Education Reform: The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education
Education Reform: Steve Denning, Contributor, 9/01/2011, Forbes
I have been asked for my âsingle best idea for reforming K-12 educationâ. When you only have one shot, you want to make it count. So I thought I would share my idea here, in case anyone has a brighter insight.
Root cause: factory model of management
To decide what is the single best idea for reforming K-12 education, one needs to figure out what is the biggest problem that the system currently faces. To my mind, the biggest problem is a preoccupation with, and the application of, the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of âthe systemâ, to which the students, the teachers, the parents and the administrators have to adjust. âThe systemâ grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike.
Given that the factory model of management doesnât work very well, even in the few factories that still remain in this country, or anywhere else in the workplace for that matter, we should hardly be surprised that it doesnât work well in education either.
But given that the education system is seen to be in trouble, there is a tendency to think we need âbetter managementâ or âstronger managementâ or âtougher managementâ, where âmanagementâ is assumed to be the factory model of management. It is assumed to mean more top-down management and tighter controls, and more carrots and sticks. It is assumed to mean hammering the teachers who donât perform and ruthlessly weeding out âthe dead woodâ. The thinking is embedded in Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind.
These methods are known to be failing in the private sector, because they dispirit the employees and limit their ability to contribute their imagination and creativity; they frustrate customers, and they are killing the very organizations that rely on them. So why should we expect anything different in the education sector?
When the problems have been caused in the first place by introducing the practices of âmanagementâ, then a more rigorous pursuit of this type of âmanagementâ only makes things worse. It is like medieval doctors trying to cure patients by bloodletting, using leeches, which only made the patients worse.
The inapplicablity of these methods is aggravated by the changes in the economy. Not so long ago, we could predict what jobs and careers might be available for children in their adult life. The education system could tell little Freddie or Janet what to study and if he or she mastered that, he or she was set for life. Not any more. We simply donât know what jobs will be there in twenty years time. Today, apart from a few core skills like reading, writing, math, thinking, imagining and creating, we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed when Freddie or Janet grows up.
The best single idea for reforming education
Given this context, I believe that the single most important idea for reform in K-12 education concerns a change in goal. The goal needs to shift from one of making a system that teaches children a curriculum more efficiently to one of making the system more effective by inspiring lifelong learning in students, so that they are able to have full and productive lives in a rapidly shifting economy.
Implications of accepting the shift in goal
This is a shift from running the system for the sake of the system (âYou study what we tell you to study, when we tell you, and how we tell you, and at a pace that we determineâ) to a focus on the ultimate goal of learning (âOur goal is to inspire our students to become life-long learners with a love of education, so that they will be able to learn whatever they have to.â) All partiesâteachers, administrators, unions, parents and studentsâneed to embrace the new goal.
Once we embrace this goal, we can see that that many things will have to change to accomplish it. We can also grasp that most of the thinking underlying current âreformsâ of the system can be seen in their true light as schemes and devices that are actually making things worse.
Some of the implications include:
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