Education: A Resistance to Change

Following up on the research paper I posted, there are a number of interesting observations I can make from the more distant perspective I have now.

One of these observations is that the resistance to change regarding education is profound, and has implications for future efforts to reform our larger culture.

The public's response to educational scare stories like 'omg the Chinese are beating us in math' is to have more memorization of facts, more high-stakes testing, and more carrot-and-stick incentives for teachers and students. This approach is similar to our culture's response to other problems: to keep adding more complexity to the system, figuring that somehow 'more of the same' will fix it.

Crime is high? More cops and more prisons will solve the problem!

Kids are using drugs? Scare them straight, and make the consequences of getting caught really high. That will get them to stop using (illegal, non-Pfizer-approved) drugs!

When people challenge these paradigms, the reaction is to retrench and build the pyramid higher. Sophisticated propaganda models like "our schools are great!" react to outside threats and work to humiliate, marginalize and/or destroy competing propaganda models.

When these propaganda models start to weaken, another model is ready to take its place:

We're running low on cheap oil? Well, let's open up more areas to drilling! And we'd better make sure to station more troops around the oil wells in the middle east. This has worked great since 1950 ... what could go wrong!?

(when this model starts to fail, we get ...)

OK, so there's actually some sort of limit on how much cheap oil is actually in the ground? No problem! Hybrid electric cars will solve everything. We'll just shift seamlessly from oil to electricity.

It's very difficult to create fundamental change in a system that is so adept at repairing holes in the dike. Public propaganda models are very sophisticated these days, are are very well-funded by established interests that profit from their continuation.

The systems are robust, but there are real people involved at level. How about appealing to the actors involved in maintaining the failing systems?

From the previous article:

"Holt argued for a radical change in the way schools were organized, but found that asking teachers to do things that were "so obviously beyond their power" was counterproductive. Instead, he asked teachers to make small changes in the classroom through a process of trial and error -- and to continue practices that proved effective. This effort, too, failed. The teachers he spoke to were too fearful to seek out their own answers, relying on the expertise of professionals above their own personal judgment."

Established systems also have sophisticated methods of filtering its membership. Teachers have to attend (at a minimum) 4 years of college, and 3 years of low status non-tenured teaching. Half of all people who make it through 16 years of schooling to become teachers do not make it through this three year trial period. This is a very effective method of assuring that teachers who would disrupt the status quo don't become professional teachers; and that even the few that get through are moderated by having to conform to peer expectations for at least their first 3 years (prior to receiving tenure).

This type of filtering is very common in bureaucratic organizations, and makes appealing to the regular people involved in a bureaucracy difficult. Not only have they been selected for their ability to conform to organizational expectations, their livelyhood is also dependent on the status quo.

This creates a very powerful paradigm, one that filters incoming information and prevents bureaucrats from seeing many of the worst abuses of their organization.

There is significant resistance to change in a large organization like a school district -- so how does one create change, then?

I'll follow up on this thought later this week.