If you're reading this blog, you likely have an understanding for how and why education needs to change.
Well, if you need further proof that things are changing, you might be interested in knowing that printed encyclopedias are one step closer to the Museum of Education.
In a move that will surprise very few, Encyclopedia Britannica is expected to announce that it will no longer print its 32-volume set of printed encyclopedias, the New York Times reports. This comes 244 years after the iconic reference books first went to press.
The usefulness of such reference materials has been on the decline for years, especially since the advent of Wikipedia. Whatever flaws its open, crowd-sourced editorial model may invite, Wikipedia is generally regarded as a comprehensive and mostly-accurate source of information, which can be accessed for free.
What implications does this have for educators?
At what point do Wikipedia-haters see that crowd sourcing + free = the future?
Do you remember that scene from Forrest Gump when Gump joined the army and met his Drill Sergeant?
Drill Sergeant: Gump! What's your sole purpose in this army?
Forrest Gump: To do whatever you tell me, drill sergeant!
Drill Sergeant: God damn it, Gump! You're a god damn genius! This is the most outstanding answer I have ever heard. You must have a goddamn I.Q. of 160. You are goddamn gifted, Private Gump. Listen up, people...
Forrest Gump: [narrates] Now for some reason I fit in the army like one of them round pegs. It's not really hard. You just make your bed real neat and remember to stand up straight and always answer every question with "Yes, drill sergeant."
Drill Sergeant: ...Is that clear?
Forrest Gump: Yes, drill sergeant!
Sometimes I think this is precisely how school works. Too often, I think we define the entire purpose of school as nothing more than obedience. We bastardize the terms respect and intelligence and make them nothing more than synonyms for compliance.
We've confused obedience with learning for too long.
Which column would you want for your kids? Which is good is enough for others' kids? Which would you want for your spouse? Which would you want your employer or colleagues to have?
Godin writes:
Now that obedience is less important and learning matters more than ever, we have to be brave enough to separate them. We can rebuild the entire system around passion instead of fear.
If our problem was that too many children get low testsandgrades, then compliance and obedience might be helpful tools, but this is not what ails public education. The real problem is that too many children are drop outs-in-waiting who eventually vote with their feet, or their minds, and opt out of the whole affair because they've lost their passion for learning.
To solve this problem, demanding more obedience and compliance will be at best unhelpful and at worst harmful.
I believe the drama of the current moment in education is a conflict between two opposing forces attempting to take the country's education system in two different directions.
On one side, you have the movement toward standardization--of curriculum, standards, assessments, teaching methods, and ultimately, students. On this side, testing is the way forward. It's a way to apparently control a multitude of factors that affect teaching and learning. It's a way to make teaching a simple matter of learning techniques to get results. It implies that success looks the same for every child, that we can count on "if...then..." scenarios to work every time, and that the arts have no value.
The movement toward standardization means lots of money is needed to fund the creation and administration of more tests, the development of test preparation materials and stronger data tracking systems. These endeavors add up to a booming industry funded by our tax money. This movement also means less money and time is needed to prepare, support and retain quality, professional teachers, since most curriculum and assessment decisions are made without teacher input and creativity.
On the other side, you have a powerful movement working to create a real teaching profession, something we've never really had, due in large part to sexism inherent in the way the teacher's job has historically been structured. Teachers are taking on more leadership at all levels of the educational system, revealing the complexity of teaching and child development, and bridging the huge divide between the ed policy world and the classroom. Parents are speaking up about the value of their childrens' teachers and the diverse needs of their children.
Lately there are forceful attempts by the standardization movement to take control of the professionalization of teaching, by defining great teaching as that which causes the greatest rise in student standardized test scores. Will professionals and taxpayers allow this false idea to guide the education of America's children?
I was part of a National Academies of Science committee that was asked to carefully review the nature and implications of America's test-based accountability systems, including school improvement programs under the No Child Left Behind Act, high school exit exams, test-based teacher incentive-pay systems, pay-for-scores initiatives and other uses of test scores to evaluate student and school performance and determine policy based on them. We spent nearly a decade reviewing the evidence as it accumulated, focusing on the most rigorous and credible studies of incentives in educational testing and sifting through the results to uncover the key lessons for education policymakers and the public.
Our conclusion in our report to Congress and the public was sobering: There are little to no positive effects of these systems overall on student learning and educational progress, and there is widespread teaching to the test and gaming of the systems that reflects a wasteful use of resources and leads to inaccurate or inflated measures of performance
