What went wrong (since 1910)?

Okay, this started as a comment on another thread, but it ballooned out. I’m going loose-and-fast with education history, so I’d love corrections or additions.

My general question is how did we (US education system) have such promising educational ideas in the early 20th century, but abandon them so thoroughly?

I recently read an interview with one of those award-winning Finns who just shrugged and said, “You all came up with the ideas: we just made sure they got done.”

(I’m paraphrasing into Texan.)

Here’s my thoughts on what happened:

What’s crazy is the US (and the world at large)had the same conversation about project-based education literally a hundred years ago. Folks like Dewey and Montessori (yes, that Montessori) promoted more of a student-led, active education. And there was a surprising amount of buy in!

What went wrong?

Some blame the Russians. Sputnik caused a back-to-basics panic. That same panic still happens to a lesser degree whenever a count state or school drops in the ranking of tests.

Others just say that the expense of student-directed, project-based schooling couldn’t scale up as primary and secondary education became more de facto universal. Kids coming out of the fields and the factories increased the school-going population just as the population began to swell from looser immigration and increased birth rates. The US didn’t keep pace with spending because…Sputnik, really, I guess.

Meanwhile, the wage difference between teachers and non-teachers ballooned. As the US became a globally competitive economic superpower, people simultaneously had access to professions and labor markets that had been excluded. Think about the one-room schoolhouse on the frontier; The school teacher (and maybe the librarian) was the most prestigious and well paid job a woman could hold. But with the rise of the cities and the railroad, now she could go be a secretary or a saleswoman or any number of early 20th-century lady-jobs. The flight was even faster and more pronounced for male teachers.

Even today, the US, compared to other countries, doesn’t actually pay that poorly: but they pay much, much less than other professions. That means that if you teach, especially in fields like science or math, you losing a significant premium against the job you could have. That means the “real world” is mighty tempting and teaching labor is susceptible to mass resignations if they have to put up with crap. (This has recently happened with COVID—record numbers of teachers retiring or changing professions.) The result is a perpetual staffing problem. More than 50% of teachers leave the profession within five years. Most teachers now only have a couple of years of experience. They are over-worked and under compensated and it’s almost impossible for administration and teachers to think about doing project-based learning for 7 periods of 30+ children every day under such conditions.

I think if you asked 100 parents, teachers and administrators if they would rather “drill and kill” or do project-based learning, most of them would like to focus on projects, but with testing expectations and funding pinches, it just doesn’t seem possible.

Submitted October 27, 2021 at 04:09PM by uselessfoster https://ift.tt/2Zt9oV8