Norman W. Wilson: What Every School Systems' Focus Should Be

by Norman W Wilson, PhD

During the forty year career in education I have had the privilege of witnessing significant and frivolous innovations:

New math, phased English, structural grammar, open classroom, independent learning packages, and homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping, advanced physics, and a smorgasbord of nonacademic designer courses. Among these were Preparation for Adulthood and the off-campus work-experience programs, shop for girls and home economics for boys.

Then came the Back to Basics Movement.

Supposedly this meant reading writing and arithmetic, were to be brought back into the schools. The assumption being that they had not been taught. With this Back to Basics Movement came 'tougher' standards, even talk of granting raises to teachers based on the success ratio of their students. As it has turned out, the Back to Basics Movement and tougher standards have simply meant higher scores on standardized tests, tests that are unto themselves, poorly designed. WASL is dead. Just replaced with another monster, the MSP (Measurement of Student Progress) tests? Time will tell.

I have written about the overkill in the use of standardized testing before. It has now become an absurdity. Accountability has been aimed at the teachers. Students have not been given a role in that accountability. If a student fails is it the failure of the teacher or of the student? Could it be the failure of the system?

My experience dictates seven areas upon which our educational system should have a focus:

• 1. Educational programs must meet skills demands for an ever increasingly complex world
• 2. Education must be based upon uncertainty
• 3. Educational programs must be based upon the learners' involvement in their own learning processes
• 4. Education must be concerned with behavior
• 5. Teachers must be learning managers; not dispensers of information
• 6. Emphasis should be placed upon the response of the learner
• 7. Students must be given guided independence in their pursuit of understandings rather than the accumulation of irrelevant data

Norman W Wison and his wife Suzanne are Camano Island residents.  This essay used by permission from the author. His website is http://www.shamanicmysteries.com

Comments

[Jacquie Rogers]

People should listen to you.