Posts
(published in the CDT in April 2017)
Every Pennsylvania high school student should graduate
with the skills to be successful in the modern world. I expect we would all
agree on that. But what would this actually look like, and how would it be
different from what many, if not most, of our schools are doing now?
Fortunately, this wheel doesn’t need to be invented. Some
years ago, I heard a conference speaker discuss the simple way his organization
addressed the issue: they asked business leaders and university administrators,
“what important skills do your first-year employees/students lack when they show
up at your door?” Here is the collective response: the ability to think
critically, communicate clearly, collaborate with others, and be creative
problem-solvers (what the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills calls
the ‘4 Cs’).
So why isn’t every school doing this intentionally and
consistently? These concepts aren’t new to educators. One problem is that much of the public – and
probably most of our policy-makers – is stuck with a mental vision of education
based on when they went to school, often
decades ago. (You know, with the desks all in neat rows.) As a result, we continue
to implement so-called education ‘reforms’ – such as the PSSAs and the high
school Keystone exams – that might have made sense in the middle of the last century when the United States was still
an industrial economy.
Let’s begin with the obvious. For example, you can’t
understand American history without knowing some facts; the basic chronology of
events, for example. So it is still important to learn a certain amount of
‘stuff’. But you really don’t need to memorize the date of the Smoot-Hawley
Tariff Act (which I did, in 3rd grade!) or the names of the fifty
state capitols.
1. If
you really need to know, you can look it up on your phone; no trip to the
library required.
2. To
the extent that the ‘memorize and regurgitate’ model still exists (and it does
- it’s called “teaching to the test”) it consumes time and energy that could be
spent on something more important.
3. It
truly misses the point! History, for example, isn’t really about ‘what’
happened, the true value is in understanding why it happened.
4. This
is the surest way to make any subject boring. (A truly indefensible disservice
to our students.) And perhaps most importantly:
5. That
system was designed to sort students
into winners and losers, something we can no longer afford to do.
I think it’s fair to say that model no longer works. But
as obsolete as it is now, this ‘sorting’ model actually worked pretty well as
late as the 1970s. If you were fortunate
enough to attend a middle-class suburban high school - where it was expected that
you would go to college - there’s a good chance that you went on to have a
successful professional career. But even if you didn’t go to college (and the vast
majority of students of that era didn’t) all you needed in order to have a
middle-class life forty years ago was the ability to read, write, do some basic
arithmetic, and follow instructions.
And our educational system was pretty good at that.
There is another aspect of this obsolete model that we
ought to consider. Are you curious about how it came to be that every student is
required to pass a ‘Keystone’ exam in Biology in order to graduate high school?
Why Biology? Why not a broad understanding of scientific
principles (which might actually be useful)? Well, a group of elite university presidents collectively
decided that in order to gain admission
to college, a student must first complete a minimum number of ‘Carnegie’
credits, including three in the sciences: Biology, Chemistry and Physics. And thus
we have the Biology Keystone exam! – as well as the basic structure of nearly
every high school curriculum in the country.
But did I mention that this decision was made in 1906? In 1906, America was still largely an agrarian society; relatively few
students graduated from high school, and only the sons of the elite went to
college. And so, a one-size-fits-all system built on memorization; that doesn’t
ask students ‘what’s important to them?’; that doesn’t even ask ‘what does every
student really need to know?’ perpetuates itself.
One thing on which policy-makers do seem to agree is
the value of career and technical education for those students who are not
‘college-bound’. In other words, let’s allow students to spend the four years
of high school focused on developing the skills and expertise that they see as useful
and important to their future. But why aren’t we encouraging every student to
do that? Instead of spending tens of
thousands of dollars of your parents’ money ‘figuring out who you are and what
you want to do’ – which was the model
when I went to college, when you could still afford to do that – why not help
students begin to find a sense of direction and purpose while they are still in high school?
So what’s the way forward? First, let’s stop doing the obsolete and
counter-productive, beginning with the time and effort that we waste on
standardized testing. Then let’s be deliberate about doing what we need to do,
and build the development of critical-thinking into everything that happens in
school. Let’s make sure that our students know how to communicate beyond reading,
and writing the five-paragraph essay: every student should know how to speak in
public and engage an audience. (The arts will be more important than
ever.) Every student should have
opportunities to collaborate with others on projects that are meaningful to
them – and be able to relate to, and work with, people with experiences
different from their own. (Because that’s the world they’ll be living in.) Every
student should come to school thinking, “what problem do I want to solve
today?” Or, perhaps, “what do I want to create”? And “what do I need to learn
in order to do that”?
Perhaps most importantly, we should be equipping our
students with the skills to be an effective and engaged citizens. (Fortunately,
it’s the same set of skills!)
In order to do this, we will have to work to create
and maintain school environments that are not just physically, but also emotionally
safe, where making mistakes is just part of learning; where students feel
connected to their teachers and to each other, and where everyone feels
respected and has a sense of ownership in ‘their’ school.
This might not be the school that you or I attended,
but it’s the school our students need.
