Peter Greene knows, as do we, that the tech industry has stolen and misused the term “personalized learning,” which to them means a student in front of a computer that holds his or her data.
In this post, he reimagines a future of genuine personalized learning, in which there are small classes and one to one instruction.
But what if we reclaimed the term “personalized education”? What if we decided that the key to personalized learning is not computers, but human beings? Could we meet the needs of students and the recommendations of the CDC? Let’s play the reimagining education game. What could actual personalized education look like?
To really personalize education, you need to provide more time and opportunity for teachers and individual students to interact. There are many ways we could do this, but let’s try this—split the school day in half and have teachers spend half the day teaching class, and half the day in conference with individual students. Reduce class size to a maximum of fifteen; that will allow teachers to get to know students better, sooner, and will also make it easier to do social distancing within the classroom. It retains class meetings, which provide the invaluable opportunity for learning to occur as part of a community of learners.
Can we afford it? Of course we can, if educating the future is a priority. If the president persuaded Congress that we had to make war, Congress would write in the numbers on a blank check.A trillion? No problem.
Our children? No problem.
Oppose any cuts. Education needs huge increases to keep our students and teachers and staff safe. We should spend whatever is necessary to protect them and our future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
KUDOS for yet another vision for the future. I refer to a students MAP (My Action Plan) which guides a student along THEIR pathway to success. To complex to talk about here but http://www.wholechildreform.com
The most frustrating thing about teaching, to me, was that there were too many kids and never enough time. Billy Gates, who must be one of the slowest learners in America, did a study and found that class size didn’t affect outcomes on his stupid, invalid tests. And for a while, that became an ed deform mantra: class size doesn’t matter. Put 1,000 kids in a cavern with computers and a proctor. And every time I read that or heard that, I wanted to kick something.
Gee, how about actually knowing your students? How about actually having the ability to personalize their learning? Of course, good teachers do this all the time. As a high-school teacher, this often took them form, with me, of talking with kids about where they were headed and what they wanted to do after high school, giving them advice about this, suggesting programs and books to read, trying to get them to grok that it was going to be up to them to create themselves. But there was never enough time. School days were like the chocolates assembly line in that classic episode of “I Love Lucy.”
Classes in my Bronx school are capped at 34. Even then, every year we see classes of 38 where students must sit on the floor. Every model I see divides classes in half and students attend every other day. Mind you many classes have 2 and even 3 adults in the room. There is no way we can do alternate days. The best we could do is every 4 days.
In order to implement human personalized learning, it would take investment. In the current political climate, there is little interest in making real investment in public schools. With more than half of the students in our schools qualifying for free or reduced lunch, schools should consider providing wrap around services to students. Poor students often have health and/or emotional issues that require attention beyond the regular classrooms. Needy students should be in smaller classes so that the teacher can help students more directly. If we seek to provide all students with equity, we must provide extra services and supports to those that are struggling. Poor students should be in smaller, not larger classes.
Computer instruction is no substitute for human interaction. More than half of college students said they would defer for a semester if online instruction is the only option. This is because online instruction cannot meet the academic needs and provide the meaningful assistance that human instruction offers. Students know this better than anyone.
Amen: “ Computer instruction is no substitute for human interaction.”
Thank you.
We have to keep imagining what is best for kids…given today’s challenges, kids need teachers and in-person schooling more than ever!
Peter’s analysis is right on and there’s an emerging analogy in cancer treatment. The next frontier is personalized–some call it precision–medicine. That means instead of treating patients with one-size-fits-all regimens by categorized disease types, doctors would look at the genetics, fitness, age, sex, ethnicity, and other variables to treat each patient with the optimal therapies to fit their characteristics. It would literally mean hundreds or even thousands of variations of treatment for a particular type of cancer that has differing genetic characteristics within a disease type. To achieve it would require more in-depth knowledge of each possible variable and how it would interact with a myriad of other variables. The corollary in education is smaller class sizes, teacher training to recognize how best to teach each student according their needs and circumstances. And if we could do that, then teaching in times of pandemics would be more personalized.
This sounds like a plan for elementary education where one teacher meets with, say a single class of under 36, and teaches all or most subjects.
An art teacher I know who works in an affluent district meets 800 students a week. All are fourth graders. Almost every class has students who have IEPs. Perhaps Peter is suggesting that music, art, physical education, and other teachers who are regarded as “specials” should be considered expendable. I think Peter’s imagination is wonderful but it seems here to suppress a lot of assumptions about who is teaching who, at what grade levels, and about the home environments of students who would be engaged in individualized or small group discussions with their teachers.
Also, the Education Policy Institute is out with a report on the stunning job losses in education since the financial meltdown in 2008-09. These in combination with retirements and relentless attacks on teachers has thinned the ranks of employees even as enrollments have increased.
In any case, I’d much prefer Peter imagining possibilities than the tech salespeople who think online delivery of instructional systems and virtual reality should eliminate the need for teachers.
Stop reimagining education!
Lost Lennon lyric: “Imagine there’s no reimagining”
Imagine breaking up big tech companies
It isn’t hard to do
Imagine tech billionaires paying progressive income taxes
And maybe a wealth tax too
Imagine Teddy and Franklin Delano
Trust busting and restoring prosperity to the free world
You
You may say I’m dreamer
But I’m not the only one — seriously, there were Roosevelts once.
I hope some day Gates will leave us alone
And the world will live as one