My challenge to you and all is how do we affect such change? Can we gain the attention of the President? Only a global mandate could overwhelm the two unions in the way: parents and teachers.

I would ask myself “What is it FOR?” Why do we educate kids? What is the point of it? I think we have lost sight of the answer to this/these question/s. In order to find the answer, we need to be speaking to people from all sorts of sectors currently not engaged in this discussion: corporate employers, university faculties (although they could do with a makeover, too), criminologists, psychologists, societal and religious leaders, etc.

Secondly, I would ask myself “What does the perfect school leaver ‘look’ like?” What is there profile? What skills do they have? How do they approach life and its challenges? In order to answer this question, we need to have the answer to the first question. Like everyone else, I have my own views of what the answers would be, but it really needs to be a collaborative process.

Then and only then do we start looking at how we can make it possible for the children of our society to reach that point. And we don’t adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, because kids are not made with cookie cutters and one size actually fits one (if you’re lucky!).

I have no intention of suggesting what the result would look like, since we have yet to answer the first two questions. Knowing the solution to an undefined challenge/project/whatever is what an ex manager of mine called ‘the zone of absurdity’. One thing I do know is that it would look very different from the model we have today!

One is that, luckily, I got to be part of a completely “rethought” school as a high school student — a school without age-based grades, without grading, where science credit came from interning in a city hospital lab or developing a small heritage farm in a city park. Where history credit might come from wandering Manhattan, social studies credit from re-envisioning a downtown or interviewing the homeless in Grand Central’s tunnels after midnight. See this for a pdf regarding a similar school in Philadelphia.

This taught me some key things: Kids bring the world with them into school. They bring their interests, passions, problems. “School” should be about leveraging that, not denying it. Schoolwork should be the safe place to experiment with the world – the place where we get to play and work out the details of our real learning, 99% of which happens outside of school.

School should never be a place of subject divisions – for some kids that heritage farm was science credit, for others history, for others both. Of course.

School should not be a place of time constraints. Periods, semesters… that’s stupid. Human interest and human learning does not stop and start when bells ring.

But I also know that I like schools as a physical place. It hasn’t always been “nice” for me, but even that free school really benefitted from our mostly empty “White Room” (an ex cafeteria) where we could gather, be safe and away from the world that had hurt us. I’m a massive fan of the technologies which smash the walls of school, but sometimes, those walls protect and defend. We should not lose them.

And I know that school needs to be a place focused on “what” not “how.” “How” disables – read this book this way, write this way, sit in this chair, come at this time. “What” enables – show us how you know? what u’ve learned? Do it your way.

Quick thoughts, but they’ve been bubbling up for decades.

Oh, some district somewhere will take the plunge and try to start fresh without any of the old assumptions. Let’s even assume that they can convince the teachers to go along with, better yet, be part of planning the renaissance. Imagine that, administrators, teachers, and maybe even some entrepreneurs working together and moving in a common direction; I can almost see the sun shining through brilliant rainbows and bluebirds chirping the good news.

But wait! We still have to convince the parents.

Parents, it turns out, are deeply suspicious of any major fundamental re-imagining of school. This is the main reason that charter schools, for the most part, are just more intense, sometimes more focused versions of your everyday public school.

It seems parents like the 10-hour schooldays because it provides that much more free childcare coverage for working moms and dads, but as soon as ideas like student choice and child-directed education start flying about the parents fly off the handle and out the door.

Okay, but this is an intellectual exercise, not a pragmatic one, right.

I repeat that because if it were a discussion of pragmatic reformations of education we’d have to account for all those pesky poverty-stricken inner-city kids who, while desperately in need of open space and access to nature, have little safe access to it.

It is, in fact, in the inner cities and, paradoxically perhaps, the rural areas where all discussions of education reform trip over themselves and fall.

In inner cities there are just too many kids to scrap the current system and start over. No one in their right mind is going to put the million or so school children in NYC out onto the streets whilst the school buildings are torn down to create new educational open spaces.

The rural areas have lots of space but not the concentration of students to make use of it the way it might be used elsewhere. That students who live in open space will need to be bussed to other open spaces for educational purposes is mind-boggling.

So, if it won’t work in inner cities and won’t work in rural areas, who will benefit from this re-imagination of education? Why, it’s the wealthier suburban kids whose schools, for the most part, are not the real problems we think about when we think about the problems of or caused by public education.

One can no more restart the education system than one could restart fire service, policing, sanitation services, the military or any of the other similar major social-service agencies.

Change in education, like in most aspects of life and public policy, is and will remain far more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Tis a pity, for sure.

Whatis not included in “check” are project plans, deliverables, timescales, cost/benefit analysis. This is command and control thinking, where you always must begin with a plan. Starting at “check” gives us a new place to begin.

Ultimately, we would disepnse of the old measures (usually financial and performance targets) in favor of new measures. measures decided by the purpose of the service from the customer’s point of view. This shift to purpose and measures derived from purpose allows the liberation of method in a service setting. Method is what needs to be liberated in any system and the people that we engage are the ones providing the service and are closest to our customers. Working from targets (present method) constrains method and worse creates more waste as the target becomes the defacto purpose of the system.

A fresh look would be in order for the education system . . . yes. Starting from scratch only in the way we approach the problem. I suggest systems thinking.

You can read more on my website and download understanding your organization as a system at no cost. We need to change our thinking quickly.

You should start from the natural state of affairs, where education like other services is a private service. Now ask “Should this service be made public?” Immediately several questions arise: How is this service (education) different in principle from other services? What sort of differences require a service to be public? Who decides what these differences are? What happens in the case of a disagreement? Note that none of these questions arise when the service is private. Individuals make all the decisions themselves, with no physical force being used.

Suppose, for the moment, that you find the answers to these questions. Several other questions now arise. What constitutes a proper education? Should mathematics be a part of this education? Should astrology be a part of this education? Should religious teachings be a part of this education? What sort of clothing is acceptable for students (or teachers)? What costs are acceptable? What compensation is acceptable for the service providers? Should parents who do not accept the public answers to these questions be allowed to teach their own children? Should they then still be taxed?

…Why is India a developing country (despite decades of public education) while the U.S. achieved near universal literacy with mostly private schools (according to this article in Wikipedia – “The school system remained largely private and unorganized until the 1840s. In fact, the first national census conducted in 1840 indicated that near-universal (about 97%) literacy among the white population had been achieved.”)? The benevolent dictator arguement mixes up causes and effects. Freedom is the cause, progress (of which education is an indicator) is the effect (look at the history of Europe for example). The two cannot be interchanged.

You paint a picture that so many of us would like to see. It starts a child on the road to learning as soon as they can be brought outside to the open air and sun. And that learning involves everyone in the family, the community, and—with connectivity through the Internet—to the world. Education is relaxed, fun, and not driven towards testing, but to the ideas and concepts that spark our interest and we become passionate about. Rather than some “completion” to our education, life is about continued learning and sharing what we have learned as someone new comes “to the farm” and asks a question.

As an employer, I can hear my peers asking, “Pardon me, but how am I to know what this person knows?” And I reply, “How does a test score or a degree tell you any truth now? It doesn’t. Perform your own tests to see if the candidate either knows enough to contribute immediately, or is the kind of thinker who thrives in your environment, or is open to learning what you do in order to become a contributer. Experience and relationship tells you whether this is a long term member of your team.”

I hear others who cannot see how someone would be admitted to institutions of higher learning without test scores. (Yes, I foresee colleges evolving to still be valuable to a world where there are no school buildings in the public education system. But that is for another post.) I ask them to look to other nations now and to history for that answer. Applications will be backed by research papers already written in the field of the person’s interest. References will be supplied from key mentors and experts who played a part in teaching the candidate. People will be coming to these highly specialized groups of instructors from out of the work force, or while still owning their own businesses, so performance reviews will add to the candidate’s application.

But these questions stem from an inability to drop away all preconceived notions of what the future will look like. For those who can clean a spot in their mind, sit down there and see themselves truly starting from scratch, imagine the world that Julie creates—and to a certain extent is living in her reality now. We will be a world of people who feel responsible for each other, all others, who will by virtue of how we become interdependent with the world to learn and grow, become a global society based “on a foundation of ethics, respect and compassion.” All of the other changes will come: new energy sources, new patterns of living sensitive to the resources we have access to, less waste, better transportation, and much more that we cannot imagine. But first will come a change in our perception and method of public education, so that as a nation, then a world, we are all more knowledgeable about, and responsible toward, our global relationship, dependency on each and everyone else, and potential for peaceful, joyful lives.

BTW Julie, I really like your sign off (“… well, the future will become a thing of the past.”), I just hope it’s not true. Many thanks for your thoughtful input.

… If we’re going to start from scratch, let it be in a garden, or a farmer’s field. Let the kids run and dig and plant and water and run and play in the soil some more. Let them be there with plenty of loving adults who will help them tend the pizza garden and harvest the wheat with kindergarten scissors and take it home and hull it and then mill it together and make the most delicious pizzas in the world!!

Let all their learning from then on stem from their experiences in the garden or field. And from visits to the forest for wildcrafting. And from daily or weekly walkabouts in the schoolyard and neighbourhood to see what’s changing and what’s staying the same, how the old friends are (trees, perhaps and the squirrels) and who the new friends are (migrating birds?).

I’m with you — in my view, the education system’s incessant tweaking of curriculum at a time when complete transformation is urgently needed is negligent. Out with the 19th century irrelevancies! Banish anything contributing to the status quo that’s got us to the edge of climate hell. In with the knowledge, skills and new attitudes our students are going to need to create the best possible future for themselves in light of 21st realities. Let nature bonding and ecology and alternative energy and sustainable development, all on a foundation of ethics, respect and compassion, form the basis of our new curriculum.

BTW, I disagree with you and Mr. Louv about the future. If we don’t start creating a renewable energy-based economy soon and get the world to virtually zero carbon emissions by mid-century, well, the future will become a thing of the past.

Thanks for posing this important question.