Restructuring and re-engineering our school system

Between 1937 and 1941, I attended Catholic school for the first five years of my education. In 1942, upon entering the sixth grade, I transferred to the public school system until my graduation in 1948. I recall my sixth grade as a wasted year because I had already studied the subject matters being taught to our sixth grade class in the fourth and fifth grades in Catholic school.

I recall that we moved from room to room to study various subjects under different teachers. The classrooms were styled identically to those of today. We were taught by being lectured at and forced to read from dull and unexciting textbooks. We were coerced to do homework for which most of us had little understanding as to why we had to do it.

School life over 60 years ago is identical to school life today except for new faces of students and teachers. The same attitudes plague us and the same educational results are produced. It as though schools and education have become fossilized while the world moved on.

Last November 1999, I visited my old alma mater after 51 years. As I toured the halls with the principal who was very kind to show me around, I felt right at home. Very little had changed, except that at the entrance to the school all students had to pass through a metal detector and had to wear identification cards hung around their necks. I sat in several classes for a few minutes and closed my eyes and felt as though I were back in high school again. I saw the same teaching techniques, and I heard the same student lackadaisical responses- – and this was 51 years later. I thought I had traveled back in a time warp.

Schools have tried to make improvements but somehow the results still turn out dismal. Yet annually we increase our spending to improve, but for some strange reason we still lag behind in achieving our goal of better educated students. What may be the reasons?

In his perceptive account of American schools, David Tyack wrote in The One Best System, “ Indeed, one of the chief reasons for the failures of educational reforms of the past has been that they called for a change of philosophy on the part of the individual school employee rather than a systemic change. The search for the one best system has ill-served the pluralistic character of American society. Increasing bureaucratization of urban schools has resulted in a displacement of goals, perpetuating positions and outworn practices, rather than serving the clients, the children to be taught.”

In reviewing the history of the educational system over the past one hundred years, I have found it to be a mirror image of the industrial system in vogue that period. The school system was modeled on mass production via the assembly line with its standardized production runs strictly scheduled. Schools soon began to emulate the army, the post office, and, eventually the large corporate bureaucracy. Efficiency, rationality and precision became the watchwords. Today we appear to have etched this philosophy in granite, difficult to erase or change.

In an attempt to modify the system, we raise standards of curriculum, raise teachers salaries, set higher graduation requirement, and even talk about lengthening the school day or year. But despite these efforts, the overall results have not been impressive. Little has changed in terms of classroom behavior and in the teaching process.

Tomorrow let’s discuss two revolutionary concepts: restructuring and re-engineering the school system which may turn out to be true saviors of a failing system bogged down in a sea of bureaucracy. (continued)