Those who seek to apply business thinking to education make a huge error. SomeDAM Poet, a regular commenter, cites the work of the brilliant education scholar Yong Zhao, who has consistently argued that progress and creativity rely on diversity, not standardization. This is, for example, a fundamental flaw of the Common Core, which claims without evidence that the imposition of national standards for teaching, testing, teacher education, and curriculum will lead to vast improvements. Predictably, over a decade, it has failed to produce what was promised.
Bill Gates saw the Common Core standards, which he funded in their entirety, as necessary and beneficial standardization that would transform education. In 2014, he told a conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that teachers should defend the Common Core.
He said:
“If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive,” he said. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers, he said.
If students and teachers were toasters, he would be right.
SomeDAM Poet explained why standardization is wrong in these comments on the blog:
The error that the “education as a business” proponents make is in assuming that “standardizing” the process necessarily leads to higher quality output.
For a manufacturing process, that is actually true: the greater the standardization and control over the process, the lower the defect rate.
But, of course, the error is in assuming that an idea developed for manufacturing applies to education, where the goal is entirely different.
In manufacturing, the goal is to eliminate as much variation as possible and the best way of doing that is to carefully control the process.
With education, the goal should certainly not be elimination of variation, since that is the source of all creative thinking, which is more important today than it ever had been.
Yong Zhao has pointed this out many times, but of course, the billionaires, politicians and other widget manufacturers never listen to people who actually know what they are talking about.
Even in business, it is the “outliers” (Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and others) who drive change with new ideas.
It is only after the fact — after a new idea for a product like a smartphone or electric car has been proposed — that the mindless manufacturing focus on reducing defects goes into effect .
Evolution works this way as well. Random mutations sometimes produce characteristics that make an organism better adapted to its environment and it is only after the initiall change that the process settles down into a new stable state.
If all variation were rejected without regard for whether it makes an organism better adapted, there would be no evolution and hence no development of higher life forms.
The reason that standardization works well for manufacturing is that manufactured parts do only one thing and often have to fit together with other parts. For such a case , it is advantageous to eliminate as much variation as possible.
But what should be obvious is that humans don’t just do one thing, so the idea that one should apply a manufacturing model to education is just ridiculous.
Great article, SomeDAM Poet. Thank you.
True that.
A great post from SomeDAM.
Our current Ed Deform nonsense, ofc, dates from the Bush, Jr. administration. One of the things they did was to emphasize a single test-and-punish model (both college AND career ready, lmao) for all K-12 students, something the Obama and Trump administrations ran with. What a freaking disaster. Even if we see everything through a “human capital” lens as the Deformers do, it should be obvious enough that an extremely diverse economy needs people readied for extremely varying roles in that economy. We need cosmologists AND cosmetologists. The notion that education is about imparting to everyone the same “skills” from the puerile, backward, untestable, lacuna-filled Gates/Coleman bullet list (which now goes by many names throughout the country–the same vinegar in different wine bottles with different labels) is ridiculous. WRONG FROM THE START. We desperately need a LOT more vocational alternatives in high school. It simply is not the case that everyone needs Algebra II and Trig. Some folks need auto body repair, computer network installation and maintenance, pharmacy tech, and so on. Instead, we put all our students through the same stamping machine.
I long for the day when students across America write on the standardized test one thing and one thing only:
Sorry, my mind is not standardized enough to formulate the requested responses.
Yes, High school could be academic or technical with some overlapping liberal arts courses. Two valedictorians, one technical, one academic.
YES!
After 60+ Years of teaching in real public schools and community colleges, studying the art of teaching and having to deal educational reforms passed by Republican legislatures which are dominated by lawyers and business leaders; I know that most educational reformers view education through the perspective of industrial production efficiency. The reforms based on this perspective in bound to be an assured failure.
Children are not widgets to be molded an formed on a conveyor belt. Each is unique, each learn differently, each learn at a different pace and each find different subjects either difficult or totally impossible to understand. Teaching is not manufacturing, it is not trying to produce interchangeable uniform “products!” Reforms based on, even just a little, on this idea are destined to fail.
I am a teacher who practices the ART OF TEACHING, but no amount of training, practice or demands that I meet testable “standards” will never make me the next Rembrandt, Shakespeare or Bill Gates.
We must stop looking at education as a production line into which a set amount of raw material goes in and a uniform product emerges from the end of that process.
All educational “reforms” must start with the professional teachers in our classrooms who understand the pressure on their students and themselves as well as the art of successful teaching.
Let the lawyers in our legislature “reform” industrial production and distribution for business without the business leaders in the legislature having any input. Then let the business leaders in the legislature “reform” the state law codes without the lawyers have any input. How well do you think that would work?
As long as the professionals in the trenches (our classrooms) are out of the loop the legislated educational reforms are certain to fail.
great words: the ART of teaching. We fight to protect the creative side of teaching what the larger monetary game would push out
“…through the perspective of industrial production efficiency…” Is that their real view? Perhaps they actually view things from a much narrower perspective.
My experience with the general public is that every one I meet views education with a somewhat inaccurate eye on their own experience in education. Even teachers revert back to the models they watched as learners as they ply their trade.
The reasons the reforms fail is that the legislators either want them to fail on purpose, or that they are too myopic to recognize failure in anything in any form.
Students are not plugs for appliances. Shopping for schools is not like buying pizza. Teachers cringe when they hear folksy, false analogies from the disruptive political and business domains applied to education. Teachers know that students are complex, multi-faceted beings that should not be “standardized.” Students are not products on a production line. People are social and emotional beings that must be valued, encouraged, guided and inspired.
Humans are diverse beings, and often it is their diversity that makes them interesting. One reason quality public schools are so important is that we do not know from where the next big idea will come. Education needs to nurture students talents and interests as well as provide them with a solid foundational education so that they can become informed participants in democratic governance.
Thank you for your ever divergent thinking and wicked sense of humor, SomeDAM.
Of course, the tech industry serving education has participated in the international quest for a “plug and play” interface, with automatic downloads of software and automatic uptake of class rosters.This is Bill Gates’ heart’s desire (if he has a heart).He is not alone.
Our National Center for Education Statistics is part of a larger program—the IMS Global Consortium–where the planned digital revolution for K-12 education is marketed and is under refinement. IMS stands for Instructional Management Systems.
IMS “revolutionists” call for schools, districts, and entrepreneurs to adopt a four-step process of change.
–Only use IMS Certified Products. Why? IMS has certified that these products are interoperable; that is, guaranteed to work with almost every computer. In computing, “plug and play” means that software and devices are designed to work without any reconfiguration or adjustment by the user.
— The use of an IMS Certified app (e.g., Clever, Magic Box) will launch instruction online with only one click, and with a capture of the unique identifications for the school, course, teacher of record, and every student.
— IMS expects and values color-coded data dashboards and more actual “data-driven instruction” achieved with help from the artificial intelligence of machines.
–Savings from IMS “interoperable” products are increased by the use of a “badge method” to certify learning. Learning is evident in the completion of tasks programmed into IMS certified products.
In effect, the learning revolution happens when instruction is outsourced to programmers who are skilled in producing IMS certified “plug and play” products—curricula, playlists of resources, tests, and the rest.
https://www.imsglobal.org/background.html
IMS, started in 1997, has money. A conspicuous “platinum-level” funder is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Another is eLumen, a system first marketed to higher education but expanding to elementary and secondary education. The eLumen system claims to integrate curriculum and tests, with learning outcomes monitored for individual students.
A major role for IMS in standardizing instruction is a multilayered system of computer codes for characteristics of instruction. See for example CASE Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange. This source allows you to see how artificial intelligence—machine-based instruction—requires computer-coded “competencies.” https://www.imsglobal.org/introduction-case-competencies-and-academic-standards-exchange-case
IMS Global is also supported by about 180 vendors in education, including Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. Add to this list many buyers of IMS Certified products, including (in 2018) these school districts–Houston, Texas; Volusia County, Florida; Gwinnett County, Georgia among others. IMS Global has relationships with computer-centric education agencies in Japan, the Netherlands, the EU, UK, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Spain.
In other words, a future for education is being written as if online platforms will be the new normal, unconstrained by national or state policies and borders. That also means there will be less opportunity for working and thinking about education in the contexts of local schools, communities, and institutions of higher education.
Computer-centric education also points to a future with fewer teachers, fewer brick and mortar schools, and more authority over education (and other social goods and services) determined by mega-computer companies, along with tech-friendly lobbies, private foundations and venture capitalists.
This is to say that the forms of variation long associated with creativity are unlikely to be nurtured in tech-centric educational products purporting to be superior means of “managing instruction.”
Gates’ big ideas are the same of mastery learning flop of the 1970s, only now it is deadly, dull computer generated worksheets. It’s same old lipstick on a different pig, but now it is “innovative” because Gates said so.
Anyone that feels the need for a badge should join law enforcement. My daughter earned a ton of badges when she got her Gold Award from the Girl Scouts. Don’t fall for billionaire adulation.
You, too, can sign up and become a Gates Insider! LMAO.
SDP can bring the prose when he wants to!
Excellent analysis.
I used to cry when I got a “B” in art class on my report card . I loved art class but I couldn’t draw well to save my soul (and I still can’t!). My mother used to tell me that the world would be a really boring place if everyone were the same….then she would try to direct my attention to something that I did well. I have always tried to instill this in both of my children, but CC and the data craziness pushed in a test centric public school district has made this almost impossible. It’s no wonder that child/teen mental illness and suicide rates have increased along with diagnoses of ADD/ADHD….then Big Pharma makes a killing on the drugs to keep the kids in a zombie like state of obedience.
I taught art. And many of my students could not draw. My mantra, “What is the worst thing you can do? Compare yourself to others! Look at the funny pages. Are all the comics the same? It would be a a boring world if someone never thought of a sponge living in a pineapple under the sea. I reminded them, “If you try to draw a tree and it keeps looking like a rat, your are the best rat drawer in class. No matter what someone says, no one can draw like you do. No one can make that original piece of art like you do. As Bob Ross said, “I am not an artist; I am a technician — I teach technique.” It is easier to teach technique but no one can garner the soul of your “Artist Within” through color, line, and the wonderful emotions conveying how a splat of yellow on a white canvas makes one feel like you.” Yes, I remember them (with no art experience telling me how I wasn’t teaching art correctly) “You need to have more math in art. You need to have more science in art. If not, we will have to cut your program.” And I was the one they said was ignorant. Needless to say, the only way to nourish my student’s souls was to be “Charvet Rogue Rider of the West.” And that went for all subjects I taught. And of course, I got into trouble, evaluated poorly, and let kids listen to music while creating. My claim to fame is taking a young man slated for expulsion, helping him every step of the way get a $44K Merit Scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago. There were no ticker tape parades or much mention of this, but I know — only the way we learned together and not some standardized art program would have got him there. The admissions director stated, “This is the most original art we have seen in a long while. Most are just mimics. This young man is the real deal.” Otherwise, we were in a perpetual state of the “Stepford Wives Syndrome.” Face forward. No talking. No breathing. No eating. No smiling. There, one, two, three — that’s how you draw a rose. And all the little roses were hung in the corridor looking like any other rose in the garden.
My favorite example is the comic XKCD, which is all drawn with stick figures
https://xkcd.com/
Who hasn’t drawn stick figures at one time or another?
But who other than Randall Munroe considered using stick figures as a basis of a very popular comic strip?
I used to love to watch Bob Ross paint his mountain scenes and “happy trees.”
Though I am no more a real artist than a real poet, I used to spend hours on end drawing as a little kid and have done some painting as an adult.
http://halgeranonpaintings.blogspot.com/
I used to write “climate change poetry ” under the pseudonym Horatio Algeranon. Somewhat bizarre genres, I admit.
I have a good friend who has made a career out of selling his paintings and he just laughs when I bring up Bob Ross, but I always thought he was very good.
Shows what I know about art, I guess.
Beautiful.
You sound like me in typing class. No matter how hard I tried, I was mediocre at best. I still am! My lack of typing talent taught me a lesson in humility and empathy for others that struggled with academics.
SomeDAM does it again! This post and its comments should be written into enabling legislation for our public schools.
Good points, SDP. I would, however, like to question your evolution analogy. Sometime the “higher life forms” in the biological world do not really make a good analogy. Herbert Spencer, the English father of sociology who coined the term, “survival of the fittest”, bequeathed us Social Darwinism making the same mistake. Evolution takes place over long periods of time. Human developments affect people in the moment. We cannot, for example, wait for people’s attitude toward people of color and difference to “evolve.” Instead, we are forced to seek social justice and evolve the situation ourselves.
My point about evolution was that if one eliminates all variation without regard to adaptation, evolution stops.
And higher life forms are clearly a product of natural selection working on random mutations.
If it came across as implying anything else, I apologize.
The interesting thing about evolution is that it is not always obvious which variation(s) will make an individual better adapted to it’s environment and hence more likely to leave it’s genes to successive generations. If humans were the ones who decided that, we would almost certainly choose wrong in many cases. All the inbred dogs with hip problems and other health issues are a perfect example of this.
Any breeder of cattle has had the experience of having a calf that was a little too close to the vine. Like human imagination, it is always good to branch out in genetics.
You have to mix the genes a bit. Variation is necessary. Do NOT get down with your sister.
I am attempting to work up a school board candidate questionnaire meant to be very non-traditional and even controversial and to be put out in the style of an open letter to all candidates. Borrowing from “Systems Thinking: A Primer” by the late Donella Meadows, two draft items on the questionnaire are:
To what degree do homogeneity and predictably comfort you? Explain.
To what degree do heterogeneity and unpredictability frighten you? Explain.
Suggested questions will be greatly appreciated. Reply here or to edwjohnson@aol.com
“If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive,” he said. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers, he said.
Wow! So profound.
Unbelievable. I am sure he felt like he had made an insightful analogy.
Factories control the inputs of the manufacturing process……. by the age of 5 the “inputs” of education are so beautifully unique that no standardized process could capture what they need to grow and thrive.
Poet, there is one reason and one reason only why standardization works: It makes it easy for Bill Gates to get richer off the data from standardized tests and curricula.
Agree, but Bill Gates is not the only one getting rich from promoting standardized education and doing serious damage to the principle that professionalism in education is possible. Gates was not alone in pressing forward policies that marginalized the judgment of teachers. Groups representing thousands of teachers participated in doing this damage.
We have a glut of national standards on the books. My last count in 2016 was 3,558 from 16 groups representing pre-K-12 educators and support groups like school counselors. These standards included contradictions, duplications, and serious errors stated as if facts to know (e.g. a well-known Impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt, reclassified as an American regionalist. That is/was a history standard.
So the standardistos said do it, NCLB and ESSA reinforced that nonsense. What is not widely understood: Teachers can be fired if they fail to have curricula linked to district standards.
Credit to Susan Ohanian, a superb critic and teacher for the term “standardistos.”
I would love to see students everywhere write this and nothing else on the test:
Sorry, my mind is not standardized enough to formulate the requested responses. I’m sure someone else will be tickled to get your gold star.
Excellent post, Diane and Poet.
I remember one of the explanations, when Gates first applied his model (and “apply it” he did), was:
We live in a much more mobile society than in the past. People’s jobs often require being transferred from one area of the country to another. Through standardization of the curriculum (right down to what’s taught on specific calendar days), Johnny, who’s family has just moved from Omaha to New York City, will be able to jump right back into the flow.
This was an actual talking/selling point for imposition of the CCSS and all its trappings. No muss. No fuss.
The concept that anyone could possibly think this scenario anywhere near to possible is beyond comprehension. Yes; teachers understand the flaws because it’s our profession. But, seriously: use your common sense.
That was a great post, Poet. I love the idea of people from varied backgrounds meeting up at college, on the job, on line, etc; exchanging different and similar points of view and building new ideas from there. It’s our life spring.