The function of education as preparation for an unknown future...

I had a wide-ranging conversation with G this morning about the state of education. What triggered it is a very insightful guest commentary by Mark Tucker, the superintendent of schools in Vermont's CCSU, the area near us that includes where we grew up in and around Danville. His article addressed a lot of the misconceptions about how education works and needs to happen in 2024; we are not in the same model nor can we be that was the norm fifty years ago. He explained that schools have to be different; the responsibilities are far more than they were then, and include everything society puts on them, including mental health. And those expectations are there, but yet when the cost is discussed, the public pivots to a punitive measure: improve, or funding is cut. Mental health costs alone in his district --and likely across the state-- account for about 11% of the budget, and there is no direct source of funding for this other than the overall education budget. His district is very much like mine, so I read his article with real interest. I know first hand what we are trying to do, and what we have to do, and with what funding we can get. It was refreshing to read a reasoned discussion of the issues that schools are tasked with addressing, and how it must be done. Believe me, there is no "fluff" in the budget, and it's not a joke that teachers spend a lot more time trying to do a lot more than "deliver content." 

Unfortunately, few people set foot in a school unless they have to after they've graduated. I would love to invite any community member to schedule a day where they shadow a student, to see what schools do and how hard we are working. I'd love for them to sit still a moment and think about what schools are asked to accomplish: we are trying to educate kids to be ready to pivot to jobs that don't even exist yet. Teaching kids to think about literature, history, and math in new ways asks us to be really flexible in how we approach the content, to make it useful for them beyond playing a round of Jeopardy. Here's an example: when studying history or social studies, kids should be taught to think about causality, not just parrot back dates. Instead of "the Battle of Hastings took place in October of 1066," it is more useful in the long run to know "what are the social factors that lead to conflict and geographical aggression?" Yes, it's good to know those battles and so on as examples of conflict, but maybe we could avoid global warfare if people understood what triggers conflict, and then, using the skills they learn through social and emotional learning, maybe we can address conflict before people start killing each other. It's a goal. 

In my literature classes --actually, in all of my classes-- my students learn one phrase (they actually chant it later, which is hysterical): People don't change, the date changes. It's impossible to teach literature, or even nonfiction, without understanding that documents, plays, poems, stories, and novels don't just happen; they are reflective of the societies in which they are created. It's not enough to know a piece of literature; we have to understand why it was written, and what we can learn from it today. 

Because people don't change, the date changes.

In our school, the high school math curriculum is not done as I learned it (read: struggled with it) years ago; there's an integrated math approach, and students learn the processes they need to approach real-world type problems as well as more "mathy" ones. I would have loved that, and likely I'd have been a much better math student. Learning formulas and doing abstract equations without a clear, practical purpose was really hard for me, and I can trace my frustration with math back to those word problems that made no sense: I could not see what the purpose was of mathematically figuring out John's grandfather's age when one could just ask him, or why did anyone need so many melons? And forget about that two trains, different speeds, where will they hit question. Call ahead and save lives. And to just "do" math without any connection to anything else was really puzzling for me. Yay, I solved for X. Now what? Today's methods are much more sane.

See? we are working hard, every single day, to make education useful, not just something kids have to get through so that they can get on with their lives. We are not taking "raw material" and turning out "products"-- we are hoping to show kids how to use all of their tools to approach situations they can't possibly predict. The only way to survive a major paradigm shift is to be able to think creatively, independently, and rationally. We are not going to be releasing finished human beings, so please don't expect that, Mrs and Mr Taxpayer. And be glad of it; ideas set in mental concrete don't work well when we are faced with things we've never expected to deal with. 

And the world has some big ol' problems that need fixing. Those who are set in the old model of learning will not be able to do much about those; we need to prep our kids to take the ball and run with it. Cutting funding as a punitive measure because we are not turning out human widgets is not only short-sighted,  it is the death blow to our collective survival.

Thanks for coming to my rant. The linked commentary is in today's Caledonian Record (which has a paywall).

C