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| Education leaders are like King Arthur |
© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Facts are easy. When I was doing
Talk Radio a few years ago I always had a computer in front of me. When there
was a question, the computer provided information quickly. The talking points were
in front of me.
Educational leaders in public
schools say they are teaching thinking but from what I see students spend much
of their time on memorization and how to take tests. Why are we spending so
much time and testing effort essentially teaching test preparation?
Years from now education pundits
will wail, "How could all of those supposedly educated educational leaders
in 2015 be so stupid?" They were stupid because they were overcome with
their arrogance and power.
Example: Picture a superintendent of
a large school district explaining being in charge. The person says, "The Lady
of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur
from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I was to
carry Excalibur. That is why I am your superintendent."
Well, that may have come from a Monty Python movie, but it is a fine example of the arrogance of leaders. There
is no arguing with the leaders. I know because I have tried, but they have
Excalibur, etc.
A college department that certifies
superintendents and principals was the department where I got my Ph.D. so I am
quite familiar with what these educational leaders are taught. For a while after
my 1998 graduation I was an adjunct faculty in that department. Some current
leaders and teachers were in my classes.
Recently I was exasperated with a
principal who I had in class years ago. The end of the conversation was,
"You are not doing any of the things we taught you to do as an educational
leader nor are you using research to guide you." This person answered,
"But I am legally in charge so I can do what I want."
There are two main contentions of
the current public education management: First, that increased management will always
improve educational outcomes and, the change agent for learning is entirely
teachers. Both are wrong but we, as a society, have put our money and power in
the hands of administrators.
We have an administrator-centric
system where everything is about administrators. Every administrator hired
comes up with more administrative requirements to where teachers I am in
contact with say they no longer teach, they just work making data sheets for
administrators so the administrators can hire more administrators to make more
teacher requests.
But are we improving education? More
importantly, will the improvement be useful when these students are adults. Public
Education is not supposed to be an end in itself for school children; it is the
living of life as an adult that ultimately matters.
The U. S. Department of Health and
Human Services in 2012 had a report that indicated the Federal Program, Head
Start, had many immediate benefits for students but those benefits did not appear
to last into adulthood. The program has gone for five decades so there is a lasting
problem. Childhood leads to adulthood and that is what we should value.
Ultimately what we do for children needs to improve their lives as adults.
The mania is teaching the test so
administrators can game the test and then show on accountability reports that
schools are doing well. But the report of schools doing well will not help students
when they become adults. In fact, this disconnects students from schools.
As a society we need lifelong
learners. What students need to become a lifelong learner is curiosity and support
for their own individual curiosity of all things. However, the schools don't seem
to want curiosity in their classrooms, rather, they want compliant little
robots who do what they are told.
Each year we need to bolster the
curiosity of students, give them literate and numerate tools to satisfy their
curiosity. They will become lifelong learners. Almost all of the real education
in a person's lifetime is self learning.
Teachers are just there to help
students learn to teach themselves. We need to think of the learners and not
the educational leaders who have a cottage industry.
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