At least in the
field of education, ideas are almost always better than products, and ideas can
be free. The mentality that something has to be developed, produced, purchased,
and then physically added to the classroom to improve education is based on
path dependent thinking that material improvements are always beneficial. The
reality is that the marginal benefit from new classroom technology is small….
Technological barriers are not really what is preventing better teaching- it’s
the lack of good ideas and teaching strategies, and the failure to find these
ideas and implement them across the country (in fact, technology can sometimes
be distracting and therefore counterproductive to pedagogical goals).
And
unfortunately for lazy or financially motivated policy makers , it won’t be as
easy as simply throwing money at the problem.
Things like changing the hours of the school day, serving healthier
meals, and having more physically interactive classes to keep students engaged
will make the most difference. The idea
that simply extending the school day and having more “math and science” (whatever
that means) will lead to better education is not realistic and intellectually
lazy.
Eliminating
social and psychological blocks to learning, such as feelings of inferiority or
unwillingness to seek help and ask questions can make an enormous difference by
getting kids more involved and excited about learning. If school age kids can
see ways that they can personally improve themselves from what they are
learning they will certainly be more motivated. One way to do this is by
creating opportunities for field specialization, which at the latest should
occur at 8th grade. By this point, the core curriculum's have essentially been
repeated at least 5 years, and most kids have a good idea of their academic
strengths and weaknesses.
This has a
personal meaning for me too. I realized by age 8 or so that I was terrible at
math. I hated it and could never seem to learn it as fast as the other kids.
Although I was pretty good at writing, reading, and social studies, being
forced to do math for every year of my K-12 education made me hate school as a
whole. The stress and anxiety from having to take math classes (which I was
terrible at) spilled over into the rest of my course work and made me hate
school in general. In economics, this is called a "negative externality; a phenomenon that all economists know is
detrimental to societal improvement. And all that stress turned out to be in
vain, because to this day I have yet to use anything more than simple
multiplication in my daily life.
I always
desperately wanted math to be taught to me in some sort of relevant context.
One of the reasons I had such mental block towards mathematics was that it was
taught as a bunch of abstract rules and theorems that never seemed to have any
real world applicability. So instead of just teaching more out of context
equations, what the mathematics curriculum going forward should do is be
included in real world problems. Basic personal economic education, such as
balancing checkbooks, paying taxes, saving money/investments etc. is not only
severely lacking from modern K-12 curricula, but if made mandatory could act as
a fantastic supplement to traditional mathematics.
Forcing all
students to take the exact same coursework, regardless of their talents is
foolish, wasteful, and demoralizing. Instead, allowing the prolific writers,
the creative artists, the inquisitive scientists, and the few and the proud
mathematicians to pursue their talents and differentiate themselves will be a
boon to education nationwide, especially with students in their teenage years,
where identity formation is so important psychologically.
And what could
bring light and warmth to those dark teenage years better than a new
realization of ones future potential. In the teenage years where prevailing self-doubt and
confusion so often serve to demotivate and undermine academic
efforts , giving students the ability
to truly see themselves having a successful career and adult life could serve to motivate classroom effort at a time where it is needed most. It is
often said that the key to happiness is simply the feeling of progress. And for
America’s unmotivated and faltering schoolchildren, a feeling of individual
progress will lead to collective progress nationwide.