Comments on: The 3 R’s of Industry

By: Meghan W.

Meghan W. — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:37:10 +0000

Tom,
My name is Meghan and I am a Junior at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. I am currently studying to be a high school science teacher, and in my Educational Media class I was assigned to follow your blog.
I liked how you compared public education to the industry business. They are very similar and probably did start out similarly to what you painted a picture of. I think that we could keep this idea of an ‘industry’ related education system if adopted to the new century like the industrial world has.
That would mean we need to adapt more technology into our classrooms, like today’s businesses have done.
Doing this would not only prepare our students for the outside world better, but it would also help them with the preparing for a job bit. Even though i would love for my students to just enjoy learning for learning sake, but the truth is most do not, and I plan to at least prepare the others as best I can.

You can see my full blog and my classmates at:
wallacemeghan.edm310.blogspot.com
edm310.blogspot.com

By: educhange

educhange — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:40:39 +0000

The business model for education falls apart, because in what business is the customer mandated by law to buy? Who is the customer in education? students? parents? If the customer is students and they want to buy training to achieve a job, I am thinking they would be unlikely to select our schools for this training.

Sometimes I think schools have left the business model and joined the childcare/babysitting model. If schools do not watch children, who will? Certainly the schools where I have worked get a great deal of heat for not “holding” children during the hours their parents work. Maybe that is the real function of education…

The thinking model, the idea that ed is about growing thinking participants in a democratic society, I think that model is the least embraced by our present culture and society. i seldom hear anyone concerned about whether students learn to think critically (except teachers).

How about a “future consumers” model? Maybe that is really what we are building in our schools? People who learn to read, rite, and do rith for the purposes of buying products and keeping our market alive?

Plenty to think about…thanks.

By: Tom King

Tom King — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:19:22 +0000

Tom:

Love it when I see such fundamental questions on why we’ve done it that way so long, when upon further thought it seems madness.

Al Shanker, former AFT president, years ago did a weekly column in the NYT and often used the cookie-cutter, box analogy as you have.

If we locked a group of right-thinking people (there have to be some somewhere, right?) in a room and asked them to design a way for K-12 kids to learn effectively in today’s world, it’s hard to believe they’d come up with a model that looks anything like the one we have.

Keep asking the questions like Socrates did. The answers are in our heads somewhere. All we have to do is elicit them out!

Cheers!

Tom King

By: Alan Stange

Alan Stange — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:08:30 +0000

When we struggle with the inertia of our traditional educational model it is important to recall that regardless of how disconnected we may have become from the original rationale for the public education design, it was and remains functional at some level. Perhaps some of this functionality is the result of individual and collective divergences from the model. Despite mandated student learning outcomes and assessments for and of learning, teachers and students find time to follow their own differentiated goals. The human propensity for divergent and convergent thinking drives this I think. We think the system is broken. I think not. I suspect it is working pretty much the way our social and economic elites want it to work. In our western paradigm there is always a scarcity of resources and competition. The system is a dream for people with social and economic capital. Why would they want to change it?

By: Judy Gressel

Judy Gressel — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:58:36 +0000

I think the problem is more complex than outdated belief systems. At my large high school, where everyone is at least theoretically a progressive educator, the thing that stands in the way of significant scheduling change (away from the industrial model) is proprietary interests in building and maintaining huge programs such as theater and music, and sports!

We have short 40 minute periods –9 periods a day to maintain all the choices in extracurricular and elective areas for students Why can’t we have a straddled school day? Sports. Why can’t we do block scheduling? Sports. Why do teenagers have to start their day at 8 am despite all the research that runs counter to this notion? Sports. In addition, the competition out there from the college admissions demands that our students have fully scheduled days with no breaks.

Although our school is a shining model of academic excellence, technology and social media are not enough to reform the system.

By: Irene

Irene — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:43:52 +0000

Tom,
I agree with everything you say and I think you hit the nail on the head when you wrote, “I wonder is there a need to change what everyone chooses to believe.”

Belief systems are the hardest things to change. Many belief systems (such as “the goal of education is to get a job”) have been hardwired in people. It’s bad software. But for some people it is all that they know and, unfortunately, what they are “comfortable” with.

On a positive note, educators are changing and working around these belief systems the best that they can. There are many hurdles to be sure, but we have some wonderful educators and administrators ready to address these changes. There are changes (ever so subtle) being made. We have to hold onto these inroads and build upon them.

Technology and social media, I believe, are going to be a huge part of this change. Social media is growing and, I feel, is going to be instrumental in altering these outdated belief systems.

I await the day, as do you, when the little changes turn into bigger ones and reform the entire system. If we can effect the belief systems of our current students (and their parents), imagine the possibilities as they come into position of influence. It will happen.

By: Todd Wandio

Todd Wandio — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:24:19 +0000

Sorry, the second comment was in agreement of Bonnie. I jumped the gun.

By: Todd Wandio

Todd Wandio — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:22:24 +0000

I love your take on it, Tom. I think the Great creators of the 20th Century schools were more thinking how to occupy the time of children and thus employ more adults in the workforce. That eventually gave way to intellectual bean counters whose job it was to create something constructive for the children to do. It was all fairly simple, at first. The children had to memorize numbers and vocabulary and facts. However, somehow it all got twisted. Children didn’t do as they were told. Children who grew up questioned the efficacy of what they were taught and how it would benefit them.

And I think you are correct, you can’t run a school like a business, yet here in Alberta, the business model drives every decision we make. We say it is all for the kids, but really, the decision was based on how much money there was to pay for it.

By: Bonnie Frampton Faust

Bonnie Frampton Faust — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:33:56 +0000

I think I read it from another post by someone on the Educator’s PLN, but there was a great story about this.

I think the guy from Ben & Jerry’s was discussing how successful he was as a CEO and how these techniques could be applied to education. Mind you, he was talking to a group of educators. Many of them were getting ticked off, and he said if he had an employee who wasn’t doing their job, he fired them, or something of that nature. Anyway, one *wise* teacher sitting up front raised her hand to ask a question.

She asked, “Where do you get your ingredients?” and he answered, “Oh, we purchase the finest ingredients, blah blah blah…” So the teacher asked, “Well, what happens if you get a bad batch of ingredients? What do you do with them?” and I guess he said he’d send them back to the supplier and fire him.

I know I’m butchering the story, but the gist was the teacher said, “Well, as educators, if we only had the best and the brightest, the BEST ingredients, we’d probably have a great product too.” But she went on to say that as educators, we don’t have the option to turn away ‘bad ingredients’ we have to make do with what we have. And sometimes it affects even the good ingredients.

So, teachers make the best of the ingredients, and tools, they have at their disposal. You can’t run a school like a business, at least not in this country.