5 Things We Need to Quit Pretending About Education

We have to stop pretending… http://t.co/jhU5rnYkXl cc @gcouros @smartinez @wfryer @coolcatteacher @web20classroom #edchat #edtech #cpchat

— Scott McLeod (@mcleod) April 13, 2015

I saw a tweet from Wes Fryer that got me thinking – so here they come in no particular order…

1. We need to quit pretending schools have to be so so unequal.  It should not matter if you live in the suburbs or are living in the inner city, every student has the right to attend a school that is fully functional and can meet the needs of that unique student population.  We need to quit pretending that it’s okay to have unequal buildings based on ZIP Code number.
2. We need to quit pretending it is permissible to continue the public assault on teachers and understand how critical teachers are to the future of the human race.  We need to understand that teachers are people full of passion, care care massively for their students, and want their students to succeed.  Teachers want to inspire students to understand that there is more to life than the four walls that create the schoolhouse. Teachers want their students to know that they can do the most incredible things and as teachers we want to cheer students on.
3. Stop pretending that students are test scores and that the results of those test scores indicate how well the teacher has taught those children.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Our students are not test scores! Teachers should not be defined by those scores.  Students are sponges, they soak up everything around them.  Some teachers are have classes that must cover so much more than the normal curriculum becuase of real life situations.  There is so much more that could be understood about a student than a simple bubble on a test.  This policy of testing, testing, testing, to understand what the student knows it’s so backwards.  Unless every politician is willing to take each test and publicly publish their scores, testing needs to go away.  Unless we can get immediate results and use those results to narrow instruction for the students, testing needs to go away.
4. We need to stop pretending that we live in the 1800’s.  There is absolutely no need for the school day and the school year to remain structured how it is currently structured.  With the technology that is now available for students, with the technology available for teachers, with the way that our society and culture has developed over the past 100 years since the old one room schoolhouse, there is no need to structure the schooldays exact same way.  If you want to create that one room schoolhouse in today’s age,  wow, think of all the brilliant things you could add in.  Pretending that school needs to remain structured this way because that’s how we’ve always done it is not a good reason any longer.
5.  We need to quit pretending that there is a single change that will solve all of the struggles with the education system.  We need to quit pretending that one magic, magic curriculum, magic classroom model, magic teacher, magic administrator, magic whatever will work.  It won’t.  We will be disappointed time and time again if we depend on “that one special super duper education fixer.”  It takes a community, a city, a state, a nation, working together: teachers, policy makers, parents, business leaders, grandparents, CEO’s, Chambers of Commerce.

Passionate stuff here…I love teachers, I am a teacher, I am teaching future teachers.  I Teach From Here.

Agree?  Disagree?  Leave a comment – civil dialogue is where we start making everything better!