The Operating System of Education is Broken

The following is an excerpt from a forthcoming book I hope to finish this year. I also recently read a great article that reinforced my thinking on this topic. Please take the time to go to https://goo.gl/CwzLQX and read a perspective on the “achievement gap” that is thought provoking by Dr. Camika Royal.

The importance of the underlying “operating system” of the school system cannot be overstated. The command and control operating system is often accepted as a “given” with few people stopping to conceive of another OS. Progressive educators at the turn of the 20th century recognized the inherent dangers in accepting the assembly line operating system, but their voices had little or no effect. (Please take the time to read John Dewey and Jane Addams so you can gain hope that there are other operating systems out there that can be used in our schools.) The result is our current system of education with its severe reliance on control and compliance. You simply cannot separate the industrialized school system from the command and control operating system. If we are to change our educational ecosystem to one where the Learner is actually at the center, we must “upgrade” our school operating system.

SCHOOL OPERATING SYSTEM 1.0
Let’s recognize something important: our school system is modeled on an industrial factory. There are two important ramifications for learners when discussing our industrial model of school. The first ramification revolves around management of the school system. Bells ring, grade levels place learners in “batches”, grades “sort” learners much like quality control sorts raw material in a factory. There are also more subtle ramifications to the industrialized schooling model. Namely, the values and mores that are transmitted because of the management structure of schools. An industrialized system demands compliance and conformity. Thus, compliance and conformity are rewarded in schools as learners stay out of trouble (or not) and conform to the biddings of the “system”.

Our current school system was created in the image of a factory. The modern school system was created during the height of industrialization across the world. Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie revolutionized the work in factories by instituting concepts that led to mass production. The most profound innovation was the use of the assembly line. Henry Ford in particular led the way in creating the assembly line which was efficient in turning raw material into a working product. Before the assembly line, workers would put together large sections of the vehicle in one work space. Material was brought to the vehicle being assembled for inclusion in the manufacturing process. This required that workers be proficient in many different aspects of the assembly process resulting in a limited number of vehicles that could be assembled in a day. After all, workers were required to move frequently away from the assembling point to gather parts for the next step in the assembly process, slowing the process of assembly. Ford considered the movement of the workers as wasted time and inefficient. Instead, he devised a system where the vehicles moved on an assembly line from one station to the next while the workers stayed in place and specialized in one discrete task in the assembly process. In this way, there was no wasted motion and inefficiencies were driven from the process. An empty chassis started on one end of the assembly line and a completed vehicle appeared at the other end of the line.

Henry Ford quickly discovered that workers did not like to do the same (boring) repetitive task thousands of times a day. Many of the workers, out of sheer boredom, would deviate from the prescribed routine. This drove Ford nuts. Any small deviation from routine would have a snowball effect on the rest of the assembly process and significantly slow down the entire production process. The question that Ford had to answer centered on management. Essentially, Ford created a management system to assure the workers do exactly what the system required them to do on the assembly line exactly when he wanted them to do it. A system of command and control was created to make sure workers stayed on task at all times. Workers were told explicitly what to do and foremen, supervisors monitored the foreman to make sure they did their job. This compliance system reached all the way to the factory manager. A command and control system goes hand in hand with an assembly line process…you can’t have one without the other. An entire organizational system is required to assure that all workers in the plant are compliant to the process.

School leaders at the turn of the 20th century, influenced by the assembly line method, created a school system that mimicked a factory. Just like a chassis move through the assembly line, batches of learners move through the assembly line with added parts (curriculum) added to them along the way. Teachers act like glorified assembly workers placing parts where they are supposed to fit on a learner. The reformers that created the industrialized school system adopted the model of the assembly line system also installed (by default) the command and control systems required in an industrialized assembly line factory. Teachers are workers on the line, foreman are principals to assure compliance from the teachers, superintendents are there to assure compliance by the principals. Learners move from room to room to accommodate the teachers so they would not have to move. I know teachers who taught in the same room for 40 years! Bells are used to notify Learners and teachers when the next stage of the assembly process is to take place. The result are schools that dehumanize Learners and de-professionalizes teachers.

SCHOOL OPERATING SYSTEM 2.0
A new operating system for schools replaces key parts of the command and control structure of “School 1.0”. School 2.0 has as its focus a new learning ecosystem centered on the learner and the ideal learning experience.

At the heart of the ecosystem is the learner and the learning experience. Creating learning experiences for the learner that are relevant, engaging, and meet the learning needs of the learner, may seem to be obvious. The ramifications of placing the learner and the learning experience at the center of everything the school does is radical. All decisions by the school board, administration and teachers are filtered through the lens of radical learner centeredness. When this occurs, the structures from School 1.0 become obsolete. Learners are not moving from room to room to have curriculum “placed” in their heads. Rather, decisions on learning are based on what is best for the learner, not the convenience of the school operating system. The role of the teachers shifts from one whose job it is to depart a specified knowledge base to one where a teacher facilitates the knowledge learners are engaging in. Since learning is disentangled from the factory model, there becomes more flexibility in where learning can take place and when learning takes place for learners. Finally, when the command and control structure is taken away, more opportunities are open to other stakeholders to participate meaningfully in the learning of the student.

This is a quick overview of the new operating system of education. I appreciate your comments and insights about this important topic…please leave your thoughts in the comment box.