Everyone over forty marvels at how quickly the world is changing. Technology and globalization have transformed our economy and most workplaces. Social and cultural changes have changed family life as well. Our grandparents would never have imagined the world we inhabit today!
But those grandparents (even our great grandparents) might still be very comfortable spending time in an American school today. Sure, the classroom furniture is different. The Internet is now the main reference tool, rather than the encyclopedia. The student body is more diverse in several ways. And, of course, computers or tablets have replaced the spiral notebooks, so keyboarding has replaced the inkwells. However, the structures of the organization would be quite familiar – the design of the workforce, the basic delivery system for instruction, and even much of the content to be learned would be similar. Interestingly, if several successive generations could assemble, they could all compare their high school transcripts with comparative ease because the subjects would be so similar.
Most Americans are not aware that much of today’s education structure was designed*a century ago when agriculture provided the workplace for most Americans and the Industrial Revolution was just beginning. At that time, only a third of children who started elementary entered high school, and only one in nine graduated.
Yet think about how different the lives of today’s young people will be from the children of many decades past. Today’s children will need to find a place to succeed in an economy that is no longer an economy dominated by agriculture, or even manufacturing. For the moment, it seems to be an information economy that calls for very different sets of skills than those needed by several generations of grandparents. The challenges of family and civic life call for different skills, as well.
If American education is to really help families support the development of today’s children, then it must change as radically as we have seen in nearly every other enterprise, such as agriculture, manufacturing, medicine and finance. We must consider major structural changes such as changing the scope of public education to provide strong, supportive relationships with parents, starting with the birth of their child. We should be willing to consider the major redesign of instructional content to better prepare today’s youth for a very different future than their parents. This is just not the augmentation of existing curriculum. It must be a deepening, as well as a redesign of the content and experiences that will better develop our youth. Education must establish formal, collaborative relationships with workforce and economic development, as well as healthcare. Then we must develop the technology to support the implementation of these changes. I will try to outline examples of these changes in postings to come.
Education is a social institution, but it must not be static one. If Education change is driven by facts, research and development, it can adapt in complex and difficult ways. Our children deserve no less.
*The Committee of Ten, 1894; The Cardinal Principles, 1918; The Commission of the Reorganization of Secondary Schools, 1918
Just a thought: We have gone from the agricultural age, to the industrial age, to the digital/informational age. I am wondering what the next age will be – perhaps the “attention age” as there is so much information that we much be able to focus our attention on the “right information” for the “right issues” in order to identify the changes needed and the protocols or solutions to achieve the changes.
Lou – take a look at “Changing the Content of What Children Learn” under the “Possible Themes for Change” tab and see if you have any reaction as a curriculum expert.