The problemS with education

Apparently, one of the smartest things I’ve ever said: Education is a problem because we just throw a bunch of kids together. Mike and I were having a conversation today about education’s downfalls. He was positing that one of the biggest problems was the lack of quality professional development teachers get. He makes a good point. We just received the results of our teacher surveys and we have weak professional development. He pointed out that the graduate level class he was taking in his discipline  had completely changed many of his lesson plans. Something 7 years of professional development had failed to accomplish. Big problem, but not the biggest in my opinion. 

Before I go any further, I should make a disclaimer: I am not educated to teach. (Side note: I read a really interesting article recently about Teach for America and all the cons of that program throwing unprepared teachers into tough districts. Not the point here, but a note for discussion another time) Aside from the handful of discussions I’ve had with friends and family who are teachers, the only side of education I know anything about is the student side. I only have a faint grasp of different learning theories and styles of teaching. And by that I mean I know that they exist, but basically nothing beyond that. 

Having said this, I have now been in the classroom for 2 months. This means I am but a wee tadpole in the frog-verse of teaching, however, I feel like it’s enough experience to levy a few observations. Namely, that students make up a vast population of incredible variety. When you account for all the different factors that affect education, like the education of parents, home discipline, home circumstances, personal aptitude, learning style, integrated knowledge, etc, I would hesitate to say I could find 2 students alike (at least at Ward). The problem is that we’ve randomly separated this diverse population into units that are expected to learn well together. This is especially true at the grade school and high school levels. The deciding factor for school makeup is mere geography. For classes, it’s course requirements and age. What if we grouped based on other factors? Admittedly, grouping students by personal aptitude (or it’s correlating factors) seems a little risky. Most research on education says we need the class to have a mix of knowledges to reach it’s highest effectiveness. On the other hand, every teacher hates seeing the glazed looks on his/her best students’ faces when material is covered at an agonizingly slow pace. Similarly, watching students struggle to keep up with teaching or check out because something is over their heads is also frustrating. What if we grouped it based on learning styles? So all the auditory learners would have lecture style classes. Students who prefer 1v1s with the teacher could have smaller class sizes. Or what if the deciding factor were investment? Those who were committed to their education and willing to put in time outside of class could be put in an accelerated learning environment, while other students carried on at the usual pace. What if that spectrum was determined not at enrollment, but in the first quarter? 

I think education needs better individualization. What exactly that looks like I’m not sure, but it seems to me to be a large problem.