School has become a train. It’s a train that has been expected to go faster and faster, and do more and more, with less and less. We’ve continued to try and improve education incrementally by adding a bunch of new engines and cars (standards, high stakes tests, accountability, technology…)
The problem is that many of the things that have been added are just seen as add-ons – they’ve not been perceived as being core and essential. Or they’re viewed as temporary fads that will disappear in due course if we just hunker down for long enough.
Why are these changes viewed in this manner? It’s because education has historically had an amazing stability and incredible resistance to change. And in continuing to add cars to this speeding train, we fail to recognize that schools are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the children they are intended to serve.
The Smoking Gun
The smoking gun is data gathered by the American Center for Education Statistics and reported in The Condition of Education, 2010. It shows the seriousness of the disconnect between the real world of the high-school student and the real world of schools. Children’s view of the relevancy of their school experience to their future lives has declined steadily since the late 1980s. Today, only 28% of 12th-grade high school students believe that school work is meaningful; 21% believe that their courses are interesting; and a mere 39% believe that school work will have any bearing on their success in later life.
These statistics are even more shocking when one realizes that these are the opinions of those students who have remained in high school for four years. Students who find the high school experience the least relevant have already exited the system in huge numbers. The Carnegie Institute reports that in the largest 32 urban districts in our country, only 50% of students who enroll actually graduate. Each day, more than 2000 U.S. high school students drop out. If their voices were heard in the above poll, the profile would be far worse.
Thus, in continuing to take a PhD approach (piling things on higher and deeper) we’ve absolutely missed the point. In education, it’s not about efficiency—the issue is relevance.
Irrelevancy as an Issue
Why is irrelevance an issue? The reason is because, in the ‘70s, as electronics exploded into our lives, much of the rest of the world outside of education switched to a different track. It was a track that started to diverge from the one that education was on. And that was only part of the story—outside of education, they also switched to new vehicles.
In the ‘80s, with continued increase in technological power and the global trends these technologies unleashed, much of the rest of the world outside of education got into a plane. We in education missed that one too. Instead, we continued down the same old track. And now, here we are in the early part of the new millennium. Today, much of the rest of the world is in a rocket and we still haven’t grasped the significance of this.
So What’s Fueling the Rocket?
It’s the microchip. It has become an integral and ubiquitous part of everyday life. Microchips are embedded into everything. The only time you ever realize how dependent we are on microchips is when the power goes out or the batteries fail. Then you can’t even cook a meal.
Think about it in these terms: If all the computers in 1960 stopped functioning, few people would have noticed. A few scientists would have seen a delay in getting printouts from their last submission of data on punch cards. Some business reports would have been held up. There was really not much to worry about.
Today is another matter. If all computers stopped functioning, society would grind to a halt. First of all, electric power distribution would fail. Even if electric power continued, virtually everything would still break down.
Most motorized vehicles have embedded microprocessors, so the only cars that would run would be quite old. There would be almost no functioning trucks, buses, railroads, subways, or airplanes. There would be no electronic communications. Telephone, radio, TV, fax machines, pagers, email, and the Web would all cease functioning. You wouldn’t be able to get your money out of your bank. Business and government would operate only at the most primitive level. The microchip has and is fueling an Exponential Revolution.
Tomorrow: Part 3—The Exponential Revolution
