Last Edited: February 13, 2018
For the past several decades, a relatively few politicians and educators have led a growing chorus of media and citizens saying that the United States education system is inadequate for 21st century life, if it’s not broken. The term education system is at best a way to simplify discussions about a complex set of things people do in the name of trying to make the world more as they choose for everyone. They want changes in schools and in the way schools operate. They cite as evidence for changes that some demographic groups of students do not complete high school or college, that some school buildings are “old”, that some teachers continue to have students sit at desks arranged in rows and columns, that teachers should receive better pay as well as more community support. The list, noble as individual items may appear, goes on seemingly without end.
Their argument rests on the assumption that ideal school programs equals an education system. The equation rests on an undisclosed plan to reach an undisclosed goal. Some argue that the purpose of education is to make possible the full realization of the inalienable right of each citizen to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as asserted by the United States Declaration of Independence. No such education system or plan exists beyond philosophies for public discussion.
Responsibility for education and educators, especially for schooling, remains with each of the 50 states. To assist with schooling, states enter voluntarily into programs with the Federal government and private philanthropies. Each requires their own accountability standards that states and their operating units, like local schools, must meet. Regardless of how noble and worthy the intent of using the state-Federal-philanthropy arrangements rests on an assumption that it results in closer to an ideal education system. This assumption works for conversations and political debate, but not to organize sustainable public policies or professional activities of educators. People do not agree about what life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness mean or their relationships with education and schooling. To complicate matters further, educators as individuals do not agree among themselves with ways to meet accountability standards set by anyone other than themselves.
The word education refers to multiple formal and even more informal theories that account for two observable social patterns in daily life: one, changes people make in their social activities, and two, schooling does not necessarily account for all learning, such as learning that occurs in families and during work. Assertions that an education systems exists attempt to override the lack of agreement for how to use those theories in practice.
Also, the word system refers to relationships among parts of a whole; agreement with a meaning of education would identify that whole in ways that define its purpose (outcome), such as all people learning all lessons teachers instruct. Theorists and others use the word learning without necessarily referring to the same phenomenon. Theories of education, systems, and learning may feature a unique set of relationships and sometimes of vocabulary that describe a variety of processes and outcomes.
A single education system, not limited to a school programs, would appear in ways that people can agree on what and how they see, hear, and measure it. A simpler strategy would be for educators to commit to insuring that all learners will learn all lessons taught that the most accomplished people in society learn(ed). Until either commitment, claims of an inadequate or broken school system remain political assertions, not empirical facts that educators can use to accelerate, increase, or deepen learning consistently.
Previous Edit: October 6, 2015