Envisioning the New School

Envisioning the New School

by Josie Holford, Head, Poughkeepsie Day School

When everything around is changing so rapidly that it feels like living inside a blender on high speed, habits and traditions can be comforting. As the year rolls along in any school there are the dates on the calendar – love them or dread them, those ceremonies and celebrations – that are familiar, anticipated and taken for granted.

And then there are the routines provided by policy and established practice – the way students are scheduled, assigned to classes, assessed, and allowed to dress or to use technology – that provide structure and send the message: This is the way we do things here. This is what matters most.

Schools Must Change.  But How?

There’s an old joke in education that it is easier to change the course of history than it is to change a history course. For good reason, schools tend to be conservative institutions and the pace of change in effective schools is often glacial. But something new is afoot. It is no longer good enough just to say, “This is the way it has always been,” and “This is the way we have always done it.”  The way we have always done things may be an enduring and solid foothold on a slippery rock face but may also be the enemy of essential adaptation needed for survival.

Schools are affected by social changes in different ways and some may feel immune. When the wait list is solid, college acceptances strong and the annual fund exceeds expectations, it is easy to imagine that life can continue as usual. But change is nibbling at the edges of even the most assured institutions as they contemplate a world of learning transformed by digital technology. This is when “That’s the way we have always done it” is not the rock of values, but a stumbling block.

Children are born digital and are growing up global and the adult task is to help them be ready to thrive in a future that we cannot predict. There’s an intense debate going on in education about this changing world and the imperative for schools.  Many schools, recognizing that the world is changing fast, are reconsidering habits as they take up the challenge to educate children for a world transformed. What is the place of grades in a learning environment where intellectual risk-taking is essential? How do we help our students develop global awareness? Is critical thinking enough, and what does it look like? Should we monitor student internet access? What belongs in the curriculum and what can we take out? Can cell phones and social networks be tools for learning? What kinds of students do colleges really want? Is the AP or the IB program the way to go? Are award ceremonies sending the wrong message? How can we meet the needs of diverse learners?

For over a decade there has been lots of excited talk about the 21^st century learner and the need to reimagine education and redefine rigor for the new age. Unfortunately, however, schools have proved very pliable to the pressures that say more is better – more tests, more AP courses more curriculum content. Taking on more seems easy, changing the game is so much harder. The needs of childhood are timeless, we tell ourselves, oblivious to the fact that we have already piled more expectations into kindergarten than are reasonable or justifiable by any established and rational theory of child development.  Schools have also stuffed expensive interactive white boards into classrooms and outfitted labs with computers and children with laptops. But these can be cosmetic changes to an antiquated system. The whole notion of how and who we educate, why, where and for what, is the real debate.

In the 20^th century it made sense – to many, at least – that education was an achievement-driven, sorting process. Schools were the engines for the transfer of knowledge and skills; conformity and memory were prized; and higher education was a scarce commodity. Teachers were experts in their field and it was their job to pass the knowledge along. It was about linearity, conformity, scarcity and sorting.

All this is in the process of being uprooted. That’s a violent metaphor, but in context it is not too extreme. From entertainment to finance to philanthropy, the way the world does business has been challenged by change; jobs and positions are disrupted, disintermediated or dismantled. And schools are not invulnerable. Home schooling is on the rise, middle class families struggle to pay independent school tuitions, online learning is no longer an oddity and disengaged students drop out of school in the thousands every week.

The trick for schools is to figure out the difference between the mission-critical baby and the bathwater of time-honored practice.

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