Let's start with a cautionary tale, the school system of our friends south of the border. Many have stressed its reliance on testing but that's only one aspect and it should be placed in context. Sir Ken Robinson, the renowned educator, describes public education as an assembly line except that it's no longer simply the one of Henry Ford's vision http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html. Rather it's an assembly line on steroids and educational change has become constant. If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be Kaizen, the Japanese word for continuous improvement.
Besides student testing, the American educational system can be described as stressing accountability, standardization, skills-oriented, entrepreneurial-focused, computer reliant, and private-enterprise based. It is championed and well-funded by Silicon Valley enterprises, charter school founders, union opponents, deschooling advocates, and various levels of governments throughout the U.S. There is an interesting article on this topic written Audrey Watters, Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege and the Hole in the Wall at http://hackeducation.com/2013/03/03/hacking-your-education-stephens-hole-in-the-wall-mitra/.
Why has there been such a broad rejection of public schools in The States? I mean this is the educational system that created some of the brightest thinkers of the 20th century who in turn created the biggest economic juggernaut in history, found cures for many contagious diseases, and put a man on the moon. But today, America is facing an overall sense of crisis (real or self-created?) and many Americans are looking for a fix to the problem and blame the inadequacy of their current educational system rather than perhaps a government and economy unable to produce jobs. A refrain often follows that society is crumbling because the kids don't have the skills needed to compete on the world stage. Then there is often some news story about how American kids can't find China on the map with the implication that Chinese students are doing better in school.
There's a temptation to simply reject this analysis out-of-hand but let's take a moment to understand why it resonates. Many American kids aren't doing particularly well in school. The 19th century school room is competing against 21st century electronics for students' attention. And guess what? The school room is losing as children's brains are rewired, restructured, by their constant use of electronics. See the video by Sir Ken Robinson for details http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html.
As well, students' general knowledge has likely declined as music, art, drama, and even history and geography are reduced or taken out of the curriculum altogether. There has been an increasing focus on literacy and an emphasis on teaching to standardized tests. Don't get me wrong. The ability to read is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children and it lays the foundation for most other learning. But reading isn't all there is and if the kids can't locate China on the map, blame it on a narrowing of the curriculum and not on teachers or the kids.
There is also an aspect of the anti-elitist deschooling movement that rings true. The amount of information available to researchers and academics has increased exponentially and this has pushed academic disciplines to become more specialized. It's also led to an overall decline in general arts programmes with the result that there are fewer generalists who are able to knit together emerging knowledge into an integrated worldview. And the focus on applied education has curtailed the development of creative people who can help conceive meaning in a chaotic world. What many in the deschooling movement decry is an educational system that is top-heavy in the acquisition of information and specialized skills at the expense of overall understanding.
Finally, much of the recent technology really is useful to learning. It has not only opened up the world of education to children with physical or mental disabilities who were traditionally marginalized from schooling but it has also opened up higher education to youth whose access was limited by geography or language. The technology can serve to extend knowledge to the broader community through tools such as Wikipedia and online courses, and Sugata Mitra's School in the Cloud http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html.
The American educational system is seen to have a lot going for it so there tends to be a retrenchment rather than a questioning of the paradigm when student test scores decline. Since many American schools stand or fall on the basis of their test scores, schools that are seen as failing tend to move further away from music and art classes, move away even from recess, to make more time for literacy and test skill drills.
Perhaps Albert Einstein once said, there is debate on the source, "Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Ultimately the problem with the American paradigm is that children are not the interchangeable parts of assembly lines http://pamfitzgeraldottawa.blogspot.ca/2013/02/complex-problems-and-germ-theory.html nor can they be mass produced particularly for a society that values creativity and knowledge as the means to survive economically. There are educational academics such as Sir Ken Robinson and Dr. Pasi Sahlberg who are beginning to articulate an alternative. Perhaps it's almost too late for the American public school system but we in Ontario still have excellent public schools and we still have time to learn from America's mistakes.
There's more to come so let me take a moment to sum up where I think I am -- that is examining not only the current state of our educational system but also how we got here, why extra-curricular activity has become a lightning rod, and where we can go from here.
The views expressed in this blog are my personal views only.
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