Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Assimilation of Change

A few weeks ago, I was trying to figure out what was bugging me about all of the talk around President Obama’s recent education reform efforts.

As others have said, “Everybody calls themselves a reformer.” But what really is “reform”? We’ve seen too many hyped, large-scale efforts that have fallen flat to know that that isn’t reform. And we’ve seen some very inspirational work being done on the ground, in individual classrooms and schools, but some would question whether that’s reform if it’s impact doesn’t extend any further.

The question is, how to marry the two. It’s this friction, between the macro-level structures that often can be seen as “getting in the way” (despite their overall necessity) and the micro-level work within classrooms, that has often been what’s stopped well-meaning “education reform” from taking place. And I believe it’s this relationship we’ll have to understand if we want anything good to actually happen.

Gever Tulley, founder of The Tinkering School, recently highlighted one aspect of this macro-micro relationship that I think is fundamental:

The rate at which an education system assimilates change is inversely proportional to the level of hierarchy. Students will always be threatening the stability of the system by introducing technologies and behaviors to the classroom long before the administration is prepared for it.

Give a kid the opportunity to explore and learn about something they want to learn about, and the speed at which they’ll do so is breathtaking. Good teachers know how to inspire and capitalise on this motivation, and great teachers can pull it off with all 20 or 30 kids in their class.

There’s no way an education administration can keep up with that. There’s no hope at all that they can develop suitable measures, tests, and structures fast enough, that will do justice to the children themselves or to the future they’ll live in. Most administrations are instead just trying to feign stability, and try to maintain the status quo for however long they can.

I think real reform will mean putting aside efforts that either emphasise macro-level fixes or disregard them completely for micro-level change. The trick will be to marry the two, making them as aligned, complementary, and frictionless as possible.

If you’re a person at the top, this would mean to empower the people at the bottom and make it as simple as possible for them to do what is best. If you’re a person at the bottom, this would mean to recognise the well-meaning intentions of the people at the top and let them know what it’s really like in your classroom, what your kids really need, and how they can help.

It’s this macro-micro relationship that will need all the work. I think we’re lucky to have a President who understands this relationship well (having worked many years as a community organiser at the bottom), but it will take everybody involved to be vividly aware of and respectful of this relationship – its shortcomings, potential, and the responsibilities it bears – for meaningful change to happen.

Nov 24, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #