I've been involved in education for over forty years. For most of that I didn't do it for a living but managed to keep at it never the less. It was actually John Holt's How Children Fail that got me involved back in the 1960's and is now seen as the start of the permanent educational reform movement in this country. You would think that we should have gotten somewhere in fifty years. Instead we have an institutionalized the reformist war . . .
The whole educational reform movement has come to seem like a friendly reenactment of a civil war battle. The players all know the history and have more in common with the other players than with some historical event, or, heaven forbid, the people wanting to be educated. The traditionalists (back to basics) and the reformists (creative discovery) have reenacted the different versions of the battle so many times they are beginning to forget which side they are on.
Much, it seems, like every other problem we have on a national level things are so politicized that there is no rational position to take. The only position is counter to the other guys. Currently this is based on Silicon Valley saving the world with technology while the other side wants the Common Core to get measurable results and completely stifle the last vestiges of creativity in our children. Or wait . . . maybe that is the same side? In either case the kids are screwed. Of course they really don't give a shit because it hasn't meant anything for years. Who are all those old people and what are they shouting about? None of this stuff will make any difference . . .
While the forces of technology and the instigators of standards map out their futures (there is a pun in there) the kids have taken to educating themselves. The irony is that this takes place partially online and partially as a collaboration with their friends. And, as you might suspect, this works pretty well with the brightest and wealthiest but with the others, not so much. The trouble is the majority are the others . . .
As most anyone in education knows the smarter kids usually manage to extract an education out of the school experience despite the best efforts of politicians and parents. The hurt falls on those who could use some help in figuring out what they need to know.
It use to be OK as you really only needed to know enough to get a factory job. Now the gap has widened to the point that there is a far greater distance between the kids that are getting it and those that aren't and a greater economic and social gap between their families. We also need to factor in the collapse of the industrial economy (I'm not sure what else to call it) resulting from the need for sustainability as we force unfavorable changes to our climate and the public refusal to pay a living wage for the services that are still in demand. But that's not all as we have never settled on what public education is supposed to do: Train for jobs and indoctrination or educate for knowledge, creativity and fulfillment? Actually it has always been an amalgamation of both with the emphasis driven by the prevailing political winds. Lately those have been very much for indoctrination.
OK, we have run around the wheel again and our classrooms look pretty much as they did in the 19th century while the kids are more and more educating themselves or not depending on their family status. So what do we do?
In my humble opinion we should get the hell out of the way. We live in a heavily networked and increasingly virtualized world. Almost all information is online with more and more social interaction. This is not hard. Information (content) is not education just as a library is not a school. Communication to discover new ideas and solve problems is where education happens. That is now a combination of virtual and physical, personal and group. We need to merge virtual and physical learning environments with individualized skill paths and certification options. Note that word "options". We are not going to educate everyone to have a career or even a job. Once we accept that we can look at how we can allow people to live and be productive in some way that is possible on our increasingly challenged planet.
And, of course, I have just raised more issues than I have settled. The point is that our kids are beginning to do this themselves. Shouldn't we quit playing games and help them?