The book I am posting today — Public Education 2030, The Singularity Approaches — focuses on the future of public education.
I’ve shortened and summarized twenty-five of my previous posts on education so that most will fit on one page. I’ve added an “Introduction”, a “Message from the Author” and a “Conclusion” and I’ve grouped the posts into six sections: 1) The Singularity Approaches 2) Reforming Public Education 3) Building A Better System 4) The Aim of the System 5) Great Teachers and the Profession of Teaching 6) Good Character, the Key to Success 6) The Importance of Civic Education.
My goal in putting this publication together is twofold:
- To make the case that a redesign of the system of public education is needed and
- To invite readers to enter into brainstorming conversations about the future of public education.
The book is a total of only 60 pages and contains live links to all of the articles/books that I reference. You may download a PDF of the book here . It’s an easy read on my iPad and I’m sure it will work on other reading devices as well. I am going to have a few copies printed at Lulu.com — the great online publisher that three years ago printed my first collection of web-posts Why You Are Not Entitled To Your Opinion.
The introduction to the book — posted below — indicates that soon I will be starting a new web-site, OhioTownHall, but this site is not yet ready to be launched. I’m anticipating that this new site will be ready to go in a short time and when it is ready to go live online, I will announce it here on DaytonOS.
Introduction
The essays in this book originally were written as web-posts. They show the point of view of a retired public school teacher who very much wants public education to succeed and who appreciates the hard work of the many talented teachers, administrators and board members in the present system. The message of this book, however, is that public education is in need of a major overhaul. The system of public education is poorly designed; its goals of public education are too narrow; and as it is, even the highest rated schools are accomplishing way too little.
Most schools post nice sounding goals about developing student potential and forming solid citizens, but, the fact is, schools do not expend their resources on accomplishing these admirable aims. Because of the No Child Left Behind law, schools obsess over government school evaluations and focus their efforts on accomplishing just one goal — producing acceptable test scores. The narrow aim of raising test scores has become the controlling mission of public schools and, to accomplish this mission, school time is precisely controlled, curriculum carefully aligned, and the definition of “good teaching” narrowly defined.
Schools are stuck in the business of schooling — transmitting curriculum, grading, preparing for tests — but to fulfill the wonderful goals posted on their websites, schools would need to be in the business of education. It is a great thought that schools should help each child achieve his or her potential, but a school designed to accomplish this goal would need to be built on a solid theory of motivation and on an enriched understanding of human nature now largely absent in today’s schools. A school focused on helping students fulfill their potential would need to empower and free both teachers and students in ways that seem unthinkable in the present system.
I’ve entitled this book Public Education 2030, The Singularity Approaches because the big point I hope this book will communicate is that we need to be forward looking. We need to do the hard work of building a new system capable of sustaining our democracy; we need to build a system equipped with the capacity to successfully meet the challenges of the future. The term “singularity” is taken from the writings of futurist Ray Kurzweil, an acknowledged genius with over 17 honorary degrees, who predicts that a coming revolution in technology will create a world for today’s children astonishingly different from the world of their parents and grandparents. To thrive in the transformed world in which they will live, children will need a transformative education that will lift them to a full development of their humanity. The qualities of thoughtfulness, leadership, creativity, and character that seem exceptional today will need to be commonplace tomorrow.
This book points to these conclusions:
- The aim of public education must be the advancement of the common good, which means — 1) Each child will acquire the tools and experience needed to develop his or her potential, and 2) Each child will gain the knowledge, habits, temperament, and character that will empower him or her to be an effective citizen.
- The system of public education must be restructured so that all the resources available to the system will be focused on accomplishing the aim of the system.
- The transformation needed in public education will require a vitalization of local democracy resulting in communities regaining local control of their schools.
This book does not attempt to show what a transformed system of public education might look like. The goal of this book is twofold: 1) To make the case that a redesign of the system of public education is needed and 2) To invite readers to enter into brainstorming conversations about the future of public education. I hope these essays will be helpful in promoting thoughtful dialogue. I am posting this book on a new web-site — OhioTownHall.com. — where ideas for restructuring eventually also will be posted. You are invited to join me there.
