Students as Robots
How do we make quality adults? Most of the time legislators seem to think students are like cars. We put them on the assembly at age 6 and by the time they read the end at age 18, they are a fully functioning car. Somehow I don’t think this is really how it works. But, this is how the United States has continued to view its education system. We are all products on an assembly line. If you just add all the proper ingredients we all turn out the same right?
I’m going to take you back to the beginnings of the U.S. public school system… In early 1800s the beginning of the Industrial Revolution signaled the need for a basically educated work force. As the secretary of education in Massachusetts, Horace Mann instituted reforms to give every student the same curriculum. Supposedly this was meant to give all students a proper education. The purposes of education: disciplined citizens. This idea spread to most of the civilized country.
Okay… so that worked in the 1800s. Unforetunately for students, the world has changed a lot since then. I doubt anyon would argue that the purpose of education is to create disciplind citizens. Maybe a part of educaiton, but not everything. Later in the 1800s we started to focus less on the classics (Latin) and more on what was decided to be basic classes.
Okay… that was good for rise of white collar jobs in America. Yet still we taught everyone the same. Gradually we started to realize that not all students are alike. We are not cogs in a machine. We are thinking beings with individual strengths and weaknesses. So why do we continue with the idea of the same education for everyone. When clearly we are not the same.
And now there is a push for national standards. At a basic level, I agree that we need a general framework for classes. Every child should learn about the Revolutionary War in high school U.S. history. But beyond the general… we cannot teach all students exactly the same thing in the same way. It’s not beneficial for a changing society. We need to evolve from the assembly line theory of education and create a multifaceted approach, meeting the needs of all types of students.
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