Friday, August 19, 2005

Ian Jukes’ writings…

I’ve been reading a series of articles by the futurist Ian Jukes (from the Committed Sardine blog). It’s nothing I haven’t heard before, or don’t believe. He essentially thinks we need to deliver education differently, and doesn’t dance around the real reasons why we just can’t seem to address the issue.

Education at the Crossroads
Is the purpose of schools to prepare students for college or the workplace? There is a disconnect between what students and parents are saying and what actually occurs: 74 % of students and 83% of parents believe school should prepare students for some sort of higher education. Yet only 36% of students actually complete schooling beyond high school, before the age of 30.

Jukes proposes that the purpose of school is to prepare students for both higher education and the world of work. He asks the question, “If we can acknowledge that the world is changed, and continuing to change, what are schools doing about these dramatic changes?” Jukes points out correctly that the world is changing exponentially while schools are changing incrementally. The gap between what students leave with and what an, “increasingly interconnected, technological world” requires is getting greater every year.

“There is a huge gap between what’s learned in our classrooms and how it’s learned with how things work in the modern workplace.” Curriculum has not kept pace with the changes in the real world. We need to rethink what students need to learn: thinking skills; technical skills; personal skills; workplace skills.

Jukes questions whether we as professionals are capable of putting ourselves under the microscope and coming to realize that we need an entirely new paradigm– that what we are offering now is not enough. “This will be a bitter pill to swallow.”

Easier said than done. “Start by standing back. It’s time to step back from our traditional thinking about learning and rethink schools, classrooms, curriculum, evaluation, the roles of teachers & learners and particularly, what it means and what it will mean to be learned in the light of the modern changing world.”

New Horizons
While our students are the best prepared generation ever, it isn’t enough. The world is changing much more quickly than our schools are able to keep up.

This is due largely to the educational mindset that we have. We are shifting the burden of the problem. A majority of parents believe that education needs to change, but not in their school. A majority of teachers believe that education needs to change, but not in their classroom. We aren’t willing to take that bitter pill and accept that we are part of the problem. We are organizations that are not willing to learn.

“It is absolutely shortsighted not to spend money on education – our pensions, culture – yes, even the future success of this country depend on it. We live in strange times in a strange land. We think nothing of spending huge amounts of money on athletes, industry bailouts, weapons, security, and political witch-hunts, but we don’t seem interested in spending money on our children and their schools. Students are our most important natural resource – schools are our farms of the future. They produce our most valuable new crops – which are thinking minds.” Maine is an example of an action that was focused on the root cause of a problem. The Maine Learning Technology Initiative was an innovative solution designed to address the root of a problem rather than simply a solution.

What are we willing to look at? Will we keep passing the blame, or will we address the tough issues that need to be addressed? Will we all take personal responsibility? Will we understand that we can only solve these problems collectively, not individually? Will we address root causes rather than only symptoms?

“We must help others understand that it’s a new world out there. And that there’s a real danger if we stay the same.”

Understanding Digital Kids
In this presentation, Jukes gets at the heart of why we can’t seem to address the root causes that create the gap between schools and what students need for their future. The problem is that we don’t see kids today for what they are, and we aren’t willing to change our mindset about what kids should do and know, and how they should be educated. This mindset is rooted in the way that we learned and were taught in schools – essentially, the past.

Jukes presents volumes of evidence on how our schools are modeled on the past while our students are living in the rapidly changing future.

“We are digital immigrants. We come from a land and time before most of the dramatic developments in our world occurred. The schools of today reflect our comfort zone, our experiences, our views of technology, our views of instruction and our views of learning. We have a Polaroid snapshot of the world of then and this is the source of the dissonance. We haven’t allowed the institutions of education to reflect the world of today and we’re now in the unenviable position of having schools that increasingly reflect a world that does not exist.”

“And if we’re truly honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that today’s standards and high stakes testing are simply reinforcing this focus. And we’ll also acknowledge that some teachers are silently delighted because this simply validates the way they’ve always taught & tested and reinforces the notion that THEY don’t need to change, it’s THE KIDS that need to change.”

At the end of the article there is also an excellent list of suggested readings related to curriculum, teaching and brain-based research.

Posted by Randy on 08/19 at 12:01 PM
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