If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.
attr. Albert Einstein
I just don’t think we’re asking the right questions yet. We are rushing to answers without clearly understanding the problem. (For a beautiful illustration of how important questions are, check out Kristos Kiriakais’ A Day in the Park.) That may be why we haven’t seen the change we all want to see in education.
Actually, I’m not sure that change that we want is all that well defined either, which may also be why we haven’t yet seen it. One clue that this might be the case is that we are using the same language—the words “reforming education” for example—to describe two different categories of problems, which creates a confusion that dilutes or frustrates our efforts to make change.
One category is about how we improve the practice of teaching and learning. Let’s call that the micro-level problem. The other category of problems is about how we define the relationship between that activity and society, or what’s the purpose of schooling anyways? That’s the macro-level. We use the word “education” for both but they aren’t the same thing. So, from here on I’ll try to stick to the word schooling when I mean the teaching and learning that happens in the classroom and the word “education” when I’m talking about the larger endeavour.
I actually don’t think schooling needs reforming or reinvention. This is not to say schooling can’t get better or shouldn’t try to improve itself. But this is about improving a practice and that comes through, well, disciplined practice, not through revolution, reinvention or even reform. (Read Josh Waitzkin’s, The Art of Learning for a great exploration of this.) Words like revitalize, reinvent, revolutionize and so on get thrown around all too casually. I think they are actually more of an expression of emotional conditions like enthusiasm or frustration than anything practical. I also think those words are characteristic of a general cultural romance with dramatic intervention and heroic change rather than the hours and hours of steady hard work necessary for improving a practice. This is true for every discipline—that’s what “discipline” means.
Those “re-words” like reforming, reinventing etc., those words that suggest some great disruption are, on the other hand, suited for changing education. Note this is different than what I was saying in an earlier post, Maybe We Should Stop Trying to Reform Education. As I go through this open search for problems we want to solve in education, this is emerging as the central one: do we need to rewrite the social contract between society and education?
I’m not sure making schooling better will make education better. It’s possible that we could get really good at schooling people, but do so in things they don’t need or want, or that society doesn’t need or want. There is a difference between how we teach and learn and what we teach and learn, right? Schooling sets the former, education the latter. Schooling can be out of touch or of of date. This is what we are mean when when we criticize schooling for not preparing kids for the future.
When this happens I think we are really asking questions about schooling’s jurisdiction and competence. What are they supposed to do? and, Are they capable of doing it? I honestly think we’re asking them to do too much, more than they were designed for when we built them as the sole arm of the project we’re calling education. I know that in many communities, schools are the main vehicle for delivering critical social services—beyond schooling—to children. That may be a matter of necessity or expediency, but it might not be the best way to manage those services. If we want schools to do all of those things that they actually do, then again we need to rethink the social contract.
Making education better might, on the other hand, might `make schooling better because we will then reset—another “re” -word—our expectations for it and for how we go about providing education to all.
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