Many issues are tying the golden opportunity of K-12 eLearningi [0] into an all constraining ball of twine. Three credible causes:
Our Minds: The focus on the latest current example instead of the solution. Every day media and special interests bombard us with what Daniel Gardner in his new book “The Science of Fear” calls the upside down pyramid. The minor but exciting current issue is picked up our intuitive and non-rational unconscious mind and controls most of our actions. High gas prices can shape this year’s elections but slow moving problem of education is shaping the destiny of Arizona and or nation. Effective eLearning adoption is a typical rational, long term strategic solution to that ails K-12 education and to seizing the opportunitiesi [0] of the 21st century. This solution gets short shrift. It rarely gets traction in the day-to-day hubbub of eventi [0] driven issues.
Societies’ Ideas: The focus on one area instead of the system. There is no end to well thought out K-12 education memes that will fix education. You all have a one or a few favorites: smaller class sizes, Science Technology Engineering Math education, individualized education, computer on every desk, pilot programs of all types, graduate all students, compulsory education, home schooling, multiple choices for schooling, master teachers for all students, higher teacher pay, wise and effective transformational leadership, 21st century schools, tutoring for struggling students, cheap broadbandi [0] Internet, longer school day and year, 21st century skills education, academic standards for all subjects, tests to graduate and more money. Arizona has 1.3 million students, 1800 schools, and 220 districts on the horizon. The human, physical, technological or funding resources require to effected these memes within Arizona K-12 education are scarce or non-existent. Except for eSATSi [0], School Facilities Board and the Rodel Foundation, there have been few system wide cost calculations.
Hope for Progress: The lack of recent progress gives us few logical pathways and squelches hope. From 1890 to 1970 American’s level of education increased from 8 years to 14 years of schooling. Since then progress has slowed to a crawl. Graduation rates peaked at 80% then declined. Our lead of 70% vs. 30% full time secondary school enrollment over global competition no longer exists. The basic cause is family environment deterioration. A best practice predictor of high school graduation is academic assessment of child at age five. (NY Times, July 29, 2008, “The Biggest Issue,” David Brooks).Legacy education has stalled while technology in other almost all other fields has steadily advanced. Technologically savvy workforce creation has not kept pace with public and private sector needs. Highly 21st century skilled workers command higher wages, while unskilled workforce has few good employment opportunities. Death by a thousand pricks can not be addressed by a thousand bandages.
Next blog: By the end of August my next blog will address a possible pathway for Arizona to quit trying to fix K-12 and focus on transforming the entire system. The states are the central player in systemic innovation of K-12 education.
Note: Definition of meme from Wikipedia:
The word meme (pronounced /miːm/ [1])[1] [2], a 1976 neologism [3], denotes any learned feeling, thought or behavior. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a sociological "culture [4]" in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus [5]. As a unit of cultural evolution [6], a meme in some ways resembles a biological gene [7]. Richard Dawkins [8], in his book The Selfish Gene [9],[2] [10] recounts how and why he coined the term meme to describe how one might extend Darwinian [11] principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples tunes [12], catch-phrases [13], beliefs [14], clothing-fashions [15], and the technology [16] of building arches.
Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection [17] (similarly to Darwinian [18] biological [19] evolution [20]) through the processes of variation [21], mutation [22], competition [23], and inheritance [24] influencing an individual entity's reproductive success. So with memes, some ideas will propagate less successfully and become extinct [25], while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutate [26]. "Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts."[3] [27]