Transforming Education for the 21st Century – Part Three
August 30th, 2009
In the last two columns I looked back at the history and development of the American School. I also wrote about some recent developments that both transformed a school and became the genesis of what is now an on-going process to create the 21st century educational campus for K-12 education. This column, and future ones, will describe what a task force of committed people in the general area of education is doing to truly face the future of education in America.
[A promise to all my readers who enjoy focused commentaries on a variety of subjects: I will continue to write those while continuing to write about transforming education for the 21st century, so please continue to come here the subject matter will not just be about education]
As a futurist I spend most of my time thinking, writing and speaking about the future. I make my living through the sale of the Shift Age Trend Report, my book The Shift Age, and primarily speaking engagements. I truly believe that my highest value is to be a catalyst to get people to think about the future and to hopefully at times facilitate a conversation about the future. Now, in addition to this activity I find myself participating in actually creating one of the most important elements of the future; the 21st century American school.
I say American because the task force of which I am a part is focused on the creation of new forms of K-12 education in this country. That does not mean that what is created cannot be contributed to the global community, just that it is taking place in real time in this country. I say school as that is what we all call the institution that generations of children up to the age of 18 have attended. School has been a metaphor for learning as in “going to school” “being schooled” “going back to school” or on playing fields and courts of this country “being taken to school”. What now must occur is reinventing the educational process so much that even the word school might become obsolete.
A few weeks ago a number of leaders and experts in the area of K-12 education came together for a two day symposium. It was called the” 21st Century Educational Campus Symposium”. The idea for such a conference first came up over a dinner of Chicago deep dish pizza that Darryl Rosser, CEO of Sagus International, Amanda Burnette, Director of the South Carolina Turnaround Schools Initiative and I were having in early summer. However, the real driver, and host of the conference was Amanda’s boss, Dr. Jim Rex, State Superintendent of Education for South Carolina. Dr. Rex immediately mobilized his staff, donated his technologically state of the art conference center and hosted this symposium. To say that Dr. Rex and his staff are passionate about improving education in the state of South Carolina is an understatement.
In addition to Rex, Rosser, Burnette and me, there were a number of well respected participants, listed here. With Rosser and Rex acting as co-hosts the rest of us presented and discussed the issues that had to be addressed as we face education in the 21st century. I had the honor – and challenge – to deliver a keynote address to the group following Richard Riley, two time governor of South Carolina, and the Secretary of Education for all eight years of the Clinton administration. The intelligence, passion and commitment to education in the room was palpable and exhilarating.
While there were many quotes I could insert here, there are two in particular that have stayed with me.
The first is from the Honorable Leon Lott, Sheriff of Richland County, who, as the last speaker on a panel about Health, Social and Onsite Services, leaned into the microphone and asked the audience: “Have you ever had your child sleep in the bathtub during the night to insure they wouldn’t get shot due to random gang gunfire? This is the environment some of our students live in.” He was speaking to the need for the 21st century educational campus to not just be a place for learning, but to also be a safe haven, a force of goodness and opportunity within a community. In other words, any educational campus must also be an integral part of the community it serves as it is the community that both supports and benefits from the campus.
The second quote is from Dr. Rex in his closing remarks, as he was acknowledging all the enthusiasm and commitment we had shared over two days. He said: “We know so much more than we have ever known about child development up to the age of five and older. If we could just integrate that knowledge into practice we could change America in a generation.” In a larger context, this means taking all that we know and bring it to the process of creating the future model of education.
It is time to reject the status quo. It is time to no longer let vested interests and political agendas dictate the educational system. It is time to just decide that every single aspect of K-12 must be looked at completely unencumbered from the past. Even practices that have worked well in the 20th century must be closely analyzed as to their efficacy in this new century. Create the vision for the future of the 21st century K-12 campus based not on the past, or the present, but what it could, should and might be in the future.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:03 am
This is a good way for me (as an educationalist) to start Monday morning. Many thanks, David.
I agree with your end point: ‘it is time to reject the status quo. It is time to no longer let vested interests and political agendas dictate the educational system.’
You are absolutely correct about that, but I have a slight concern. Do not each of the participants in your symposium also represent ‘vested interests’ and have ‘political agendas’?
I believe it is vital that all engaged in shaping education (and schooling) for the future declare the the door just what those ‘vested interests’ are and what ‘political agendas’ might be. I’ll start.
I taughth for 12 years before starting my post-graduate study in a leading Irish university. I taught in a secondary (high) school in inner-city Dublin (pre-Celtic tiger) and found myself ‘teaching computers’ to young people who struggled to read and write.
At the same time, I taught in a local unemployed centre and found myself teaching the parents, siblings and community peers of those in the school. Here I experienced deep educational, and intergenerational, disadvantage.
I also spent three years working in an educational programme with drug addicts (under the remit of a local Drug Court Programme), also in inner-city Dublin.
Now I lecture in an Irish university (part-time, non-tenured) in areas such as language in the classroom (English); grammar in the primary school; educational sociology (from critical perspectives); and educational disadvantage. I lecture both under- and post-graduates.
I do not (any more than YOU do I’d suggest) have all the answers to what education (and schooling) would look like for the 21st century. But I believe (as I feel YOU also do) that something MUST change.
Maybe two points can contribute to thinking and engaging in dialogue about such change:
* what is the actually purpose of education (and schooling) in today’s world for tomorrow’s children?
* how might a shift in education (and schooling) away from knowledge (epistempology) and towards thinking (epistemophily) change the way we teach children about preparing for a world that is yet to be?
In addition the social issues you highlight, David, there are also ecological issues and concerns (quite serious I’d suggest) that must be taken into account.
Great stuff, David. Do keep up the interesting exchanges.
brian
August 31st, 2009 at 10:28 am
David: Great Post. JACKPEPTALKS says that “Education Needs to Be Turned on its Head!” I see a movement beginning. Thanks.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
What about the chance that computer interfaces with the brain may become a reality in the future? (it could be reality in 20 years or so)
Imagine how that might change education. Either people would be able to learn a LOT in a very short time… Or it would give instant access to anything you needed to know, like having access to internet encyclopedias, instantly in your brain.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:08 am
Hi, Jack.
Can I ask you two questions: if ‘education needs to be turned on its head’:
1: where you grab it to turn it over (where would you start the turning)?
2: what you wish the up(over?)turning to accomplish (what would your ‘revised’ educational system look like)?
…brian
September 1st, 2009 at 8:37 am
OkinKun-
Brain wave technology is coming to the consumer market in the next year is a very simple form. It should be in video games in 3-4 years so the educational application with computers will be available by 2015 and accelerate from there.
September 1st, 2009 at 9:25 am
Brian: Thanks for the questions. Every month new technology is announced that alters the way people work, or will work in the future. Our current K-12 model is predicated on teaching to the middle. Those at that high or low end of achievement are not included. Literacy is a basic problem in every city of America. Home Schooling is the fastest growing part of K-12 education… mostly high achievers. We need new models of learning and presenting information. Technology is a part of it, but not the whole part. I smell a revolution that will transform K-12 that will reach all students. Excuse me while I check my Kindle for updates…Thanks for the chance to talk to you.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Hi, Jack. I think David is to be blam…errr… thanked for creating the space for this dialogue.
Literacy (in fact, multi-literacies) is a huge problem through the developed (and non-developed) world. You are correct about that. Home schooling is a small trend, here in Ireland, but I’m fascinated that you write it is the fastest growing part of k-12 education in the US.
Now, let’s focus on technology for a moment. You write that new technology is announced that alters the way people work. I agree that new technologies are introduced all the time (was it Adam Osborne, many years ago, who said that there are only two types of technology: those that are obsolete and those that haven’t been invented?). And I agree that those technologies are changing the way some people work.
But are those changes for the better or worse?
You are dead right that schooling (for you: k-12; for me: primary and secondary) is predicated on teaching to the middle. I see that as a huge problem. I also see technology contributing to that.
Technology in schools is directed to the middle for the most part, leaving the ‘not yet made’ technology for the high end of students; and the ‘obsolete’ technologies for the low end of students.
It is software for schooling, however, that tends to be almost solely directed to the middle.
I fight with this all the time in Irish schooling and academia.
Yes–we need NEW models of learning and I see that as being a key, prime focus. For me, the focus has to shift away from knowing and on to thinking. The thinking aspect of this allows a move away from information (however defined) to forms of interpreting all data in a critically informed way.
I teach with that goal in mind…though I’m not sure how many of my university students hear it.
I’m sorry, Jack–but let me go back to an earlier question:
* what do we want our education and schooling systems (and I’m happy focusing on k-12/primary-secondary) to look like after the changes (varied though I suspect they are) we would like to see?
As you check your Kindle for updates, I’ve just started reading Stephanie Mills’ book, ‘Turning Away from Technology’…and will enjoy it with a glass of wine.
Sláinte,
brian