What are we to do in education?

by Walter Smith

Innovation needed in the classroom

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British Columbia, Ontario , and Alberta are the top performers among all the provinces, earning “B” grades on the Education education and Skills skills report card. 

The largest provincial differences occur on student reading, science , and math skills—with skills — with provinces earning anywhere from an “A +” plus” to a “D–” “D minus” grade.   The PISA ( Programme for International Student Assessment ) Scores scores produced by OECD (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ) rates Canada as #2 No. 2 in achievement among the 15 countries tested, second only to Finland. 

We are graduating almost everybody, but many are not learning.   In fact, if we go back 40 30 years, the CBC reports were similar.   The only difference then was that there were a lot less fewer high school graduates.

Blaming the students

There are many who believe that the problem lies in the behavior of the students.  

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with student behaviour. Students who do not conform to the system fail because they are not behaving appropriately.

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They link a lack of progress in school to the

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behaviour of the student.

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But is this a legitimate rationalization?

I do not think that we will find any evidence, statistical or otherwise, to support this assertion.  In fact, the evidence is to the contrary.  Many students do get through the education system on behavior alone, but the evidence shows that they have not learned much.

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Behaviour problems are actually a symptom of the real problem in education.

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The only factor that legitimately contributes to a lack of progress in learning is the quality of the learning experience.  

Poor-quality learning is caused by poor-quality learning experiences.

Schools, colleges and universities are mills that are largely run on the fuel of psychology. 

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Granted, teachers are well qualified in their specialties, but they are not well qualified in learning.

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Psychology is used to rationalize the incompetence of the mill

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. It is a force to rationalize negativity.

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Traditional education is forced, it’s mundane, it’s constantly tested

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and it’s boring

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In the late 1960s, Dr. John Evans, chair of the new medical school of Macmaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, inspired an innovation that has revolutionized medical education in Canada.  He was concerned about the deterioration of student interest after the first year of study.  They became bored with the endless rote memorization which was characteristic of the traditional approach to medical training.  Under his direction, the curriculum of the school was restructured from a passive information base to an active experiential base.  Problem solving based on real medical cases was used to focus learning experiences and information was introduced in relation to those problems.  There was tremendous scepticism in the medical community in regard to those new ideas because it was felt that students would not have the knowledge required to be effective practitioners.  In fact, it soon became evident that the exact opposite was true.  The first students who graduated in 1972 were as good as any of their colleagues in Canada as far as knowledge was concerned, and many exceeded their colleagues in practical ability.  Since 1972, all of Canada's medical schools as well as medical schools around the world have successfully adopted this approach to the most vital training in our society.

An interesting footnote to Dr. Evans' experiment concerns educational prerequisites.  He conducted a study where half the students admitted to the medical program in a particular year had the traditional 95% academic standing, and the other half were selected through interviews.  He found that when the experiential learning approach was used, academic prerequisites has no significant effect on the number of student graduates in either group.

There are thousands of examples like the Macmaster experiment in every profession, occupation and discipline.  Maybe they are not all so dramatic, but they are all significant.  So why haven’t we adopted a positive psychological approach to all education.  I think the obvious answer is that it will disrupt academia.  The experiential approach will bring real accountability to everyone in education.  But who in the establishment wants to change the utopia of unaccountable education where we can fight over it, play politics with it, belittle the real solutions, apply band aids, and make ourselves believe we are actually doing something?

What action do we need?  We have to get past blaming the victims and rationalizing it by calling people smart and stupid.  Everyone can learn if the learning experience is rich and engaging.

How can we get people to do it?  We need to create frameworks that give teachers the autonomy to do their jobs.  Everything else will fall in place.

How can we adapt the solution to our needs? 

The answer is simple - strategically designed projects and an organizational system which allows us to design complete project-based curriculums.

Do we need to pilot or are there things already in place that we can build on?  There is lots of experiential learning going on in the schools and colleges and universities and outside the schools.  We need to identify it, enhance it and classify it.  And we need to eventually bring all curriculums on stream.  Everyone will benefit, even the ones who currently excel in the academic system.   We need some advocates to bring it about.  We need some politicians who are willing to do what needs to be done.

Can we get accountability in education?  Can we improve the statistics?  We can, and we can do it dramatically.

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  Innovation needed in the classroom

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You can reach Walter Smith directly at walter.smith@nf.sympatico.ca