Rupert Murdoch: 'Blow up what doesn't work' in education

Rupert Murdoch: The Steve Jobs Model for Education Reform - WSJ.com

Mr. Murdoch, an accomplished pragmatist, criticizes the public education system for failing to deliver enough exceptional workers into the job market. In presenting the problem from the corporate perspective, he echoes the concerns reported time and time again by business leaders who are struggling to find the talent their firms need to compete in today's fast-paced, technology-driven economies. Interestingly, the chairman and CEO of News Corporation starts off his article by stating that "everyone" today is in favour of education reform, but that the hard part is determining which model to adopt.

So far so good, and this is where we would want to jump into the conversation to advocate for classical education.

For his part, Mr. Murdoch suggests that the answer - or at least a significant part of it - is to use technology to transform the educational experience. He finds that children today gravitate naturally to new technologies, but that schools have not changed their approach to capitalize on the new reality. He also lashes out at the traditional classroom model. Here in concise form he exposes some of the structural problems with the system:

The top-down, one-size-fits-all approach frustrates the ones who could do more advanced work. And it leaves further and further behind those who need extra help to keep up. Teachers are likewise stunted. Some excel at lecturing. Some are better at giving personal attention. With the right structure, they would work together like a football team. With the existing structure, they are treated like interchangeable cogs.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the proposed solutions, what Mr. Murdoch proposes is somewhat simplistic. He suggests that with the right technology, learning would be less of a chore, almost as if we could find a technology solution that would trigger some previously-untapped, innate learning instinct, making the whole process easy. In this line of thinking, Mr. Murdoch essentially falls into the same trap that Dewey pedagogues fell into. Certainly 3-dimensional animations, online video clips, or interactive iPad presentations can be for today's students what diagrams and charts were for the previous generation, but there is a limit to what visual aids can do. This is why those who promote classical education argue exactly against visual-based learning, maintaining that it is an inferior kind of training. A student might get a rough idea of what the Bernoulli principle is from a video, but he or she will never become one of the expert aerospace engineers Boeing wants to hire without spending hours, weeks, and months wrestling with the equations of fluid mechanics, solving problem after progressively more difficult problem. His or her brain will finally respond by opening up new neural pathways, recognizing and saving new patterns through this laborious struggle. It is the same in every field of study and human endeavour.

Never forget that it is the mind we must train. Learning is less of a natural process than it is a discipline. It requires work, often hard work. If Mr. Murdoch were to reflect on how he managed to become a successful practitioner in his field, he will certainly remember that it took many years of extreme effort and mental exertion, with each new skill building only slowly upon previous skills. What's more, he had to make many mistakes (an almost-foreign word in today's educational discourse), and realize that they were mistakes, in order to get the feedback required to improve his capabilities. We are now starting to describe the real process whereby the human mind learns. It is through the crucible of hard experience, complete with pain, frustration, and finally satisfaction at accomplishment, that each of us becomes who he is.

But there is more. The classical model also does not neglect the spirit. We will take up that critical component of a complete education in the next post.

No child left behind

No parent wants his or her child to be left behind by the school system.  But the fact remains that some children, especially boys of the active 'kinesthetic' type, are still more likely to fail to learn the core subjects well enough in grade school to have a solid foundation for high school studies.  Instead, many of them do learn early that they make good class clowns and can provide hours of entertainment for the other students during recess, but that reading, writing, and arithmetic are not "their thing."  That which is not enjoyed is not rehearsed, and that which is not rehearsed cannot be enjoyed, so the cycle goes on and students "fall through the cracks."

In the United States, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandates standardized testing for all federally-funded schools.  As a condition of continued funding, each school is required to show continuous improvement in test scores year-over-year.  Various corrective measures kick in if scores do not improve.  Standardized tests and the follow-up processes based on the scores are useful tools for improving accountability and quality.  (Ontario also has standardized tests in grades 3, 6, 9, and 10.)  In spite of the optimistic name of the American legislation though, this type of 30,000-ft approach cannot prevent your child or mine from falling through the cracks.

Solving this problem requires close engagement with the student.  It takes a teacher or a parent who is willing to invest time with that student to coach him through.  The student often needs to be separated from his 'audience' of 25-30 peers and instead be taught one-on-one.  Sometimes it also takes a very unorthodox approach.  I read of one home-schooling parent whose son did his best reading while hanging sideways off the sofa.  Most school systems will rarely find the time to engage with every child - they are, after all, focused on giving the average student an average education.  But parents working in a collaborative environment with their own children will definitely be able to meet the needs of each student much better than any institution can.