In Order To Reform Public Education, The First Task Is To See The Big Picture |

On the desk of Steve Clark, Treasurer of Kettering Schools, are two crystal eagles, each citing a commendation. Top performing treasurers, like Mr. Clark, have eagle eyes for detail and an eagle perspective that soars high above and sees the big picture.

The MESSENGER spacecraft snapped a great photo of the Earth and our Moon from about 114 million miles while on its way to the planet Mercury.

It’d be great if our leadership, in general, could have the POV of an eagle. But to solve really big challenges — like the challenge to transform public education — we need a POV that exceeds that of the eagle’s. The vision of the eagle is practical and immediate. We need a vision that is inspiring, one that will deliver on Robert Kennedy’s words: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

We need dreamers in education, leaders who will excite interest in defining and pursuing excellence. As a society, we seem stuck in a medieval understanding of education, we are stuck in a medieval understanding concerning the purpose of education. As the development of technology has expanded, it seems the development of humanity has actually contracted. As a species, we seem less today, than in the recent past. I believe research would support the thesis that the educated person of 2011, in many ways is sorely inferior to the educated person of 1911, or 1811. (I’d love to have insight into how research could answer such a question, one way or the other.)

In 1911, I would imagine that the term, “Excellent with Distinction,” would indicate a profound quality of a quite different order and nature than what the term, as appropriated by educational bureaucracies, has come to mean today. The evidence seems irrefutable that the nomenclature of quality has become corrupted.

I like the thought experiment, explored in a lot of science fiction, that imagines how an intelligent visitor from far away might analyze earth and the activities on earth. The photo, above, shows what such a visitor might first see — a diamond in the sky.

The scientist James Lovelock argues that earth may be seen as a single cell, a single organism. He calls it the “gaia hypothesis.” According to Lovelock, the earth has attained a fever and that this fever will only get worse and worse and will last 100,000 year, or more. By 2100, according to Lovelock, this fever will have caused the death of over six billion humans. Six Billion.

I’d like to think that any intelligent visitors to earth would will share the perspective of Ray Kurzweil, author of “The Singularity Is Near,” and not the perspective of Lovelock. Kurzweil is confident that, thanks to the exponential growth of machine power, humanity will soon have the capacity to solve all of its problems.

These crystal eagles were awarded to Steve Clark, Treasurer of Kettering Schools

I’m working on the book I’m determined to write, “Kettering Public Education In 2030,” about the future of public education, and, the book takes the big picture view that Ray Kurzweil is basically right. And, because Mr Kurzweil is right, my conclusion: The purpose of education, necessarily, will shift away from development of the intellect and toward the development of character and virtue. We will need a transformed system of public education to accomplish a transformed definition of purpose.

The question to ponder, here in 2011, is how do we prepare the green space where such a system might to developed by 2030? What is the structure that would empower the most visionary educational leaders?

As it is, a community like Kettering elects a five member school board and empowers them to spend tax money to create and administer a school system. The board, in turn, hires a CEO to oversee the operation, and the board and the CEO work together to review and set policy and make plans for the future. What this amounts to, is, in Kettering we are paying $12,000 per year per student to this management firm, and have given them exclusive rights to tax money to educate the youth of Kettering. This management group, in turn, has structured an industrial type bureaucracy and hierarchy.

In the big picture, it is hard to argue that the structure we have today, a monopoly, is the structure with which to best respond to the challenges of the future. It seems to me, we need to open green space so that a board might offer teachers and independent operators entrepreneurial opportunities — the chance to define excellence and cost in a different way: “For $9,000 per student, this is how we will define excellence…”

In Order To Reform Public Education, The First Task Is To See The Big Picture.