Will schools change in twenty years?
An economic point of view
Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat
Will schools change in twenty years? My short opinion to this question is: probably not. Schools, if they still exist, would most likely be the same. By saying the same, I mean school will still segregate students by some criteria; a rigid curriculum will still enforce mass production pedagogy to teachers and students; expectations from the demanding industries and impatient parents will still haunt education reformers with tough arguments and rejections. However, I do believe the way people learn in the future could change. This change may happen in forms of emerged strategies that allow people to be financially successful without schooling or the shift of social expectations that make people depend less on their degrees and diplomas. I believe these changes may make schools seem less important and may one day make schools extinct. In this paper, I will discuss my thoughts that lead to the above conclusions.
Why did schooling catches people’s attention and was rapidly accepted to became such a well-established and sustained system, regardless of reformers’ objections. One main reason was probably the belief that learners should learn with a person who is well trained and is specialized in the filed. This was the same way musicians believed they would develop their skills better when practiced with a novel musician. Thus, schools seemed to be a better place for youngsters to gain their knowledge. But what and how students learned in schools were different than what musician learned from their mentor. Schools were based on the idea of providing equity to all citizens. That is, every student should receive the same basic set of knowledge. Since the number of dedicated teachers never met with the growing number of students, the learning styles that musicians learned from his/her master was not practical. The solution was to use mess-production pedagogy to manage and sustain the school system.
The idea of equity was probably one of the most important foundations that defined the way schools are today. No matter what equity means (e.g. preparing the young generation to be good citizens of a country, providing equal knowledge as foundations to pursue different carriers), it created a definition of a school being a place where every learner would receive and learn exactly the same set of things. These “set of things” were defined by a group of experts and thus resulted in the need for a curriculum. Schools then became similar to a factory that operates in, as Ivan Illich calls, an industrial mode of production [Illich, 1973].
Many people have pointed out how schooling created destructive side effects and many times failed to accomplish its goals. More about this issue could be found in Illich’s book “De-schooling society,” and “Tools for Conviviality.” My focus here is more about why schooling sustains.
One way to look at why schools are so rigid and resistant to change is to discuss what a person is expected to get from being schooled. Generally speaking, one would expect to gain a better life quality though schooling. In a world overwhelmingly attracted to economic well being, a better life usually comes from having better jobs. Since most jobs require a certain level of education, those who do not have the degree are deprived from even trying to get the job. The modern industry has accepted schooling as a way to segregate people into different groups or, more precisely, different grades. Those with their masters and Ph.D.s are usually grouped into the managers, CEOs, and directors category and school-dropouts are seen as mere labors. Though in the end this grouping is often invalid, it does set the public’s general perception.
By looking at schools from this economic point of view, what is important is not really what students learn. It is more about getting the end product: the degrees, the diplomas that put the learner in a higher job-class or lead them to higher education. Thus, what parents care about schooling is that their child is well prepared to for their furthur studies or their jobs. Anything that may disturb this process would turn out to be troublesome and cause resistance. Teachers often share the same objective with parents and react to changes in the same way. Even learners themselves can have this perspective too. While I was teaching at a university in Thailand, many of my students would do anything needed for them to graduate. They did what they were told, but there were no sense of curiosity or engagement in the subject. All that mattered to them was not to get an “F.”
From the discussion above, it is not hard to understand why reform efforts have failed. Though people (parents, teacher, and the society) generally accept ideas like student-centered and project-based learning and may say they want more of these practices in schools, they usually leave a hole in their thoughts that disconnects these changes from people’s expectations. That is, though new learning ideas are demanded, the general expectation remains the same. So, a parent may say: “Yes, we need student-centered learning,” but he or she would also have in mind that “my child should get high SAT scores and get in to MIT or Harvard.” These are unrealized apposing ideas. From the example above, SAT is designed to give high scores to students who perform well in the traditional school practices. It is unlikely that a student who learns in a different environment would succeed the SAT test. As soon as parents and teachers realize this fact, the new practice (or the reform) is questioned and finally rejected. As long as MIT, Harvard, and other universities are associated with good opportunities and high-paying jobs, getting accepted to these universities will remain the ultimate goal for students. And as long as getting in to good universities require high SAT tests, any school reform that would disrupt the process of getting there will be rejected. Though my example is highly exsaturated, I believe it sets the tone for my point.
The discussion above views schools and the industries as a demand-supply chain. Schools and Universities see themselves as part of a process that selects and produce outputs that are supplied to industries based on their demands in different levels. Any improvement in the education system should improve the throughput and the quality of the learners. The industries accept the measurements produced by schools and set their business operations based on the schools’ supply. This demand-supply loop has become well established. Thus, changes cannot happen in the education system or the industries alone. But engineering the change to happen on both sides is also unlikely to succeed. Therefore, I believe the chances that any large-scale school reform would succeed and spread are dim.
However, I do believe that the way people learn could change. Given my emphasis on economic well being, I see two strategies that could work: Engineered biological-approach and an evolutional phenomenon. Engineered biological-approach refers to changes that are well planned and supported. I use the term biological-approach to indicate the way the changes would evolve and spread. Rural and underserved communities are examples of places that this approach could work well. The trap of the demand-supply model discussed above is that students in rural or underserved areas would almost never get a chance to compete with students in rich-urban schools. Thus, they are most likely be categorized in the least-likely-to-get-a-good-job group. Since, it is difficult to compete in the traditional approach, some places may wish to take the risk of doing things that are entirely different. For example, many agricultural communities are self-sustainable in terms of producing and consuming food. Thus, it could make sense for them to have a school that focus more on fulfilling the local needs. It is possible for a carefully designed reform to succeed and sustain. The reformed school would focus very little on teaching discrete subjects (i.e. math, history, art) and on segregating students into age groups, but will focus more on issues to which students could relate themselves or their community. It should not be only a vocational school. Here is where the reform design and technology could play a big role. Instead of learning only the existing skills and knowledge from the local community, visualization tools (e.g. agricultural sensors), communication tools (e.g. the web, e-mail, on-line discussion groups) can help students to think systematically about their environment and enhance their problem solving skills. How this process can happen is a big topic and deserves a whole paper to discuss. But if this kind of reform succeeds, people in these areas will become more competent. When this population reaches a critical mass, even larger changes in the bigger society could happen.
An evolutional phenomenon is a way that changes could happen in a larger scale. The way it will happen would be unpredictable and would happen on its own. One example would be analogous to how some graduate students leave their Ph.D. programs when they receive a good job offering. If there is a new way for learners to be financially successful and maintain a wealthy life without schooling, schools may suddenly become unnecessary. Here’s an imaginative example. If one day all jobs are modulated into small chunks and posted on the Internet for anybody to pursue regardless of their education, people may prefer to specialize themselves for a job more than going to school. High-paying jobs will determine which skills are more demanded than others. Teenagers may be working and paid on jobs that only adults today can do. This kind of change is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and not necessarily better than what we have now.
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