Down the rabbit hole of education reform
Former teacher Mark Phillips takes us on a scary trip through the Wonderland of Educational Reform. Phillips is aformer high school teacher and a former teacher educator at the University of California at Santa Barbara and at San Francisco State. He writes a monthly column on education for the Marin Independent Journal and blogs atEdutopia. A version of this appeared on the Edutopia website.By Mark Phillips
I had a Lewis Carroll-like dream the other night….a trip to the Wonderland of Educational Reform.
My story begins…
I fall down a rabbit hole. I look around and notice a little inlet just off to the west calledThe Institute of No Cliché Left Behind. As I enter I see a sign above a door: “21stCentury Learning.” Four people, evidently educational reformers (they’re each wearing an Arne Duncan T-shirt), greet me at the door. I ask them to explain what 21st Century learning means. Each gives a different answer.
“How can you use the same title and have different answers?” I ask. “Ah, that’s the beauty of this,” they answer in unison, “the true beauty of clichés. They can mean whatever we