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To Transform Our System Of Education, We Must Redefine The Aim Of The System

Posted on May 27, 2008 by Mike Bock

Barack Obama has said that our schools should “provide an education for children that will allow them to fulfill their God-given potential.” To make this goal the actual purpose of our educational system would mean a radical transformation of the system, because this goal is radically different from the goal that our educational system currently pursues.

One point of confusion is that the goal that Obama states for schools sounds a lot like the goal that schools already proclaim. It hardly sounds like a new idea. When schools endlessly drill students on discrete curriculum, treating students as empty vessels to be filled, they claim they are working to help students fulfill their potential. Most everything that a school does is justified as working to accomplish the goal of helping students reach their potential, so Obama’s goal doesn’t sound like much of a breakthrough idea.

I’ve made comparisons between how our current educational system works and how the East German car manufacturing system, that produced the poor quality Trabant, worked. The ostensible goal of the Trabant system was to produce quality and the ostensible aim of our educational system also is to produce quality. In both systems, the biggest impediment to producing quality is the fact that producing quality was never the actual aim of either system. The actual aim in both cases, and this sounds harsh, was to protect and advance people in the system.

The people in the educational system are not evil, almost all are dedicated to helping children, but the truth is, the educational system is largely a monopoly with little accountability. Over the years, the actual aim of the system — reflected in its contracts, budgets and established practices — was shaped to advance and protect the interests of its members. Of course, the educational system would claim that the aim of the system is to provide quality education, and, in fact, it is true that many individuals in the system work fervently to attempt to fulfill this aim. But, it is clear, from analyzing its organizational structure, the system is simply not organized to accomplish the purpose of educating children, it is organized to benefit its members. Similarly, the health care system is filled with dedicated professionals, but the actual aim of the health care system, itself, is not to make the nation healthy. Its actual aim is to advance and protect the interests of its members. And similarly, the legal system is filled with dedicated professionals ….

Dr. Ruddick, in reply to my last post, defended centralized bureaucratic systems and said, “The Canadian, French, and British central health care systems outperform ours and cost less at the same time.” That comment made me think. What I’ve realized is that any discussion about system design must start with the most important element of a system: its actual aim.

The European health care system is a government run monopoly. The American health care system is a different type of monopoly. The big difference between these two monopolies is the difference in the actual aims and purposes of the two systems. The European health system is accountable to the government to actually promote health and heal disease. Because it is bureaucratic and centrally controlled, no doubt, it has a lot of waste and inefficiency. But, what saves it is that at least the aim of the system is carefully controlled. The American health care system, on the other hand, is accountable to large corporations and the AMA. It is not surprising that, regardless of its inefficiencies, the European system outperforms ours by those measures having to do with public health.

The problem with the Trabant system was not so much its centralized control and bureaucratic processes, but rather, without market reasons to do otherwise, it pursued the wrong aim. I’m imagining its aim was to provide employment, to give plush jobs to communist bosses, to provide a stream of income to cronies — and it accomplished its aim quite well. If its aim had been to produce a quality automobile, certainly, over the years, the East German engineers would have figured out how. The Mercedes Company was a big complicated company, organized with centralized control and bureaucratic processes, but with many other auto companies to compete with, Mercedes had to focus the aim of its system on producing quality and customer satisfaction. Mercedes had to respond to the free market, the Trabant did not.

Can we envision an educational system whose actual aim is understanding and developing the human potential of children, of preparing students for authentic participation and leadership in a democracy? Can we imagine a system of education with an aim that would rival what the most wise parents want for their own children?

Suppose we start with that aim to guide us, with a lot of school property and equipment already paid for, and with a $8,000 budget per child per year. What would be the design of a system that could accomplish such an aim? This is a huge question that universities and think tanks should be addressing. I wrote a post, “Strickland Should Use Charter Schools To Help Fulfill His Promise: “Reform and Renew the System of Education Itself,” in which I urge Gov. Strickland to use charter school laws as a means to develop carefully designed school organizational structures and programs. (I haven’t heard back from the governor as yet.) To transform our system may take twenty years. But we need to stop simply replicating the present system.

If the system is to work, it seems clear that the role of teachers must be expanded and redefined. At the heart of education is the teacher / student relationship. The system needs to attract the most creative and most ambitious young people to become teaching professionals. A top teacher should have the expectation to earn at least three times what top teachers now earn (say, $200,000 per year). We have a system where architects and lawyers can ascend to the top of their profession, based on their accomplishments. It is an interesting question as to what an educational system would look like that would allow the most effective teachers to rise to the top. Such top teachers would be those teachers who could best help accomplish and advance the aim of the system: helping students understand and reach their potential. It is an interesting question as to what the characteristics of teachers most successful in accomplishing such aim would be, what the organizational structure would look like where such teachers could emerge, and what an educational program would look like that focused on accomplishing this aim.

The present traditional system strives for too little and applauds itself too much for the meager amount it does accomplish. As it is, based on its own tools of evaluation, the nine hours spent daily in school activity — including transportation and homework — is very wasteful and unproductive. If it’s all about test scores, there are much easier and much less expensive ways to educate than the way offered by traditional schools. Students who spend two or three hours in a concentrated computer assisted program at home easily can accomplish test scores that equal or surpass the scores of peers in the traditional system.

The future challenges of our democracy will require the best that humanity can offer, and will challenge the limits of human potential. Our present system of education is not up to the task before it. We need an educational system that will redefine its purpose. To transform our system of education so that its aim and resources became focused on developing the human potential of children would be a worthy and needed — and difficult to achieve — national goal.

Most everyone agrees that our education system needs transformation. A system is transformed when its actual purpose or aim is transformed, and when its structure and practices are aligned to achieve its purpose. A president who seeks to lead us to a transformed future must show us a way to transform our system of education. To transform our system of education, we must redefine the aim of the system. Obama’s comment about education, if taken seriously, may be a good start.

Posted in M Bock, Opinion | Leave a comment

Grassroots Dayton Meeting To Be Held At Oakwood Library on Thursday, May 29

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Mike Bock

The Grassroots Dayton meet-up will be held at the Oakwood Library, 1776 Far Hills, on Thursday, May 29, starting at 5:00 PM. Anyone interested in knowing more about Grassroots Dayton, or in helping this organization meet its goals, is urged to attend. You may find out details of the meeting, see who has signed up to attend, and sign-up to attend the meeting at this Meet-Up web site.

Grassroots Dayton is a not-for-profit 501C(3) organization with a great purpose: “to promote the development of citizen democracy in the Dayton region.” This is a huge goal, and Grassroots Dayton is developing plans for how to accomplish this goal.

The May 29th meeting will focus on discussing ideas outlined in this article: “How Grassroots Dayton Can Build Democracy By Building Community,”

As outlined in this article, at the May 29th meeting we will be discussing how:

a Grassroots Dayton internet web-site might work to create “citizen councils” that will work in cooperation with elected officials,
short video projects can be defined and encouraged,
a video festival might be organized and what it might include,
neighborhood community meetings for this September and October can be organized where candidates can attend and meet voters,
a specific fund raising idea might work to not only raise funds for Grassroots Dayton projects, and at the same time help other community groups raise funds as well.

In addition there will be plenty of open ended opportunity during the meeting for attendees to give their insight into other ideas of how Grassroots Dayton might work to fulfill its mission.

Creating a cutting edge web-site is key part of the vision for promoting citizen democracy. A Grassroots Dayton web-site already exists, but the goal is to greatly enhance this site. Posted on this site is my article, Grassroots Dayton: “Sowing The Seeds Of Democracy,” which gives an overview of the goals for Grassroots Dayton.

You may be wondering how you can best help your democracy and your community. Many people are tired of exclusive partisan approaches and are looking for non-partisan opportunities. Here if your chance to get on the ground floor of helping to build an organization that has the potential to make a big impact in Montgomery County. The way forward is through vitalizing our democracy, it is through unity. Grassroots Dayton is a nonpartisan group that seeks to help strength democracy via education and via the creation of venues that encourage meaningful communication and in-depth understanding. Please consider attending this meeting to find out more about how Grassroots Dayton can be a valuable component of and help to the democracy in Montgomery County — and how your talents and energy can be focused on bringing a vision of renewed citizen democracy to reality.

If you can’t make the meeting at 5:00PM, but can come later, please join the meeting when you can.

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Obama’s Writing About His Life Story Propelled His Meteoric Rise

Posted on May 18, 2008 by Mike Bock

An article in today’s New York Times gives an interesting view about Barack Obama and his meteoric rise. The article says that Obama, “has risen in politics less on his track record than on his telling of his life story — a tale he has packaged into two hugely successful books.”

The article, “Obama’s Story, Written by Obama,” tells how Obama’s success as a writer interweaved with his success as a politician. The article says, “The story of Mr. Obama’s life as an author tells as much about him as some of the stories he has recounted in his books. It possesses at times the same charmed quality sometimes ascribed to his political ascent — an impression of ease, if not exactly effortlessness, that obscures a more complex amalgam of drive, ambition, timing and the ability to recognize an opportunity and to do what it takes to seize it.” Excerpts from the article:

He untethered himself from his longtime literary agent in favor of Robert B. Barnett, the Washington lawyer who had gotten Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton an $8 million book advance and then landed Mr. Obama a $1.9 million, three-book deal.
He finished his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” 18 months into his first term in the Senate, edited the proofs late at night on a Congressional fact-finding trip to Africa, plunged into campaigning for colleagues in the midterm elections, took time out for a 12-city book tour, appeared on programs like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Charlie Rose,” then announced four months later that he was running for president.
Out of his story, he has also drawn the central promise of his campaign: if a biracial son of a Kenyan and a Kansan could reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable in himself, a divided country could do the same.
His memoir is, as one publisher put it, “the single most vetted book in American politics right now.” Written at a time when Mr. Obama says he was thinking less about a career in politics than about simply writing a good book, it leaves an impression of candidness and authenticity that gives it much of its power. Reporters have questioned Mr. Obama’s use of fictional techniques like composite characters, but some editors and critics say that is common in memoirs.
“This is an example of what happens when you look at things backwards,” Mr. Obama said when asked whether he had his political future in mind when he first began to write. “Then everything looks like, ‘Ah! Of course this was part of some well-calibrated consideration.’ But frankly, no. It would have been very hard for me to anticipate that I’d be where I am today, where a book that I wrote almost 20 years ago now would even be read.”
Mr. Obama’s story first surfaced publicly in February 1990, when he was elected as the first black president of The Harvard Law Review. An initial wire service report described him simply as a 28-year-old, second-year student from Hawaii who had “not ruled out a future in politics”; but in the days that followed, newspaper reporters grew interested and produced long, detailed profiles of Mr. Obama.
The coverage prompted a call to him from Jane Dystel, a gravelly-voiced literary agent described by Peter Osnos, then the publisher of Times Books, as “a good journeyman with a hard edge.” The home page of her firm’s Web site currently features clients’ best sellers including “Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages.” Ms. Dystel suggested Mr. Obama write a book proposal. Then she got him a contract with Poseidon Press, a now-defunct imprint of Simon & Schuster. When he missed his deadline, she got him another contract and a $40,000 advance from Times Books.
Mr. Obama acknowledged his use of pseudonyms, composite characters, approximated dialogue and events out of chronological order. He was writing at a time well before a recent series of publishing scandals involving fabrication in memoirs. “He was trying to be careful of people’s feelings,” said Deborah Baker, the editor on the first paperback edition of the book. “The fact is, it all had a sort of larger truth going on that you couldn’t make up.”
The book came out in the summer of 1995, shortly before Mr. Obama announced that he was running for the Illinois State Senate. …Kodansha Globe, a now-defunct branch of a Japanese company, bought the paperback rights for $5,000 to $7,500 and printed about 6,000 copies in 1996, said Philip Turner, Kondansha’s editor in chief at the time.
“Even now, it’s hard to get my mind around the idea that this person is in politics,” said Ms. Baker, who described Mr. Obama as a born writer. … “Barack is worth millions now,” Mr. Osnos said. “It’s almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one’s life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it’s a stunning fact.”

From The New York Times, Obama’s Story, Written by Obama