The most wonderful people I have met over my lifetime are dedicated
to education. Many work in schools and many of those in awful schools.
The following is not in any sense a criticism of them or of their thousands
of counterparts across American and the world in their devotion
to children and learning.
In fact my comments throughout these ideas
are the opposite: a tribute to them for trying to make things better, in
often amazingly adverse circumstances.
The villain in this book is an ogre I have called the education establishment.
Tales of the woes of traditional education cannot be told without
an ogre character. Exactly who, though, is the ogre of education?
Can the right princess—like the No Child Left Behind laws—kiss this
ogre and transform him into a knight in shining armor—or must he be
slain? If it is option one, who is that princess? If it is option two, how do
we identify this dreadful fellow and strike a stake through his heart?
Perhaps the ogre is actually a kindly character, like the animated
movie star ogre Shrek. In that case he would be doing a lot of the wrong
things for the right reasons. He would have the lamest excuse of all for
dumbing down our kids: he means well. His destructive ways would
need correcting just as those of an evil ogre would.
About eight years ago I was in a small meeting with some executives
of a Washington-based public relations firm that specialized in representing
the education establishment. They worked for clients from the full
spectrum of that establishment, not a certain sector or point of view.
After a couple of hours of exploring ideas for how to get the education
establishment’s attention for some new things
happening on the Internet,
the executives began to be increasingly candid about how difficult it was
to get any attention or action from the conglomeration of education entities.
One of the public relation guys turned to me in the midst of these
laments and said, ‘‘Do you know what we call the education establishment
among ourselves?’’ I shook my head. He said, ‘‘The Blob.’’
So, we have an ogre named The Blob. Reform movements disappear
into it. It offers no identifiable face to sit down with and talk. Though
enormously wealthy and getting richer every year, it whines endlessly
for money. The children it teaches slip a little or a lot nearly every year
to learning less than the kids they follow. Wave after wave of fresh new
teachers penetrate it briefly and are repelled. It hides in a collective
cynicism that justifies jobs and profits, perpetuating the status quo. The
Blob, shrugging, proclaims itself the professional expert and assures us
there is no way to do any better.
The Blob is an unfortunate mix—in varying degrees in many
places—of many factors: bureaucratic entrenchment, vested interests,
unwarranted tenure, misanthropy in the classroom, professional snobbery,
liberal do-gooding, conservative stinginess, cynicism about other
people’s children, fear of kids, and quite a few other things. It is beyond
the scope of this book to go on a wild blob chase and try to pin down and
identify our villain. A lot of very good people have tried doing that and
others are still trying—almost all with little luck. A lot of heroic people
are caught up in The Blob where they strive every day to educate children.
But ours is a different and much more hopeful story of an entirely
new phenomenon for learning flowering beyond the ogre’s control.
I pause here to bring up the ogre because it is crucial to this book
that you suspend listening to the education establishment as you read
what I have to say. The Blob is very effective at blowing smoke. The
ogre has programmed the public to react negatively to online learning.
It is not easy to get beyond the concern and confusion The Blob causes.
Does The Blob really know more than you and I do about education?
Does The Blob have any sort of real handle on the digital age we have
entered? Is this ogre really better qualified than you are to judge your
children and help them choose their path in life—and then to decide
with what they should be equipped for the twenty-first century? Should
we really commit our kids by law to twelve years of confinement under
The Blob?
The biggest threat The Blob has ever faced is the migration of education’s
most obvious commodity, knowledge, into the virtual knowledge ecology.
Idea 11 from
109 IDEAS for Virtual Learning by Judy Breck