Our educational system currently relies upon survey courses designed as introductions to various fields of knowledge. For many, the merit of such an approach is its ability to produce well-rounded individuals capable of discussing multiple fields and interests. However, when backed by current standardized testing and accompanying memorization, it also seems to guarantee that most students will only gain a shallow level of knowledge in any one field. Instead of adhering to survey courses, leaders in education must push for radical structural changes that mirror radical technological changes. The first structural change is the abandonment of survey courses and the introduction of more projects and activities that, in Howard Gardner’s language, help to “discipline” students’ minds. Secondly, technology must be seamlessly integrated into students’ academic life by placing a laptop computer within the hands of every student. Finally, current standardized assessment must be abandoned in favor of personalized, electronic portfolios.
Before achieving the first structural change, state and federal governments must abandon the standardization that has characterized reforms over the past decade. Virginia’s Standards of Learning examinations force teachers and students to cover a multitude of facts from different historical eras. In the process, they discourage social studies teachers from assigning the large scale, authentic assessments described in 10 Big Ideas. Opportunity cost dictates that formerly valued hallmarks of instruction, such as the survey course, be eliminated. According to Gardner (2006)“educators face a choice: do not teach them the discipline at all; introduce them to the facts of the subject and let them fend for themselves; or strive at least to give them a taste—a ‘threshold experience’ (p. 31).” Currently, we are forcing students to learn according to the second option. As a result, we are depriving teachers of the ability to introduce those methods of inquiry that are pertinent to social sciences, law, and other fields requiring extensive documentation and analysis. Students deserve better. As Gardner (2006) explains, if [the topic] is worth studying, it is worth studying deeply, over a significant period of time, using a variety of examples and modes of analysis (32).” If we accept this claim, we cannot justify the race to hit every point within the state-mandated curriculum.
In his exposition of what he terms the “disciplined mind” Howard Gardner, with the perspective of a neuropsychologist, correctly identifies the length of time that individuals need in order to excel within a given discipline. In addition, he correctly estimates the value of extensive experience within all professions. Like many other academics, however, he unfortunately overvalues the importance of academic degrees within this process. He fails to recognize that in the burgeoning digital arena, where many students can expect to find their best professional opportunities, certifications, not academic degrees, are primarily valued. Furthermore, even these certifications are secondary to experience. What professionals value within the large data center in which I work, for example, is experiential knowledge and a proven ability to perform. My immediate superior majored in Art History, but within the data center environment proved his worth without any professional certification. In our East Coast operations, he is the only employee with a bachelor’s degree. While he is on the road to earn millions of dollars, others who hold computer science degrees work as guards for Securitas, and pander for the chance to work on our night shift.
If Gardner is correct in his valuation of disciplinary thinking but partially incorrect in his valuation of academic degrees, what policy initiative is most appropriate? The answer aligns closely with an assertion made by Oakes and Lipton (2003) in Teaching to Change the World.” “Much like mass production techniques,” they claim, “schools separate students into classes by age and grade so that teachers can teach all of the students in the room simultaneously – the same material at the same pace in the same way. (www.merinews.com)” For decades, this was doubtlessly the only feasible model within public education. Now, however, technology has provided us with the opportunity to depart from it. We must advance a second structural change by giving all students a laptop at the beginning of each school day to use within all classes. If this is done, students would be able to easily collaborate with each other inside of the classroom and out; send files and receive feedback more readily; train on a variety of digital tools that would help them to better succeed in a myriad of professions; and most importantly, become able to work on personalized curriculums. This is far from fantasy. Apple’s website details the process through which computers can be completely embedded.
"After receiving a digital lesson from the teacher, student teams select a topic and use their Mac computers to plan, create, and present reports in a variety of formats, including content- and media-rich movies, podcasts, wikis, and blogs. And because iMovie, GarageBand, Keynote, Pages, and iChat are so easy to use, the students are able to work independently." (www.apple.com)
As Green County Middle School teacher Jose Garcia explains, “The Macs are interwoven into our curriculum. There isn’t a single day we don’t use them.” Garcia’s attitude is essential to the implementation of the third major reform.
The introduction of personalized portfolios is perhaps the most radical structural change that we can now consider. Most educators have not even imagined that they could respond to students’ needs and desires by helping them to chart their own curriculums. Carrying their laptops, students could contribute every day to projects within comprehensive portfolios. A range of staff could then, in turn, assess and provide feedback on a regular basis. When searching for examples of how this new portfolio system cannot operate, we should turn no further than the current method employed by the College Board, the International Baccalaurate Program, and the Virginia Department of Education. The first two organizations inefficiently collect essay examinations and then gather thousands of teachers to grade them simultaneously within exposition centers. The third organization resorted more than ten years ago to a sensible pre-digital solution that is now obsolete and dangerous. Aiming to save time and public funds, the Virginia DOE decided to mandate multiple-choice tests due to the ease with which they could be graded. The proliferation of high speed Internet is now making these organizations look ridiculous. No gathering of teachers is necessary now that documents can be transmitted instantaneously anywhere to most areas of our nation.
Throughout the school year, as students build upon their electronic portfolios, faculty from different departments, schools, and regions, could provide feedback to students. While this has not been fully developed, schools across the country are internally developing electron portfolios. Pat Bolanos, Principal of the Key Learning Community, has outlined how the rigidity of current standardization can be replaced with a feasible method of introducing portfolio learning. Echoing what Howard Gardner (2006) calls for in Five Minds for the Future, she succinctly explains in “10 Big Ideas” how students gain deeper understandings of the disciplines they study.
"We are interested in how students apply knowledge, and so students are required through their high school, to do major projects each semester, and at the end of high school, they should have eight major projects that they would have developed. All this is to be put together on a multi-media portfolio that documents what they are capable of doing."(10 Big Ideas)
The introduction of large scale projects that span significant portions of the school year, the permeation of laptop computers into the school environment, and the use of e-portfolios in lieu of standardized tests will by 2025 displace the outdated form of industrial education that predominates our school systems today. William A. Draves and Julie Coates (2005) make the same prediction in Nine Shift. The eighth shift they predict, entitled “Half of all learning is online,” details how “the traditional classroom rapidly becomes obsolete…changing the nature of how we learn and teach.” The ninth shift they predict is a permanent emphasis on learning within web-based institutions as opposed to learning within physical school environments (www.nineshift.com). As long as adult supervision continues to be seen as necessary for children under the age of 18, personal guidance from content experts acting as teachers will continue to be both available and useful. However, the revolution taking place in Greene County and other municipalities throughout the country will make the traditional lesson obsolete and direct instruction less prolonged. These changes are the best possible options within the digital environment. Just as the transportation revolution eliminated the one-room school house, the digital revolution will eliminate the educational uniformity of the industrial era.
References
Gardner, Howard. Five Minds for The Future. Retrieved from http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=EBOOK&WRD=five+minds+for+the+future&page=&prod=univ&choice=ebooks&query=five+minds+for+the+future&flag=False&pos=-1&box=five+minds+for+the+future&box=five%20minds%20for%20the%20future&pos=-1&ugrp=2
http://www.merinews.com/article/teaching-to-change-the-world-book-review/15798022.shtml
http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/greene-county/#video-greene-county
https://mymasonportal.gmu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=null&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2477_1%26url%3D
http://www.nineshift.com/firstChapter.htm
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