What Business Doesn't Know About Education
Robert Pondiscio of CitizenshipFirst writes to Deborah Meier again today.
Dear Deborah,
In my last post I pointed out some of the ways in which education misunderstands business. One of the points I made was that schools, more than businesses, tend to demand compliance. As if on cue, the same day I wrote that a video appeared on YouTube of Chicago teachers sitting through an infantilizing call and response "professional development" exercise. It was a depressing, demeaning thing to see. I can't imagine sitting through it. I'd probably have walked out.
The misunderstandings go both ways. If education has an outdated view of business, the business world can be equally clueless about education. Business people tend to be frustrated by education's slow pace of change and inability to be nimble. Schools resist or fail to respond to financial incentives, and when we respond to external pressures like testing, we often do so poorly. Like most institutions, schools are inherently conservative. That's not a flaw of our education system; it's a feature of it.
Education, by nature, is not forward-looking. We share the best of what is known about the past, not just in history but in all subjects. Newton's famous remark about seeing further because we