I hope everyone has been enjoying their summer. A year ago, I started this dialogue because I felt like there was a need for a space to share thoughts about Progressive Education. I am honored that people have spent some of their time reading these thoughts and as we begin the second year of this experiment, I thank you and I appreciate you for being on this adventure.
There is no ahead and there is no behind.
I've had experience in small schools, I've had experience in big schools, I've had experience in urban schools, and in rural schools. My job title has been; teacher, principal, director of curriculum and instruction, senior director of teacher learning, director of learning, and head of school. I have spent time in one of the biggest school systems in the world in New York City and also in a tiny little three-room public school in New Hampshire. Regardless of the setting or the pedagogy of the school, these last few years have been challenging.
The truth of the matter is that no one signed up for the COVID-19 pandemic. As this experience began in the spring of 2019, no one said, “I am thrilled about the impact that this will have on my life and/or, on the short and long term culture and practices of schools and education.” No one said, “I am thrilled about the impact this will have on the young people of all ages who are navigating their own growth and learning, during these unprecedented times.” (I recognize we have had global pandemics before, but the world is a different place than in 1919) There are innumerable impacts on our all of our lives over these past three years, and I could spend many pages exploring them all. Instead, there is one topic that I would like to discuss this week. As we navigated these past years, one of the common fears that parents/guardians, educators and many politicians and commentators have spoken and written about is that their children, students, constitutions or viewers will fall behind, and will never be able to recover from the “learning loss” of these years.
We can fear this specter of perpetual damage as many have, or as my wife, who is also an educator, reminded a parent of a student in the second year of the pandemic, there is no ahead and there is no behind. Because in fact, there are only human beings who are where they are and who need what they need at any given point in time. If we take that idea to heart, which I would suggest that we do, it is a potent reminder that this unprecedented time allows us the opportunity to look upon schooling with a critical eye identify the things that we want to hold on to and those things that we want to leave behind.
The first thing that we need to leave behind is the quantification and standardization of learning because the idea that students are ahead of each other or behind each other only exists if we believe that the inputs and the outputs of the system are the same. It is only a viable model if we assume that identical outcomes are universal, and it only take moments knowing the diversity of human lives in the world to recognize that this is a fallacy.
In fact, if we took the time, (which would be time well spent) and listed all of the things that we as human beings need to know at this point in time in order to live fulfilling, joyful and sustainable lives, nearly all of the things that will appeare on that list are not the knowledge, skills and understand that is measured or given weight in a standardized test-based education system.
A great deal of what we teach in schools will not matter in the lives of our students and there are many things that we don't teach or offer learning experiences for in schools that will be far more beneficial to their preferred futures. Drawing on the work of David Perkins and Laurie Howe from the Harvard Graduate School of Education I’d like to share a little more about this point. In a piece in the School of Education Magazine they refer to rival learning agendas which stand in the way of shifting the focus of schooling and learning to respond to the realities of our present and our future.
The first rival learning agenda which gets in the way of reimagining schooling is Information;
“…most education has become a mastery of a very large body of information, even if it’s not what Perkins calls lifeworthy — likely to matter, in any meaningful way, in the lives learners are expected to live.”
I am the first person to admit that I like to know things and anyone who has spent time in a classroom with me engaged in a learning experience knows that I like to add in esoteric and occasionally or maybe usually irrelevant information into dialogues and conversations.
That being said, the vast majority of the information that I enjoy learning has not come from a classroom experience that I have had as a student. We live now in a digital age in which information exists at our fingertips and the essential skill of learning is not how much information you can hold on to for short-term gains such as the quiz or the test but instead knowing how to find the knowledge that you need and then how to apply it to something useful, which will help you along the path or paths that you have decided to follow.
The second of the learning agenda which gets in the way of reimagining schooling is Achievement, as an example;
“Students are drilled to remember state capitals and major rivers and rewarded as ‘achieving’ when they score well. And while it’s nice and sometimes useful to know those things, Perkins argues that instead, knowing how the location of rivers and harbors and other features of the land have been shaped and continue to shape the course of history offers more in terms of lifelong usefulness — more so than ‘a bag full of facts. All that talk about achievement leaves little room for discussing what’s being achieved.’
Achievement has been the focus of schools for a significant portion of the preceding decades. In order to measure achievement in such a way that it can be compared along a scale, it is necessary to standardize both Curriculum and theAssessments. This has led to concern about an achievement gap, which is a topic that we can discuss at length in another issue. (Although it is important to note that there is a gap in opportunity and access which is directly related to the injustices and inequalities that exist and have existed in our society for a long time.)
Achievement presupposes a certain set of knowledge, skills and understanding that have been decided and when they are not demonstrated the result is a gap in achievement. The more important gap to consider, which is directly related to inequality and injustice, is the relevance or the importance gap. We should ask ourselves if this set of knowledge, skills and understanding will matter? Will it help this individual person to chart the paths that they want to create in their life? Just to be clear, this is not to say that certain things that schools do don't have value. I will be the first to argue that learning to read and write well and learning how to build numerical fluency are essential to being able to chart a path and that understanding the nature of science and arcs of history enable us to move towards a less unjust and a more sustainable future, yet so much of what really matters in these academic realms, as well as all of the others, is not measured through standardized tests and rigid curriculum.
Just to be clear of course we need to assess what matters in order to determine if people have the knowledge, skills and understanding to bring their dreams to fruition and formative assessments with feedback have a far stronger track record of providing people with what they need to grow and learn. Standardized summative assessments, on the other hand measure achievement against a largely irrelevant standard that has little value in supporting each individual person in achieving their dreams.
The third of rival learning agenda which gets in the way of reimagining schooling is Expertise. Dr. Perkins refers to expertise as the holy grail of learning. The pinnacle of schooling is the drive to master the most difficult content, the most challenging knowledge, skills and understanding. We only need to experience the aura that surrounds AP classes and honors classes, the crowning achievement of calculus.
Frankly the vast majority of people will not use the knowledge, skills and understanding that they have “earned” in their pursuit of expertise at any point in their lives beyond their schooling. The drive for professionalism or expertise, does not align with the reality of the lives that we lead, in fact, as Dr. Perkins says;
“…students can instead become “expert amateurs” in something like statistics — a rigorous topic that is also used in daily life. In fact, expert amateurism works great, he says, in most of what we do in our lives — raising children, filing taxes, appreciating art, understanding insurance rates, or dealing with our own health care.”
Ultimately the goal of education and schooling is to create experiences where people can build the lives that they want through knowledge, skills and understanding and more importantly they can learn how to learn the things that they need to know in order to build those preferable futures.
Expertise has its value and providing opportunities to build it is absolutely a goal of a society that values lifelong learning but to emphasize expertise all too often excludes people from the opportunity to explore multiple paths and possible futures as they strive to catch an artificial golden ring.
This brings us back to the title that hopefully got your attention and brought you here to read this rather long article.
There is no ahead and there is no behind.
I personally only need to look at the young people that I know and have the honor of working with every day who have stepped off that industrial model of Schooling and decided instead to immerse themselves in a more humane community. A learning community that supports them and honors their agency as human beings to see the value in learning what they need to in order live their lives with satisfaction and joy.
So, what does a humane educational model look like?
That is the topic that I will take up next week!
It is an honor to be back sharing thoughts with you, as always, if you have questions or just want to say hello, please reach out.
With Gratitude,
Randy