A New Education (Part 2)

           It is widely assumed today that the American Education system is broken and falling behind the rest of the world.  This is a false assumption, because there is no American Education system.  We are one of the few developed countries in the world that doesn’t have a National Education System.  In actuality the United States is a conglomeration of local education systems all independently following state and national laws, so that they can claim some funds from those respective institutions.  It’s a strange system that is unique to America and perplexing to other countries.  On one hand, it makes sense that a country so vast and diverse would have local school boards govern education, but on the other hand you have local school boards in Kansas mandating teaching of creationism in science classes and Texas school boards ignoring history professors and skewing history books to meet a political agenda that expert historians say doesn’t accurately reflect history.  The major problems within education today are a lack of qualified teachers, inequitable fund distribution throughout the country and a lack of respect for authentic education.  Norway has a unique model for education and can be a model moving forward for our local districts to look at for success in educating our youth. 

            Over the past decade countless organizations have researched what is the silver bullet in education, especially the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Time and time again the research is clear, the better the teacher is the better the education is. 

Good teacher = good education. 

In America today we have too many teachers teaching subjects that they are not qualified to teach.  In the better schools this rarely if ever happens, but in so many poorer districts this occurs most frequently in Math classrooms.  According to a massive and comprehensive study by Michigan State University, researchers found that the best results for students on international math exams was by those students whose teachers were the best trained in their subject.  States have tried to require all teachers to be “highly qualified,” but so much more needs to be done aside from legislation.  All this does is make the majority of qualified teachers to waste time and money jumping through burecratic hoops that don’t actually increase the education students receive. 

            Instead, what needs to be done to bring in more qualified teachers is to increase teacher pay and status in society.  In Norway, the best and brightest graduates from college become teachers and there is no higher respected profession in Norway than a teacher.  Both changes are difficult to make.  Concessions need to be made from teachers unions, tenure needs to be revised, teacher evaluation needs to be rethought and an all out effort to convince the brightest and best to join the teaching profession should be a priority. 

            What does a quality teacher look like?  In my just under a decade of teaching I see 4 qualities in the best teachers that I have seen. 

1.     Experts in the subject they teach.

2.     Experience using varied pedagogical teaching methods.

3.     Non-complacent.  Working hard each year to create new lessons and better old lessons.

4.     A deep care and concern for their students and their futures. 

The first and the second can be taught and ascertained through education.  The final two are part of who a person is.  The final two are what make the best teachers.  As a teacher you have to create a solid rapport and relationship with your students.  They have to trust you and you have to respect them.  Each day with your students you must learn who they are, what their passions are and what ways they will learn most effectively.  Too often today teaching is seen as a data driven science, when it is much more of an art than many think.  That is not to say that data and scores should be ignored, but the teacher should use that as just one of many tools to know and find out how much and what students are learning.  Great teachers with these 4 characteristics must be found and spread throughout our country if we are to get our system up to world standards. 

 

However, this proves difficult with roughly 15,000 districts across the United States it is difficult for them to agree on anything, especially teacher pay.  The bankrupt states can’t possibly handle this legislation and financing of schools, but we need to decide if education is a national priority or not.  Sacrificing one Bomber for $40 billion could go a long way in finding excellent teachers.  Some problems are clearly local, but if we want to talk about our education system in America we might need to actually have an education system.  I don’t mean a large national do-nothing bureaucracy, but an institution that sets minimal national standards, trains qualified teachers and distributes funds to schools.  If we are not willing to do this, then we need to stop complaining about “American education,” because it doesn’t exist.  If we keep our broken local system by which rich and middle class children receive quality educations and poor children suffer because they live in a poor community. 

            Too often people think that education serves only a practical purpose, so that an individual can find a job someday.  That is a minority part of education.  Education teaches people how do think, while indoctrination teaches people what to think.  If we want to give young people a quality education it has to go way beyond what the Standardized tests require.  We need to help students find their passions, talents and voice if we are to arm them for the 21^st Century.  Sir Ken Robinson, an education professor from England, has a famous TED talk that everyone should watch.  We have to foster children’s creativity and teach the whole person, not just this narrow view that is popular today that we should focus on math and science.  Again, don’t misunderstand me, math and science are critical and should be taught to every student, but so should art, dance and music.  By limiting our education to a narrow set of core classes, we are cutting out students whose strength may be in other arenas.  In some ways, we may need to start over on a blank sheet of paper with the education system and we could start by consolidating all school districts under a National System with new national priorities.  In part 3, we will look at what we can learn from Norway and how the difficult process of implementation would work.