To All,
The system by which we educate is obsolete. It is still designed around teaching individual stand alone subjects in an industrial era format. The problem we face is a megalithic bureaucracy plus all the tentacles it maintains throughout our communities that provide jobs even though the job to be done is not being done. The argument around the issue that seems to be your priority has no bearing on bringing education into the 21st century and making it far more student specific. All covered in the many education resources most appear to be unwilling to read. Talk about illiteracy.
The focus I hear is to force public ed to change directions while still maintaining the institution and all the jobs it supports. That is about on par with giving an airplane a complete overhaul including changing the crew while inflight. Find a better way. Yes jobs will be lost, lives will be disrupted but that is always the case in large size institution disruption where a better way is found.
This piece by Michael Horn offers a different perspective:
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/fund-schools-based-on-learning-not-attendance/?utm_source=Ed%20Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10%2F21%2F22
I propose the question again, “What is the purpose, or job to be done, of school and is it doing it?”. Obviously, unless its purpose is to just employ people and provide free daycare for all for 12 years, the outcomes we are seeing says it is not.
I have a wealth of books on the subject (see attached) but maybe start with the President of Hillsdale College, Larry Arnn’s book “Liberty and Learning, The Evolution of American Education” for an overview of government involvement in education. From there I suggest Michael Horn’s “From Reopen to Reinvent, Recreating School for Every Child.”
We need more like all of you that desire to engage the consuming of education public in creating dialogue within our communities on the fact that there are better more student centric ways to be doing school. Until that conversation takes hold I see nothing improving relative to preparing children for their futures.
Trying to go back to some outdated system that I keep hearing some desiring (how it was for me) is far more destructive than flushing the system we are being forced to use and letting the creativeness of our society establish better ways. As this list of resources shows, those ways are already there but we fear the disruption.
The greatest fear of man is change, but change we must.
Rob Wood
