Disruptive Technologies in Public Schools

Over spring break, I read "Disrupting Class" by Clayton Christensen. I found the book to be a fascinating read and full of insight regarding the future challenges that will be faced by public education. Over the next few blog postings, I will try to summarize the main tenets of the book as well as provide some commentary that I hope to be both relevant and thought-provoking.

Christensen did an excellent job of challenging the current structure of public schools, which he argued "mandates standardization". He posited that most all teachers would agree that different students learn in different ways. Yet, in our current structure, we seldom take these learning differences into account. Instead of customizing learning, we practice "batch learning." He summarized this on page 29 by stating

If we agree that we learn differently and that students need customized pathways and paces to learn, why do schools standardize the way they teach and the way they test?

He goes so far as to say

The students who succeed in schools do so largely because their intelligence happens to match the dominant paradigm in use in a particular classroom--or somehow they have found ways to adapt to it. (p. 35)

In other words, most mathematicians have strong logical-mathematical skills. Therefore, most math teachers, math classrooms and math textbooks (which are written by mathematicians) will be geared towards like learners. Such a design potentially leaves the other types of learners behind (i.e. linguistic, musical, kinesthetic, etc.).

In advocating for a different type of learning system, Christensen stated

...the current educational system--the way it trains teachers, the way it groups students, the way the curriculum is designed, and the way the school buildings are laid out--is designed for standardization. If the United States is serious about leaving no child behind, it cannot teach its students with standardized methods. Today's system was designed at a time when standardization was seen as a virtue...Schools need a new system (pp. 37-38).

This analysis by the author leads me to a variety of questions. How does District #1 go about meeting the individual needs of 2,200 students? What are the potential ramifications if we don't? Given limited resources, is such a system cost prohibitive? How does such a model fit into the standardized testing requirements of NCLB? How would parents respond to such a system which would look radically different from their own educational experience?

In future posts, I will discuss how Christensen addressed many of these questions through his plan for moving from our current system based upon standardization of instruction to a system that is "student-centric" in nature. In the meantime, I would be interested in your thoughts on this topic.