Problems in American Education - Part 18: Real Life Education
One of the great mysteries in education, in my opinion, has to do with our reluctance to readily accept even common sense, “no-brainer” solutions to problems. We tend to be suspicious of everything, no matter how pure the motive or how logical the plan. It’s like we Red Sox fans used to be before last year’s championship, always expecting that the worst is just about to happen and convinced that the worst will happen if we allow ourselves to indulge in optimism about new ideas. Most theorists believe that we must take risks to make progress, but the conservative nature and political consciousness of many educators makes them very reluctant to take even minimal steps in directions that deviate from what has been the norm. This may be the biggest single reason for the stagnation we have seen in education over the past century. It leads us to always play catch-up and, when we get there, we have failed to deal with new issues on the horizon because of the same cautions we failed to deal with them before.
Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock was one of the most popular books circulating through academia back in the ‘70s. Toffler seemed to put his finger squarely on the pulse of what was bothering us as a society and, not only did he identify what most of us had been feeling for quite some time, but he also offered a logical plan for dealing with the ailment.
It is probably unfair to capsulize Toffler’s thesis, but we need to in order to get to the point. Toffler’s contention, you may remember, was that we were being overwhelmed by the speed of change in twentieth century America and that the resulting confusion threatened to destroy many of our beliefs about how society plans to move forward into the future. Further, he quite logically concluded that his thesis, if true, had profound implications on how we needed to educate our youth if they were to lead successful lives.
As obvious as Toffler’s theories seemed to be in a newly computerized world, they were as challenging to education as they were obvious. He stated that we needed to revamp our thinking and give up many of our beliefs about what should be taught in our schools. We needed to come to the realization that it was just as important to teach our children how to learn as it was to teach them specific subject matter. The future, he said, would continue to witness accelerated change and the study of specific subject matter and even study in preparation for a particular career could actually be counterproductive in a world that would be vastly different in the near future and that would change again shortly afterward. He cited sociological and demographic studies indicating that, more and more, we would be leading lives of multiple careers, lives that required skills related to flexibility and a level of learning generalization that would allow change of direction quickly in an information age. The liberal artist and the “Renaissance Man” would be making a big comeback, and Toffler felt that education needed to respond to that reality.
It is now quite obvious that Toffler was very prophetic in what he predicted in Future Shock and in the several other books he wrote expanding and further defining his original theme. We definitely know this now and have felt the impact; but we also knew then that he was simply reading the handwriting on the wall that we all could see. Our thoughts may not have been quite as clear or coherent as his; but virtually everyone who read his work felt the phenomenon of the “oh yeah, of course” light going on in his or her head.
One of the most important of the untold stories of the late twentieth century is the one about how slowly our educational establishment reacted to the reality so clearly explained by Toffler and how resistant it was to seeing the nose sitting squarely on it’s face. The message was and is for schools to teach process in addition to subject matter. Notice, that statement did not imply that subject matter should be ignored; it indicated that mastery of process was necessary if young people were to be properly prepared to react to a rapidly changing environment. You would think that such an implication would be pretty obvious in our society; but it was remarkable to observe how that need was met with intransigence and retrenchment in the latter part of the last century. Once again, the “back to basics” movement seemed to be the culprit. No matter how pressing the need for change, reactionary forces in education argued that a better strategy would be to return to the values of life that were honored when life was more simple. They capitalized on the nostalgic premise of the simpler life in convincing many that change was a bad thing, denying the reality that change was taking place whether we liked it or not. It was difficult to argue against people who operate from such a premise because there is an undeniable charm attached to the kind of existence they remember from their childhood; but the problem is that it promotes an ostrich-like strategy that suggests burying our heads in the sand.
One of the clearest examples I encountered had to do with the most innovative program I worked with in my career. A brilliant young principal came to our school in the late 1980’s. He understood Toffler’s ideas and was also very well versed in the strategies proposed by the best academic thinkers. He immediately formed a steering committee for the school (teachers, parents, community leaders, etc.) and charged them with the task of developing a mission for the school, a mission defined by a set of competencies that we wanted our graduates to have when they left our school.
It was obvious that he was looking at process in these competencies and, almost immediately, his initiative was met with suspicion. What was he doing? Was this some kind of liberal agenda? Was this an attempt to make a name for himself to create a stepping stone for a bigger job? Why did he want to bring change to a school that already had a strong academic reputation?
To his credit, the young principal fought through the early criticism and moved forward on the competencies that were proposed by the steering committee. One of the competencies, life-long learning, was used to form a foundation for a new program referred to as the senior project and that is where I got involved. The senior project sought to have students in their senior year (remember, the year that is quite often a largely wasted year in many high schools) take a year-long course in which they would develop a project in a field of interest, culminating with a major presentation in which they would submit their work to the educational community. He asked me to pilot the program as an elective with a small group of students with the understanding that, if it was successful, we would eventually expand it and make it a senior requirement for graduation and a model for methodologies promoting process, or performance based assessment, in all of our courses.
Well, the pilot was successful and that was when the fun began. The careful planning required by the principal and the human resources he devoted to the idea were largely responsible for its success. The most committed teachers in the school were assigned to the project and they came to believe in it in much the same way as did the principal. Wonderful projects were completed by the students, even by those who first balked at the unique and innovative approach; and there was a clear indication that the methodology was accomplishing exactly what was intended, a vehicle for demonstrating the process mastery students needed to face the real world.
Remarkably we found that an unexpected result was a marked success enjoyed by students who previously had great difficulty in school - particularly special education students. We attributed that result to the fact that their special designations over the years had led to a strategic compensation program that stressed process and better prepared them for the rigors of actually creating something in a real-life situation. Conversely, our most capable students, many of whom were accustomed to using their innate ability to just put assignments together at the last minute, resented the sequential patterns required by process orientation and had some of the greatest difficulty adapting to the requirements. Quite often, in the end, and after a tremendous amount of complaining, they tended to come up with brilliant final projects; but their resentment told a much bigger story about the state of traditional education and its connection (or lack of connection) to real life.
Anyway, our first attempts to make senior project a requirement for graduation met with tremendous resistance. The “college-bound” students described above were the first to lead the charge. Many of them felt that it was an insult to their intelligence to be forced to follow prescribed process. Their parents appeared at Board of Education meetings, claiming that senior project was just not for everyone. Their implication was clear. “Back-to-basic” board members jumped on the band wagon, ignoring the obvious success of the program in its early years, complained that it was just another liberal erosion of the academic rigor that we should be promoting in education.
In the meantime, positive reaction to the program was spreading. Teachers from other schools visited our school to see what was going on. Our own teachers, except for the most entrenched, came around to the methodology for use in their classes one at a time. A foundation was established designed to finance those projects that required materials. A popular national magazine wrote an article in which senior project was cited as one of the country’s most innovative programs.
Yes, the board eventually approved the program as a requirement for graduation, but only after numerous battles and grudging and bitter resistance from members who could not deny its popularity and clear success with the vast majority of students who were willing to demonstrate the effort that was required. The team who was involved in putting the program together was more than proud of what was achieved and the impact on the school; but the key question still remains as to why such an obviously promising idea was so difficult to implement in a community that should have embraced it with open arms. More important, what does this say about our chances for progress in the face of inevitable change in our society? The problems that were inherent and substantial in my situation are a significant part of a much bigger untold story in American education as it exists at this time. Why does a system that is so obviously in need of change so resistant to change? What is wrong with a system that so defiantly resists innovation? These are very fundamental questions and, as of now, they go largely unanswered.
Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock was one of the most popular books circulating through academia back in the ‘70s. Toffler seemed to put his finger squarely on the pulse of what was bothering us as a society and, not only did he identify what most of us had been feeling for quite some time, but he also offered a logical plan for dealing with the ailment.
It is probably unfair to capsulize Toffler’s thesis, but we need to in order to get to the point. Toffler’s contention, you may remember, was that we were being overwhelmed by the speed of change in twentieth century America and that the resulting confusion threatened to destroy many of our beliefs about how society plans to move forward into the future. Further, he quite logically concluded that his thesis, if true, had profound implications on how we needed to educate our youth if they were to lead successful lives.
As obvious as Toffler’s theories seemed to be in a newly computerized world, they were as challenging to education as they were obvious. He stated that we needed to revamp our thinking and give up many of our beliefs about what should be taught in our schools. We needed to come to the realization that it was just as important to teach our children how to learn as it was to teach them specific subject matter. The future, he said, would continue to witness accelerated change and the study of specific subject matter and even study in preparation for a particular career could actually be counterproductive in a world that would be vastly different in the near future and that would change again shortly afterward. He cited sociological and demographic studies indicating that, more and more, we would be leading lives of multiple careers, lives that required skills related to flexibility and a level of learning generalization that would allow change of direction quickly in an information age. The liberal artist and the “Renaissance Man” would be making a big comeback, and Toffler felt that education needed to respond to that reality.
It is now quite obvious that Toffler was very prophetic in what he predicted in Future Shock and in the several other books he wrote expanding and further defining his original theme. We definitely know this now and have felt the impact; but we also knew then that he was simply reading the handwriting on the wall that we all could see. Our thoughts may not have been quite as clear or coherent as his; but virtually everyone who read his work felt the phenomenon of the “oh yeah, of course” light going on in his or her head.
One of the most important of the untold stories of the late twentieth century is the one about how slowly our educational establishment reacted to the reality so clearly explained by Toffler and how resistant it was to seeing the nose sitting squarely on it’s face. The message was and is for schools to teach process in addition to subject matter. Notice, that statement did not imply that subject matter should be ignored; it indicated that mastery of process was necessary if young people were to be properly prepared to react to a rapidly changing environment. You would think that such an implication would be pretty obvious in our society; but it was remarkable to observe how that need was met with intransigence and retrenchment in the latter part of the last century. Once again, the “back to basics” movement seemed to be the culprit. No matter how pressing the need for change, reactionary forces in education argued that a better strategy would be to return to the values of life that were honored when life was more simple. They capitalized on the nostalgic premise of the simpler life in convincing many that change was a bad thing, denying the reality that change was taking place whether we liked it or not. It was difficult to argue against people who operate from such a premise because there is an undeniable charm attached to the kind of existence they remember from their childhood; but the problem is that it promotes an ostrich-like strategy that suggests burying our heads in the sand.
One of the clearest examples I encountered had to do with the most innovative program I worked with in my career. A brilliant young principal came to our school in the late 1980’s. He understood Toffler’s ideas and was also very well versed in the strategies proposed by the best academic thinkers. He immediately formed a steering committee for the school (teachers, parents, community leaders, etc.) and charged them with the task of developing a mission for the school, a mission defined by a set of competencies that we wanted our graduates to have when they left our school.
It was obvious that he was looking at process in these competencies and, almost immediately, his initiative was met with suspicion. What was he doing? Was this some kind of liberal agenda? Was this an attempt to make a name for himself to create a stepping stone for a bigger job? Why did he want to bring change to a school that already had a strong academic reputation?
To his credit, the young principal fought through the early criticism and moved forward on the competencies that were proposed by the steering committee. One of the competencies, life-long learning, was used to form a foundation for a new program referred to as the senior project and that is where I got involved. The senior project sought to have students in their senior year (remember, the year that is quite often a largely wasted year in many high schools) take a year-long course in which they would develop a project in a field of interest, culminating with a major presentation in which they would submit their work to the educational community. He asked me to pilot the program as an elective with a small group of students with the understanding that, if it was successful, we would eventually expand it and make it a senior requirement for graduation and a model for methodologies promoting process, or performance based assessment, in all of our courses.
Well, the pilot was successful and that was when the fun began. The careful planning required by the principal and the human resources he devoted to the idea were largely responsible for its success. The most committed teachers in the school were assigned to the project and they came to believe in it in much the same way as did the principal. Wonderful projects were completed by the students, even by those who first balked at the unique and innovative approach; and there was a clear indication that the methodology was accomplishing exactly what was intended, a vehicle for demonstrating the process mastery students needed to face the real world.
Remarkably we found that an unexpected result was a marked success enjoyed by students who previously had great difficulty in school - particularly special education students. We attributed that result to the fact that their special designations over the years had led to a strategic compensation program that stressed process and better prepared them for the rigors of actually creating something in a real-life situation. Conversely, our most capable students, many of whom were accustomed to using their innate ability to just put assignments together at the last minute, resented the sequential patterns required by process orientation and had some of the greatest difficulty adapting to the requirements. Quite often, in the end, and after a tremendous amount of complaining, they tended to come up with brilliant final projects; but their resentment told a much bigger story about the state of traditional education and its connection (or lack of connection) to real life.
Anyway, our first attempts to make senior project a requirement for graduation met with tremendous resistance. The “college-bound” students described above were the first to lead the charge. Many of them felt that it was an insult to their intelligence to be forced to follow prescribed process. Their parents appeared at Board of Education meetings, claiming that senior project was just not for everyone. Their implication was clear. “Back-to-basic” board members jumped on the band wagon, ignoring the obvious success of the program in its early years, complained that it was just another liberal erosion of the academic rigor that we should be promoting in education.
In the meantime, positive reaction to the program was spreading. Teachers from other schools visited our school to see what was going on. Our own teachers, except for the most entrenched, came around to the methodology for use in their classes one at a time. A foundation was established designed to finance those projects that required materials. A popular national magazine wrote an article in which senior project was cited as one of the country’s most innovative programs.
Yes, the board eventually approved the program as a requirement for graduation, but only after numerous battles and grudging and bitter resistance from members who could not deny its popularity and clear success with the vast majority of students who were willing to demonstrate the effort that was required. The team who was involved in putting the program together was more than proud of what was achieved and the impact on the school; but the key question still remains as to why such an obviously promising idea was so difficult to implement in a community that should have embraced it with open arms. More important, what does this say about our chances for progress in the face of inevitable change in our society? The problems that were inherent and substantial in my situation are a significant part of a much bigger untold story in American education as it exists at this time. Why does a system that is so obviously in need of change so resistant to change? What is wrong with a system that so defiantly resists innovation? These are very fundamental questions and, as of now, they go largely unanswered.
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