Much press is recently devoted to fixing the education system in the U.S. Fixing the problem is quite simple, as demonstrated by Stephen Fleming's recent post at Academic VC. All we really need is the will to change from the current industrial model where principals are the factory owners, teachers are the foremen and students are the output.
Cathy Davidson writing at the Chronicle of Higher Education sums up the problem well:
"Unfortunately, current practices of our educational institutions—and workplaces—are a mismatch between the age we live in and the institutions we have built over the last 100-plus years. The 20th century taught us that completing one task before starting another one was the route to success. Everything about 20th-century education, like the 20th-century workplace, has been designed to reinforce our attention to regular, systematic tasks that we take to completion. Attention to task is at the heart of industrial labor management, from the assembly line to the modern office, and of educational philosophy, from grade school to graduate school."
The dilemma of abandoning the industrial production model of public education is further complicated by the widespread proliferation of computing devices, whether it be desktops, laptops or the current panacea--tablets. Everyone sees technology as a part of the education solution and the most extreme commentators see technology as replacing the teacher. Clayton Christensen, anHBS professor, points out in his book Disrupting Class that if we use technology to reinforce the existing methods we should not expect any appreciable improvement in student performance.
What actually concerns me the most is that everyone is formulating solutions based on the past. Everyone seems to be contemplating a solution based on the current usage of computers. What no one appears to be taking into consideration is what students, or least students from middle income or better families, will be like in 5-10 years. I jokingly tell people that we use an 18 month old child to evaluate new tablets at OLPC. The fact is that if the interface and touch screen do not work well, this young child loses interest in the device. (For the record the 18 month old tester likes the iPad, iPhone and XO so far.) I have seen 3 year olds control televisions by moving their hands to activate a Wii controller and five year olds recording videos and posting on YouTube. Nearly all the children I know who have used an iPhone believe that every picture on every device can be enlarged by moving your fingers. 12 year olds are writing Python programs...I have seen it.
Very young children are becoming very advanced computer users, perhaps in part because the computing devices and content available are so entertaining. Regardless of why it is happening, children entering kindergarten in 2020 will have very high expectations for the computing environment they need. They will also expect teachers knowledgeable about the latest technology and its use in primary school education. What will the teacher do if every first grader shows up with a tablet or laptop because they want to check at lunch time the daily views of their videos on YouTube.
In thinking about the features of education in 2020, I see several requirements based on the students and their expected skills with computing technology:
- Video as a teaching method will be a basic requirement and online course material will be ubiquitous
- Education will need to be more entertaining to engage all the game addicts
- Education will have to be more self-paced, where the student advances through subject matter as fast as they can
- The use of grades (3rd, 4th, 5th) will go away and when you complete the primary school curriculum at your own pace you graduate to middle school
- Budget constraints in the U.S. will reduce school activities to the bare bones curriculum and the private sector will provide services for after school activities such as drama, sports and yearbook
- The number of teachers will be reduced given their new role as mentors rather than as instructors; school monitors may increase to maintain control
- Schools will no longer be designed based on classrooms but rather based on the environments different children need for learning--online areas, quiet areas, video rooms, collaboration areas, laboratories, etc.
Much of the current dialogue on transforming education focuses on teacher quality and teachers' unions. Of course this dialog assumes that we should continue the current industrial production model of education. A better solution to the problem would be to focus on a new model for education, a model that recognizes the vastly different students that will need education and the increasing using of computer technology in education. Building a concencus around this new model might actually force us to build a model based on student needs and reduce the friction over teachers and unions.
A central concept in this new model should address the well known quote from Jean Piaget:
“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers”
This quote strikes me as more timely today than when Piaget drafted it in the early 20th century. Access to information today is low cost and easy through the Internet, as compared to the time when the industrial production model was adopted for education. This "convenience of information" may afford us the opportunity to focus more on developing creativity and innovation skills in students given that the burden of simply transferring knowledge has been reduced by the Internet.
This post was inspired in part by some recent conversations with @OLPC_Mexico .
The views expressed here are my personal views and do not reflect the views of any client, organization or institution with whom I am affiliated.
Notes:
(1) Fleming's post was quite critical of the teachers' unions. I do not share this view. I do share his view that we should provide better pay to attract people to the teaching profession. However, without some sacrifice, budget constraints will make this challenging.
(2) The industrial model is held up as a culprit in education despite having educated all the critics of it so well, myself included.
(3) In a previous post on the future of education I proposed that schools would disappear in favor of online content. I now think this is unlikely to occur. I overlooked the role of schools as babysitters for dual income families.
Image credit: bbc.co.uk
