Michael Swickard
Steve Jobs left us one principle above all others: The clients are the wellhead of concern. Regardless of technical details or manufacturing ease, everything went back to what was exactly right for those who would use the products. The genius of Steve Jobs was he could not be talked into anything that violated his core principle.
We can use the focus of Steve Jobs on the problems of public education. At the very least we can say public-school students are not learning adequately. They are generally not thriving in our informational age. Our society has almost boundless energy to develop new communication products but we are not communicating well with the clients of public education.
The reason for this dysfunction may surprise you. It is so simple yet impossible for educational leaders to grasp. Public education does not focus on the clients, regardless of what is said by our educational leaders. Most educational discussion and planning centers on teachers, not students.
No Child Left Behind was and is focused on accountability for the teachers so that managers can manage the teachers. Outside of the political window dressing, it is a political mandate for the public education system to expend enormous resources and time trying to label good teachers from bad.
Despite the name, which does actually mention the clients, No Child Left Behind is not designed to deal with each child’s ability to live an enhanced life in our country. This political mandate leaves all children behind. In theory, teachers through the lens of students taking accountability tests can show if they are effective. It is further assumed a teacher labeled effective will be effective with the needs of students as a whole. It never gets down to individual students to make sure they are not left behind.
Ignoring the most basic principle
Education at its core is about engaging the hearts and minds of students. However, each heart and mind is different in the focus of attention, but all operate exactly the same. To learn, each student must be engaged by his or her activity. If the student has absolutely no interest, then no long-term learning will take place. You may occasionally find an exception but as a general rule schools that concentrate on accountability measures do not engage students – they smother them with accountability preparation and tests of no interest to the students.
No Child Left Behind increased the incidence in public schools of everything that inhibits children learning. What percentage of the public-school student population enjoys or even finds the slightest bit of interest in taking tests? Pretty close to zero. Yet the actions of the public schools nationwide are completely focused on students passing accountability tests so they can prove they have effective teachers regardless of the harm that action does to students. Teachers are mandated by their school districts to teach to the tests. Students must practice the tests repeatedly. Students do not have the slightest curiosity or interest in accountability tests.
The core of our dysfunction is the schools are ignoring the most basic principle of learning. It is driven almost entirely by the curiosity of humans and their need to have the tools to satisfy that curiosity. Speaking for myself, curiosity is the one commonality in my life.
Over my 61 years it is the currency of my life and the reason I became educated. Public-school life for me was many long years of an anti-curiosity environment (shut up and sit quietly) and I just barely made it to high-school graduation. They kept trying to teach me stuff in which I had no interest. I retained nothing of that forced upon me when I had no interest.
A very few public school teachers did engage my curiosity and interest. It was wonderful each time. Throughout my years of public education I insisted that the schools could not teach me anything in which I had no interest. They said they could. They did not. Nor, when I was a public school teacher (what irony), could I teach students who had no interest in my lessons. The only way for me to prevail was to get the students’ curious about my subjects. Otherwise it was the proverbial trying to teach a pig to whistle. They say you should not try to do so since you cannot do it and it only annoys the pig.
My first day in teacher education a professor asked us to define education. I came up with: Education is what happens when you find someone with something you want to learn. It has the two essential parts: a teacher with something a learner wants to learn. There is no dialog about the factory setting of education where we get several thousand students to all show up at approximately the same time and we spend much of our energy squelching their innate curiosity since what they are curious about will not be on the accountability tests.
The challenge
The challenge for our society is to construct curiosity-centered schools that focus the students’ need for literate and numerate tools to satisfy their curiosity.
I find it curious that curiosity is missing from our school system at the core. Without it, students put in their time and escape with little to show for the time they spent. Too bad Steve Jobs spent his life on technology instead of reforming public education to be focused on clients.
Swickard is co-host of the radio talk show News New Mexico, which airs from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday on KSNM-AM 570 in Las Cruces and throughout the state through streaming. His e-mail address is michael@swickard.com.