Clinging to Horace Mann in the 21st Century

February, 2000

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I was recently looking at a brochure for a Brazilian conference on "schools for the third millennium," a topic near and dear to my heart. The cover of the conference brochure had a series of photographs depicting various objects, with parallels being drawn to existing school technologies. The questions asked were these: Will the mouse be the chalk of the next millennium? Will virtual reality be the school bus? Will the CRT replace the blackboard? Every attempt was being made to present a futuristic view of education, yet I found the very core of their assumptions to be downright funny.

First, the so-called "cutting edge" technologies referred to in the pictures will look positively antique within a decade. Second, and more to the point, the underlying assumption was that schools of the future will be like schools of today, only with more technology. No assumptions were made regarding the underlying model of education.

The attempt to draw parallels between today's technology and the artifacts of schools provides a safe haven for those educators who are more likely to adopt technology if it doesn't change their underlying models of how the world works. There is no paradigm shift implied by the move from classroom lectures to the delivery of content through video. Such a transition only preserves the model of teaching as telling.

In this regard, the hypotheses presented in the conference brochure are reflective of the manner in which computers were adopted by businesses. In the beginning, most corporations resisted desktop computers because they were comforted by the idea that a top-down, hierarchical flow of data mediated by a single mainframe computer would maintain control over information. Once computers started showing up on desktops, employees at all levels of an organization discovered that they could access core company data without having to send requests up through a chain of command.

On one hand, such information access was celebrated as a method for letting people make decisions faster, thus benefiting the company. It also allowed for a flattening of hierarchies and a loss of many middle-management positions. While these were significant changes, they were nothing compared to the revolution that occurred once people realized they could use technology to "do different things," rather than just provide incremental changes to existing procedures. Even more recently (triggered by the incredibly rapid rise of the Internet), we have seen small upstart organizations totally disrupt the traditional brick and mortar businesses who had been using technology to make their existing methods of operation more efficient.

Paradigm shifts come when technologies are disruptive to the status quo. On this basis, it is safe to conclude that technology has thus far not produced a paradigm shift in education. Our underlying model of how teaching should be done remains much the same as it was in the pre-computer days. In fact, it remains almost unchanged since the time of Horace Mann. During the intervening years we have nibbled at the edges of reform with our fierce debates about Dewey, Piaget, Gardner, Vygotsky, and other great pedagogical thinkers. We brought in cooperative learning and other improvements to instructional strategies, but the underlying assumption was that the core basis of schools, curriculum, and pedagogy was sound and not in need of transformation.

When computers started showing up in classrooms in the late 1970's, most educators supportive of technology saw these machines as tools for helping students practice skill development. The work of Papert and other supporters of a Logo-based constructivist approach to education was largely ignored, even though many classrooms were using Logo effectively as part of a strategy to transform the practice of teaching. Most schools assumed that, if they simply ignored the "Logo movement," it would go away, and they were mostly right. In its place we have the use of technology in support of decontextualized learning and the preparation of students to play a good game of 'Jeopardy.' We have math blasted ourselves into the era of the classroom computer, and have convinced ourselves (and legions of parents) that even gerunds can be mastered if they can be woven into a computer game where students get to blow something up.

Much of our classroom use of the Web is no better. Instead of having students create reports by copying long passages from encyclopedias, the students now copy long passages from Web sites where they are far less likely to be detected. The idea that we are "hunters and gatherers" of information remains unchanged as we move into the wired classroom.

I know that this perspective will infuriate some readers who will rush to point out the tremendously innovative ways they are using these tools with their students. In their defense, let me acknowledge that there are many wonderful educators who sweat blood helping their students learn in spite of the constraints of the schools in which these brave souls teach. But my question is this: Why do we persist in maintaining a structure in which it is hard for teachers to do the right things with their students? Why do we persist in thinking that student performance can be reduced to a page full of numbers on a transcript? Why do we allow schools to treat learners as pieces of a system rather than as sensitive human beings?

Well, while we are pondering these questions, time marches on. Some continue to wonder what the blackboard of the future will be. But just as corporations have adjusted their approach to applying technology, the essential question for schools to ask is, "Does it still make sense to use a blackboard in the future?"

Copyright, © 2000, Thornburg Center. All Rights Reserved.