Why Schools Must Change

The Clark County School District, the fifth largest district in the nation, resembles in many ways the factory system of the industrial era. In the 19^th century, industrialist experimented with ways in which to make their factories more productive, thus lowering costs and raising profits. At the same time, they had to contend with assimilating immigrants who had little experience of industrial and urban life. Work was structured around a bell system that signaled workers when it was time to start, break for lunch, and when it was time to end the workday. Complex tasks were divided into parts, so that each worker was responsible for only a small part of the finished product, they had very little autonomy and were under the constant supervision of their immediate supervisors. The factory system worked well for the time in which it was implemented. Educators, faced with the same challenges of assimilating immigrants and educating large populations of students turned to the factories for inspiration as to how to most efficiently educate their students. Schools were structured around individual subjects, students were grouped by age, and a bell system let students know when it was time to change classes. Schools and factories operated in a similar fashion for the last one hundred and thirty years or so.    

Unfortunately, the schools designed for a 19^th century economy are still ubiquitous today.  These factory school are anachronisms that seem woefully out of place in our modern technologically rich environment. One of the most problematic vestiges of the old factory model of education  is the teaching of subjects in isolation. A century ago an educated person was someone who had memorized massive amounts of information and could recall it at will, in an age when access to knowledge was reserved for a small minority of educated elites, this made sense. But today, thanks to personal computing and internet technology, students have instantaneous access to information once only dreamed of. This has called into question the relationship between learners and knowledge (Wiles & Bondi, 2014, p. 65). In addition, schools still function like factories in that they have standardized almost every aspect of education. While most education leaders talk about the importance for differentiation of instruction and giving students voice and choice, the school’s infrastructure impedes these very things. Teachers are locked into teaching by quarters and semesters, they must teach in such a way that denies the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge. Teachers themselves continue to work in the isolation of their classrooms, interacting with their colleagues intermittently or not at all.

While many schools across the country approach education in the manner previously described, there are some innovative schools that are forging ahead and reimagining what school could be. One such school is High Tech High located in San Diego California. What makes HTH different is that they base their curriculum on Project Based Learning, students work collaboratively to solve problems and design projects across the curriculum (Robinson & Aronica, 2015, p. 129). At HTH teachers are facilitators of student learning, not the sole source of all knowledge. Students are encouraged to take risks, ask questions, collaborate, evaluate and think outside of the box, all traits that will help them be successful in the world of work and college in the 21^st century economy.    

  

Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2015). Creative schools: The grassroots revolution that's
            transforming education. New York, NY: Viking.

TED Conferences, LLC (Producer). (2010). Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms
            [Video file]. Retrieved from
            http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms

Wiles, J.W., & Bondi, J.C. (2014). Curriculum development: A guide to practice (9^th ed).
            Boston, MA: Pearson.