Social, Workplace, and School Changes

Social Shifts

Society has changed. The primary modes of transportation, family organization, and business structures have changed dramatically. For example, in the agrarian age, we primarily transported people and goods via horse. Then, during the industrial revolution, society recognized that the horse could no longer serve its growing needs, to say nothing of the problems with pollution from horse droppings. A new form of transportation was essential, and the train fit the bill. These changes were certainly not without painful effects (like job losses for those in jobs made obsolete by new technology), but they followed the needs of the society.

Today, our schools are significantly out of step with the rest of society in preparing students for technological specialization, in the needs of employers, in global competition, and in many other ways. Such social shifts demand that our system of education adapt in ways relevant to the changes in our social system.

Workplace Changes

This brings us to a more careful examination of the changes happening in our society. If we understand the shift from the industrial to the information age, we can begin to see how best to change our schools. For example, the shift in business from bureaucratic organization (bosses directing "underlings") to a more team-oriented approach (employees empowered with decision-making responsibilities) brings with it significant implications for schools. The notion of a teacher-led classroom with “jobs” given to students may mirror a more industrial model of work but may not be effective in today’s information age workplace where far more empowerment is essential than we see in today’s classrooms.

Future Schools

If we begin to think of schools as places where people are prepared for the world of work (a vision I do not ascribe to, by the way), we can start to think about how schools might answer the challenges of the information age. This includes things like continuous progress, without our summer vacations, which seem to put kids way behind and artificially mark their "grades" as progress (first grade, second grade, and so forth). The summer vacation is largely an artifact of the agrarian age, when children were released from school to help with planting and harvest times. Naturally, changing to a school system without long breaks (shorter ones, instead) and one in which students of all ages are in different learning groups allowing for continuous progress (and less stigma attached to remediation) would create a certain amount of pain to the current system. And such a change may not be an appropriate approach to respond to one of the markers of the information age. Nevertheless, dreaming of ways schools can be but aren't right now is one of the wonderful activities of those involved in systems change. Thinking carefully about the possible intended and unintended consequences of our actions is vital to systemic change.