In other posts I have bemoaned the trend in education today where its primary value is judged by whether it prepares a student adequately for gainful employment after graduation. Instead of opening minds, constructing meaning, and creating worlds, education has gotten reduced to little more than job training. As this happens, students stop caring and surrender responsibility for their learning, relying on the system to tell them what they need to know and what they’re supposed to do with it.
If you ask students what action new knowledge is for, the first answer of many is that it’s for passing tests, which in turn is for graduating and getting a job. Will the new knowledge be useful in their job some day? Maybe, but probably not. The classroom question, “Will this be on the test?” is eventually followed by the workplace question, “Is this necessary for me to do my job?” If so, then effort will be made to retain it. If not, it gets tossed on the scrap pile of useless information.
A quick and dirty summary of what’s wrong with education today sees it as “teaching to the test,” by which is meant not only progress assessments along the path of mastery, but standardized tests that serve as gateways for students to next-level instruction, graduation, or professional certification. The goal in each case is to pass the test with a grade that meets or exceeds the cut-score for moving on.
Teachers teach to the test by focusing instruction only on what will be tested. Passing grades mean good success data that schools can report to their funding sources and accreditation associations. In order to improve their numbers, schools have accommodated student underachievement with shortcuts and allowances, effectively lowering the challenge gradient for students to climb.
It’s not long, however, before interventions must be introduced in order to build up the deficiencies that such accommodations worked around or even fostered over time.
Soon enough education has become an expensive process of instructors teaching to the test, students dreading the test, accommodations to help them make it through one test, and interventions to get them ready for the test next in line. The expense is measured not only in terms of the billions of dollars required to keep this gauntlet in operation, but in the toll it is taking on the confidence, self-respect, creativity, and passion in nearly everyone involved, which is a cost much more tragic and devastating. We might hail the commitment to lifelong learning, but who wants to prolong the agony of education beyond the goal of getting a job?
As I pointed out in The Paradox of Education and the Search for Its Soul, the roots of our words educate and instruct set them in very different value systems. Educare means “to lead out,” which might be nothing more than leading a youngster out into the adult world. But more likely it has to do with leading the creative intelligence and talent of students out into the constructive discourse of world-building known as culture. Instruct, on the other hand, means to “to put in,” and is about downloading knowledge and skills into one regarded as naive, incompetent, or untrained.
In the second perspective, students are ignorant of the sophisticated things they need to know in order to make it in the world. But according to the first, in the spirit of educare – and it’s helpful that “care” is right there in the word itself – they are crackling with potential, and all a teacher really needs to do is light a match and show the way.
As illustrated in my diagram above, there is a serious relevancy gap in education today. To fix the problem of poor student performance, accommodations and interventions are introduced early, but somewhere farther down the line students are stressing out, burning out, and dropping out in record numbers. Even “getting a job” – while it might be the reason a greater percentage of them give for being in college – is not enough to keep students engaged anymore. The real problem is not that students are stupid, lazy, or unable to learn, but that passing tests and getting a job doesn’t inspire them to learn.
Effective teachers know the importance of helping students make connections between new information and what they love. The heart is the center of our personal experience and includes what we are curious about and interested in, what we desire and what currently holds our emotional investment – all frequencies of passion that inspire our construction of meaning.
Unless students can connect new information to their personal lives, it may be retained for the goal of passing the test, but it won’t be incorporated into their worldview or enrich their perspective on reality.
Obviously the better teachers know their students by taking the time to discover what they love. The wise proverb, “They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” speaks to this relevancy gap in education today. Students can feel the difference when teachers are teaching to the test, or instead are teaching to help them learn, personalize new information, and construct meaning.
Tracts of Revolution 