While society has evolved (read: wireless phone technology, wider Internet access, intensive brain research, and so on), school responses have lagged, sometimes with heels dug deep in the trenches of tradition and comfortable experience. Yet everything about education screams, "Change now!" Students enter our schools with the primary purpose of getting in, getting smart, and getting out. Class rosters change, sometimes daily. Curricula change, federal mandates change, laws change, textbooks change, instructional styles change. Our understanding of learning changes as we take in research-based findings on how the brain develops and processes information. The world has become both broader and more accessible, and the global market demands new and different skills from both workers and consumers. In short, everything changes. So why aren't we, in education, changing?
Why does it seem that everything we read about asks the same question?!?! This same book speaks of individuals dating back to the 1730s who recognized the importance of having great schools. From Mann to Coleman.....the same topic dates back from the 1830s to the 1960s...and here we are...still talking about the same topic...while everyone is sitting around talking about the need for change....why isn't anybody doing anything about it? Data does'nt lie....we are not improving....what are we going to do!?!?!?
Uncertainty
14 years ago
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this reminds me of what dr. dagget said at the leadership conference, that schools are museums. i couldn't agree with you more, it seems like the more changes the more excuses teachers, schools, and districts come up with for staying the same. i think much of this attitude/practices are born out of genuine fear of the type of accountability that are in play and the high stakes. professional developers are in a unique situation to effect the changes you speak of, sounds like you found your niche (:
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