Judith Shulevitz has written
a brilliant essay in “The Néw Republic” about the
corporate and political leaders’ infatuation with “disruption.” It
is “the most pernicious cliche of our time.” She identifies its
author, Clayton Christenson, and shows how it explains some
technological change yet is now used in policy circles to undermine
and privatize public functions. Shulevitz observes: “Christensen
and his acolytes make the free-market-fundamentalist assumption
that all public or nonprofit institutions are sclerotic and unable
to cope with change. This leads to an urge to disrupt,
preemptively, from above, rather than deal with disruption when it
starts bubbling up below….they don’t like participatory democracy
much. “The sobering conclusion,” write Christensen and co-authors
in their book about K–12 education, “is that democracy … is an
effective tool of government only in” less contentious communities
than those that surround schools. “Political and school leaders who
seek fundamental school reform need to become much more comfortable
amassing and wielding power because other tools of governance will
yield begrudging cooperation at best.” This observation leads to an
enlightening discussion of the Broad-trained superintendents and
their love of disruption. When they move into districts to impose
transformation and disruption, they sow dissension and turmoil.
None of this is good for children.
A site to discuss better education for all
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Very telling is their argument for touting Harvard colleague Howard Gardiner’s 1980s multiple intelligence theory, which is, essentially, that, regardless of its merit, they required a theory that’s about individualizing instruction in order to support their foregone conclusions. They are impressed by the way low-quality, low fidelity transistor radios found a market with teenagers who couldn’t afford audiophile tube rigs, or carry them around, and that some of those transistor radio manufacturers became corporations like Texas Instruments (oligarchy in business is apparently not a problem). They similarly hope low quality tutorials can reproduce such cash flows and opportunities for HBS grads on the backs of America’s perpetually poor. They suggest eLearning modules created by amateurs can target learning needs in all these “intelligences” (not to pan Gardiner; his 1980 language does not hold up to current brain research). Most outrageously (and tragically, in light if the initial acclaim this dangerous blueprint for the destruction of democratic public education received nearly everywhere) claim this is new thinking, but it is in fact (and as you noted) top down projection of their desire that it be so.
There’s nothing new to be learned from Christensen et al. In the 80s & 90s John Seely Brown’s Institute for Learning Technology put together ethnographers, computer scientists and dedicated educators and looked at authentic apprenticeships, asking “how do we do that better, assisted by technology?” and not “how do we sell more technology by doing that?” Cognitive Apprenticeship, it’s practitioners and those who have come after—Jean Lave, Étienne Wenger, Alan Collins, more recently Aziz Ghefaili, Gráinne Conole—among many others who devote their lives to learning, teaching, learners and teachers—have researched and documented the “thick” (as in Geertz) requirements of online pedagogy, the importance of context, and in so doing are exposing realistic boundaries around expectations for its wider applicability and long term success. Scaffolding a learner who is constructing new knowledge is a complex task that depends on design, coaching, fading, preparation, knowledge of threshold concepts, and the ability to know how much or little to hold a learner’s hand while crossing those thresholds, always with an eye on the next door further along the path. As with any art, there are always the rare few who are natural talents. For most of us, getting all that right requires authentic lifelong study and practice, in the presence of authentic learners and teachers.
It is a word I hope goes away from the popular lexicon soon (even though I have been saying public schools should use creative disruption right back—but with our hands tied by RttT, there isn’t much room for that).
If one thinks about disruption in the the order of classroom management it generally does not have positive connotations, even though sometimes children who create disruption do help redefine classroom approach (but more often that not, disruption says more about the person doing it than it does about the system they are disrupting). At the end of the day, it requires cooperation to be disruptive within a system or network of people and to me the energy that goes into that cooperation for being disruptive would be better spent on being cooperative in illiciting change that helps an institution (like public school) grow, instead of “disrupting” it into something different—that is, not public. It is as if the term gives carte blanche to people who have a different vision and to hell with the history or larger motivation or purpose behind the institution (like public schools being available to all students or a cornerstone of democracy). “Creative disruption” is not about working together, except for those who agree and have the same vision.
I have two other points related to this. One is from my mentor and is related to the idea of not working together (just like creative disruption suggests):
“Know what bothers me most of all? That there are very few involved in all of this who really block out their special interests, ideology, politics, and privileges, taking as objective and open views of each sub-issue as possible, who will work with others of like objectivity, ignoring all those other activists, to figure out what in the world to do locally, regionally, state-wide and nationally. Very, very few and far between. Everybody has a megaphone and they just talk past each other. Bah!”
The second is the motivations of the disruptors.
It seems to me “reformers” are not interested in what public school represents in a democracy.
For those who are motivated by money, I don’t know what to say.
For those wanting to try new ways to build up the middle class, I am not convinced this is it.
For those who are motivated by strict religious dogma (such as might be behind some of ALEC??) I would offer up that they want to structure society in a way that they believe leads people to experiencing and seeking out faith in the way that they do. I won’t fault them for being compelled by a fervor for a Christ-centered life. But I would offer up that forcing a society to embody a structure that restricts what religious expression looks like (by trying to streamline it) probably will not turn out the way hoped or planned for. To me it comes down to different interpretations of what a life in Christ (which I imagine is the one most of them are trying to live) looks like. But the more they try to force a society to look like that vision they have, rather than simply fostering communitites that consider humanity first, and religious expression second, the farther they take us from having the stability it really takes for such freedom of religious expression to occur in the first place.
And the disruption, when applied to areas outside business (like public education), becomes a disruption for the society at large.
It might end up being a sitiuation of “woops, I was just playing with it (creative disruption) and it went off.”
Clayton Christensen´s work and the word “disruption” makes sense, but on technology and business. Education is neither.
By the way, there is a marvelous French Comicstrip, Les Profs, about a group of High School teachers. There is a principal that sprouts clichés from management books, it´s simply brutal.
Far better to call this euphemism by its real name: looting.
When my graduate institution chose Christensen’s book as one for teachers to read (along with the melting iceberg book), I knew it was time to leave.
As a long-time reader of The New Republic, I was glad to see the magazine publishing something sensible about education. It seems to me they’ve tended to be sympathetic to the “reform” agenda. Perhaps that’s changing.
Better yet, call it “gangsterism.”
I’ve been thinking about this overnight. Do they count on the fact that people are desensitized? that people are at a fatigue level on constant wars around the globe?
I worry that I don’t see a response from my colleagues…. do they feel self-satisfied because they are in Massachusetts? I feel the hurt for those students in VA who are in special ed classes and they are told they have flunked (once again). If they tell the students in NY “this test doesn’t matter ” then how do we tell them the next test maters. Is this desensitization to tests? Is it a cultural thing? I only feel the pain if MY child flunks. One esteemed colleague has taken the anti-union side and she says “well there are teachers who need to be fired” . Is that the way we do our job by killing off all the flowers in the garden to find some weeds? I can’t find a metaphor that indicates my anger and I can’t figure out why more people don’t react with the outrage that I feel. If it weren’t for the people on this website/blog I would be extremely lonely. I was reading an article about the demise of Ladino speakers and Yiddish speakers that compared the political turmoil in the Ottoman Empire and Russia. One item I copied out noted “They eviscerated our learning centers” . That struck me as parallel to the dismantling of libraries (public) and public schools; “everything is on the internet” … I know that the book was the first technology and the printing press was a miracle I just refuse to let go of the book that I can own on the shelf and read several times without paying a fee each time….
When colleagues don’t seem to pay attention, I think it is because they are overwhelmed and too busy to stop and think about the big picture. They are often too concerned with their personal lives and with keeping their jobs to bother with studying what is happening right under their noses. They seem more in tune when their own children’s lives are impacted by the testing and by the concepts of “disruption”. Rocking the boat has become the norm.
you are probably right , Deb.
Thanks for your comment
this site was pointed out by Diane a few weeks back in an article by Valerie Strauss where she describes the writings of Janelle Scott (Washington Post article)
quoting Janelle Scott: “This misunderstanding of the history of the civil rights struggle reveals one of the key flaws in the push for market-based educational solutions. The top-down, managerial, approaches pursued by leading school reformers ignores the vital, grassroots efforts underway in low-income communities, many of which directly challenge the market approach to schools that embraces competition, choice without equity provisions, and privatization. ”
John Lewis says it is time to march again…. John was quoted on NPR yesterday that they had to formulate training situations (socio drama) where they would practice someone spitting on them and someone putting out a cigarette in their hair because they knew that was coming in their struggle. Father Drinan was one of the individuals in the 60s who was active on the anti-war movement and civil rights at that time; I was on BU campus at the time.
Get access to Teaching Matters via the U.S. Dept. Of Ed. They are gung ho in their revamping efforts!