Our Education System: Past and Present

Main Argument: "The Broken Model" by Sal Khan (Chapter 2 of his book, The One World School House ) situates the current education system among both its historical antecedents (the Prussian model) and its current reality while examining and deconstructing, in essence picking apart the traditions that we hold to be "normal" in the education system that we perhaps shouldn't -- with an emphasis on test taking in school. 

Beginning Reflections: Khan opens his argument by positioning the current realities of the education system among a longer list of current traditions and customs that while we are keeping them, are doing practically nothing to serve us in our modern era. He says "parts of the system we now hold sacred-- for example the length of the class period of the number of years assigned to "elementary" or "high" school are in fact rather arbitrary, even accidental" (62). This reminded me a lot about the video that we watched, "A Short History of Public Schooling", not because of their similarities but moreover because the video pushes on the idea that the current schooling model is accidental. The video introduces the idea that almost every aspect we recognize as normal in our education system was a deliberate choice towards pushing students to become subordinates, to recognize their place in the world (as being a cog in a larger factory machine) and most importantly, to realize the importance of this place-- there is no other option than to do it. 

Connection: This reminded me a lot of the four teaching ideologies that I learned in a class on Curriculum and Ideology at RIC that I took last semester. The idea behind the four teaching ideologies are that there are four ideologies-- or frameworks that frame your view on students, on teachers, on the student-teacher relationships, and on assessments. All of these core beliefs stem from a common goal that each ideology holds. The four teaching ideologies are: 

- scholar academic: who view the ultimate goal of education as transmitting information from teachers to students to have master academic subjects/academic disciplines. 

- social efficiency : Who view the goal of education as wanting to produce effective members of society that will work, social efficiency believes that students can meet the needs of society as students become contributing members of society. They understand and firmly believe that students can be successful members of society if they learn the behaviors needed to succeed.

- learner centered: focuses on the needs of the "individual", as opposed to the needs of academics or society. People who subscribe to a learner centered ideology believe that learning is a way to aid students in their growth, that because of the importance of growth, students naturally learn from their environment and so a teacher's role is to help a student maneuver their environments by providing "units" for the student to learn from. 

- social reconstruction: This ideology recognizes that society has many problems-- racism, sexism, economic inequalities, the list goes on. A social reconstructionist ideology asserts that the way to "fix" these problems is to use students by not teaching "undesirable" patterns. 

Beginning reflections; It's clear to me that while currently different educators may have different ideologies and anyone who has gone through the education system will recognize that they have parts and pieces of each ideology from different teachers, the ideology of the beginning of the public education system (Horace Mann's education system) was created around the social efficiency ideology. Because of this, our modern education system has many routines and traditions that support a student's role in becoming a "productive" member of society (it's important to note that social efficiency defines "productive" as someone who produces, someone who contributes to the economy and capitalism). Khan also asserts that if we "redo" the current education system, that our systems and routines as we know them would have to change. 

Middle Reflections: In Khan's reflections about the historical impact of the "Committee of Ten", he explains that this committee pushed that some subjects be made mandatory and other, more specialized subjects be made optional. If a student were able to take a specialized class, the student's work should be to create meaning, not just to be "merely receptive" (79). What was most interesting about this to me was that there is a current system that identifies the rigor in an activity (Blooms Taxonomy, as pictured above) as a tiered system that holds recalling facts at the bottom to the creation of something on the top. It made me wonder about whether Bloom's Taxonomy was created to reflect the current education system or if it was created to model what an ideal education system would be. It also made me wonder what the "Committee of Ten" would think of Bloom's Taxonomy. 

Ending Reflections: The last portion of the chapter heavily discusses testing in school. It asserts that the tests we have do not necessarily test the information we want to know. We typically (we as educators) look at tests to measure how much a student has "mastered" an idea. However, (both looking at where remembering is on Bloom's Taxonomy and what Khan says about testing) typically only measure how much a student is able to memorize in a certain moment: "tests measure the approximate state of a student's memory and perhaps understanding..." (92). Test taking, at least in my opinion (and I think Khan would likely agree with me) is a measure at how well a student can take a test-- whether they understand the way the test is formatted, if they remember what they need to, do not have any testing anxiety that prevents them from accessing the information they need, etc. The way to measure the mastery of an idea by a student, at least in my opinion, would be to follow Bloom's Taxonomy or a different system that tests rigor. One thing that surprised me was that Khan didn't say we should be done with tests altogether. He suggests that we can use tests, but to be specific about the ways we understand what they are measuring. I think I partially agree with him and I partially disagree. I think we could have tests if tests were not viewed as summative assessments, there should be different activities, whether it be a project, a one on one conversation with a teacher, or something else, that tests the mastery of a student. Additionally, I think that tests shouldn't hold the weight that they do in regards to the relationship that testing  has with funding. A lot of (at least public schools) view testing as one of the most important things that a student can go through because it directly impacts the funding that a school gets. 

But, not only is this relationship between testing and funding already making it more difficult for students who do not have the same outside resources, or even in school supports and resources, but also testing itself, at least testing as it is, is incredibly racist. Testing (especially in its relationships to immigration and voting) was created to exclude, specifically exclude anyone who is not white. 

Overall, I found myself agreeing with the majority of what Khan argued and I enjoyed reading his work :)