Who Has Time to Learn?

Professor J,

Thanks for clearing up the idea of tenure and its benefits. I certainly agree that there isn't much that could be done to make the current system any worse. What we have seems so fractured and dysfunctional as to be beyond saving in form. But we are a people who are intent on throwing good money after bad and who lack imagination for how different something could be. We tweak and tailor ideas that have proved not to work. We try the next new thing that ends up being a rehash of some other bad idea and never consider that the entire thing might be flawed.

I agree with you that teachers should not be told how to teach and should be given much more leeway than they have now about what to teach. I cringe when I think how many teachable moments are lost because a teacher has that ever looming standardized test in the back of her mind and can't risk (or doesn't feel she can) answering thoughtful questions from students or asking them what they might want to learn. I've never met a child that didn't have some interesting questions and ideas that could spark lots of learning if given a chance. More freedom (and free time) all the way around would benefit everyone.

My daughter, who is one project away from graduating with her masters in education, asked me once how I knew how to teach. The truth is, I didn't, but I managed to send them off to high school fairly well prepared and they both loved college and excelled there. I had to tell my daughter that I loosely used a scope and sequence to make sure we didn't have gaping voids. Every other year they took the state achievement test just to make sure I wasn't ruining them. But my overall goal wasn't for them to know everything. My daily mission was not to prepare them for the state issued standardized test. My passionate vision for their education was to spark in them a love of learning and to be curious thinkers.

There isn't any perfect curriculum. The next program with the catchy name isn't going to fix anything. The problem is one of freedom and time. No one has enough of either. Teachers don't for all the reasons you've listed in your post. Parents don't because they are struggling to make ends meet and families are stressed to the breaking point. And children don't. They are herded from class to class and then after school their schedules keep them from processing the day's events and careful reflection. Imagine someone in charge trying to suggest that we actually do less, or have more recess and time outdoors. Imagine parents having time to engage their children in conversation instead of just being the nightly homework police.

We desperately need the paradigm shift Sir Ken outlines. I suspect that standardized testing has now become big business and that we are going to keep going down the wrong road.

Question: When we were growing up, the education we got was less stressed and achieved better results.  I'm assuming it's a string of events and policies, but what caused the education train to jump so far off track in the first place?