Micromanagement

This is a big one.  It's at the core of the problem of industrial education.  Most organized education systems are just that - organized.  They are an organization.  Usually, an old fashioned organization, with central command, and with lots of rules, bylaws and lines of authority.  And from one year to the next, there are more rules, not less.  It is all very natural: The organization people manage the field people.  Logistical, administrative, legal and political (national & local) concerns tend to overshadow pedagogic concerns, since the organization is made of more logistics and administration people than pedagogues.  Also, the non-pedagogues have more time and attention for the power-struggle.  Pedagogues are busy thinking about education…  of all things…  The organizational center is worried about controlling a very large organization with hundreds of thousands of teachers at many thousands of locations, being responsible for millions of pupils.   The natural response to this worry, taken together with the type of people and type of activities in the organizational center, often leads to strict control of the center over the field.  At least an attempt of strict control.  At its worst, this strict control is embodied in micromanagement - an attempt to control exactly who will teach, how they will teach, when they will teach, whom they will teach, certainly what they will teach, whether they will be allowed to teach one subject or another, and none of that pesky "why."

Again, all this is very natural. Education systems are very large organizations. A large organization is interested in itself, its own internal rules are enough to create a microcosm around the people working in it.  Especially the people who are removed from the field, since those at the field - teachers - are less likely to think the organization is the whole world.  The field people encounter a larger world every day through the pupils and parents.

What are the results of this micromanagement?

For pupils, micromanagement means that the teaching is aimed at a certain theoretical group of pupils, since the [micro]managers are concerned with all the pupils and they can't be familiar with all the individual students.  This theoretical group may be at the mean of abilities in one subject or another; it may have a certain learning style; they have a certain emotional state; etc.  The micromanaged teacher is not allowed to suit the teaching speed, material, method or timing to the needs of the individual pupils in front of him.  So the pupils get a lesson that is not suitable for them.  At any given time, most of the pupils get the wrong lesson in the wrong timing and the wrong way.

For educators, micromanagement means they are reduced to Modern-Times-type technicians, lacking control over their time and actions.  Being micromanaged, the teacher's own judgement is not very relevant.  The teacher has very little autonomy.  People who are good at what they are doing - be it teachers or any other profession - tend to demand a measure of autonomy.  Offer to them a job description with "subservience" as a significant component, and they will decline.  Micromanagement in education alienates many would-be good teachers, and breaks the back of those good teachers who do enter the system.  the same goes for principals, counselors, etc.

For the education system as a whole, micromanagement means that there is no room for innovation.  Innovation needs to be connected to the field.  The opportunity for innovation must be available to many people - not just to a designated innovator at the main office.  As a result of systematic-non-innovation, many education systems are the most conservative organizations one can find.  They don't change at all, and ignore the quick changing world around them.  The very world for which they are supposed to prepare the pupils.

To conclude:  Micromanagement is a natural occurence in large organizations, and is natural to education systems.  The only problems with it are that: Micromanagement of education impedes learning, impedes teaching and prevents the education system from performing its core function.

Democratize education!

Tough Choices

What choices are tough?

All choices are tough.  Inherently. To choose is to risk an error, while at the same time taking responsibility.  Very unpleasant business.

This post is a short addendum to an older one - Price of Freedom, which was a bit theoretical.  Now I can add a few more recent insights and experiences, to make the idea more real.

A few months ago my wife and I decided to look for a better school and a better kindergarten. Not for the theoretical pupil which is to become the theoretical graduate, but for our own very real children. Big difference.

We knew that our decisions are going to have a significant impact on our kids' well-being.  These decisions will affect their distant future, for example, what type of schools they graduate.  The decisions will affect their more immediate future, for example, their sense of belonging to one community or another, their contact with their friends.  Even the very preliminary decision to consider  change had an immediate impact on the children's present - they were worried about the coming changes, about the coming unknown, about moving away from the familiar.  These were the difficulties inherent in any contemplated change involving our kids.

To this distress we had the added factor of the schooling market being far from a perfect market:  We didn't know enough about what schools are available - either in our area or farther away.  Of those schools we did know existed, we didn't know enough about their qualities.  And then of course, even if a school is good for some kids, it may not be good for others.  And we have two very different children to take care of.

Until now in this text I have been using the plural "we" when talking about decisions, but the married reader is probably aware that there is never a "we" in such unclear situations.  There are two separate "I"s.  Each with its own anxieties and fears.  Trying to make a joint decision about a complex system (kids, parents, jobs, studies, accommodation, social contacts) without knowing what would be good for the kids (because it's not knowable), without having all the information about the market, without knowing the future.

Putting it more formally, school choice is done with high stakes - our kids well-being.  It is done with no internal clarity about what's right for the kids.  It is done with no external clarity about what the options are.  It is done (if we are lucky) jointly by two different people, about very different kids.  And there is no relief from the responsibility - it is ours. If anything goes wrong - it's our fault.

So, that wasn't easy at all. And it was probably much easier for us than for most people, since we are involved in education, and we have the economic privilege of being able to move.  Also, we are in the habit of making choices about our lives. There are many people who aren't used to making choices.  They think they have no choice.

We ended up moving to a place where we actually have a choice between two different schools.  We went for the democratic school.  We will know if that was a good decision in 10 years.  Maybe.

Discomfort Zone

I like working with computers.  They are predictable - kind of; they don't have complex emotions; they don't expect anything; and if I don't enjoy working with them, I can just turn them off and go do something else.  It's easy.  It's comfortable.

But over the years I started working with people, employing people, selling products and services, selling ideas, getting socially involved.  Also started a family, raising children...  Suddenly I am surrounded by people who are not predictable, have complex and dynamic emotions, expecting things from me.  I am responsible for their well-being...  I strayed so far from my comfort zone, that I am not sure I can find my way back.  The story of course is not that simple, but close enough to demonstrate the issue of comfort zone.

It seems that to achieve almost anything I want, I have to leave my comfort zone.  And I am not very special this way:  The comfort zone is normally inert, unchanging, un-achieving, restful, sluggish...  It has it place, but generally it doesn't support development.

What does all this have to do with education?

Education is a place of development.  Learning is development and change.  If a pupil remains in his comfort zone, development and change (=learning) are not likely.  Much of learning is trying new ideas and activities.  By definition, these new things are not the old comfort zone.  Even worse, trial goes with error.  Trying new things is closely associated with failure - at least at first.  I don't know anyone whose comfort zone is large enough to include failure. Those people who deal well with failure are just more tolerant of it, and recover more quickly from the discomfort of having failed.  They are flexible in moving in and out of their comfort zone.

So, learning is change.  Change is not very compatible with the comfort zone.

Also, learning involves failure.  Failure is very incompatible with the comfort zone.

Learners must be flexible outside their comfort zone.

What about teaching?  As in "standing in front of a group of people who are themselves out of their comfort zone?"  Sounds uncomfortable.  Definitely error-prone.  Sadly riddled with failure. For mortals, it's way out of the comfort zone.

Teachers must be flexible outside their comfort zone.  They are the ones who should be able to model flexibility in moving into and out of the comfort zone, so pupils can learn that, too.

So much for learning and teaching.  What about the school graduate?  Can she stay much in her comfort zone?  Since we expect the world to keep changing quite rapidly, we can expect the graduate (=ourselves) to keep learning constantly, which means we all need to be outside our comfort zone much of the time, and to tolerate our own failures.

We all must be flexible outside our comfort zone.

It is a worthy habit to develop.

Minimalist Core (Curriculum?)

What's at the core of Education?  Or, rather, what should be at the core of education?  Often we refer to "Core Curriculum," but many of us are not even sure that the curriculum is at the core.  Maybe it's the school's environment?  Maybe the side-effects of schooling, such as socialization into the larger society, are at the core?  And what is that socialization about - is it about becoming a good citizen?  A productive (economically of course) member of society?  A subservient employee? A well-rounded human, whatever that is?  A happy person?

As usual, more questions than answers.  And maybe that's good, as Isidor Rabi would say.

Without noticing it, the main question became "who is the desired graduate?"  I wrote about that some two years ago, but this time I will go towards the minimalist end.

Let's start with two levels of characteristics of the graduate:  Personal and Society.  Notice I leave the Transcendental/Spiritual outside the short-list.  Not saying it's unimportant, but feeling that it cannot be discussed and agreed upon by different people of different spiritual denominations.

Personal:
Everybody wants the best for their kids.  Different people think that "best" is different things.  No reason to formalize it in state laws.  Let parents and pupils select a school from those offered, according to their own perception of what's personally good for them.  Spirituality can fit nicely here, too.

Society:
We tend to want the graduate to be a contributing member to society, and again an avalanche of questions ensues:  What do we expect from everyone:  Economic contribution?    And how much is enough economic contribution?  From each according to his abilities, as Karl Marx would have it? Full participation in the democratic process?  And what is enough participation?  Participating as a voter? as an activist? as a candidate for a public post? as a member of the crowd cheering to a Dear Leader?  Do we expect many people to volunteer their time for civic society activities?
But the title says "Minimalist."  This follows the basic understanding that the wider the demands, the farther we get from the possibility of consensus.
So, instead of requiring everybody to be a contributor to society in many ways, let's just try to make sure nobody harms society beyond what it can tolerate.  A sort of societal Primum Non Nocere - First, do no harm. And here is my personal opinion, correct to September 27^th, 2011, 14:11:30

• Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic.
  Without a good grasp of all three, a person is likely to become a burden on society.  There is room for some details, such as the required level of reading, the content of arithmetic studies, etc.
• Democracy
  Representative Democracy, to be exact.  This is the modern western state-religion, and deviations from it are dangerous to the stability of such societies.  This core subject includes several important requirements
• An understanding of the mechanisms:  Voting; Parliament; Government; Judiciary; Journalism; Lobbying; Good-old-boy networks; Politics
• Various granted freedoms
• Equality
• Violence is the Monopoly of the State.
  Modern western society is quite adamant about that, and can't tolerate almost any violent behavior by individuals.

The issues above may be the only absolute requirements.  Beyond these, society - through the state - may choose to encourage (but not require) a few more core issues:

• A positive attitude towards learning
  
• Good command of English as a second language, for those who don't speak English as a mother tongue.  English won.  For now.
• A deep connection with one's own culture
• A deep understanding of the scientific method.
• An understanding of technology.
• An understanding of historical processes.
• A positive attitude towards Representative Democracy.  Did anyone say "indoctrination?"
• A positive attitude towards participation in civic society.  Volunteering one's time and efforts
• A positive attitude towards personal economic viability:  Being an effective producer and a voracious consumer of goods and services... See why I prefer to be a minimalist?

These may constitute the core of education.  What's required and what's merely encouraged.  All the rest may be left to the individual schools, teachers, parents and pupils.  No state-mandated content, teaching-methods, timetables, etc.

Assessment

To make sure this post is focused on a single coherent issue, I will think of assessment as part of the general subject of measurement,.  Measurement can be concerned with anything, including money, buildings and their characteristics, time, noise, people, etc.  Assessment - in my current arbitrary definition - is concerned with people, and more specifically, with people's progress towards their goals.

The motivation for assessment is the same as for more general measurements - it provides feedback to all involved, which enables them to see where they are going, and to correct their course if they find they are going somewhere different than where they wanted to go.  I hold these truths to be self evident, that anyone working in open-loop - i.e., without feedback - is bound to fail, except in the simplest of tasks; and that mass education is not simple at all.

First, let's get the following off the table:  In my opinion, testing as it is normally done in schools is a poor method of assessment.  Incessant testing is a detriment to learning, and standardized testing is a detriment to teaching.  I put some of these thoughts in writing in previous posts about tests and about announcements.  The general idea is that studying for a test is very unlike learning, and succeeding in a standard test is quite different than having acquired knowledge, skills or habits.  Whew!  I am glad I took that off my chest.  Now I can continue speaking in praise of assessment without being accused of being a test-happy bureaucrat.  I hope.

Open minded people thinking about assessment of pupils' progress, often talk about using informal methods, such as conversation between a teacher and a pupil, thinking together about what has happened, what is going on, what their expectations may be, etc.  If this sounds vague, it's only because it is.  Such conversation - and what educators sometimes call "reflection" - can be useful in digging underneath the surface and gaining insights.  It has similar advantages to those of qualitative research, and very similar disadvantages, as I discussed in Education Research Impracticalities a while ago.  One specific issue with such methods, which may be called "qualitative assessment," is that of credibility.  A conversation between two or more people is very personal.  It could go differently if other people were involved - for example, if the assessment talk happened between the same pupil and another teacher.  The conclusions from such a conversation depend on the specific people involved, on their mood, and on other things.  It is not easily repeatable, and therefore not verifiable and the level of faith the pupil can have in it suffers.  Faith being an important part of the usefulness of feedback.  I think such qualitative assessment methods should be part of the arsenal, but we should not limit ourselves exclusively to them.

To complement the qualitative assessment method

Now, if we say that the assessment is intended to be used as feedback, to promote growth in the directions we want, then surely the pupils are not the only ones who can benefit from it.  So do the teachers, administrators and the school in general.  Assessment of teachers should be done not only because it is indeed useful, but it will lend credence to the teachers' claim that assessment is not a whip to beat the weak with.  It will also let the pupils learn how to relate to assessment by the example of the grown-ups, which may be the only way to learn any behavior.  We can leave the assessment of parents to another phase of utopia.

Compartmentalized Knowledge

I am going over a book I once read: “Motivation in Education,” and I see more clearly than ever how specific and compartmentalized modern expertise is.
An extremely high level of knowledge is expected on a narrow issue for any scientific work.  Like “The Role of Expectancy and Self-Efficacy Beliefs in the context of motivation in education.”  Knowing dozens and dozens of sources, their various theories and beliefs, their differing terminologies, the methodology they used to conduct their experiments, any weaknesses in the experiments or in the logical development of their arguments, etc.  Beyond that, to be an expert one needs to know what the “holes” are in between the shreds of evidence:  What hasn’t been checked; what has been checked but is not quite conclusive; what has been checked a few times with contradicting results.

While it’s not easy to be an expert even in a narrow field, it is extremely difficult to be an expert in a wide field, such as Motivation of school-children in general.  More difficult to be an expert in a wider field such as Learning of school-children.  It’s probably superhuman to have a real understanding of an issue as wide as schooling in general, which involves students, teachers, parents, finance, politics, etc.  I have never met anyone who claims to have a “real understanding” of the education system as a whole, including sufficient detail  to be able to say something definitive about what needs to be done in a specific situation.  Not that there is any dearth of people who are happy to tell us what to do in every situation we encounter.

To make very clear sense of a real world situation, we need to have very clear knowledge of all the components.  As a simple example, if a pupil seems to be falling behind in his grades over a few months, we need to at least understand the nature of material studied, the material studied by that pupil’s previously, a host of motivational issues specific to that pupil, much about the dynamics in the class, the specific dynamics between the pupil and classmates, dynamics between the pupil and teachers, dynamics in the pupil’s home and personal life, neurological and health issues specific to the pupil, the situation in society in general (e.g., is there a war going on?) and more.  And these are just the facts to consider.  In order to consider each set of facts with clarity, we need a different expert – one expert (or team?) for each “compartment” of knowledge.  And then there is the integration – getting the experts to discuss their insights and let a single picture emerge.

It is not difficult to act with perfect expertise in real-life situations.  It is impossible.

What can we do when faced with real situations, involving real people?  One way is to rely on less-than-expert knowledge in the general situation (schooling, in this case) and have enough specific-domain experts looking behind our shoulders and keeping us from doing something already known to be dumb.

A plan? Hah!

After deciding on a plan to improve education (over a year ago), and declaring it, both to myself and to those around me, I took some time to break my ideas down into a more detailed working plan, with quarterly milestones and deadlines… And then life happened.
The milestones and deadlines came and went, making their characteristic “Whooosh” sound. Together with the predictably unpredictable difficulties of turning my plan into a reality, a few unexpected opportunities arose.

I chanced to meet a group of people who felt and continue to feel strongly about the need to provide a diverse range of schools for parents and students to choose from. Not only are they convinced that educational diversity is good for everybody, but they also act upon their convictions.  Imagine that.

Opportunity for cooperation is precious; a chance to work with people who act, who put their irreplaceable time and attention where their mouths are, should be seized. Therefore, the opportunities that presented themselves directed my activity toward creating an infrastructure for building new and diverse education establishments.

This activity corresponds with the ideas that appear in this blog under the headings of “Market Economy,” “Distributed Establishment,” “Freedom of Choice,” etc.  The goal of knowledge sharing and building, referred to in this book mostly in the context of research, becomes an effort secondary to building the schools. The final issue, complementary to the idea of diversity, is that of regulation, and it now awaits its own opportunity to be addressed.

Things are looking up.