Although run by intelligent, caring, dedicated people, our schools are products of the industrial era and are structured like factories.

Meanwhile, knowledge is literally in the air. Our children, the first digital generation, take to technology as if by osmosis. They text their friends, look up information, and play games on their smart phones. Those with access have dozens of ways to learn.

The problems are vast, but the solutions, thanks to technology, are relatively simple.

The Problem

Education needs reform and the Obama administration agrees. Arne Duncan, the new secretary of the Department of Education, has released the vision and plans for the spending of an additional $100 billion to his budget. He wants to “fundamentally change the culture of the DOE” with a “dramatic reform agenda” to “change student outcomes and improve achievement” with “wisely spent dollars.” His intention is for the department and for schools and teachers to be open, transparent, and networked, so that all will together work toward “continual improvement.”

To achieve these goals, the Obama administration is expanding the mission of No Child Left Behind. It’s the ultimate industrial solution: Top down management. Assembly line production. Standardization of curricula content and student performance in each subject and at each grade level. Assessment using multiple choice and short answer testing.

NCLB’s real success has been its capacity to measure its own failure, and now its failure is blamed on lack of support. The Obama administration calls for more:  More money, better people, higher standards, more effort and time, more exchange of good practices, more parent involvement, more math and science education, and, I fear, more homework for kindergarteners.

But the problem is not that we don’t care enough. The problem is not the students, teachers, parents, administrators, or schools. The problem is not society or money or resources. The problem is not “not enough.”

The problem is the system.

School as Factory

The easy problem is how to improve the current system. The hard problem is how to evolve the system into a 21st century system.

Four blocks to reform exist:

• The system is designed to prevent change.
• People who are successful products of industrial systems and who are immersed in solving the problems    created by them can’t possible produce a new system.
• 20th century systems don’t produce 21st century thinking.
• 21st century thinking can’t evolve 20th century systems.

It’s important to understand that our current thinking and systems are guided by industrial reasoning. Machines and factories are the metaphors.

Schools, like machines and factories are structured to maintain order and prevent change.

A mechanical perspective sees linear, cause-and-effect relationships. The teacher-student relationship is a classic example. The teacher provides instruction and the student is educated.

The source of learning is unidirectional and simple. The teacher is the primary, if not sole, source of student learning. If the student doesn’t learn, then the teacher adjusts instruction.

Assembly-line standardization is the hallmark of industrial systems. Grade levels standardize children by age. Content and performance standards standardize learning.

Feedback systems for assessing progress are particularly mechanical. Multiple choice and short answer tests assure objectivity and reduce complexity of learning to the simplest forms.

Assessment results in adjustments to the system. The teacher adjusts the curriculum to fit the majority of students’ needs, and then, to meet standardized goals, moves on to cover the required curriculum. Changes are made to curriculum, length of the school day, and amounts of homework and extra help, but not to the system itself.

The entire system is guided by experts. The more complex the machine, the more parts it has and the more specific the expertise needed to identify the source of problems and their solutions. Curriculum experts, management experts, textbooks experts, technology experts, and research experts are concerned with analysis, reducing the problem to its simplest form.

The university, the industrial age source of officially recognized experts, divides knowledge into smaller and smaller parts. A doctoral dissertation adds a small part to a great body of knowledge within a part of the whole.
Objective, research-based knowledge takes precedence over messy, unreliable personal experience.

The classic industrial assumption is that the problem is scarcity. Change means more. We need more money, time, expertise, information, better teachers, more involved parents, and better school buildings, more technology.
All of this requires control. Top-down control keeps order. As we add more to the system, we have to build more controls and the bureaucracy grows.

To control complexity schools have to close their boundaries. Too many ideas, too many people, and too much diversity disrupts order and control is lost.

Changing a mechanical system is a big deal. Top down planning and massive retooling and training assures that everyone is “on the same page.”

A Problem of Poor Design

At least a simple vending machine is designed to meet user needs.

You are the primary user when you go to a vending machine to buy bottled water. You have a need: You are thirsty and you want clean water. The delivery system is the machine and the stakeholders are the water distributors, machine owners, and people who own the space.

The machine is familiar. You push the button next to a picture of bottled water. An amount of money flashes. You put the dollar bill into the machine and the machine tells you that it has registered that dollar. You put in another dollar bill but the machine rejects it. You straighten the corner and try again. The machine accepts your money, the water falls down into the shelf, and change falls into the change slot. The water bottle is not that easy to get out because the machine prevents people from reaching in and it has to keep the drinks cold.

The system is designed to assure your success. At each step, if something goes wrong, there is some kind of remedy. If you push the button for water and it’s out of water, the machine tells you. As a last resort, you’ll find a sticker with a contact number for complaints.

In the case of education, the primary users are students, the delivery system is schools, curricula, standards, and teachers, and stakeholders are parents and taxpayers.

For the system to pay off, the first consideration should be the needs of primary users. We should at least ask, “What are the needs of a first-grader? Does she share our goals? Can she see clearly how to reach those goals? Does she feel rewarded when she reaches the goals? If she fails to meet a goal, is there a feedback system that identifies and remedies the situation immediately?”

But the education system is designed backward. Despite the documented need for 10 to 12 hours of sleep a night for adolescents, bussing begins early to meet the 7:45 a.m. school bell. Despite the need for close peer and adult relationships in preadolescence, teachers have 120+ students and children are herded out of their neighborhoods into mini high schools before they have the skills or self-integration to handle it. Despite the documented need for play, kindergarteners attend full school days and courier homework to reach standards. Even though many parents may not have the skills, work long hours, and/or have other children and the sick and elderly to care for, parents are expected to keep their children up to speed.

Feedback from the students is limited to testing, an assessment of the achievement of goals created by others. Their experience is not considered in the design of the system, so the system doesn’t remedy their problems. Then, when the system doesn’t work for students, we label them “behind” and pour energy, time, and money into fixing them.
It’s like fixing the customer when the vending machine doesn’t work.

As long as learning needs were relatively simple and as long as the system was loosely enforced, putting children through this mechanical system was reasonably acceptable. But demands for competency are higher and the pressure’s on.

For far too many of our children, this mechanical system is brutally inhumane.

The Solution

Technology has extended our capacity to learn together.  New systems are heavily networked and learn the same way that we learn.  Learning occurs in extremely complex networks at the level of neurons, whole brains, people, and communities.  Whole nations evolve and then the world evolves.

Wikipedia, Google, and the Obama campaign are examples of new open and transparent systems that operate and develop organically. They first consider the needs, goals, and aspirations of their users. Then they consider the functions and features to meet those considerations. Then they build a platform, a structure to meet those needs.

A new system only succeeds if their users love it and share it with others. As people use the system, new aspirations, goals, and needs are discovered, new features and functions are added, and the structure evolves. The entire purpose or use of the system may change over time as everyone learns in the process of using the system. Users create the system as they go.

Because of these new systems, how knowledge is produced and how experts are used has changed. Whether it has to do with recipes, particle physics, or campaign strategy, knowledge is no longer the realm of the select few but is freely available to all. Knowledge from experts is modified by the experiences of users. The contributions of many creates more reliable knowledge than the contribution of a few experts. The sources of knowledge can be traced and also modified. The critique and use of knowledge and the ability to sift through information to create knowledge is as important as the acquisition of knowledge.

In these systems roles are dynamic and complex. Interactions form patterns of relationships among people.

Prediction is not possible in this complexity. Systems, leaders, and solutions emerge out of collective interaction.

Experts are still required for analysis but we also need synthesis. The goal is to understand how systems work and to facilitate the inevitable emergence of new forms. This requires the input of subjective experience.

In new systems, objectivity is no longer possible. The observer is always involved and influencing. Each actor is part of the whole. Each actor contributes to the knowledge of the whole.

We are just beginning to understand the rules of these new systems. Structures and processes, like networks, chaos, attractors, fractals, development, evolution, feedback, bonds, boundaries, and hierarchies, are not only found in all complex systems but also create them.

Bringing In the New

The questions arise:  How can we evolve a system not built to evolve? How can we have standards and not standardize? How can we create a new system when we’re in the current one? How can we have a bottom up system when the top down system squashes it?

The answer is simple. We just structure a new system and let individuals, whether students or teachers or anyone anywhere, go at it. If it works, it will spread. If it doesn’t work for people, another system will.

A new system will only work if it is:

• Easy to use. I can use it, add to it, and share it.
• Personal. I have my own space in the system and I can find my own way through it.
• Networked. By sharing I create networks and I join other networks.
• Useful. It addresses my needs and desires and the needs and desires of society.
• Inspiring. I get jazzed by what it can do for me and for others.
• Cheap and efficient. It saves time, energy, and money.
• Meaningful. It reflects my highest aspirations.
• Respectful. It allows me to take part at my own speed and respects people who don’t.
• Inclusive. Everyone can take part.
• Organic. It grows where it needs to grow and how it needs to grow.
• Bottom up. It grows from my unique, diverse actions and the actions of my friends..
• Lifelong. It holds no limits on age.
• Accountable. It provides data that shows where it works and where it doesn’t.
• Evolving. It adds new features and functions and eliminates what doesn’t work.
• Self-sustaining. As it adds value, it pays its way.
• Ethical. By promoting the greater good, it moves us all toward greater social integration.

Getting Radical

Envisioning a completely new operating system for education takes a few simple shifts:

• Don’t try to turn the current system into another system.
• Think outside of the current delivery system: Schools, teaching, instruction, curriculum.
• Focus on competencies, not on content. Content is everywhere.
• Listen to our children. They will show us what works and what doesn’t.

Imagine that the new system is a network. Imagine that it is supported by an online socially-networked, wiki-type system.

In this new system, what you have to learn, what you may want to learn and/or what you have learned are available as standards or, better, competencies on your laptop. You discover, and then edit, tag, and link everything from training dogs to reading weather maps to reading Harry Potter. If the competencies that you want to show aren’t there, you create them.

You link resources to these competencies, and then comment on and rate the resources. You find dozens of ways to learn things.

You create your own page, or eportfolio, of competencies. You instantly capture your learning in life and on the Internet. While working on a project, you identify, capture, and archive specific competencies learned. If it matters, you have someone, like a teacher, employer, or project partner, verify your accomplishment. You also archive competencies that you’ve verified for others.

You form maps by tagging competencies. You discover maps of subjects, project needs, grade levels, careers, job descriptions, resumes, organizational requirements, certifications, and more. You also find maps of competencies that are essential for life and not formally recoginized, competencies like self care, housework, parenting, ethical behavior, and finances.

You generate instant assessment and reports when you overlay your competency maps on to other maps. You can see what you’re missing and then find dozens of ways to reach those competencies.

Now imagine that a new teacher, a digital native, uses the system. He compares the maps of competencies, or standards, required for his class as a whole to each individual’s map. He generates instant interim reports. He can see clearly what each student and the class as a whole has accomplished and what’s missing. His students can instantly generate their own competency maps and view their own progress.

He lets his students find their own ways to meet competencies. They move through the class organically, finding their own paths to meet their own goals and he monitors their progress closely.

His students find dozens of ways to meet requirements and, at the same time, one project can meet many requirements. Their work is connected to community. They see maps of what it takes to be a fireman or run a business or take care of a baby. They see why what they are learning is important. They discover goals and their own paths to reaching them.

Meanwhile, the old school system proceeds as it always has. This teacher doesn’t have to convince anyone who doesn’t like or get it because it’s a completely separate system.

Some teachers spot the new system as a way to save assessment and paperwork time  Others discover it from their students and their students show them how to use it.

Respect. Include. Inspire.

A successful network permeates populations in unpredictable ways. It forms from the      bottom up and is entirely voluntary. People love it and share it with friends.

Like the Obama campaign, a new system succeeds if it respects, includes, and inspires. It forms a tribe of followers.

A new education system has to be simple to use and yet match the complexity of our culture’s needs. It must recognize that learning can’t be standardized, that it has no structure and no limits, that it is personal, cultural, and global. The new system must reflect who we are.

If it can do all of this, then, in time, like Google, Wikipedia, and the Obama campaign, a new system will emerge out of the corner of our public eye.  Guided by the aspirations and values of users, school and life will evolve in ways that we can’t even yet imagine.