

Why School Reform Is Impossible - b-man
http://www.papert.org/articles/school_reform.html

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jseliger
_The structure of School is so deeply rooted that one reacts to deviations
from it as one would to a grammatically deviant utterance: Both feel wrong on
a level deeper than one's ability to formulate reasons._

The problem with comments like this is that they depend on what you mean by
"structure." Although I want to agree with it, I do so only because I think of
"structure" as the basic idea behind the school day: you go to class for six
to eight hours, divided into chunks of about an hour each and by subject, and
then you go home. As near as I can tell, that's been the basic form of school
since the formalization of public education.

But one could easily be talking about structure as something else, like the
way teachers are hired and paid.

One problem with the idea of reforming a school's "grammar" is that a) schools
are so vast and b) the stakeholders in schools, most notably teachers and
their unions, have a greater stake in schools than any other. That's one
reason I linked to all the articles here:
<http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get> in a post on how
"Susan Engel doesn’t get the problems with schools, but she’ll tell us to
“Teach Your Teachers Well” anyway." The problems with public education are
largely structural, but probably have more to do with the way teachers are
rewarded and incentivized than any other factor. At least that's what the
educational research of the last decade or so seems to show.

Although you _might_ over time be able to change that, I'm not sure you'll be
able to change everything. For example, lots of people complain (justifiably)
about grade inflation and other aspects that are problematic about grades. But
what are you supposed to do instead? There's not anything major or obvious, as
discussed here: <http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades> .

~~~
euroclydon
There is one single aspect of the public school system, which if removed,
would make schools more productive, their material less watered down, and all
children more happy and well educated. That single aspect is: _compulsion_.

If the kids who do not want to be there, were not forced to, the mission of
teachers would move away from what it is now: discipline, and back to what it
was before compulsion, education.

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TomOfTTB
I'd offer this as a rebuttal to his conclusion...

<http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11653>

When individual reformers can't change things you need systematic reform.
That's exactly where education is right now.

~~~
jacoblyles
I don't know why the ideas of market-provided educational services are
considered so radical and receive so little consideration by smart people. I
find the arguments for school choice and loosening the grip of the education
monopoly very compelling. And the example of programs like the DC Opportunity
Scholarship Fund are very powerful (see:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7FS5B-CynM>). But these ideas have very
little uptake. There seems to be no political will to do anything but what we
have been doing all along, except try harder.

~~~
dpatru
School choice is rejected because the people who have the most to lose from
it, public school employees, are very organized and those who stand to gain,
parents, are not organized.

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tokenadult
Surely there are business opportunities for hackers in attempts to improve
education by "Darwinian design."

~~~
araneae
The problem is that we don't have a good metric for what a good education is.
Anytime you try to come up with one and enforce it, like No Child Left Behind,
someone doesn't like it.

In that Alan Greenspan book that was posted, he remarked that his father was
infuriated that some of his homework involved painstakingly coloring in maps
for hours, because he considered it useless. I don't know about history, but
in art classes we would painstakingly spend hours making little patches of
different textures. And do things like draw without looking at the page.

One person's waste of time is another person's education. We might be able to
come up with the best education to get someone into med school, but it's much
harder to come up with an education that is most likely to make someone
"successful."

~~~
tokenadult
Perhaps (and I think this agrees with TomOfTTB's point in his comment) the
problem is assuming that if all people receive the same education, then they
have all received a good education. This seems to be the assumption built into
current state laws about compulsory schooling.

If people have power to shop, they don't all eat the same foods or wear the
same wardrobes. Neither should we expect learners with the power to shop to
all choose the same educations. As you correctly say, "One person's waste of
time is another person's education." (By the way, that mention of drawing
exercises is an especially apt example.)

~~~
yardie
Primary and secondary school should provide enough education to get you
started and after that get out the way. We make choices in eating because we
are knowledgeable enough to decide what makes a good choice. But the
curriculum of schools is just insane. Fatter years, they add more classes,
leaner years they cut back to the basics. The kids are caught in the middle of
these 12 year experiments. And the results can't be seen for atleast 20 years.

Some schools want to prepare students for college and others just want to get
off the D-list of NCLB.

If anything schools should do what they were outlined to do 200 years ago.
Provide a baseline of education. If you want additional classes provide them
after school or on the weekends. If you've passed the baseline then there is
no need to stick around for 2-3 years. Get out, go to college or get an
apprenticeship.

~~~
dpatru
I think schools are more about providing jobs to school employees and
babysitting (keeping kids safely out of the way) than they are about
education.

