The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System

http://blog.sokanu.com/the-lost-opportunity-our-education-system

by sthomps • 16 years ago

30 19 16 years ago

blog.sokanu.com

KentHealy• 16 years ago

It's about time this topic get the attention it needs and deserves. And I am glad to see so many people take interest. I hope this article will turn some heads. Very timely with new Waiting for Superman movie. If you don't know what I am talking about, you need to read this post.

aik4• 16 years ago

I do agree though the author is a bit naive sounding.

"By failure we mean the inability to properly educate our children equally and fairly."

I don't agree completely with this. By failure we mean the inability to properly educate our children PERIOD. Supplying "equal" education to the underprivileged is a sub-issue to the education issues (though it is a large sub-issue).

"One is that students are educated in order to prepare them for the world, allow them to succeed, and mold them into proper social citizens. This is the governments, parents and teachers point of view."

I wouldn't go as far as to say this is the government's point of view. The government I think has a main focus of molding people into "proper" social citizens.

"We need to discover our own purpose in order to help students discover theirs."

Good conclusion as well though it came out of left-field a bit. I agree that inspiring students should be the number one goal, and re-educating teachers first is a necessary step in reaching that goal, however difficult the task.

Reclix• 16 years ago

I'm totally with you about being excited that the topic is getting the attention it deserves - if enough people are turning heads, lending a dollar and a hand, maybe we can fix the problems with our education system.

However, the hardest part about giving a lot of attention to a topic is that people who are not authorities on the subject end up with opinions about what's going on, purely based on the media or the propaganda campaigns of the bigger players.

Even in examining my own perspective, I find myself dramatically in favor of destroying the teacher's union, expanding school hours and curricula, and providing more freedom to the students, so that they can engage themselves in the subject that most interests them and appeals to their strengths. Sounds idyllic, doesn't it?

But the problem with this is that I'm not an educator. I don't know what conditions are like and I don't know what the real challenges are - I just know what I'm being told by the media. Just as in a startup, we have a lot of potentially unproven hypotheses that need testing.

This then to me is the real promise of the charter school movement - not that all of them are successful (most are not - even the ones featured aren't nearly as great as they seem, as I'm finding out from working with them), but that they represent the freedom to try new things, measure them, and figure out what does work.

What scares me is that people think they have the silver bullet, rather than the silver hypothesis. Even in making these drastic changes, if no improvement is wrought, then what? Will people give up? Or pivot?

Deskie• 16 years ago

Our education system needs a facelift! And this is a great post. More people need to recognize what is said in this article. Very interesting read.

rokhayakebe2• 16 years ago

I would like to see high school having an optional two-year extension. During those two years teach students skills they are likely to use and start earning a living. Then let them now go and start making money.

A few years down the line, when they have figured what they really want to do, they can go an enroll and pursue advanced studies.

As of now I can spend lots of time learning and understanding history. When I was 19, I was just not interested in history, geography, medicine etc...

aik4• 16 years ago

My understanding is that Quebec has a system not unlike what you describe with the extra 2 years.

About your point of going back to pursue advanced studies - the problem there is that most people end up not going back once they've stopped, even if their intent is to return. This once again though is a matter of having them truly understand the benefits.

rokhayakebe2• 16 years ago

Sorry for the late reply. I have not configured my Notifo correctly.

I respectfully disagree. Lots of us here cut back on our working hours, or quit our job to go start companies. That is because we feel we have a fall back plan which is the experience and knowledge we have acquired on the job.

andrewce2• 16 years ago

I agree with the general premise of the article (that school's purpose should be to help children become adults who know their talents (and have talents)), and will ignore the notion of "discovering" purpose (as acknowledging it requires that we discuss whether purposes are created or found, which I don't care to discuss beyond this cursory treatment).

However, the pragmatics of it all are quite a bit messier.

Helping each individual student discover his/her individual talents and skills and passions requires that we restructure schools almost entirely.

1) The current system of 22+ students per class means that, in a 50 minute class period, each student can get a maximum of just over 2 minutes of personalized time, assuming a minimum of time wasted. Over the course of a school year (180 days), this works out to be about 6 hours. Hardly enough time for direct individual feedback or for solid relationships.

(I understand that there is a lot more to it than simple contact time, and also that small groups can be more efficient than 1-on-1 interaction). If all you are doing is lecturing, it does not matter how many people are in a room so long as their behavior is not disruptive (or so long as their behavior can be controlled). If you are hoping to deal with their ideas, though, there is a definite point beyond which it's impossible to do much meaningful work.

2) The school system, as it is, is mostly designed to get as many kids through as possible. Again, individualization plays only a cursory role, typically only with students who are "exceptionalities" (read: who have IEPs). Not the environment needed for the type of learning the author describes.

3) In order for the changes the author wants to see happen to actually happen, students (and teachers) will need a lot more autonomy. This means freedom to set one's own schedule to at least some amount, freedom to at least somewhat choose one's own learning, and access to all types of competent and caring adults and older peers who can help guide the student.

Personally, I'd love it if a student who was very talented in music was able to spend 4 or 5 hours a day practicing and learning those skills, and the other 3-4 hours per day doing the other bits of learning necessary to be a competent adult (literacy, numeracy, scientific and historical thinking, and so on, as well as reflective and metacognitive thinking).

Conclusion: the current system was built by people who see students as points of data and entries in a gradebook, and needs to be rehauled dramatically to provide the freedom and opportunity necessary for the type of individualized teaching the author suggests.

sthomps3• 16 years ago

This is a brilliant look at the system. And you are of course correct. There is an entire overhaul needed if we ever want to make learning more individualized. This will probably never happen. However, I included one link to a school trying it out, you would probably like it: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-litt...

Your conclusion is bang on, and yes the current system is set up in such a way that it classifies students as data in a system.

aik4• 16 years ago

I agree with you mostly.

On point 1: I don't think there is much that is more important than personalized time. I don't think 2 minutes of 1-on-1 time a day is ideal, though it's 100x better than what we have now. Something better may be if each week a teacher spends 10-15 minutes of quality time with each student, rotating who to spend time with from week to week. Still, naturally we need to try to have less students per classroom.

On point 3: Ideally there would be more autonomy, though as a first step to be significantly more successful, some slight bending of rules would do mounds.

On your conclusion and mine: I believe a major re-education of teachers would solve a lot of the issues. Most teachers think their main job is transferring knowledge in whatever subject they teach. However, in today's world where practically all knowledge is freely available, that job has been mostly taken care of. I believe a teacher's role is being a mentor for each student - assisting each student in discovering the world and their respective subject, inspiring them, freeing their minds, passing on curiosity and intrigue.

sthomps3• 16 years ago

Very interesting how you see the role of the teacher. I never thought of it that way, but it's so true. With "free" learning available anywhere, their jobs are more to do with mentoring and less with transferring knowledge.

xenophanes• 16 years ago

I think you make a good point.

To add to it:

Take those 2 minutes of personal time. Halve them because teachers don't try to maximize personal time (I suspect that's still high). Then multiply by 6 classes per year on average for 16 years. That makes 288 hours. Such a small number for such a long education. It's less than 2 months full time work. It's so little.

This does not even begin to approach the estimated 10,000 hours it takes to actually get good at something.

icefox• 16 years ago

"The Purpose Of Education" - He left out "babysitter" as one of the purposes. Another purpose of education is to babysit children, teach them that they are a number and to blindly follow authority without question. If they happen to pick up some math or reading along the way that is nice too.

sthomps3• 16 years ago

I can see why you say this, it seems to be that way in a lot of cases. This is most likely the fault of the system though. Students wouldn't be that bad if they were taught properly from the beginning.

jadentaylor• 16 years ago

I feel that we do need to reward the "good" teachers a lot better than what is currently common practice. Having two close relatives that are teachers I hear firsthand the struggles they deal with just to be teachers. Sometimes it is hard to imagine why anyone would ever want to go into that field, but knowing these people the way I do I know that it is their true desire to be there and to do everything within their ability to be good teachers to our children. So why wouldn't we want to reward them for taking on such a huge and important responsibility of educating our children.

twillerelator• 16 years ago

Premise: learning is fun. Premise: school children are bored. Conclusion: learning is not taking place in schools.

This seems as true now as it has ever been. The belief that schools can be fixed is one of the main reasons people become teachers and why the existence of schools will drag on for at least another half century.

andrewce2• 16 years ago

I worked with a teacher a few years back who would repeat the mantra "Learning is not fun. Learning is never fun. The only time you can have fun is after you are done learning."

But you're right; honest engagement with a discipline is a brilliant combination of fun and frustrating (and more importantly: the right kind of frustrating).

pstuart• 16 years ago

I beg to differ: struggling to learn is not fun, practice and homework are not fun, learning something that seems pointless is not fun.

Learning without the above constraints is fun.

The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System

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