in a world where learning is more important than schooling—and catching up can only start when we are willing to rethink everything. We need to push aside the current norms defining education—that teachers are to govern, direct, and evaluate student work; that mastering content detailed in predetermined curricula is the best indicator of student success; that assessment and remediation are more important than feedback and reflection; that the primary reason for investing in tools and technologies is to improve on existing practices. It’s time to implement notions that better reflect the complexity of the world in which we live.
That is the origin of this series. It is my attempt to give a handful of the most progressive educators that I know a forum for detailing what they believe it will take to make schools different. Each book encourages readers to question their core beliefs about what meaningful teaching and learning look like in action. More important, each title provides readers with practical steps and strategies for reimagining their day-to-day practices. Here’s your challenge: no matter how unconventional ideas, steps, and strategies may seem at first, and no matter how uncomfortable they make you feel, find a way to take action. There is no other way to create the learning spaces that your students deserve.
Introduction
Make school different.
—Seth Godin
In 1983, the U.S. National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a landmark report. The report, titled A Nation at Risk, includes the following statements:
Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world…. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war…. We have … squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge…. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. (p. 5)
These alarmist statements echoed the fears of previous generations that U.S. students were unprepared for the world around them. They also revitalized the notion that U.S. students were woefully inadequate compared to their international peers, a tale that has been told for decade after decade regardless of the United States’ economic progress or the happiness and well-being of its citizens.
In the decades since A Nation at Risk, reports of the United States’ imminent educational demise have continued. Business RoundTable (2005) postulates that “the United States is in a fierce contest with other nations … but other countries are demonstrating a greater commitment to building their brainpower” (p. 1). Similarly, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce (2006) states: “Whereas for most of the 20th century the United States could take pride in having the best-educated workforce in the world, that is no longer true. Over the past 30 years, one country after another has surpassed us” (p. 4). And the highly respected National Academy of Science (2007) says that “without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position. For the first time in generations, the nation’s children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did” (p. 13).
The United States (as well as Canada) is not alone in this alarmism over assessment results. Just as sports enthusiasts look over league tables and box scores every morning, so too do many national governments pore over the minute details and rankings of their own tests and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Fearmongering and hand-wringing about education have become international pastimes.
That fear has narrowed and impoverished our views of learning and teaching. We ratchet up curriculum standards and devise cut scores based on political considerations rather than educational outcomes (for an example, see Bracey, 2009). We come up with standardized test after standardized test after standardized test for our students. It’s not enough to have both end-of-year grade-level and graduation exams: we must also have numerous benchmarking tests during the year to make sure that students are on track for those final exams. We try to attach numeric data to everything we do, including not just academic performance but also social and emotional growth. We try to tie teacher evaluations to these student assessment results, which leads to such farces as physical education teachers facing sanctions because of mathematics scores for students they don’t even teach.
The Relevance Gap
As nations perceive their students are falling behind international peers and make specious links to national economic well-being, they focus on narrow academic achievement gaps rather than on empowering students broadly for life success. But, as David N. Perkins (2014) notes:
The achievement gap asks, “Are students achieving X?” whereas the relevance gap asks, “Is X going to matter to the lives learners are likely to live?” If X is good mastery of reading and writing, both questions earn a big yes! Skilled, fluent, and engaged reading and writing mark both a challenging gap and a high-payoff attainment. That knowledge goes somewhere! However, if X is quadratic equations, the answers don’t match. Mastering quadratic equations is challenging, but these equations are not so lifeworthy. Now fill in X with any of the thousands of topics that make up the typical content curriculum. Very often, these topics present significant challenges of achievement but with little return on investment in learners’ lives. Here’s the problem: the achievement gap is much more concerned with mastering content than with providing lifeworthy content…. The achievement gap is all about doing the same thing better…. The relevance gap asks us to reconsider deeply what schools teach in the first place. (p. 10)
It’s no wonder engagement, educator morale, teacher recruitment and retention, and parent satisfaction with schools are so low—and why little or no academic improvement seems to result (Brown, 2015). As Perkins (2014) asks, “What did you learn during your first twelve years of education that matters in your life today?” (p. 10). For many, the answer is “not as much as schools hope.” This disconnect that exists for so many of our graduates is just one of the many reasons we believe schools need to be different.
Arguments for Why Schools Need to Be Different
In this book, we outline six key arguments for why schools need to be different. These are not the only six arguments one could make but are important ones that address our changing, increasingly connected world—and how most of our classrooms fail to change in response to it. If political and school leaders—whom we consider the major audiences for this book, along with teachers, concerned parents, and anyone with a stake in the future of education—want to adapt learning and teaching environments to the demands of the 21st century, it is imperative that they understand the real challenges that future graduates will face. To recognize where our educational policymaking conversations have gone wrong, we have to zoom out of the day-to-day realities of schools and instead look at the societal contexts in which our school systems operate. If we hope to prepare our students and graduates for the world around them, we must start by observing and understanding what that world is actually like.
Our six arguments for making schools different are based on the following observations, each of which corresponds to the first six chapters.
1. Our information landscape is becoming incredibly complex and students need the skills to navigate it effectively.
2. Automation and global hypercompetition increasingly define the economy that our graduates are entering.
3. The role of teachers as exclusive purveyors of information is obsolete.
4. The tasks we ask students to perform are often undemanding and tedious, leading to boredom and a lack of critical thinking.
5. Schools are doing too little to create a culture
