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When public education began in the US, it was ahead of the curve in serving the
needs of business and the economy. Now it is behind the curve because advances
in these have far outpaced advances in education. While reading and math served
the needs of industrializing agrarian society, the subject-matter and thinking
and learning skills currently taught are inadequate for the needs of the
evolving bio-technical age.

What are the big problems in education? Here are two:

1. Education is too much push and not enough pull. Ever have to push a
kid through an amusement park? How about a computer game? Both use strategies to
pull kids along rather than push them.

Think about museums. In some, you have to drag your children through. In others,
you can’t get them to stop. The best museums use strategies to pull visitors
through.

Teachers use a mix of push and pull, to be sure, but it is dominated by push
(which recently has been amplified by the drive to have all students pass
standards tests). "Push education" raises frustration, creates
resistance and generates misbehavior. Even when teachers get the curiosity and
motivation of students fired up to actively pursue learning, the system
cannot accommodate the fire. It is doused by demanding attention to the next
matter on the agenda. Over time, repeated exposure to pushes and enticed but
ungratified cravings produces students who learn to do the minimum needed to get
by. They see little benefit or reward for committing their curiosity, motivation
and imagination to greater learning only to have their efforts ignored or
rebuffed. Students become emotionally detached from learning. They seek out more
promising and gratifying avenues for emotional satisfaction. This makes it
increasingly difficult to stimulate an emotional commitment to learning as
students advance through school. Educators complain about this, often
scapegoating parents and students, without giving the slightest hint of
awareness that it is they who are causing students to emotionally drop
out of learning and abandon desires to soar academically.

What must be done? The two metaphors suggest two reforms. First, rather than
douse sparks of learning educators need to fuel them. That means educators must
create multiple pathways to learning the core curriculum because the fire can
start in any part of the forest of knowledge. An English, science, math,
history, art or music lesson may ignite the flame. Educators must develop more
flame-fanning strategies and minimize the conditions invoking the need for fire
prevention. See, The
root cause of education mediocrity.

Second, teachers must develop alternative curricula that pulls students through
rather than pushes them. Like a well-designed computer game, when a student gets
to one level, s/he should feel a pressing need to begin and conquer the next
level.

In most cases, effective learning will vacillate between the needs for pushing
and pulling. Consequently, teachers will need access to both a push-curriculum
and a pull-curriculum so they can employ the strategy that works best for the
student at any given time in any given subject. It may be that push-curriculum
is offered in a classroom setting while pull-curriculum is offered via computers
employing a wide array of a/v and interactive strategies.

2. Stand-and-deliver classroom instruction is inefficient. With behavior
disruptions, emergencies, external interruptions, students
with different needs performing at widely
different levels, unprepared substitute teachers, absent students and much
more that make managing classroom learning an act of juggling bowling balls with
feathers, it’s no surprise that student learning is severely constrained by the
environment in which it takes place.

Students ready to move on must wait while absent students or slower learners try
to catch up. Those who can’t catch up are forced to move faster than is good for
optimal learning so teachers can cover the materials assigned for the year. It’s
a bumble bee that shouldn’t be able to fly. And it doesn’t.

In teaching
my daughter math for three summers, I learned she could master a year’s
worth of elementary math in 40 hours of instruction, practice and testing using books
from Saxon Publishers. That’s one-third the time public schools spend on
math.

I also learned from conversations with her that she has spent a lot of down time
waiting on other students to finish their tests. I estimate she could have
acquired an additional full academic year’s worth of instruction had she been
able to move on after finishing her tests.

For reference, I estimate her academic abilities to be matched or exceeded by at
least 1.5 million other public school students, who likewise are likely
experiencing lots of downtime in classrooms. Moreover, if she could do a year’s
worth of math in 40 hours, how many more students can do it in 60 or 100 hours
and have time left over to advance their mathematics learning even further or to
spend more time on topics and subjects they find especially challenging?

Dramatic improvements in the quantity and quality of learning can only be
obtained by re-engineering schools from the perspective of student learning, not
from the perspectives of teaching or of the system. The
21st Century Student will:

• Have 24-hour-a-day, year-round access to high quality, personalized
  instruction.
• Begin each day’s learning exactly where s/he left off the day before.
• Move forward at a pace that ensures mastery of each lesson, being neither
  rushed nor held back by other students’ progress.
• Take no state exam before s/he has successfully completed all the
  requisite materials.
• Be rewarded for hard work and ambition with the opportunity to complete as
  much vocational, technical or college instruction as possible before
  graduating.
• With the guidance of teachers, customize learning to include the skills
  and knowledge s/he finds most stimulating and useful.
• Have education enriched with courses like financial,
  investment and credit management, conflict
  resolution, systems
  thinking and business and science ethics.