Previously I discussed trends in education that are increasingly moving us towards a more standardized system of schooling and what some of the indicators are of these trends. Because I would rather discuss what is possible rather than what is wrong with the current system, I will outline some concrete suggestions how we might design schools that are innovative, and how our national policies might inspire this reform. We must move back and forth between looking at what the faults are of the current system, and proposing a vision of the future, for as Brazilian educator Paulo Freire writes,
Transformation of the world implies a dialectic between the two actions: denouncing the process of dehumanization and announcing the dream of a new society.
So with Freire's suggestion let's move forward envisioning a public system of education that places innovation rather than standardization at the center of learning.
Recently I've been reading an excellent history of American schools by David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Tyack looks at how the school systems in the United States developed from small, one-room schoolhouses to large, bureaucratic systems. He writes about the school reforms of the time:
Efficiency, rationality, continuity, precision, impartiality became watchwords of the consolidators. In short, they tried to create a more bureaucratic system.
Through today's lens Tyack's quote sounds particularly ominous, but during the 19th century there was a need for a more unified system of education. The population of cities was growing at an astounding rate. The small schools in cities, and particularly the teachers, were being overrun by ever increasing populations of students. Tyack points out that in Chicago in the 1860 a total of 123 teachers had the responsibility of educating 14,000 students! At this time in the United States there was a need for more school buildings, curriculums, books and materials, systems of record keeping, and staffing. Many students couldn't find seats in the local schools and weren't able to attend. Given the rapidly changing demographics, cities needed unified systems to educate all of the students, and so they began the creation of the school districts and systems we have in place today.
Over the last 150 years our school bureaucracies have grown, and our politicians today are pushing for even more unification and standardization of our education systems. What has changed is that we are no longer living in the 19th century. We have school buildings and the capacity to build more. We have a large teacher workforce and teacher training programs in place in every city across the country. Education corporations compete to sell textbooks to school districts and cities allocate hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate contracts. The initial goals of creating bureaucratic systems have been met and what we have now are schools across the country that look exactly the same.
Walk into most high schools in any rural or suburban towns and cities across the United States and you will see the following: a large building built to hold over a thousand students, a range of sports programs and teams (and playing fields and gyms to accommodate them), a maze of hallways filled with rows of hundreds of student lockers, a cafeteria, and a massive parking lot for staff and student parking. Recently I visited a school in South Florida that had not one large building, but three large buildings designed for a campus of four thousand students.
What you will also find in every one of these high schools are curriculums and courses that look exactly the same. There is the 9th grade English class that reads Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, and House on Mango Street and the Algebra class with a textbook of endless problem sets (with answers in the back!) There is the biology class that will diagram the cell and talk about the process of photosynthesis. There is the foreign language department that will continue to teach the to be verb and the music department that will generally be made up of the marching band teacher and the choral music teacher (except for urban schools; these last two departments have usually been cut). The predictability and homogeneity of schools across the United States demonstrates exactly how successful the move towards a "one best system" has been. Yet as Thomas Freidman points out in his article, The New Untouchables, we are now moving into a world that is very different than the one one hundred years ago. We need students who are able to work with and collaborate other people in a variety of industries: doctors, architects, carpenters, plumbers, teachers, entrepreneurs. Student also need to be able to think in innovative ways, solve complex problems, and creatively and critically navigate the barrage of information available.
It is now time to move from the homogeneous schools to ones that are centers of innovation. Rather than building schools that look the same, we need schools that are unique. The first step in this is creating schools with a vision. Educator Bil Johnson points out that most of the schools we have today have the exact same "mission statement" on a banner in the front entrance that reads something like, "NAME OF SCHOOL seeks to develop critical thinkers and responsible citizens. Our students will leave with the skills necessary to compete in college and in the world." What we need today is much more choice and diversity in public education in the United States. Some of the most extraordinary schools I have visited are schools with an arts focus (a great example is the Boston Arts Academy) and I don't think it's having a focus on the arts that makes them special places. It's because they actually have a vision that students, teachers, parents, and school leaders can be passionate about. There are many charter schools and innovative pilot schools with different foci. Some focus on marine biology, others on technology, and others on the humanities. Some are known for a traditional approach to education--students in uniforms and an emphasis on discipline and order--others value a constructivist, progressive model of education--interdisciplinary classrooms and project-based learning. We are a diverse nation filled with citizens from different cultural and religious backgrounds. We need schools that reflect our diverse citizenry by offering a multitude of learning experiences. Such schools with unique visions will pave the way for the kinds of innovative, creative, and global thinking that will be required in the future.