Experiments? NIMBY!

NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - is the standard human response to many situations and proposals for the betterment of society. A new prison? A must, but not in my district. Move Guantanamo Bay prisoners? Certainly, but not in my state. Conduct research on education, with it's accompanying risk of error? Can't do without it, but not in my kids' school.

Usually the NIMBY response is discussed with disdain, because there is something inconsistent about agreeing something is necessary, but not being willing to shoulder a part of the burden. But while disdain makes the disdainer feel morally superior to the disdainee, which let's admit is a great feeling, it doesn't solve the problem: Unless we find another type of solution, we still need to build a new prison, and it is going to be in somebody's back yard.

The reason we parents are unhappy with research in our kids' school, is that we are very protective of our kids, and want nothing bad to happen to them. That's good. We also tend to be quite conservative with our kids (as well as with our own survival.) The sense is that what didn't hurt us yesterday is not likely to hurt us today, so why change and run the risk that the new thing will hurt us. Completing this tendency is the fact that meaningful research is not just observation, but trying something and seeing if it works. And often it doesn't work. For example, trying a new way to learn Math may create, in a year or two, a group of children who are a year or two - or more - behind in their Math studies. Nobody wants that for their kids.

In some cases, the solution to the NIMBY dilemma lies completely in the mind, and is relatively easy. Such is the case with research in education. Reality check: Our kids are already subject to risky trial-and-error.
Example 1: A new teacher in school - is he going to be great, mediocre, or terrible? Test as we may - we will have to wait and see.
Example 2: Teaching kids about he Internet - it has never been tried before, so who knows if we are doing it right? Worse: The Internet we teach about today is going to be obsolete in just a few years. Will the way we teach it now serve our children or not?
Example 1+2: The teacher who is known to have been a pretty good teacher for 20 years. Now that same teacher needs to teach new kids in the context of new technology, new society, new values... Is the teaching going to serve the kids or hurt them?
Example 3: Tried and true methods of teaching are based on the assumption that the teacher knows everything necessary for the kids to know, and is responsible to convey that knowledge. This is no longer the case: Knowledge is available through the Internet - much more than what we can expect the teacher to know; The kids often know facts not known to the teacher; What used to be true, is now often called into question; Authority in general is now limited - uncertainty rules. There are no tried and true methods to deal with the current reality, so many school systems are changing the teaching methods of everything beyond the ancient subjects of language and basic math. New teaching methods mean more trial and error.

What stems from these examples is that trial and its accompanying error are already here. They have to be here in order to deal with both ongoing and changing reality. The question we need to ask is not "do we want trial and error?" but "how do we want our trial and error?" I propose the answer: "Scientific, and well managed."

There should be certain rules to experimentation in a context that can cause damage to something important

1. No experiments that can cause irreversible damage.
   That's not a real problem with education - the human (child) mind can heal very well
2. Controlled experiments on limited population.
   Unlike some education establishment nowadays, which tend to experiment on the whole population at once
3. Close-up tracking to identify unwanted effects, and quick re-evaluation in such cases.
   E.g, If a new method for teaching reading and writing doesn't seem to work well - stop quickly
4. Total commitment to correct any unwanted effects - even if the cost is high.
   In the context of education, this may mean bringing a super-teacher to help children catch up with lost materials, or to help them regain a positive attitude towards a subject
5. Continuous involvement with the population. In the 21^st century, it is not a real option to keep the people in the dark regarding experiments being done on them.
   In the context of education, it's the population's parents.
6. Scientific methodology in general: Double blind tests; Control groups; Published results for peer review; Repeatable experiments, etc.

This sounds a bit like a political statement, but I think it can withstand serious scrutiny: Keeping to those rules, and probably a few more, can help minimize damage and maximize gain from the inevitable experimentation that goes on in the education system.