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New York Times Magazine on How to Remake Education
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The piece published yesterday by the NYT Magazine is a collection of short contributions by five different people. It is refreshing to see some genuinely interesting ideas put forth by one of the leading national newspapers. I wish the big media did more of it. The endless repletion of clichés and errors is sickening. We genuinely need new ideas, and who else will bring them to light?
Diane Ravitch, a historian, speaks against narrow utilitarianism in education. This is, more a less a platitude. Ravitch is usually very good, but not this time.
Tom Vander Ark, an education entrepreneur, reminds us of the information technology revolution we all are witnessing, and predicts it is going to reshape education. This is a very important point to consider. In fact, there was no serious discussion amongst education reformers about it. We still think of classrooms, teachers in front of classes, desks, attendance rolls, and parent conferences. But this world is fading away, especially for the high school level. This is not about bringing smartboards into every classroom. No, we need to think of making education less expensive by supporting independent learning. We need more learning and less teaching.
Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, delivers a good critique of American higher education; its credentialing role in particular. His is a very good point: having a degree does not really mean much. He is a bit vague on solutions though. Community colleges? Please! Many of them are great institutions, a lot more flexible than 4-year colleges, but there is no evidence they actually teach any better that 4-year schools.
Susie Buffett of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, points to what is, arguably, the most exciting educational developments of the last decades. Early interventions have shown to alter the brain development and the consequent life paths of disadvantaged children. We have been pouring untold trillions of dollars in children of 6-17 years of age for as long as there is public education. Well, we might have been wrong all along. The money seems to be much better spent if it is used on pre-school children. The money seems to be decidedly wasted on high schools.
Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone, is a visionary and a hero of urban education. Everyone who cares about education must listen the excellent episode of This American Lifeabout his work. I find his piece in the NYT Magazine a bit disappointing though. He focuses on the length of the school year, and cites German and Japanese educational systems. Well, those two are not really much better than our. He is right about the summer vacation for kids – it does not make any sense to keep this archaic school year structure. However, the emphasis should be not on the length of the school day and school year, but on what we do with them.
In short – kudos to the NYT Magazine. Please do more of it, consider new ideas, and stop perpetuating the old boring debates of accountability vs. Progressivism, and unions against the conservatives. Thanks for not bring up the myth about America loosing the education race to the Indians and the Chinese. If I hear it one more time, I will scream.
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