Building Commodities

There are standards and specifications. There are expectations as to the quality of everything we purchase. We look for value in all of our acquisitions. Organizations strive for excellence, with their employees held to high standards. We live in a time and culture in which public education is under attack. We lament test scores are down. We fret because students do not seem to care. We promote individualized education and personal growth, as long as it fits within the one size fits all approach to progress.
The people who create the standards (mostly federal and state governments with the help of academic elitists) do not understand how children learn or that with more extensive requirements there is a need for budgetary increases. These standards (i.e., specifications) are intended to produce the minimum viable student (able to demonstrate proficiency on standardized tests). When the minimum viable students are not produced in sufficient quantities, the schools and teachers are to blame.
Every student is capable of excelling. Students demonstrate desire for success, but not necessarily in every subject. There is talk of rigor and relevance. Rigor has become more in lieu of variety, and there is no question as to who the material is relevant to. When a student does recognize relevance to a class, they are disengaged. There is a loss of intentionality resulting students going through the motions to be done. The result, is a plastic wrapped product upon graduation.
Instead of building commodities, they may be obsolete by the time they graduate from high school, it is time to start developing creative thinkers and developers. Jamie Casap puts it best: Don’t ask students what they want to be when they grow up. Ask them what problem they want to solve and what they need to learn to build the knowledge, skills and abilities to solve that problem.
Students are still being taught to work in factories for an industrialized society. We have put new names on the latest educational initiatives, however, the end result is students spend far too much time sitting in rows expected to absorb what the teacher is saying. We are preparing students for jobs of the past with a failure to recognize that we only have an idea of the skills that will be needed even five years from now. By allowing students to follow their passions, take a personal stake in gaining the knowledge, skills and abilities to solve the problems they care about, and follow their curiosity, they will exceed all the expectations of standardized tests. In addition, instead of score that is meaningless to anyone outside of academia, they will be able to demonstrate and utilized what they have learned.
Consider, that when a person is interested in a hobby, they immerse themselves in order to learn everything they can. They are able to answer questions and apply their knowledge and skills to solve problems outside of their area of expertise (opening the possibility of new interests and continued learning). It is time to encourage students to follow their passions, developing innovative and creative people rather than just building commodities.
