Why One-Size-Fits-All Could Save Public Education
One-size-fits-all is vanilla ice cream. It’s plain white athletic socks. It’s “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with a recorder. One-size-fits-all is an assembly line and a Model-T Ford and a straight line of school children marching to their class. It’s industrial. It’s lock-step. It’s mechanistic.
And it just might save public education.
Sometimes I use one-size-fits-all synonymously with standardization, when, in fact, they are entirely different. One-size-fits-all is boring and industrial, but it only becomes standardized when it cannot be modified. Permit a little freedom to one-size-fits-all and it becomes unique. It becomes the palate for creativity.
See, I hate vanilla ice cream only when I’m not allowed to add peanut butter and chocolate chips and crushed-up