Schools are crumbling around us. The walls are still standing, the roof still fixed, but, a closer inspection shows the foundations have shifted and and the cracks are now visible even with the most cursory of inspections. Societies around the world now desperately trying to fix the problems before it comes down, to no avail. The debate rages as to how to fix the crumbling edifice, more funding, quality teacher standards, new curriculum, higher expectations, instilling appropriate values in the next generation of kids, the list goes on. However all these measures are just band-aids measures, a way to shore up the walls and patch the roof while ignoring the foundations that continue to erode away.
To work out the true reason why the foundations of schools are eroding, Simon Sinek suggests we start with the 'WHY of schools', because a fuzzy WHY is the most likely reason organisations fail. However education departments around the world have addressed their WHY, they all recognise education in some way, shape or form is charged with 'Empowering all learners to succeed as citizens in a dynamic world', and very few would dispute that this is what education is about in the 21st century. However, we've addressed the WHY of Education in the first Part of the Talking About Schools series of Blogs and concluded that a fuzzy 'WHY of schools' is not the problem. So what is? Simon Sinek, suggests that if it's not a fuzzy WHY that is bringing an organisation down and eroding its foundations, it is most likely that HOW an organisation does things is not aligning with WHY they do things. They run in contradiction and this leads to inevitable failure.
So does the WHY and HOW of Schools run in contradiction? Are they failing to align? I would answer that question with an emphatic yes. The trouble is, however, that so many, people from the length and breadth of education, are so deeply embedded within the system that they cannot see the forest for the trees. Parents children, teachers, administrators, and politicians have all grown up within the current education system, their parents and grandparents have grown up within it and the HOW of schools has become the norm. Only if you are prepared to step outside the current education system can you see the glaring flaws and see HOW they run completely counter to the WHY of education today.
To work out the true reason why the foundations of schools are eroding, Simon Sinek suggests we start with the 'WHY of schools', because a fuzzy WHY is the most likely reason organisations fail. However education departments around the world have addressed their WHY, they all recognise education in some way, shape or form is charged with 'Empowering all learners to succeed as citizens in a dynamic world', and very few would dispute that this is what education is about in the 21st century. However, we've addressed the WHY of Education in the first Part of the Talking About Schools series of Blogs and concluded that a fuzzy 'WHY of schools' is not the problem. So what is? Simon Sinek, suggests that if it's not a fuzzy WHY that is bringing an organisation down and eroding its foundations, it is most likely that HOW an organisation does things is not aligning with WHY they do things. They run in contradiction and this leads to inevitable failure.
So does the WHY and HOW of Schools run in contradiction? Are they failing to align? I would answer that question with an emphatic yes. The trouble is, however, that so many, people from the length and breadth of education, are so deeply embedded within the system that they cannot see the forest for the trees. Parents children, teachers, administrators, and politicians have all grown up within the current education system, their parents and grandparents have grown up within it and the HOW of schools has become the norm. Only if you are prepared to step outside the current education system can you see the glaring flaws and see HOW they run completely counter to the WHY of education today.
The fundamental premise of HOW schools work hasn't changed since their interception in Europe about 150 years ago, but WHY we do education has. So to understand HOW schools work and why they are failing today you need to see how they started from an historical context if you are to see the HOW and WHY of schools, both yesterday and today.
In the mid to late 1800's the industrial age, which had been encroaching since the 1700's, was kicking into full gear and standardised mass production of all manner of wears was the innovation of the era. These wears were produced in factories, the most modern of which utilise the factory line assembly model. The factory revolutionised life for the average citizen. Prior to the factory, Ma and Pa Kettle with their wagon load of kids lived one of 3 ways. As farmers working the land in hopes of a harvest bountiful enough to afford them a few extra luxuries from time to time. As tradesmen and women who developed their craftsmanship in order to trade their skills for goods in return. Ma and Pa's children lived, played and worked alongside their parents learning the family trade and securing for themselves a livelihood as they did so and attending a small generally one room school house to learn the basic Reading Writing and Arithmetic.
The Industrial revolution changed this, whether for better or worse, is up for debate. But, in short order mass produced products began to flood traditional markets and Ma and Pa Kettle's livelihood was destroyed. Their only option, seek work in the very factories and industries that had undermined their previous livelihood. Condition were bad to say the least, 14hr days six days a week were not uncommon and Ma and Pa no longer had the time or ability to teach their children a trade, even if there had been traditional jobs available for the children. Consequently children, if they weren't also put to work on the factory floor, were left to roam the streets.
This left society with a problem (or more precisely, the Elite of society), children roaming the streets were seen as undisciplined, uneducated and unsuitable for work. So taking matters into hand for the 'well-being' of the children, schooling was made compulsory in order to ensure children received the required training in the three R's of Reading Writing and Arithmetic and that they became disciplined enough to become effective workers in the factories alongside their parents when they eventually left school. Much of what I have just said is common knowledge to any historian of the period but for a good overview I recommend reading 'Overschooled but Undereducated' by John Abbot (It also quite clearly never occurred to the 'Elite' of the time to give their workers enough time off to ensure they taught their children to be literate and responsible adults, to do so would have cost the factory production time, money and above all control)
The model they used to structure their schools of course, was the exceptionally efficient factory model of the time where students were fist sorted into age categories and then under the instruction of the production line worker...ahem... teacher, schooled in a curriculum set and designed by the state ...ahem... 'Elite' to ensure suitable workers were turned out as the final product. To ensure quality control, the product...ahem...student, was regularly tested, high quality students were sorted from the others and funneled into managerial positions, while the rest were sorted into various laboring jobs which they were expected to have for life.
The deliberate design of schools in this fashion may seem dehumanizing and in many respects cruel by modern 21st century standards, but HOW schools were designed in the 1800's perfectly aligned with WHY they were designed. The WHY of the 1800's being 'To provide a compliant workforce with the basic skills needed to work for large industrial corporations, while at the same time getting potentially rebellious and dissident children of the streets and into 'expert' care where their development can be closely monitored and modified'. To that end the factory line model of education did exactly what it set out to do...Produce reliable human cogs in an industrial machine. 'A brief history of education' by Peter Gray published in Psychology Today similarly outlines the original purpose of compulsory schooling.
Were parents of the time aware of this objective? Its hard to say, but their was resistance to compulsory state controlled schooling as Matt Hern documents in 'The anarchist library: the Emergence of Compulsory schooling and Anarchist Resistance' However, as human rights were all but non existent and unions were still struggling to make a dint in working conditions for workers, resistance to factory model of schools and their WHY objective was futile as 'industrialisation' was now the 'way of the world'. After all the children once grown would have to make a living in this world and the industrial factory provided that living. Thus compulsory, factory modeled schools rapidly spread all over the world.
Some may argue that many generations of children have gone through factory modelled schools and come out at the end okay. Can't we make some adjustments to HOW schools function to get them to align with the WHY of education in today's modern society? Honestly, I'd have to say no, we can't, the fundamental reason being that the WHY of the 1800's factory model of education rests on the ideals of control and compliance while the WHY of 21st century education rests on the ideals of autonomy and creativity. I don't think two more polar opposites could exist.To see just how opposite these WHY's are lets break down our 21st century WHY and try and pair it with the 1800's HOW of schools. We'll use my personal WHY as the working example, which is 'To Empower all learners to succeed as citizens in a dynamic world' and break it down phrase by phrase. (Truth be told any modern WHY of education would probably do, but many are overly wordy and complex for this exercise)
So here goes;
'to Empower'
Were parents of the time aware of this objective? Its hard to say, but their was resistance to compulsory state controlled schooling as Matt Hern documents in 'The anarchist library: the Emergence of Compulsory schooling and Anarchist Resistance' However, as human rights were all but non existent and unions were still struggling to make a dint in working conditions for workers, resistance to factory model of schools and their WHY objective was futile as 'industrialisation' was now the 'way of the world'. After all the children once grown would have to make a living in this world and the industrial factory provided that living. Thus compulsory, factory modeled schools rapidly spread all over the world.
Some may argue that many generations of children have gone through factory modelled schools and come out at the end okay. Can't we make some adjustments to HOW schools function to get them to align with the WHY of education in today's modern society? Honestly, I'd have to say no, we can't, the fundamental reason being that the WHY of the 1800's factory model of education rests on the ideals of control and compliance while the WHY of 21st century education rests on the ideals of autonomy and creativity. I don't think two more polar opposites could exist.To see just how opposite these WHY's are lets break down our 21st century WHY and try and pair it with the 1800's HOW of schools. We'll use my personal WHY as the working example, which is 'To Empower all learners to succeed as citizens in a dynamic world' and break it down phrase by phrase. (Truth be told any modern WHY of education would probably do, but many are overly wordy and complex for this exercise)
So here goes;
'to Empower'
To empower means to give an individual the tools and skills needed to chart their own path. In the context of schools this means help students to become creative, critically thinking individuals capable of adapting and innovating to get what they need out of life.
Factory modeled schools work directly counter to this, what students should learn is dictated by the state and questioning why they need to learn it can only be truthfully answered with 'because its in the syllabus and you will be tested on it'. Thus in one fell swoop critical thinking and creativity is crushed as students resign themselves to memorising what will be tested on the next exam. Even when question in exams are set to try get students to develop their critical thinking or creativity skills, students know better because every teacher has heard the question 'What do I need to study for the test?' In this way students are looking for hints as to what answers the teacher wants to see, there is no critical thinking or creativity in such endevours.
To honestly try and empower students with critical thinking and creative skills means no longer telling students what to learn through state created syllabus and cucurriculum, instead we need to let them choose the context of their own learning which in turn will help them to develop the required skills in critical thinking and creativity because their is no 'right answer' to the question 'what should children learn?'.
'all Learners'
We are learners from the moment we are born to the moment we die and every individual is capable of learning. This a biologically undisputed fact (unless you happen to be in a comma). There no restriction on who can learn and there is no fixed age at which learning stops, we can learn at any time and anywhere. Learners recognises this, they see the teacher as only one source among many that can be used to help build knowledge and understanding, and in this this 'googable' world the acquired knowledge of the entire human race is literally at a resourceful learners finger tips. A learner can never be said to have finished learning as learning is for life and even the teacher in the classroom is still a learner as they develop their teaching skills.
Factory modeled schools, however, only classifies 'the student' as a learner (teachers are expert and their knowledge unquestioned). Students are then sub classified into particular 'types' of learners e.g. as gifted and talented, mainstream or learning delayed and access to particular learning resources is granted based upon these classifications, which is by its very nature inequitable. It also sees learning as valuable only if it happens in the classroom under strict predetermined conditions. Once 'schooling' is finished any subsequent learning is disregarded and deemed unimportant to the industrial machine.
To see every individual as learners that can learn anywhere and any time, schools must be willing to acknowledge the learning that happens outside of the purview of the classroom and give a learner 'credit' for this learning. This is not even on the radar of the majority of education systems.
'to Succeed'
To succeed is entirely subjective, my definition of success may be entirely different from your definition of success but that is the beauty of the term in this context because it is the individuals own goals that determine whether you have succeed or failed and only the individual can make this determination.
The factory model of schools however sets external standards of success and enforces those standards the through the use of the dreaded A,B,C,D,E and F of grades. In doing so they reward individuals for aligning their goals with that of the industrial machine and then meeting them with A's and B's, and subsequently label these students as high achievers. To not achieve these goals well you are awarded a C or a D and consequently labeled as merely satisfactory. Fail to meet them and you get awarded an E or F and inevitably labelled a failure. I'm not saying schools or teachers choose to label their students in such a limited way, but, the use of grades awarded by comparison to an external standard inevitably leads to such labels. You quite simply cannot 'award' grades without likewise awarding the labels that are associated with them. In fact even when I write reports I have been directly instructed to ensure that my description of a student capabilities align with the grade they received. For example A = Excellent, B = Good, C = Satisfactory, D = Developing E = Basic and F (or N for Non completion of course outcomes) is a Fail. Can we honestly say that when a student reads such comment in a report they are not being labeled. This is how students are labeled. Label them long enough and they will come to believe in those labels and their mindset will become fixed.
To overcome this schools need to give individual students control over their own definition of success and allow them to decide when they have achieve their goals and allow them access to all the time and resources needed to do so. But resources and more importantly time is something the factory model school cannot give as students are pushed from year to year through a set curriculum with no consideration as to whether or not the individual student has had the time and resources needed to achieve the state mandated goals let alone their own personal goals. The Consequence of this is that student populations are automatically sorted into the three 'types' of students and funneled into 'appropriate' jobs.
'as Citizens'
To be a citizen, and a successful one at that, you need to ensure that your individual goals are aligned with the goals of society at large. This means that your individual goals cannot superseded the goals of any other individual and vice versa. It means working within the bounds of the law set by society and even working to change and improve society for the benefit of all through the engagement in public issues. To be a citizen you have to be willing to step up and take responsibility for your actions and the state of the society you live in.
The factory model of schools undermines ability for students to be complete citizens in a very insidious fashion. They take away student voice. Students in this model of school have no say in what they learn, when they learn it, how they learn it and even why they need to learn it. They are at all times under the control of the authority of the teachers to the extent that they must ask if they are to relieve themselves. (My six year old has already been so indoctrinated in this practice that he has on occasion asked to go to the bathroom while he was at home.) How can we expect individuals to become adept and engaged citizens when they have had absolutely no practice engaging in the democratic process and have for 12 years of their life been forced to subjugate their will to the authority of the 'school'. This lesson has been so well learned by our students that by the time they actually reach voting age they feel that they have no say or influence in the political arena and this 'apathy' can exist throughout their life.
To honestly give students a voice in how schools are run means that we must extend our trust to them. Allowing students a vote in HOW schools are run terrifies the vast majority of society because it means handing over control to the very individuals schools are 'meant to serve' and given that students out number the teaching staff this is something that is society refuses to let happen. It is a reflection of our society that we do not trust our youth and disempower them as a result (it is a familar story to People of 'colour' and Women who were once and still are thought of in the same way). Where students are given a voice it is only a cursory lip service and only in areas that are deem 'safe' because they will not influence the running of the school.
'a Dynamic World'
In the world we live in the only thing that can honestly be said to remain the same is that change is constant. The jobs our schools are supposedly training our students to have may be obsolete in five years time and the jobs that will replace them haven't been invented yet. The average number of career changes an individual is expected to have in their lifetime currently stands at seven and our youth need to be prepared to grapple with dynamics of a constantly changing world.
The Factory school model does very little to prepare students for such an eventuality. They were designed to educate a workforce that was expected to have the same job for life and curriculums reflects this assumption. However, today the content of syllabus can be out of date even before they are in a teachers hands, particularly in the Sciences and engineering fields, and the specific skills a students is required to learn may very well be done more effectively and efficiently by a computer or robot by the time a student graduates. The top down controlled factory model of school quite simply will never be able to keep up with the pace of change.
The only way to keep up with the pace of change would be to make the curriculum exceptionally general in nature and allow the individual student choose the context in which the learning happens. But again this runs smack dab against the biggest issue society has with children, ...extending trust that students will want to learn. (Do we honestly think that it is the ambition of children to grow up and be dead beats living off government handouts...it may be a nice holiday for a while but they will soon get bored with a purposeless life and an extremely low income)
The picture is not pretty but, I hope, I have outlined how the HOW of factory model schooling runs completely counter to the WHY of the 21st century education with some sort of clarity. By their very nature the factory model of schools churns out automatons, faceless and standardized. We can throw money at schools and tweak how things are done within the existing model, but we will never get the outcomes we want because children are not a premolded series of parts that can be assembled into a standardised product. They are individuals, who are forging their own identities hopes and dreams and the very nature of factory model schools cannot cope with individuals, the financial out lay to make them do so would cripple any economy (in fact the cost of schooling already doing so many cases). No amount of rhetoric about teaching for 21st century skills or improving teacher quality is going to change that if the factory model of schools is retained. Until HOW we do schooling is examined in the light of WHY we want education in the 21st century, schools will continue to stagnate and fail.
I recommend watching Sir Ken Robinson's RSA TED talk on Changing Education Paradigms, which illustrates the effects of the factory model of schools on our children nicely.
So having established that HOW schools operate is fundamentally flawed, that they work against the very reason WHY we want schools in today's society, we need to see if the HOW of schools actually produces WHAT we get out of schools. That is 'do the expectations, values, processes and practices commonly found in the factory model of schools we currently endorse as a society actually produce the systemic problems we are seeing in our education system? I will endevour to answer this question in my final blog in this series
I recommend watching Sir Ken Robinson's RSA TED talk on Changing Education Paradigms, which illustrates the effects of the factory model of schools on our children nicely.
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| Image by Richad Lee: Education, flikr |
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