Chapter 10: Why is Teaching not Working?

Why is the way we are teaching today not working, and what are the main reasons it must be changed?

Teaching today is not working because like everything else in our world, it is an outcome-oriented, not process-oriented, endeavor. Standardized tests are only the symptoms, not the root causes. As long as the goal of education is to measure what students know instead of how they get to that point, nothing will ever change. In this way, education is a lot like the modern economy. Jobs move to take advantage of lower labor costs or weaker environmental regulations because the outcome, higher profits, is far more important than the process.

This shifting job market is why education needs wholesale change. The 21^st century has sped up everything, including re-orientating the economy. Two hundred years ago it would be hard to dislodge garment-making from an established area. Now a country like Vietnam or Laos can take advantage of capital flows and international trade to build up a garment industry in less than a decade. The more online the world becomes the less important location matters. As a result, even creative class jobs will soon move to cheaper areas. Is there any reason to believe a Parisian is a better fashion designer than someone from Bucharest? Education needs to change, especially in America and Western Europe, to create flexible adults that warrant the extra labor costs.

Why are these jobs moving? The CEOs and other business leaders are often able to have the foresight and excellent analytical skills, not because they are genetically smarter but because often they have had the opportunities to attend good schools that have already pivoted away from 20^th-century teaching. And if they haven’t, their children surely will. What’s the point of working a high-pressure Wall Street job, pulling in eight figures if you can’t send your children to a gorgeous boarding school in rural Connecticut for a measly $70,000 (Private School Review)? Even considering financial aid, any school with that sort of tuition will have the staff and facilities for true 21^st-century learning. The students who go to those kinds of private schools have a serious advantage in becoming the social leaders who determine the fates of us public school plebes stuck with 20^th-century teachers. So full-scale change is needed to ensure these private school advantages are available everywhere to everyone.

Private School Review. The Frederick Gunn School. https://www.privateschoolreview.com/ the -frederick-gunn-school-profile