What Can Our Schools Be?
Thanksgiving time is when I read, especially books that I bought a long time ago and haven’t touched since then. Two of these books, Utopia (1516) by Thomas More, and The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin have caused me to rethink what schools can and should be.
For background, Utopia is a book about a fictional island of Utopia, which had solved the evils of feudalism by ridding their society of property and instead having all people share in the labor and the rewards of it equally. Basically, a form of communism before communism was created. The book is told through a conversation between More and a traveler, Raphael, who lived in Utopia briefly during his travels. What interested me is how More and others who talked to Raphael could hardly believe the story of Utopia, because they could not imagine it without seeing it.
In The Dispossessed the main character Shavek is from a deeply anarchist society and decides to go to the neighboring world his people fled from 200 years prior. This world is still a deeply capitalistic, elite-run society, and Shavek’s goal is to try to bridge the gaps between the different societies and start a reconciliation between the worlds. A consistent motif, both in the description of the anarchist society Shavek grew up in and the Capitalists society he spends a year in, is both sides’ inability to better their society, because of fear and the inability to imagine something better.
Education suffers from this fear, the belief that it can’t really be anything different than the way it is now and anything different will just be worse. I have spent a few weeks now looking up schools that do a radically different style of teaching (such as Brightworks in California) and reading about anarchist schools (The Modern School Movement by Paul Avrich is a great history of Anarchist schools in early 1900’s America).
So below, I want to imagine what school can (and should) be in my opinion, as well as identify what is holding us back. I would love to hear your thoughts about your vision of a perfect education system as well!
What school should be:
How school should be starts with the central goal of education. The central goal should be three parts: encouraging a love of learning, independent thinking and the importance of mutual aid. Our world today is changing faster than ever before. Skills that are vital one decade lose importance the next. When you think of what allows someone to be successful it is their ability to think for themselves, identify issues, develop needed skills, and figure it out.
Now that doesn’t mean it isn’t important for kids to learn basic math, reading, science, and history but it does mean that the streamlined and specific curriculum students get from elementary through high school is behind and fundamentally not that helpful for kids’ futures. The fact of the matter is there is not enough time for students to learn the basics of everything, which is partly why our high school curriculum is so outdated, as it tries to do a little bit of everything at a surface level.
So the shift should start from kindergarten on. Grade levels, grades themselves, the normal class structure all need to go out the window. The structure of school that forces kids to learn certain subjects at certain times, work their bodies only at certain times, and follow an arbitrary set of rules that are created to keep kids complacent and quiet, makes kids hate school. Creativity is not linear, curiosity cannot be turned off and on, inspiration cannot be forced.
Instead, the teacher should turn into an education guide. Students are given the freedom to do what they want. Do they want to play the whole time? Okay. Do they want to sit down and learn math or do reading with the teacher? Join in! Without the pressure of grades or a rating, students are freed up to learn. Younger students can move their bodies as they need, and teachers will not feel forced to restrict kids to match a curriculum. Kids’ curiosity will drive them to learn basic things as a natural need to learn the things they are interested in. Teachers are thus helping students learn at a more natural pace, as they help students learn through their curiosity. Intrinsic motivation is by far the best form of motivation.
A teacher’s job then becomes a weaver of sorts. How do they weave what a student is interested into an important learning opportunity? How do teachers take students’ plays and show them something? Without the need of a classroom, all teachers can then work together to improve this learning. It becomes a school effort instead of individual teacher effort. This would make teachers more effective as they can rely on each other and build off each other’s skills. A teacher could specialize on outside learning, and over time build a tool kit on how to use nature as a learning tool. Students pick up and learn from each other as well without a need to get to a certain “level”. They learn as they are able to and quickly get better at learning as the idea of failure becomes a natural step in learning instead of something that earns an “F”. Sticking to a few goals in learning frees up learning because it is not about some artificial standard at a certain age, it is about encouraging kids to love learning, and constantly teaching them HOW to learn.
This also creates a closer bond between teacher and student. Without many of the arbitrary standards of a classroom that cause conflict and separation between learner and teacher a better relationship can be created that is based on learning about what makes a student tick, what they are interested in and how a teacher can best unlock their potential. Students will feel heard, respected, and that will be reciprocated. This also models to students a healthy working relationship based on mutual respect and support.
Why must a student learn something by a certain age? There are plenty of things I am learning now that I could have learned earlier, but here I am still learning at 28. I barely remember how to do math, but I am fine because if I need to learn math I know how to look it up and learn it.
Finally, the core goal of mutual aid helps us create a society that supports everyone. Our students are often pitted against each other in the classroom, and pressure is created to make unnecessary standards that can lead to division between those who are “smart” and those who are “struggling”. Students who struggle in classes quickly build up a self image of themselves that can poison the rest of their school career. Intelligence is multifaceted, and it is more important to help students find what they love and are good at, which will build up all students’ self-esteem and competence. Students should be encouraged to work together and help each other in learning. A core idea will set in from an early age and that as a group, we all benefit when we work together. Every person deserves to be treated with respect and be supported fairly. Right now, in a classroom, our students learn the importance of silence, competition, and standing out with a good answer. This sends the wrong message to kids about what we value.
Education can then last until families feel their students are ready to move on to either a job or another level of learning or until a cut off age to prevent overflow, let’s say 20. At what we consider the high school level, students should be pushed more and more to pick a large idea they want to investigate, go through with it, and present their findings. The core skills that are once again emphasized are identifying a problem, learning about it, and presenting solutions or findings. This is basic human learning that will last a student’s lifetime while getting plenty of time to work on their social and emotional skills that will help them be a more balanced and successful human.
Lastly, schools should be the center of a community. There should be free night classes that offer parents classes in parenting, money management, personal rights as well as lectures on any subject that people are interested in. Parents should be welcome into the learning community and regularly asked to take part with their kids and give their input into schools. Everyone should see the school as a beacon of both learning and support that anchors the community.
What holds us back from changing schools
Federal programs and requirements: Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and Race To The Top are both federal programs that have encouraged funding and support to schools that test more, follow a regulated curriculum, and show improvement in “low scoring” schools. These programs reward schools that create high test-scoring factories that create students who aren’t truly supported or ready for the future. Money is then restricted from schools that fail, which logically are the schools that NEED MORE FUNDING. Education is not a business, it is not a kid’s fault if a school is struggling. Why should they then receive less funds to learn?
State curriculum requirements: Each state creates the tests that schools have to pass and the curriculum kids have to learn. Ask any teacher, these are overwhelmingly bad, with tests that are mind-numbing and show nothing, and curriculum that bores kids or is unnecessarily confusing. I understand the desire to make sure all kids have a certain standard of learning. The problem is that the people who make these curriculums have no idea what good education is.
Students have to be ready for college: Our country has made college the go to for all kids. This is dumb and unnecessary. Kids barely know what they want when they are 18 and yet have to spend thousands of dollars to get an education in a career they might never want. So many people will readily admit their degree did not actually prepare them for their job, it’s just a piece of paper that shows you made it through college. State curriculums though are crafted to make sure students are ready for college. This is the wrong way to go about it. We need to de-emphasize “ready for college” and emphasize “ ready for adulthood.” If kids can develop skills and love to learn they can survive in any college program.
Lack of funding: It blows my mind that education is not near the top of spending in every state’s budget and the federal budget. How is it that hard to understand that as a society we all benefit when students get the best education and the best people are attracted to be educators through good jobs and wages. Why would we not want this as a country? (I have my thoughts but that’s another article)
What we value: What do you think of when you hear “a good classroom”? For a lot of people it would probably be a silent classroom, bent over working on a worksheet. This assumes a lot of what makes a good student. Silent. Working. Unquestioning. As someone who has pushed for this ideal in my classroom, I now realize how much of that is driven by a fear of kids not getting the exact thing I am teaching that day. I don’t have time to reteach stuff. I can’t deviate from the curriculum because I don’t have time. I need kids to be silent and listen so that we can move quickly. That is what we value more than students organically learning content because they want to through their own choices and interests.
Our own fear of failure and lack of control: We continue to do the same system that we have because it feels safe. We learned that way, and it is difficult mentally to think the way we learned, and our parents learned, was not a good way to learn. In reality, we all can acknowledge how poor our education was, how unprepared we were for college, and then how unprepared we were for our first career jobs. Even though we can logically say our education did not prepare us, we refuse to try something different. There is also a deep need to control children that exists in education. Some control is necessary for safety, but a lot of the control seen in education shows a lack of respect for children and a fear of allowing children to explore and move away from the prepared path. This idea that there is a perfect path for learning has done so much to hurt our education system.
Overall, standards and expectations are often seen as necessary for education. It ensures that the “lazy” teacher doesn’t ignore kids, that “bad schools” don’t graduate failures, and that every student reaches a basic minimum of knowledge. Think about how you learn now though. You get interested in an idea, research it, test it out, often fail but without stakes, learn from it, and get better. This process is up and down with diversions and distractions that potentially lead to a whole new path. Why do we push our kids through an education system that doesn’t reflect the real way people learn? We must be willing to imagine something different, and not just leave it in our imagination.
