Commentary: Don’t prop up failing schools

CNN) — Historically the federal government has been a small investor in the nation’s education system. With the recent economic stimulus bill, however, this changed virtually overnight.

There is great danger in the sudden and massive amount of funding — nearly $100 billion — that the federal government is throwing at the nation’s schools. District by district, the budgetary crises into which all schools were plunging created the impetus for long-needed changes.

The most likely result of this stimulus will be to give our schools the luxury of affording not to change. This is borrowed money that we’re pumping into our schools, and it comes at a price. Charging education isn’t changing it.

via Commentary: Don’t prop up failing schools – CNN.com.

Clayton Christensen is on the right track here, which is why the real crisis in education isn’t now, but five to eight years from now.  I wish it were right now, but it’s not.

Yet the reality is that this $100 billion we’ve just dumped into our k-12 school system is only going to subsidize and prolong the current failing system.  It’s not going to fix or radically overhaul the system.

The folks over at Schools Matter might have you think that it’s a bad thing that the philanthro-capitalists are getting involved in schools, and pumping money into charter schools, programs like KIPP, and others.  They may be right.  But on the rare occasions that I talk to people at the top of the economic scale, they indicate that success came in spite of school, rather than because of it.  When I talk (far more often) to people at the middle or at the bottom of the economic scale, I hear stories about how they really didn’t like school, or didn’t learn anything there about anything important.  Once you get past reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, their work in chemistry or clerical work or project management or whatever else they do all came about as a result of engagements with learning after school ended, rather than during.

As for the oft-repeated chestnut that schools exist to train citizens, rather than people for the economy… well.  Voter involvement in local, state, and federal elections has only just recently upticked.  It seems unlikely that schools have any legitimate right to take the credit for this transformation.

David Warlick indicates in his response to this article,

“The fact is that the entire industry [education] is designed to resist change — and this is not entirely a bad thing.  ..and I’m still not comfortable with completely ditching education as we know it and replacing it with something completely new — at least not yet.”

I’m wedded to the idea of being a teacher, and I like the ideas that I’m going to be a teacher in a school.  But I think that schools are on the verge of a massive extinction or transformation, because they are resistant to change.  That’s my guess.

However… this stimulus money we’ve just pumped into the silly school system we’ve got will probably keep the silliness going for a few more years.  My gues is… five to eight.  And then we’ll be out of money, and out of change, and the social media technology of web2.0 will be building the learning media technology of 3.0.  The best schools for 5-12 learning will be online, and parents will abandon middle schools and high schools in droves.

We have until 2014… maybe until 2018.  But I’m not counting on it.

The Case for Working With Your Hands – NYTimes.com

There is good reason to suppose that responsibility has to be installed in the foundation of your mental equipment — at the level of perception and habit. There is an ethic of paying attention that develops in the trades through hard experience. It inflects your perception of the world and your habitual responses to it. This is due to the immediate feedback you get from material objects and to the fact that the work is typically situated in face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

An economy that is more entrepreneurial, less managerial, would be less subject to the kind of distortions that occur when corporate managers’ compensation is tied to the short-term profit of distant shareholders. For most entrepreneurs, profit is at once a more capacious and a more concrete thing than this. It is a calculation in which the intrinsic satisfactions of work count — not least, the exercise of your own powers of reason.

via The Case for Working With Your Hands – NYTimes.com.

It’s a brilliant article, and it suggests two things at once.  First, that students in school should learn how to work with wood, with metal, and yes, with plastic.  It should be as natural to our students and to us as working with words and grammar in the classroom.

But second, that we should in fact teach students to work with sketchbook and pencil and colored pens.  The process of drawing what we see, and what we want to see, is as critical a part of an education as building things, and interacting with real people. We need plumbers and motorcycle repairmen, yes.  We need artists and sculptors, and weavers, and potters, and basket-weavers.  And those people work with their hands, too.

2¢ Worth » Think 100 Years Ahead

I just learned, from the ThinkQuest website, why we have such a difficult time appropriately funding education.  No surprises here, but it’s a Chinese proverb that I was not aware of.

“If you are thinking a year ahead – plant seeds; If you are thinking 10 years ahead – plant a tree; If you are thinking 100 years ahead – educate the people “

When was the last time anyone you know was thinking a hundred years ahead?  When was the last time you saw somebody do something a hundred years in mind? 

via 2¢ Worth » Think 100 Years Ahead.

Let’s consider it, then, Mr. Warlick.  Let us say that in a century, we want the world to reap the fruits of biotechnology, have a successful and sustainable moon colony, a similar base of operations on Mars, and exploration vessels in the Outer Planets.  We want our atmosphere clean, our oceans rich with aquatic life and less pollution, and a successful globe-spanning culture that provides peace and prosperity for everyone. 

Let us create schools where students learn gardening, biology and molecular biology, humanism, physics, yoga and tai chi, reading and writing (1 skill!) preventative medicine, sex education, astronomy, environmental science, computer programming and calculus, chemistry, and teamwork & conflict-resolution.  

Where’s our first school going to be? Can we open this September?

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