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| We don't need no Education |
In the two previous blogs in this series I addressed the WHY and HOW of education using Simon Sinek's golden circle. In this final part of this three part blog I will attempt to address WHAT it is that schools do that inspired Roger Waters to write 'Another Brick in the Wall' and why the song is still relevant to today's youth.
Before I begin, however I would Like to recap part 1 and 2 of this blog. Part 1 determined that today's educators have noble goals and aspirations regarding the purpose of education but despite this, years effort and truckloads of money, they still fail to make any substantial improvements. Part 2 illustrated that the reason why schools fail is because they have failed to change HOW they educate children to keep up with the changing demands of society and school practices and procedures, at a fundamental level, do not align with today's WHY of education.
This final blog in the series looks at WHAT our outdated factory model education systems do to our children. The picture is not pretty but, the issues have been sugar coated far too long. Its time to bring them out into the open to really see WHAT it is our tax dollars are really paying for.
The factory model is old. Its fundamental processes and practices were designed in Europe about 150 to 100 years ago. The resulting nature of schools reflect the attitude and beliefs of the society of the times. These are;
1. The societies goals and values.
- That students work towards learning material that was deemed important for future employees and citizens to know and that students comply with the authority so that they will be socially cohesive and homogenized workforce. (For a more in depth outline of the functional objectives of early schools I would suggest reading Alexander Inglis', Principles of Secondary Education, Chaper X section II 'The Functions of Secondary Education' pg 375 for its enlightening perspective on early 20th century educational theory A summary can be found here. Inglis was Professor of Education at Harvard University an played a significant role in crystallizing and reforming education for social purposes. An overview and critic of his work and influence on educational systems can be found in the Innovation Journal )
2. The ideal of efficiency and effectiveness.
- The industrial era mentality favoured measuring things (including children) against standardised benchmarks to determine quality and the application of Behaviourist theory which advocates punishments and rewards, (popular at the beginning and middle of the 20th century) as the accepted means to meet these objectives when dealing with people.
Whether we agree with these goals, values and ideals on not we never the less now have the factory model school as the predominate school system of the world and as such an analysis of its outputs are called for.
I'll start with the values and goals of these schools namely the goal that children will adopt the learning objectives of the an externally prescribe curriculum (which may or may not have any relevance to what they want and need to to learn) and the value that students comply with authority in the form of the teacher despite whether the teacher is correct or not and is acting in a just and moral manner. (You may argue that teachers cannot get away with being 'unjust' toward a child in today's schools and to a certain extent they cannot, but the teacher still has the power to force a child to comply with doing class work, sitting down, being quite and remaining in the class until a bell. If this occurred in any other situation other than schools there could be legal grounds for the charges of child abuse.)
The following is a graph of my own design, it attempts to illustrates the type of individuals the factories goals and values bring forth in a child depending on their disposition at any one time. (Please note I have not gathered empirical evidence to support the assumptions in this graph, it is based solely on my own observations in the classroom and reflections on related text. It is also not designed to rigidly classify students, I am fully aware that such classification are reductionist in nature and do not give the full scope of the student's experiences. I ask readers to recognise that students can and will operate at any point on the continuum in any given contextual circumstances)
Compliance
These students are typically considered high achievers. This disposition can be most frequently seen in children that drive themselves to hard. They often have a poor school, family, leisure balance and can be lost without the ridgid structures of the school system. They are epitomised by the college students described in William Deresiewicz book Excellent Sheep and the students of South Korea who have a strong cultural heritage of social conformity and obligation and are now suffering extreme levels of depression and high suicide rates. The irony is that South Korea is lauded for its rising ranks in the PISA league tables. If that it the cost a good education system then I do not want it for my children or my students.
Amorality
The amoral student is a product of circumstance, they typically feel inferior and inadequate as they struggle to meet the external standard of performance imposed upon them. Feeling that such high standards are beyond their reach and powerless to do anything about it they resort to amoral tactics to reach them. Consequently these individual either bully or manipulate others to make themselves to get where they want to go, or the cheat the system. The child that continually resorts to these tactics are a future disaster for workplaces once they become adults. School systems go to great lengths to detect and deal with such individuals but despite numerous programs, such as anti bullying programs, and offers of assistance such students are an endemic part of schools and have proven next to impossible to eliminate.
Rebellion
These students are simply doing what comes naturally as a part of human development, the refusal to conform is what drives each generation to build upon the achievements of the previous generation. Directed positively, rebellious individuals can be a force for real change in society. However when when the school system they are rebelling against sees them as too small and insignificant too be noticeable and is blinded to the injustice they feel, then children and teens can and do lash out in self destructive manners. If this disposition becomes entrenched too long then there can be real consequences to a student life chances and opportunities. These children are typically represented by students with abnormally high suspension rates and early drop outs. Unfortunately these students are typically from minority and low socioeconomic backgrounds and are the most disadvantaged. This can and does quickly become a poverty/prison cycle.
Apathy
I generally like these students, they can be frustrating and defiant, yet I understand them the most. They have managed to suss out how school systems work. They understand that fighting against the authority of the school will generally get them no where so they learn the rules and generally stick to them. However when it comes to working towards the goals of externally set curriculum they actively exercise their free will, applying themselves to those curriculum objective they see as relevant and/or interesting and coasting through with the minimum effort required for those things they find irrelevant and uninteresting. Given the opportunity these students may leave school to pursue their own interests as soon as possible. Surprisingly they can be the entrepreneurs and innovators that we as a society want to cultivate yet ironically drive away from school. Albert Einstein, Richard Branson, and Bill Gates are all examples of individuals that failed, abandoned and wanted out of conventional factory model schools respectively and in school may very well have been describes as apathetic.
It goes without saying the ideal student of the factory model school is the compliant student. When we send our delightful, eager to learn 5 year old to school it would be safe to say that, other than a having a strong desire to learn, each is is their own unique individual that cannot be readily classified as one of the above 'types' of students. However, at the end of their school career they most likely can be . So what happens? What techniques do schools use to try and 'force' the compliant student? What do schools simultaneously do to students to that results in the amoral, rebellious or apathetic student? What are the the processes and practices that eventually shape the burgeoning 5 year old we send to school on their first day into the compliant, amoral, rebellious or apathetic student?
The first thing that happens to our 5 year old is that they are sorted into groups based upon their age. For the school this makes 'logical' sense because every child should be at the same developmental stage and ready to be exposed to the same curriculum. Reality does not follow 'school logic', whether a child is ready to learn something is not closely tied to their chronological age, but more closely tied to the environment they have been exposed to in the past and the prior learning they have achieved as a result. This means that children that come from a home where they were read to often and books and reading are valued will be more developmentally ready to read than the child from a home where books and reading are not as valued even if they are exactly the same age. Consequently the teacher will need to put in extra time to help the student/s that are lacking the prior knowledge needed to succeed along with their more advantaged peers.
It is here, at the very beginning, that we encounter the first problem in the factory model school that simply snowballs for the disadvantaged child. Despite the best efforts of the child and teacher to catch up, the curriculum moves on relentlessly. Each year every student must be exposed to and instructed on a set curriculum, as they will need this understanding to access the next years curriculum and the next years and the next years. Failure at any point to learn the set material of the curriculum automatically handicaps the child's ability to access curriculum in subsequent years and much of the time this handicap is caused through no fault of the child. Handicaps include such things as poverty in the home, a learning disability, illness, and family upheaval, all of which can negatively impact on a child's ability to move through the curriculum. The year by year age grouping and curriculum quite simply sets up children who do not have access to advantage to fail and all the teaching aids and remedial programs offered are merely an expensive ban-aid that never address the underlying cause. Eventually most students give up, rebelling completely and disrupting the learning of others while they wait out their time until they can leave.
The second thing that happens that happens to our 5 year old is that they are exposed to industrial ideal of classic behaviourism to motivate behaviour. They quickly learn that their behaviour is either rewarded or punished according to the teachers definition of appropriate behaviour. Rewards come in the form of stickers, merits and even good grades while punishments come in the form of timeouts, detentions and suspensions. However there is an inherit problem with applying behaviourism to humans, it is only really effective in establishing very basic responses such as putting rubbish in bins and turning off lights and even then it is only most effective when the behaviour is immediately followed by the reward or punishment. (something I assure you is easier said than done in a classroom). Behaviourism is also completely ineffective in guiding behaviours that require higher order cognitive processes such as learning where an individual draws upon their own experiences and reflects upon them in the decision making process.
This inability to guide the learning of students by behavioural or extrinsic means is well documented. Learning is exceptionally personal and can only be intrinsically motivated, in other words the student must want to be engaged in the learning. This puts extreme pressure on the teacher to make lessons interesting, relevant and purposeful and like the old saying teachers 'will be able to please all of the students some of the time or some of the student all the time' but a rigid syllabus and curriculum does not make this any easier. Consequently students that frequently find themselves in uninteresting classes soon lose the motivation to learn and disengage into apathy.
The third thing is that our 5 year old learns is that when they are tested some students receive A's and B's others C's and D's and yet others receive E's and the dreaded F. But along with the grades they receive they also receive preferential treatment or are subjected to the looks and words of disappointment according to the grade they get. Any child facing this situation could very well find themselves dreading the results of their latest test or seeing their peers as competition for approval. Some if they can find a way, will 'cheat' and 'bully' their way to that approval. The use of class rankings, which are extremely common in the factory school, only make the situation worse. The more testing and subsequent competition the more likely the amoral student is likely to appear.
If by some miracle (and most likely an an advantaged background) our 5 year old manages to keep up with the curriculum and achieve good grades to become the stellar student (without resorting to cheating) we often reward ourselves with pats on the back for helping our child run the factory school gauntlet unscathed. This, however, is an illusion as no child escapes unscathed and it is very likely that our school star has learned to take tests very well and give all the desired responses, but when asked to think creatively about a problem or issues in the work force they become dumbstruck, a deer caught in the headlights of 'but no one taught me that'. This is our compliant student, a yes man or woman, trained so well by the factory school system that they cannot think for themselves or see outside the box. Such 'training' prevents them from reaching their full potential.
The problem with factory model schools is that they were never designed to do what we as a society want from them today. The irony is not that we can't get out of these schools what today's society wants but, that the goals and values, processes and practices of our schools run completely counter to human nature at every level. From their very beginning they were built on shaky foundations by an elite upper class that thought they could shape humans in the same way they shape iron, by hammering and twisting it till it suits their purpose.
The true horror is not the factory school itself, for it can with a little effort be relegated to the dust bin of history, a misguided experiment that failed generations of children. No, the true horror is that governments and education department heads hope to fix the crisis in education by adding more of the same factory model ethos because, they continually fail to take the time to ask the right questions or look outside the box. In the process they dominate the conversation with more of the same rhetoric, blinding the very people the education systems are meant to serve from the other more human centric school models that are out there and producing fantastic outcomes for students. We need to open up the debate to other school models that give students, parents and teachers greater opportunities for autonomy, mastery and purpose in their own lives. The time to do so is now.
I truly believe that many of the ills that besiege today's society do so as a direct or indirect result of factory model schooling. Everything from environmental degradation, economic crises, ongoing poverty and the ever widening inequity gap can trace their roots in some way shape or form to the fact that factory model schools disempower students and subsequently people. That they limit the genuine human capacity of people to make contributions to their own society and in turn effect real change. Only when we all start to wake up to the true nature of factory model schooling will we be able to step out of the industrial age and into the future.
Rebellion
These students are simply doing what comes naturally as a part of human development, the refusal to conform is what drives each generation to build upon the achievements of the previous generation. Directed positively, rebellious individuals can be a force for real change in society. However when when the school system they are rebelling against sees them as too small and insignificant too be noticeable and is blinded to the injustice they feel, then children and teens can and do lash out in self destructive manners. If this disposition becomes entrenched too long then there can be real consequences to a student life chances and opportunities. These children are typically represented by students with abnormally high suspension rates and early drop outs. Unfortunately these students are typically from minority and low socioeconomic backgrounds and are the most disadvantaged. This can and does quickly become a poverty/prison cycle.
Apathy
I generally like these students, they can be frustrating and defiant, yet I understand them the most. They have managed to suss out how school systems work. They understand that fighting against the authority of the school will generally get them no where so they learn the rules and generally stick to them. However when it comes to working towards the goals of externally set curriculum they actively exercise their free will, applying themselves to those curriculum objective they see as relevant and/or interesting and coasting through with the minimum effort required for those things they find irrelevant and uninteresting. Given the opportunity these students may leave school to pursue their own interests as soon as possible. Surprisingly they can be the entrepreneurs and innovators that we as a society want to cultivate yet ironically drive away from school. Albert Einstein, Richard Branson, and Bill Gates are all examples of individuals that failed, abandoned and wanted out of conventional factory model schools respectively and in school may very well have been describes as apathetic.
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| Sadness class: Andrew flikr |
The first thing that happens to our 5 year old is that they are sorted into groups based upon their age. For the school this makes 'logical' sense because every child should be at the same developmental stage and ready to be exposed to the same curriculum. Reality does not follow 'school logic', whether a child is ready to learn something is not closely tied to their chronological age, but more closely tied to the environment they have been exposed to in the past and the prior learning they have achieved as a result. This means that children that come from a home where they were read to often and books and reading are valued will be more developmentally ready to read than the child from a home where books and reading are not as valued even if they are exactly the same age. Consequently the teacher will need to put in extra time to help the student/s that are lacking the prior knowledge needed to succeed along with their more advantaged peers.
It is here, at the very beginning, that we encounter the first problem in the factory model school that simply snowballs for the disadvantaged child. Despite the best efforts of the child and teacher to catch up, the curriculum moves on relentlessly. Each year every student must be exposed to and instructed on a set curriculum, as they will need this understanding to access the next years curriculum and the next years and the next years. Failure at any point to learn the set material of the curriculum automatically handicaps the child's ability to access curriculum in subsequent years and much of the time this handicap is caused through no fault of the child. Handicaps include such things as poverty in the home, a learning disability, illness, and family upheaval, all of which can negatively impact on a child's ability to move through the curriculum. The year by year age grouping and curriculum quite simply sets up children who do not have access to advantage to fail and all the teaching aids and remedial programs offered are merely an expensive ban-aid that never address the underlying cause. Eventually most students give up, rebelling completely and disrupting the learning of others while they wait out their time until they can leave.
The second thing that happens that happens to our 5 year old is that they are exposed to industrial ideal of classic behaviourism to motivate behaviour. They quickly learn that their behaviour is either rewarded or punished according to the teachers definition of appropriate behaviour. Rewards come in the form of stickers, merits and even good grades while punishments come in the form of timeouts, detentions and suspensions. However there is an inherit problem with applying behaviourism to humans, it is only really effective in establishing very basic responses such as putting rubbish in bins and turning off lights and even then it is only most effective when the behaviour is immediately followed by the reward or punishment. (something I assure you is easier said than done in a classroom). Behaviourism is also completely ineffective in guiding behaviours that require higher order cognitive processes such as learning where an individual draws upon their own experiences and reflects upon them in the decision making process.
This inability to guide the learning of students by behavioural or extrinsic means is well documented. Learning is exceptionally personal and can only be intrinsically motivated, in other words the student must want to be engaged in the learning. This puts extreme pressure on the teacher to make lessons interesting, relevant and purposeful and like the old saying teachers 'will be able to please all of the students some of the time or some of the student all the time' but a rigid syllabus and curriculum does not make this any easier. Consequently students that frequently find themselves in uninteresting classes soon lose the motivation to learn and disengage into apathy.
The third thing is that our 5 year old learns is that when they are tested some students receive A's and B's others C's and D's and yet others receive E's and the dreaded F. But along with the grades they receive they also receive preferential treatment or are subjected to the looks and words of disappointment according to the grade they get. Any child facing this situation could very well find themselves dreading the results of their latest test or seeing their peers as competition for approval. Some if they can find a way, will 'cheat' and 'bully' their way to that approval. The use of class rankings, which are extremely common in the factory school, only make the situation worse. The more testing and subsequent competition the more likely the amoral student is likely to appear.
If by some miracle (and most likely an an advantaged background) our 5 year old manages to keep up with the curriculum and achieve good grades to become the stellar student (without resorting to cheating) we often reward ourselves with pats on the back for helping our child run the factory school gauntlet unscathed. This, however, is an illusion as no child escapes unscathed and it is very likely that our school star has learned to take tests very well and give all the desired responses, but when asked to think creatively about a problem or issues in the work force they become dumbstruck, a deer caught in the headlights of 'but no one taught me that'. This is our compliant student, a yes man or woman, trained so well by the factory school system that they cannot think for themselves or see outside the box. Such 'training' prevents them from reaching their full potential.
The problem with factory model schools is that they were never designed to do what we as a society want from them today. The irony is not that we can't get out of these schools what today's society wants but, that the goals and values, processes and practices of our schools run completely counter to human nature at every level. From their very beginning they were built on shaky foundations by an elite upper class that thought they could shape humans in the same way they shape iron, by hammering and twisting it till it suits their purpose.
The true horror is not the factory school itself, for it can with a little effort be relegated to the dust bin of history, a misguided experiment that failed generations of children. No, the true horror is that governments and education department heads hope to fix the crisis in education by adding more of the same factory model ethos because, they continually fail to take the time to ask the right questions or look outside the box. In the process they dominate the conversation with more of the same rhetoric, blinding the very people the education systems are meant to serve from the other more human centric school models that are out there and producing fantastic outcomes for students. We need to open up the debate to other school models that give students, parents and teachers greater opportunities for autonomy, mastery and purpose in their own lives. The time to do so is now.
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| Educational postcard: How can you prepare student for the future if you are stuck in the past, Ken Wytock Flikr |
I truly believe that many of the ills that besiege today's society do so as a direct or indirect result of factory model schooling. Everything from environmental degradation, economic crises, ongoing poverty and the ever widening inequity gap can trace their roots in some way shape or form to the fact that factory model schools disempower students and subsequently people. That they limit the genuine human capacity of people to make contributions to their own society and in turn effect real change. Only when we all start to wake up to the true nature of factory model schooling will we be able to step out of the industrial age and into the future.
