Kimberly Swygert / Number
2 Pencil
October 18, 2005
The News-Leader (MO) covers a presentation by an
educator with a radical plan for schools that might be suitable for, oh,
about 1% of the student population:
Just hear me out, educator Bruce Smith told a small crowd Monday at Drury
University. Students should set their own schedule, work at their own pace and
decide, in many ways, what they want to learn. Smith was providing an overview
of the Sudbury schools model,
which emphasizes independence and democracy – with students and teachers being
the governing force and decision makers.
Here we go again. The fetishization of unstructured learning and the assumption
that students today always know enough about what they like to choose anything
at all.
Kimberly
doesn’t get it–at least not in the context of schools for The
21st Century Student. Bruce is essentially right. Students must set their
own schedules, their own pace and their own course of study. But that can’t
possibly work in the atmosphere of today’s public schools where lessons
are boring, focused on slow to moderate learners, delivered at fixed times
in fixed locations at a fixed pace and with the preponderance of incentives
driving students to work no harder than needed to get by. Setting students
free in a learning culture like this guarantees disaster.
But suppose lessons were so compelling students couldn’t wait to see what
happens next. Suppose that rather than being motivated to merely get by, the
faster students learn, the more rewards they get–like finishing two-years worth
of college or graduating with a joint high school and technical diploma. Suppose
students had to master a core curriculum that included basic applied statistics,
marketing, advertising, opinion polling, personal finance, economics, law,
personal health and fitness. Suppose students had to achieve reading
rates twice today’s average, typing rates of 60 wpm and solid math, science
and social studies skills. And suppose students could integrate all this into
the issues, topics and vocational pursuits that most excite and intrigue them,
working year-round if they like, taking vacations when convenient, consulting
with teacher-coaches and attending special seminars and small
learning-reinforcement sessions. That’s the system of education we need to
create. We have the means.
Smith is a former Columbia high school teacher who left public schools because
he thought the system was squashing the natural curiosity in children. The
schools stress independent thinking and de-emphasize standardized testing.
Students are encouraged to follow their passions.
I wonder if "follow" means "learn the facts about," or if
it’s okay to just be independently "interested." One could argue that
being passionate yet uninformed about a topic is worse than being ignorant and
uninterested.
I
agree, but suppose each lesson requires the demonstration of mastery, too.
Before moving beyond the scope of a student’s current inquiry, s/he must pass
tests or complete other work with an 85% or greater degree of acceptance.
Students ages 4-19 are accepted. There are no formal grades. Depending on
state standards, many Sudbury schools do not require standardized testing.
If there are no formal grades, the anti-testing attitude is a given. Grades, and
test scores, imply a set standard to which students are being compared. That
standard might be a set amount of facts learned, or how other students are doing
with the same material, but it’s always there. Except at Sudbury schools, where
their philosophy sounds like it would make any sort of useful comparison
virtually impossible.
I
don’t know how Sudbury does it, but grade levels are a complete contrivance
designed to serve system needs, not student needs. They provide a structure to
the school organization. Students aren’t naturally in one grade or another,
especially with respect to different subjects. At any given time, students are
at fixed points in a journey of acquiring knowledge and skills. Those points may
correlate to a certain part of the school year in a grade level, but this
correlation is completely unnecessary to academic progress except where
instruction must be provided en masse. The absence of grade levels in no way
requires or implies the absence of proof of learning.
After the presentation, Smith fielded audience questions ranging from
student-teacher ratios – although there are no specific ratios, ratios are
much smaller than in the public school system – to how the system deals with
children with special needs.
I wonder if any questions were along the lines of, "What will you do to
ensure that my child learns something in your school? What will you do to ensure
that they learn something that will allow them to support themselves as mature
adults?"
Good
questions.
How does a student know if he’s graduated – one man asked. The crowd laughed.
In order to graduate, students must prepare and defend a thesis over a
six-month period, Smith said.
"Say what? What if my child needs more than six months to explore his
chosen passion? What if he doesn’t express himself well in writing or in speech,
instead choosing interpretive dance? What if his style of learning precludes him
being required to defend anything about it to impartial observers? Didn’t you
say that he gets to decide how quickly his education goes? How dare you set such
an arbitrary and unmoving standard! My child is special and can’t possibly
develop his passionate work of, of, whatever it is, on that sort of schedule!
"
The
student gets to set her pace of learning. In a 21st Century School, her typical
learning pace would be known. If it slows or increases, computer software would
detect that and generate a notice to teachers for intervention and/or closer
monitoring. Having control over one’s pace of learning doesn’t mean one gets to
decide when one graduates.
Kimberly seems to believe that flexibility precludes high standards. Perhaps in
the current educational enterprise. But higher standards and greater skills do
not necessarily require inflexibility. Just the opposite.
And if Sudbury school administrators expect never to hear that, I have some
lovely, inhabitable lakefront property in New Orleans to sell them.
One parent speaks out in support of the school:
"I would say one of the biggest ones is the ability for my daughter to be
able to know herself and make choices and have freedom," Frey said. Frey
is against standardized testing, saying it adds stress at a young age, doesn’t
test children on skills they will need in real life and places an emphasis on
learning how to test, instead of learning.
Because, as we all know, life never requires that you be able to withstand any
sort of test, or live by someone else’s schedule. Making life choices also never
requires the drudgery of learning facts. Life involves no stress, and no
restrictions on freedom, and no knowledge of standardized-test friendly skills
like literacy and numeracy.
Life
requires all that. It also requires freedom, the power to make choices and the
opportunity to succeed and fail. Standardized testing is mostly a necessary
evil. It provides a relatively inexpensive means of ensuring students learn at
least something at school. Sadly, the dominate culture in public schools has
shifted to chasing test scores. It’s professional malpractice. A high quality
curriculum expertly taught will produce all the high scores anyone needs.
Can you imagine how a child who was actually in this system from ages 4 to 19
would do in the real world? The only one I bet would survive would be the
natural scientific geek who – to the horror of the school, I would think – would
insist on being taught rigorous mathematics and chemistry and biology. This
would be the lucky child who understood intuitively that many of the world’s
triumphs and adult successes don’t involve passion and self-knowledge so much as
they involve lots of hard work, stress, and precise calculations.
The
assumption that giving students guided choices and learning flexibility reduces
hard work, stress and precise calculations is a biased and flawed opinion.
Getting students to work harder and more precisely requires expanding choices
and increasing flexibility. To be sure, in 21st Century Schools there will be
interventions when students slack off, though mostly they won’t because it will
be against their own selfish interests–like finishing a year’s worth of
schoolwork in 180 days rather than spreading it over 240 days. But mostly, the
focus will not be on marching in a straight column. It will be on maximizing
each student’s potential for success.
I’m on the Beltway for a Sunday Drive.