I'm a teacher. A parent. A citizen. Those are the lenses I view teaching and learning, educators and students, education and school through. That doesn't make me an expert, and I don't have all the answers, but I think I have some good questions, so let's get started with one of those questions.
This is the question that educators are constantly asking themselves.
What should students know and be able to do?
It gets back to an old argument in education, the argument about which is more important -- content or skills. Like most teachers I've talked with, I think that's a false dichotomy. I want both. I want students to know some content and have the skills to be able to use their knowledge. I don't want them to just "cover" the material, I want them to uncover their own understanding, and to think critically about the content.
My bias, however, is that too often in schools we err too much on the side of content. I once heard Cris Tovani, a wonderful reading teacher in Colorado, say,
Yeah, as a teacher I can cover my curriculum. I can get to that finish line. But often when I get to that finish line and look around, I'm all by myself.
That's even more true today, when we live in a rapidly changing, information abundant world. We live in exponential times. There's just too much content out there. As Eric Hoffer said,
In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
He said that more than thirty years ago, and I think most of us would agree that the pace of change has only increased since then.
Schools were designed for an age when information was scarce, when students came to school because that's where the information was. It was in the textbook, it was in the teacher's head, and -- if they were lucky and had a good library -- it was in the additional resources the school library provided. But now, now we live in an information abundant world. I don't hear many people complaining that they don't have enough information (although they may complain about the quality of that information), yet schools are still designed around the concept that this is where you go to get information. That needs to change.
Which leads, I think, to an even more basic question. A question I think that, despite all the education reform lately, we haven't really talked much about.
What's the purpose of school? Is the primary purpose of school to meet the needs of society, or to meet the needs of the students?
There's a strong argument to be made that since society is investing so many resources into educating the young, that schools should be designed to meet the needs of society. After all, if schools don't meet the needs of society, why should society support them? This is the argument that is currently in fashion.
But I'd like to suggest an alternative, that the primary purpose of school should be to meet the needs of the individual. That if we meet the individual needs of students, we will ultimately meet the needs of all students. And if we truly meet the needs of all students, we will then meet the needs of society. I think this has always been the case, but it's even more important in a rapidly changing, information abundant world, a world where society doesn't even know what its needs are going to be in five years, much less in thirteen (for K-12 education) or longer (if you include post-secondary education).
This is a problem for many of the current school reform discussions because, despite the rhetoric about leaving no child behind and racing to the top, they rely on a standardized view of success, a one size fits all approach. I think individual students are different, and to ignore that fact is to deny the evidence that is all around us, at least if you ever met more than one kid.
No, I'm not talking about lowering expectations. I think we can have high standards without being standardized. Standardized curricula create standardized minds. Standardized minds create collateral debt obligations and credit default swaps. You know all those folks on Wall Street aced their standardized tests. They were the best and the brightest, the success stories from our schools, at least by our current definition of success in schools. Yet clearly there must be more to success than just those test scores.
So, I would suggest we need to slightly modify the question we ask ourselves as educators. Instead, perhaps we should be asking,
What should this student know and be able to do?
I think the addition of just one word might just make all the difference.
Follow Karl Fisch on Twitter: www.twitter.com/karlfisch
http://reading-sage.blogspot.com
Now, if anyone would like to donate some new computer to my school, I'm not saying we wouldn't take them :-)
I agree with this fully. We have to meet the needs of the individual students and work out from there. Regardless of where you go in the debate about what should be in the curriculum re content, one indispensable skill students need regardless of their pursuits, is the ability to take committed, determined action towards specific goals, the heart of achievement in whatever form it takes. http://bit.ly/9xiQqp
This single skill goes to the heart of student readiness, as well as job readiness. (I am amazed at the cavalier, often sneering dismissal this idea of being employable receives from many in this debate. What an attitude to pass on to your kids.
While I agree with Karl's central premise that meeting the individual needs of students is essential if we're to create an educational system that truly leaves America stronger---and while new technologies are starting to make this level of individualized instruction possible---I'm intimidated as a classroom teacher because I know just how hard differentiating in a room of 30+ students or on a team of 120+ students really is.
The barrier isn't my know-how. The barrier is the willingness of communities to provide me with the kinds of working conditions---reasonable student loads, significant time for planning and reflection, digital tools for finding trends in student learning---necessary to pull individualization off at the student level.
Any of this make sense?
Bill
Many correlations between what you are saying above.
I think we need to redefine what success looks like, and I think that definition should focus more on each child.
Great post!! You've got me thinking - if the technology of the 21st Century had been around before schools were widely developed, what would schools have looked like? How would schools have been different if we knew about 21st Century technology?
Andrew Pass
A Pass Educational Group
It's a complicated question, and I don't want to imply that I think the answers are easy or that I have them all. But, to me, it starts with meeting the needs of the students we have in front of us. Each one of those students, as individual human beings, not as a "disaggregated subgroup" who's scores need to improve, or a "bubble" student that we need to get to the next proficiency level.
I think that, more and more, we have the ability to personalize education, to meet the needs of individual students and allow them to pursue their passions. My evolving goal as an educator, which I'm coming nowhere near to achieving yet, is to meet the individual needs of my students and to support them as they pursue their passions, while in a community setting (currently school) with shared values and goals.