforce than for life. This difference was not dramatic a century ago and as long as graduates could read the instructions and memos while doing arithmetic reasonably correctly, teachers were allowed to teach the nuances that make this amazing adventure a life.
The world is different now.
Specialization has made it impossible for a high school graduate to be prepared for most jobs, even as employers whine about the lack of a qualified pool of hires. An increasingly stretched education budget with decisions on how to assign the limited funds left to those least qualified to make such decisions – the politicians – is resulting in schools that do a poorer job of preparing students for highly technical employment while axing from the curriculum music, arts, literature – and most anything else that might make life more enjoyable. Add in AI and the near future will be redefining the entire concept of ‘work’ and what preparation for that ‘work’ should be. The simple truth is what used to be defined as ‘work’ is less needed; while the desires and needs of the peons of the world have become increasingly subservient to the egos of the oligarchy.
Historically oligarchs have fared poorly; from the Magna Carta to numerous revolutions. The downfall is predictable since you can’t fool all the people all the time is as true today as in Abe’s day. The greed, privilege, ego and resources of the oligarchs DO guarantee their downfall will be protracted and damaging; while the greatest danger is control of the result will be oligarchs in new attire (see Lenin). Revolutions have been successful largely to the degree they inspire the common people, who are most acutely aware of the deficiencies of the oligarchs. ‘All men are created equal’; ‘No taxation without representation’; ‘No apartheid’; are all ideas that inspire – and oligarchs traffic in fear, not inspiration.
Bringing education into the 21st century (definitely foreign territory currently!) requires a revised view of the purpose of education. Is education to prepare for life or for a job? The capitalists and oligarchs will certainly argue a job, even as they omit the truth that they plan to eliminate as many jobs as possible with AI. Parents want their child prepared for life – and a job – which is how the oligarchs will try to hamstring them. The truth is in a technologically advanced society preparing for life is also preparing for a job; what the oligarchs want is the taxpayer to foot the bill for the training required for their job. Training focuses on the specific knowledge required for very specific tasks, and the broad range of those tasks today both guarantees no education can cover them all and misses the point that the tasks are evolving so rapidly the likelihood your ‘education’ will miss the mark is almost as sure. Turns out the best way to prepare our children for the jobs of this century is the same as the best way to prepare them for living in the same.
As a mathematician please let me illustrate using what is laughably called math education. Every high school diploma in the nation bases the math requirement on completing Algebra and Geometry. Thousands of times I was asked by a student: “Mr. Cheney, when will I ever use this in my life?” My stock answer was: “This? You’ll never use this in your life, it’s way too simple. These are the ABC’s of technology, without them there is nothing technological you can do!” While this remains true today, I now have a calculator that can do Calculus so the demand for widespread ability in these areas is miniscule – high-paying jobs yes but not many available. Yet that is exactly what we are preparing ALL of our high school graduates for!
What would preparing for life and a job – any job – look like in math? Critical thinking would be number one on my list, and everybody puts it on theirs: But it is impossible to measure critical thinking ability on a standardized test because it is the antithesis of a multiple-choice question, yet the current NUMBER ONE priority of education is Standardized Test Scores! What do standardized tests do? Statistically (another math topic I would rank high in preparation for life) the evidence is clear, they DO NOT measure how intelligent, knowledgeable or capable the student is; their highest correlation is with the socio-economic level of the testee – or in other words they are fantastic at ‘proving’ to the peons they are stupid, another high priority of the oligarchs.
Education is definitely in crisis. Where to next?
Along with job training and keeping the masses in their place the other requirement oligarchs have instilled in education is competition. Grades, grade level, tests, honor rolls, valedictorian and required curricula are all measurements of one’s relative standing in the educational hierarchy. The unasked question is why do we consider ability and knowledge to be a competition? Does acing the quadratic equations test your rival failed prove you are a superior person? In what way? What if your goals in life have no more need of Algebra than your calculator can provide? Does your lack of a high school diploma make you less capable than your peers?
My lifetime of being an educator has taught me competition is in many ways the antithesis of understanding. I have watched brilliant students specifically avoid a challenging course because of the possible negative effect on their GPA, and therefore their valedictorian chances. Likewise, I have watched thousands of students refuse to even attempt to learn because they are too stupid – an opinion backed by innumerable tests.
If you asked teachers whether grades would be part of the ideal teaching environment, the number who would say the answer is NO would surprise you. How would a system without grades be run? Would there be no measure of mastery? Of course not! There is no point in studying Calculus without a strong background in Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry. Certainly a pass/fail grade is necessary to document preparation for advanced courses, but the desire to study those advanced courses should be reason for taking the preparatory courses. Competition can be allowed and even encouraged, but it should be a choice, and it should NOT be the measure of success for anything besides winning the competition.
Montessori schools have long known this truth and do a marvelous job of educating all students; but run counter to the idea of competing for the ‘best’ jobs. For those convinced that life itself is a competition – not true since we figured out there is enough food on the planet for all of us – education must be training to ‘win’ at life. At one point I too ascribed to this theory but in my dotage, I realize I have ‘won’ at life, and it had far more to do with the ways I cooperated than with the ways I competed. Educating ALL of my students would be revealing to them the truth that we are each a unique combination of abilities and interests for which increasing knowledge and honing skills can be rewarding – and winning! The best part is it would be possible for everyone to win!
Preparation for life – and whatever job – would not even be the best result of this change. That would be making education the amazing and fun activity that excites kindergarteners – before we beat such concepts out of them by making ‘winners’ and ‘losers’!
https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/finland-s-education-system-journey-success
Thank you for sharing great article