The publisher of this website and I recently talked about the idea, held by many, that societal change must occur before the education system (and other systems within society) can change. I promised him that my next blog post would address this issue directly. So, here goes…
There are three typical stances people take towards change of America’s educational system:
- Everything is fine, so nothing really needs much fixing.
- Things aren’t fine, especially for those who are “underserved,” and we know specific strategies to fix the system (think – our nation’s current dominant narrative on education reform).
- Things aren’t fine, but that’s because society is messed up. So, we need to fix society first, and then education can change.
There is a fourth way to think about this issue – co-evolution.
Over the past 100 years or so society has evolved in three “great waves.” It has moved from an agrarian society to an industrial age and then to our current wave, the information age. Some key characteristics of the industrial age are adversarial relationships, centralized control, compliance, and compartmentalization. In contrast, key aspects of the information age include cooperative relationships, team organization, shared leadership, and participatory democracy.
Dr. Bela Banathy, a systems scientist, wrote extensively about the idea of societal evolution, especially as it connected to education. He posits that, over time, society has evolved, and ideally, as a society evolves the systems within it should evolve as well. He calls this concept “co-evolution.” Banathy believed in a co-evolutionary relationship where education’s role could be “…in the form of co-evolution with and mutual shaping of the society and even spearheading societal development.”
“Our concern here is primarily the public image, the image that “makes” our contemporary society, the image that at the same time is shaped by the emerging and transforming society. It is important for us to understand the dynamics of this mutual shaping, inasmuch as the same will apply in creating a new image of education. That image IS shaped by the societal image, and the societal image IS shaped by education. Earlier we named this dynamic recursive relationship as co-evolution.” (Banathy – Systems Design of Education)
So, here is a fourth way to consider educational change; education must co-evolve with society in such a way that each shapes the other; society not only effects education, but education effects society.
Unfortunately, our nation has not seen the necessary co-evolution of education with society and its systems. This evolutionary imbalance is dangerous, and we have begun to see its effects.
There is a disconnect between the core features of the information age and the reality of life for so many in our country. Our current society still has significant inequality and injustice, to mention just a couple social ills. In fact, over the past 40 years our nation has seen increased apathy and civic disengagement on these issues. We can tie this to the disconnect between our society and its major systems – educational, health care, political. Simply – while society as a whole has evolved, the educational system (and other key systems) within in it has not.
And there are other dangers with this evolutionary imbalance. Not only is our educational system inequitably meeting the needs of our country’s student population, it also lacks the structures and emphasis to produce the students our nation needs – students who can work well in teams, think creatively, and solve problems, students with well-developed social and emotional competencies, and students with grounded moral centers. This is in large part due to the fact that it is still operating within an industrial age paradigm.
Banathy writes:
“…The societal characteristics of the current age are markedly different from – and are discontinuous with – those of the industrial age, in which our educational systems remain rooted. The major shift toward… the Post-Industrial Information Society is manifested in massive changes in general societal characteristics, in socio-cultural, socio-technical, socio-economic, and scientific characteristics, and in organizational characteristics. These characteristics reflect major transformations in all aspects of our lives, a total change of our societal environmental landscape. Such a transformation requires radical changes in the “whats,” “hows,” “when,” and “where” of education. This calls for nothing less than a massive transformation – or metamorphosis – of our educational systems.”
As educators, and those who care about education, we must work for evolution of our educational system – an educational system that can “spearhead societal development.”
This calls for paradigm change – a paradigm as evolved as the information age. Piecemeal change (which is how we can classify the current educational reform agenda) will not suffice because it is contained within the industrial age paradigm.
I ended the last post with this question which I ask again… I ask you to take a minute, regardless of your feelings about today’s reform agenda, and envision a new paradigm for education. What would yours look like?
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Language/communication is a very important foundation upon which societies are built. Listen carefully to how we have become disengaged through the lack of a sophisticated and meaningful sharing of language. Students are not taught to begin a sentence with “Me and you,” instead of “You and I.” We have become a “me” society, encouraging students to become less engaged in a direct manner with each other. Instead, we emphasize technology, forgetting that compassion and caring cannot be learned through a cell-phone or a computer or a test. We need face to face, direct engagement, with critical analysis in our classrooms, instead of “teaching to the test.” If our students don’t learn how to engage in an intelligent, meaningful, put-away-the-gadgets manner, we will continue to become more disengaged within our communities. And we will continue to lose as a society.
In reply to “We must evolve” I agree that there will something like co-evolution. The book, Disrupting Class by Christensen, Horn, Johnson, describes how changes become integrated into the society. I think they give a fairly accurate description of where things are headed.
The book uses the concept of “student-centric learning “, which I call individualization. This move is made possible by technical advances, which I like to call 21st century tools. The use of these techniques increases motivational levels and improves the efficiency of learning. Motivation may come from either intrinsic or extrinsic sources. Intrinsic motivation is largely stifled by the current educational system and extrinsic motivation has been reduced by the general state of the society.
There are different levels of tools. For example using a computer to log an x-ray film in a lab data base is different than having a medical data base that is national. A bigger change in the tool is when the computer and x-ray are integrated into a CT scanner. The tool then takes on a new dimension, both figuratively and literally. We need to develop these educational tools.
I agree that the evolutionary imbalance is dangerous. Failure to recognize that change has happened can lead to disaster as in the Titanic. The book gives examples of companies that did not react to change quickly enough and as a result are no longer with us or drastically reduced in their influence. My two great concerns with not recognizing and dealing appropriately with the change is that students are being damage intellectually, as well as, emotionally, and the public educational system may collapse.
Love this post..thanks Marc. In response to the question of what would a new paradigm for education look like? The first thing that comes to mind for me is to think about how do I learn? For some reason adults seem to think that we need to force kids to sit down and listen/do what we say – that is an example of being stuck in a control paradigm from a past era. It is more about what adults need to feel powerful than what kids need to learn. All human beings learn naturally when we feel cared for, encouraged and free. I learn by reading, watching and talking with others. When I am with people whom I like or admire I learn more. When I am encouraged thru pay or recognition or status I learn more. When I a have some freedom to pick the topics, subjects or methods, I feel respected and then learn more.
Ask any adult to describe the best learning experience they had in high school and they will usually describe an adult (teacher/coach/mentor) with whom they had a great relationship.
I think the new educational paradigm will be more about care and less about control.
Show me a time when the American educational system has EVER really worked–met social needs or operated within a sustainable ecological balance with the rest of the social world, in any society. 2010 Finland? But hey, we’re talking America, right? So, just limit this to the USA.
Have we ever, really, been satisfied with our educational system? Even during the hallowed 1950s, the American educational system underwent a series of racial shocks to its system putting the lie to every American has an equal opportunity in life. And so on…
If what I have been trying to say in a whole series of posts, has any saliency, what I am trying to get across is this whole educational crisis we think we are in is nothing more than a creation of our own flawed self-perception combined with a long-held American ethos of always wanting to do more or better than our parents.
As to your three stances, Marc: each one has a certain ring of truth. And as such, what are we to do with them? Fight for the ascendancy of one over the vanquished others? Find some fourth path through the morass of postmodern navel-gazing?
Me, I’m for scrapping the whole argy-bargy. No, not starting the schools over, at least not right now. What I want to have ‘do-overs’ on is the discussion we have never, ever really had and that is, what is education for?
I get your industrial age paradigm argument and I use it myself. I get that there are under-served communities and even in 2010, little has changed for too many of those communities. But one thing I don’t get is that the Information Age is all that.
My students have their own web pages, ok? I get the whole Web 2.0. And it is supremely cool. What I don’t get is how kids now and this culture now is all that different. You can talk about co-evolution and thinking as a team, creatively, but you know what? Such has always been true. The good ‘ol USA would not be still eating high on the global hog were it not for creativity, team relations and our business, educational and social worlds co-evolving.
So what is it then–if, you follow my argument? What really is the issue here?
A question like “what really is the issue here?” kind of blows my mind. We apparently agree that schools successfully do what they have always done. And that is exactly the issue.
What they have always done is prepare people to participate in an economy that is maladaptive from a planetary perspective. We send kids into a system predicated on exponential growth, operating now on a debt based monetary system (which the Fed Open Market Committee apparently believes needs more inflation), both of which require a increasing throughput of material and energy and an output of waste which we think we can just bury. Wealth has become concentrated to an extent we have not seen since the 19th century but no one seems too bothered because we have cheap processed food (bread) and TV (circuses) to distract us from the gnawing feeling something has gone awry. We have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere, trashed and fished out the oceans and now have 3-4 inches of topsoil left where once there were 18 on some of the most fertile land on Earth. I could go on.
If you really think that preparing kids to perpetuate a suicide trajectory is a non-issue, then I guess there is no conversation to have.
I get it. Based on Marc’s recent writing, it seems he and I have come to pretty similar conclusions regarding the root of the clearly devastating problems in education.
To answer his final question directly, I really can’t explain it yet. But I believe deeply in the socially constructed nature of meaning, knowledge and understanding so my ability to explain will only follow from more and deeper exchanges like this. I find considerable value in what asynchronous communication like this blog allows, but I also insist that people talking to people face-to-face forms the real foundation for all such work. My final answer will reflect everything I have just written as well as a deep commitment to human rights (today especially vis-a-vis corporate rights) and democracy.
I will say that I believe our current school system does pretty much what it was set up to do and that no amount of reforming it will change that enough. I look at decades of evidence and have a hard time reaching any other conclusion. I suppose that idea will be peer reviewed now.
On another thread Alex mentioned that defenders of the status quo will sometimes agree that the system needs to change then go on to detract from all of the proposed solutions (I do not endorse this characterization of any particular person). I believe such a position has validity when both the system and the solutions fail to respond to the actual problem (I do not impute this motive to any particular person other than myself).
All systems exist in an environment and in order to survive, they must accommodate changes in the environment. Sometimes the environmental changes exceed a system’s capacity to accommodate and one of two things happens – collapse or a shift to a different order. Interestingly, Banathy wrote in 1991, years before the World Wide Web and cell phones became almost ubiquitous. And what has happened since? The world is really, REALLY different now. I’d rather not experience collapse and I believe we could effect a change of order, or it could just happen to us. We decide and I vote for the former.
The education system, among others as Marc has pointed out, has fallen so far out of synch with society as a whole that we must figure out what happens next. I don’t have the vision to describe it all to you but I join Marc in asking everyone to wonder about it and fairly quickly get down to crafting new systems responsive to new reality.
I also think that chicken/egg problems like solve poverty or solve education shout out that we need to think in a larger context, one which includes and goes beyond the thesis/antithesis. I didn’t just make that up. The tool of synthesis has been available to us for some time. Let’s use it.
I think we agree–the system actually does work, too well.
I’m just saying that the people who advocate for change these days, the ones who are saying the system is broken are working from assumptions about the nature of life on Earth that are not yours, Jeff. They don’t have your agenda. In fact, I don’t think they know what they want much more than higher test scores or more poverty kids going to college and into the middle class.
Believe me jj, I am acutely aware of the disconnect between my assumptions and those driving the main-stream of American behavior. However, I think that enough people sense on some level that something has gone wrong and would be natural allies if they could get off the pablum fed to them by most of the media. And we have a large and growing number of people already engaged in reorienting themselves and their communities.
I keep thinking I should get a t-shirt made that says, “Proceed Until Apprehended.” You want one?
You betcha!
Marc –
Thanks for the thoughtful post. The theoretical world is a little above my pay-grade, as you know I’m more interested in figuring out what works on the ground-level in education, however I would love to engage.
It seems to me that educators have consistently and with surprising consensus placed a lot of value on educating students to become changemakers, catalysts for societal change and students who will “spearhead societal development”, etc. Sounds fine to me, but perhaps we should focus a little more on our immediate jobs of giving students requisite knowledge and skills first?