Wishful Thinking

This week The Big Questions Institute (BQI), a group committed to learner-based education, presented two trends they are seeing inside their partner schools:

“First, we’re seeing a lot more schools around the world asking important questions, fundamental questions about why and how they exist at this moment. It’s clear to us that the confluence of the pandemic, AI, climate change, youth mental health issues, demands for social justice, societal polarization, and more have moved more communities into difficult conversations they have never had before. And that’s good news.”

“What’s also emerging, however, is a deeper sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the problems that we need to face together. We are waking up to the fact that none of what we’re dealing with is happening in isolation. Our present challenges are all tied to a vast systems change that is gaining speed each day. It’s our urgent belief that education has a crucial role to play in how we respond to these changes.”

Traditional schools are good at asking questions. When I worked as a region superintendent for a large, urban school district in Texas, I sat in many meetings where questions were asked, and then more questions were asked. The problem with those meetings, and I’m afraid our traditional school system at large, is that even if we answered some of those questions, we weren’t (and aren’t) able to take action on what those answers suggested we do.

Michael Fullan, the Canadian educational researcher, and former dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, put it this way: “The problem with schools is that they spend too much time practicing “Ready, ready, ready,” when they should be practicing “Reading, fire, aim.”

It’s time for traditional schools to stop asking questions and start working on the answers. And the answers demand a different learning system for our kids.

I’m skeptical that our traditional school system is arriving at “a deeper sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the problems that we need to face together.” It seems to me that most schools are committed to doing today what they have done yesterday – doubling down on improved curriculum, attracting increased number of talented teachers, testing, and, with some schools, supporting needed interventions for kids struggling to learn. I don’t think there are many inside our traditional school system interested in “a vast systems change.” Instead, they are happy to continue trying to improve the current system. Traditional educators are convinced that they can fix this system.

I’m not so sure.

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. Til then. SVB