What if The Smithsonian Ran Public Education?

A few weeks ago, I participated in an online conference hosted by The Smithsonian, their National Education Summit. It was two days of deep, exploratory learning for both young and adult learners.

When I reviewed some of the session titles, it became apparent to me that these learning sessions were a bit different than most of the lesson plans I reviewed while working in the traditional public education space. The two days were filled with learning opportunities addressing:

“Exploring Alien Worlds: From Science Fiction to Science Fact”

“Exploring Women’s History Through Portraiture: From Queen Liliʻuokalani to Shirley Chisholm”

“Light Your Fire: Leveraging Public Art as a Platform for Teen Voices”

“Making Sense of Things in the Real World: Phenomenon and Problem-driven Weather Curriculum”

“Students as Problem Solvers: Addressing Real World Challenges to Design a Better Future”

Nowhere over the two days did I find “Today students will learn the importance of the quadratic equation,” or “Today students will learn who Stephen F. Austin was and why he is considered the ‘Father of Texas.’” (I remember this one back when I taught Texas history.)

It struck me over the two days that, while all of us learners were learning important knowledge and skills, we were doing it in such a way where those basic knowledge and skill factoids were embedded in well-formulated inquiry-based questions.

I also noticed the professional expertise and experience the conference presenters possessed. Here’s a sampling of that expertise and experience from the speaker bios over those two days:

• Representatives from the Center for Astrophysics, a joint appointment by Harvard University and The Smithsonian
• Representatives from the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative
• Arts educators from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
• Education directors from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
• Manager of Content and Curriculum at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Even at the central office level inside a traditional school system, you would be lucky to meet someone with these types of qualifications.

So I started wondering. What if we took all the expertise and experience from The Smithsonian, added in additional expertise and experience from other museums across America, to develop an outline of learning expectations and a library of learning resources for our young learners, and their adult learning leaders, to access?

I guess this is happening to a certain extent already; witness the two-day Smithsonian “summit” reviewed above. But currently the relationship between our greatest museums and our young learners is haphazard at best. We would be better served as a country of learners if we had access to the Smithsonian’s (and other museum’s) best and brightest, including their ideas about what quality learning would look like for all of America’s young people.

And the current relationship between our young learners and places like The Smithsonian is inequitable. Some of America’s young learners have limited to no access to our museum’s best and brightest, while other young people receive a daily dose of the excellence these places can offer.

Several years ago, I was part of a personalized learning lab school for 50 middle school-aged students, led by two learning coaches. The lab school was in the heart of the Houston, Texas Museum District. Museums shared their educator expertise and experience with our lab school over a period of three years. The difference between the museum educators training and that of a teacher inside the traditional Houston school system was noticeable and significant. It was evident to me that we needed to better connect these museum educators with more of Houston’s young learners moving forward.

But that never happened. You know why? It never happened because the traditional school districts had people inside their system that were assigned similar responsibilities like the museum educators. So, when push came to shove, the school district favored using their personnel instead of the museums.

The big loser here is the young learner. There’s got to be a way to connect our “best and brightest” educators, no matter if they come from a museum background or other, to help define, plan, execute, and evaluate learning for our young learners. We can no longer depend on those hired by public school districts to take the lead on such a process.

Our young learners, and their eventual success as citizens, hang in the balance.

Til tomorrow. SVB