I’ve talked to teachers on a couple of occaisions and I’ve heard them describe the model of educational output. The standard model for education is the factory assembly line system. Apparently, some years back there was a movement afoot to adopt a system more akin to “work teams” that focus on team production.
Am I the only person who sees a problem here? Education isn’t a manufacturing operation and the students are not the operation’s product. Education is, or at least should be, a service business. And the students are, or at least should be, the operation’s customers. This focus, a product of the government monopoly on the provision of education, strikes me as the core of the problem.
Our educational system is designed to treat students as product to be processed through the system and parents as, at best, an auxiliary support system for those engaged in the production process. Now, in many more affluent districts or districts in tight communities, the parents have the power and influence to take on the role of customers/clients and, not surprisingly, get better results. However, that seems to be more of a function of the system failing to work as intended. In most schools, the educational technicians – the teachers, the administrators, etc. – don’t report to the parents as consumers, but rather to political decision-makers as their customers. As a result, their focus is on meeting the latest set of political priorities and, through a rough equivalent of regulatory capture, seeking out any rents they can secure for themselves.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that we wind up with disengaged parents, schools operating as day care, and students who lag our competitors.