Excerpt: Chapter 1: The System Story

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. —Bertrand Russell

Many of us feel something is not right with the majority of our schools. Having been in the education profession for over thirty years, I have witnessed many innovations designed to transform our schools. We tinker with existing structures, changing schedules, extending the length of the school day, designing new curriculum guides, providing more professional development for our teachers as testing continues to increase. We open magnet schools, charter schools, and various academies with specialized learning programs and curriculums. We call for smaller class sizes, vouchers, on-line schools, “highly qualified teachers,” while initiating year round school calendars. We have introduced and implemented progress monitoring assessments, along with the addition of remedial classes, attempting to revamp our current system. Technology continues to evolve inside our schools for assessment, remediation, and instruction.  Our students are spending more and more time being directly instructed and assessed by machines. Special Education is a field that continues to change and evolve. 

“After decades of steady increases, the population of students with disabilities peaked in 2004-05 with 6.72 million youngsters, comprising 13.8 percent of the nation’s student population. The following year marked the first time since the enactment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that special-education participation numbers declined—and they have continued to do so, falling to 6.48 million students by 2009-10, or 13.1 percent of all students nationwide.”[i]

It is not rare, however, to have school districts where the classification rates soar above 20 percent. That translates into one out of every five students in need of a special education.

One might ask what kind of system creates a need for that many students to be classified as eligible for a specialized education?  Research also makes us very aware of the links between race, poverty, and special education rates.

We create teacher and principal evaluation systems that link professional evaluations into “best practices” correlating these metrics with monitoring student growth through assessments and determining teacher effectiveness. We have created basic skills programs, remedial programs, special education programs, after school programs, alternative school programs. We have transitioned from chalk boards to white boards, from overhead projectors to smart boards, from desk tops to lap tops to bring-your-own devices; yet, none of the changes we have made have come close to transforming our schools.  Fundamentally, the story has stayed the same.

 This mechanistic worldview drives the way we educate our young and sees schooling as simply the “transmission of knowledge” from one person—the teacher, to another—the student. This way of “seeing” education and schooling continues to be the dominant and mainstream approach to schooling in our country. Ron Miller defines the transmission model of schooling this way: 

“Knowledge is seen as an established, objective, authoritative body of facts outside the learner’s experiences or personal preferences, and the role of the educator is to transmit this knowledge, along with accompanying academic skills and attitudes, to the learners mind.”[ii]

Historically, the current story of the expansion of public education and the design of almost all our schools was based on the need to create modern factory workers. This was the time when standardization became synonymous with “modern.” It was the time of Henry Ford’s assembly line and, at the time, a more modern form of work. It was in this context that the current story of education was born, the birthplace of “modern schooling.”

 We unconsciously institutionalize this worldview in our thinking and our behavior. In essence the world viewed as a machine continues to shape our institutions and the majority of our schools at every developmental level. It is not that difficult to step back and imagine a child placed on the “assembly line” in kindergarten, shuffling along through the system with a final destination of being “college and career ready.”  

The current wave of school reform movements across our country and the globe are simply creating a twenty-first century assembly line system. 

We have focused and almost perfected our ability to find what is wrong with our young people. What is the outcome of the current story of education? This system has not and will not serve us well. The majority of students leaving this mechanistic schooling feel less than adequate intellectually. Most celebrate being finished with their schooling so that they can get on with their “real life.” Many also feel they are finally done with learning! Only a small fraction of students leave feeling that their gifts were recognized after spending thirteen years in a place called school.

Our current story continues to shut down learning, which is the most natural thing human beings do. The myth that at one time our public schools were a place of great engagement and learning, is just that—a myth. Our current high school graduation rate is approximately 75 percent, and that is as high as it has ever been.  An estimated one million students will fail to graduate this year, which is a loss of 5,500 students for every day on the academic calendar.[iii]

 When we actually take the time to ask students about their schooling, the answers we receive should give any adult interested in education major concern. According to a national report: Charting A Path from Engagement to Achievement, a 2009 survey of 42,000 high school students reported that 66 percent of students stated they are bored every day in school. The students consistently cite that the material is boring and not relevant. The students also indicated, with a whopping 82 percent in agreement, that they would welcome more opportunities to be creative at school.[iv]

This old story of schooling stifles real learning, and cuts off our young’s natural learning capacities to explore, to create, and to imagine. It literally shuts down the most natural thing human beings do. 

It is time for a new story of education and schooling in our country. So let us imagine another trip through another imaginary school. As you wander around this school, try and go underneath all the surface activities of the school. Notice the content that is being taught, the bells that ring, the tests being taken, the pencils being sharpened, the lectures being delivered, and the questions being asked. Notice the lockers being opened, the lesson plans being delivered and just stop and listen.  Observe and feel the place you are in. Listen to the buzz and hustling of all the life within this place we call a school. Feel the pulse of the place you have entered. Sense the vibrations and energy within the walls. All schools have a felt sense. 

 Schools are living systems, and they are alive. Viewing our schools as living systems creates space for seeing our role within them much differently. We do not need to restructure schools or reconstitute them. We do not need to remediate or fix them.

What we need is a Re-visioning of our schools. 

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