We're the Fools If We Don't Fix Our Schools

Over a year ago, we set out on a mission to elevate the discussion amongst America's leaders about the need for education reform. In this year, we have made substantial progress -- not only have we had the presidential candidates start talking about the education crisis, but they’ve also began to offer solutions for teacher recruitment and higher education standards.

We've communicated with thousands of people from Iowa to Texas to California and New Hampshire on the need for education reform. We're going strong and we're ready to re-launch our campaign for the general election.

Traditionally, today is a day for pranks and jokes -- however the global economic crisis the United States is currently facing due to our mediocre educational system is not a joke. It's time for all of us to put our heads together, roll up our sleeves and get back to work delivering a world class education. Only then will our students reach their potential and America will truly prosper.

Comments

[Philip E. Johnson]

Educational reform, much needed, should take a rather different pattern, I believe, that the traditional improvement in techniques for the delivery of the curriculum.

The pattern starts with an Experience for the learner, then moves to an Analysis of the experience, then to the discovery of the big idea; the generalization or Theory. Think “E-A-T”. Most “transfer” learning, important and not to be denied, is in the reverse direction: theory, analysis of the theory, and then an application or experience.

Picture a continuum of education/learning/teaching; a line from left to right. On the left end let’s put the traditional transfer mode - moving already known information from the teacher or text or parent or film or whatever - into the learner. On the right end of the continuum, put learning the skills of learning; learning how to learn from experiences. My sense is that we should move at least a bit from left to right. (The “No Child Left Behind” legislation seems to emphasize only the left end of the continuum.)

One reason is that what is known is so rapidly changing. When my grandfather finished school, what he had learned would likely still be “true” throughout his life. Not so today. I studied a lot of genetics, for example, some 50 years ago. Today, not only is what I learned outmoded, but most of it actually wrong!

Another is that learning grounded in one’s own experiences is obviously more relevant to the learner, and thus much more motivating.

So I’m suggesting that our teaching efforts move at least a bit away from sharing our content expertise, towards helping kids learn the processes of learning, which are eminently teachable and learnable. Let’s make learn a verb more than a noun, a process more than a product. In science, it’s really nothing more than DOING science rather than merely learning science facts; helping kids to BE scientists rather than only learning ABOUT science. And the scientific method is applicable, of course, far beyond the confines of what is normally thought of as science.

Here’s a wonderful quote from an article in Time Magazine this week, titled “How to Make Great Teachers”.
“Dr. Cappel told us from the outset that his goal was not to prepare us for the AP biology exam; it was to teach us how to think like scientists”.

Nothing really new or earth-shaking here, I guess, but the tricky part is how to do it. Seems to me that the most neglected part of the process, even with people who agree with the idea, is helping kids to move from the experience to generalization; to helping them look at their own learning. At least that’s where I am now!

Philip E. Johnson