The education system in the United States is failing. It’s failing students, families, taxpayers, and society as a whole. The fact that it’s failing is not news and it’s not even surprising. The American education system is based on a paradigm that is hundreds of years old and intended to provide children in insulated societies with the minimum set of skills required to serve as the next generation’s food producers, factory workers, and solid citizens – where one’s span of influence and interest rarely extended beyond the county of one’s birth.
If you look at a photo of an 19th century school room
you will see little, beyond fashion, to distinguish it from a 21st century school room.
In both cases you have a single individual charged with instructing a large number of students by presenting a single curriculum targeted at a theoretical “median student”.
There are an innumerable collection of laws, practices, and norms that enforce and reinforce this paradigm. There an equal number of new laws and “research-based” practices that have been proposed to address the shortcomings of the current system and wrestle it into shape. Unfortunately, they are the equivalent of turning a moving ocean liner using a thousand men with a thousand push poles. The system is too complex and the proposed solutions are too narrow and too naive.
For American education to become effective, it will require a complete restart. The restart will have to begin as a focused trial with no ties to or requirements from the existing system. It will need to demonstrate its effectiveness at the focused, local level and then demonstrate that it can be scaled up. At each point it must inspire families to give it a chance by the strength of its performance to date. Most of all it will require a significant investment of money by a small number of iconoclastic individuals who are willing to embrace a revolutionary vision of the future and hold onto that vision through periods of growth and setback.
The development of a new model of education will require the identification of first principles. Fundamentally, what is the core, foundational purpose of the education system and what can be said, universally, about the primary customers of that system? I’d like to suggest that the core purpose of the education system is “transition”. Taking a child and transforming the child into a successful and happy adult. As a first principle, any decision about the design of the system can be made based on whether a proposed option contributes to a more successful transition or not. Regarding the primary customers of the education system, children, I believe it can be stated universally that “no two children are alike”. Children differ in a variety of ways and those differences must be taken into account if that child’s transition to adulthood is going to be successful.
That’s all there is! The purpose of education is successful transition and a successful transition must take into account the individual differences of students.
The next step is to watch how these two fundamental principles naturally lead to a revolutionary vision of the future of education.
Constructing a vision of effective education based on first principles.