NEW Education!
‘The Apple’ teachers really want!
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.
Sun-Tzu
Let’s start with something we can all agree on – our educational system is a mess! If you disagree with this my challenge is to spend ONE DAY as a substitute teacher: Every school in the country is crying for them and there are NO requirements other than a background check – you don’t even need a high school diploma! After that experience I will be glad to discuss with you exactly what you see as good.
Change is necessary; the road MUST be forward and NOT some return to a hazy ‘great’ past. The GOP has recognized the mess we currently call public education and offered their ‘solution’ – vouchers.
Vouchers are ‘welfare for the wealthy’. Included here is an article posted on FB titled “Debunking 4 myths about school choice” from a ‘right wing think tank’ – now THAT’S an oxymoron! Holding two degrees in Mathematics I was able to apply my extensive training in logic and notice its complete lack in this article. If you would like a quick layman’s guide to recognizing BS the extensive use of statistical data is a classic hallmark, especially if the sources quoted are not easily recognizable as reputable. As a mathematician, every time I start seeing numbers in an argument I think of the quote: “There are three kinds of lies: Lies; Damned lies; and Statistics!”
The chaos is here. Now is when we must look for the opportunity! They want to eliminate public schools – so do I. The primary usage of public education has NOT been education for quite a while. When a system gets destroyed is when the opportunity for meaningful change occurs. Buckminster Fuller was looking squarely at the future when he said:
“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
The truth that IS on display is we ALL understand the existing paradigm is bad. What we should focus on is the truth that none of our politicians – who are falling all over themselves claiming to have ‘the answer’ – recognize: IF the system is broken, who is the most aware of how it could be fixed? THE TEACHERS!
The reason the teachers are so critical is because we need to change the entire educational system. Such a change WILL require the teachers to do the work – indeed they are the only ones who can!
This change will be multi-faceted as one of the fundamental uses of the system as a ‘babysitting service’ for working adults must be eliminated; or the additional time required for such service be treated as such and not called ‘public education’. The school day must change drastically from a strongly regimented, militaristic control paradigm to a much more open, communal learning environment. This means school buildings will have do be DESIGNED dramatically differently, which means a LOT of rebuilding – of course a healthy percentage of schools are past their due date anyway.
None of the previous more than touches on the needed differences in how students are taught; how evaluated; how ‘mastery’ of any stage of the process is determined; or what such mastery means. This is the part of the educational revolution where the teachers must shine. Not only is their input essential, ANY other input is at best superfluous, at worst decidedly detrimental.
Looking back on my seventy-three years there is no doubt that teaching is BY FAR the most difficult thing I have ever done. There is NO TEACHING METHODOLOGY that works for everyone. I have serious doubts there is any one methodology that even works for a majority of the students one teaches. Teaching is the most human activity I have experienced and my best teaching always occurred when I was able to relate to a student on a personal basis. Not only did the methodology change dramatically with each student, new methodologies were needed every day. This means learning cannot be legislated, and is exceptionally difficult to measure – virtually impossible if the goal is any kind of comparison to fellow students.
Teaching is a career filled with requirements that are incredibly time-wasting but what every teacher hates is the one titled ‘Professional Development’. The majority of the time, PD is geared towards training teachers to use the latest tool the district has purchased to ‘help’ teachers do the job with which the developer of the tool has zero experience. Every teacher can tell war stories of days spent in training by someone who earns some multiple of the teacher’s salary explaining in detail how this marvelous tool is going to make them so much more effective as a teacher – a job they have never themselves, as they explaining how to those who do it every day.
The most instructive training I ever received was observing veteran teachers teaching! In 36 years of teaching, NEVER was a PD session based on this simple idea – apparently nobody makes a profit (or even worse, the veteran teacher earns some money!).
The educational system is broken. It can’t be fixed. A new paradigm is essential. Teachers have the clearest understanding of both the problem and the new paradigm that needs to replace the current one. In this crisis there IS opportunity!