In 1874, a simple yet radical technology, the price tag, revolutionized the retail industry. A fixed price for goods was better for most customers and better for most businesses. Importantly, it didn’t eliminate the role of the store clerk nor the incentive inherent in better serving customers (e.g., knowledge of materials, styles, etc.) Instead, it dramatically lowered the barrier to entry by eliminating extraneous complexity.
Analogous to store clerks of yore, expert teaching is simply too complex. It requires, at minimum, a single person to deeply understand:
1. at least one subject deeply,
2. how to present that subject in bite-sized lessons,
3. how to customize those lessons a priori based on an expected audience,
4. how to identify and overcome academic, social, and emotional challenges during a lesson,
5. how to connect those lessons into a logical progression,
6. how to customize that progression based on the outcomes of previous lessons, and
7. how to motivate learners to exert effort over the long haul.
This is a tall task even for professional teachers and an almost insurmountable barrier for the countless parents, relatives, and volunteers that want to ensure children everywhere succeed.
My question for this group: Is today’s educational technology a breakthrough like the humble price tag or does it miss the mark? Why or why not?
Project based learning pioneers, Maria Montessori, and other education innovators like Tom Wagner @ Harvard have discovered that learning is a human experience
Dr. Feynman has a wonderful illustration of this in his book “Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman” on how he transformed Brazil’s physics education curriculum. Instead of drilling mathematical models of curves, they build ramps, invented their own questions, learned how to measure outputs, and derived their own formulas under Dr. Feynman’s guidance.
From birth, we are naturally curious and learn.
The fundamental problems to solve in education are:
1. Poverty - children without healthy, stable environments with proper nutrition & sleep are significantly handicapped in their ability to learn
Psychological safety matters
2. Reframing learning as something a person does vs. a scaffolded theoretical learning journey they are supposed go on
3. Building lessons as experiences that the student then creates out of - using the creative arts like writing, film, products, etc. - similar to what you’ll see Olin College of Engineering do
There is no way to bring this approach to education into the education system as it is today, because the education system is not designed as an institution of learning but certification.
Instead, we must build new institutions. It takes about 60 to 100 years for new institutions to take root because their students & families go on to be successful then donate back to the school in dollars, time, and political influence.
There are people who understand how to do all the things you describe, but that is not the decision tree for today’s education content producers. The work of Dr. Katherine von Duyke might be something you consider as you explore.
Instructional Design courses may be worth investigating. Just be highly skeptical that measuring performance is measuring learning. Retention is an easy indicator as to whether students have internalized a new concept or simply passed a test.