Harold Jarche is Wicked Smart and We Need to Talk about Curriculum

 First, Harold Jarche is wicked smart. Second, I feel kinda dumb because the post that I want to talk about was published in January of 2008. Don't know how I missed it. It's the kind of post that makes me want to back to grad school. Wicked smart post and wicked smart comments.

The post in question is First, we kill the curriculum. One of the main reasons that I love this post so much is because it dares to think big. I love this line "Our education system needs to drop the whole notion of subjects and content mastery and move to process-oriented learning." Maybe it does (I happen to agree) and maybe it doesn't but THANK YOU HAROLD for bringing the Big Thought.

Harold's point in the post, if I may be so bold, seems to be that given the change being wrought by the Internet and the Web should be pushing us into a fundamental re-examination of such foundational items as the notion of curriculum. Damn right we should. Gary Woodill of Brandon Hall Research, presented a terrific webinar on The History of the Classroom as a Learning Technology. Gary wins me over by including in his discussion, vital parts of the context surrounding the use of classrooms. This includes looking at the ways in which humans learned before the dawn of the classroom - a phenomena that some people in the learning/training industry seem to think never happened. It also includes talking about such authors as Michel Foucault and such linked predecessors as Monitorial Schools. You don't believe that the classroom originated as a technology focused on control of students, then you need to read some. I'm not saying that classrooms are evil per se but that we need to understand them as a technology, as a practice and look at their impact on the learning/education process - just as we need to understand the role of curriculum.

Don't believe me yet that we a systematic review of how we teach (at least in the U.S.)? Look at some of the quotes from a 2005 speech that Bill Gates gave to the National Governor's Association:

"When we looked at the millions of students that our high schools are not preparing for higher education – and we looked at the damaging impact that has on their lives – we came to a painful conclusion: America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. 

Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times. Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age.  Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting – even ruining – the lives of millions of Americans every year.

Today, only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citizenship. The other two-thirds, most of them low-income and minority students, are tracked into courses that won’t ever get them ready for college or prepare them for a family-wage job – no matter how well the students learn or the teachers teach.  This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the system."

This is a guy who wasn't looking to pick a fight or run for office. This was a businessman who was telling the Governor's that their systems of education were not producing students that he would hire to work at his company. Also note that his point is that we can't fix it because its not broken. Its functioning perfectly - to achieve 50 year old goals. That's not good enough.   

Someone, I can't remember who (if you can find the link, please put in the comments) wrote a post about how we have failed to consider how the impact of tools such as Blackboard have colored how we actually create training. That if you have a tool that uses a drop-down, hierarchical menu for creating a course - then by default you end up with a linear, lock step course.

Think of the Mighty LMS. Read this description of the Panopticon and tell me you see no great resemblance. 

So do we need to consider whether or not we continue with our current structure of curriculum and classroom and LMS and tools designed by people who may or may not know anything of education and/or learning yet whose tools we use to shape those very moments? We must if we think we will ever see any fundamental change in our system. You know people used to think that newspapers were immortal and that record companies were all-powerful and that the Big Three would always dominate and that computers would never replace typewriters. Let's not go too far down that road again. Thanks Harold.

  

Comments

[Dave Ferguson]

Harold once posted his frustration about a school assignment his son had. As I recall, he was to write a report related to the internet--in longhand, without any hyperlinks. I'm not sure what that requirement did, other than provide practice in penmanship.

In terms of resistance--there are over 14,550 school districts in the U.S., each with its board, its principals, its problems related to financing.

Going to the moon, frankly, was a top-down decision (JFK's bright idea) coupled with the congressional opportunity to spread around the support wealth, with almost no opposition from political groups afraid that getting there would violate scripture, promote gun ownership, or perpetuate fluoridated water.

I don't see change in the immediate future coming from either the federal level or from most states. The latter are trying right now to keep from falling even further behind.

Under-the-radar experiments will continue: charter schools, independent models, home schooling. The formal-education establishment (administrators, teachers, publishers) ignores these things at its peril.

[mark oehlert]

John,

Newspapers. Music companies. Car Makers. These hugely dominant biz models were utterly broken by new technology coupled with new biz models.

I take Dave's point as well though - I have a 4th grader and would clearly be concerned with the road changing while he's on it.

Here is my concern, that he's either going to eat some change now or eat it later when he leaves a system that prepares him inadequately to compete in a global market.

I do think that change needs to be holistic and sweeping - no easy task I understand - but neither was going to the Moon.

[John Zurovchak]

Nice one, Mark. And good comments, Dave. You make a good point that perhaps where we are and where we need to be are too far apart. Nobody is going to jump the chasm if that means you fall to your death if you miss. If most intelligent people agree with Harold and Mark and Dave - where is the resistance coming from? Shouldn't Superintendents and Board Members and parents and governors and Secretaries of Education also agree? What's keeping the old technology in place? Do we have any successful models of how to break down an "old" technology on a national basis and replace it with a new one? As a side note, it seems that gasoline is another "old" technology that everyone agrees is past its useful service, but we can't seem to replace that national technology either.

What examples can we turn to for such a dramatic change? Anyone...? Bueller?

Just my two cents...

[Dave Ferguson]

Yeah, Harold is smart. And for a guy with a strong vision, he's neither arrogant nor authoritarian.

On schools and change: I wonder whether, for many people, the gap between where schools are and what "child learning" could be is just too wide.

(I use "child learning" to mean "people who aren't adults yet." Don't mean to get into a big debate about who's in what group and who could benefit from what -- CL's just shorthand for whatever replaces formal schooling.)

What strikes me, as a former teacher and the parent of three children, is that changes to / experiments in CL are high-risk. I don't disagree that the existing system is seriously flawed--I was once a substitute teacher in the city of Detroit. But if my kid's 12 and somebody's going to try redoing how she gets ready to be 15, 18, 21 -- and that blows up, there's a lot at stake for her.

I'm not saying it couldn't or shouldn't be done. I am saying, frankly, I'm glad my kids are past the age where I have to decide for them.