Technology for Learning

photo credit: alterallensteiner

What will it take to effect change in schools? Dr. John Lundt suggests we need to leave them – the schools that is. In a keynote presentation he told the audience of district leaders we should reconsider the concept of school as a place. The notion of a physical building is beyond the fiscal capacity of the tax-paying public to sustain.

Change is inevitable but unnatural, Lundt said. How strange that we got to be leaders because we knew well the paradigm, only to be asked to change that paradigm as soon as we were in the leadership position. But there is a risk in living in the rear view mirror. An accurate examination of our history will always reveal that the mirror is more rosy than the reality. We should not be stuck in an imagined past.

Lundt compared the plight of school districts to corporations that flounder when they don’t know what business they are in. Over the decades since the turn of the century when public schooling became the norm, we have continued to add to what we believe the business of education to be. But we have not added a single minute to the curriculum, despite the huge list of items added to the curriculum. All have merit and their supporters, but should they all be assigned to our schools? Have schools been assigned to raise the nation’s children? Lundt suggested that perhaps there are so many groups wanting to influence education because there are so many experts – everyone who has attended school thinks of themselves as an expert.

Why do we cling to outdated models? Lundt suggests it is we have a string of past successes to stand on – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But the need to change no longer means you’re doing something wrong. Lundt introduced Peter Drucker’s concept of planned abandonment. The most successful companies are always introducing something new while still delivering products and services the public wants. This reinvention ensures the companies are still around tomorrow.

Lundt concluded with ten suggestions for the participants:

1. Accurately identify what business you are in. List what you will NOT do. You can’t do everything. American private schools and universities run like businesses – look there for examples.
2. Base your evaluation on the goals of your business. Assessment must reflect what we state we are trying to do.
3. Acknowledge that curriculum development is a constant ongoing activity. Continually review (not on a schedule).
4. Keep the greatest wild card of all time in mind. Technology is the best thing that ever happened to education. Makes the world your district.
5. Consider an era-appropriate curriculum model. Prepare students for their world, not yours.
6. Become comfortable with the unknown. There are no answer books. There are no final answers.
7. Make planned abandonment a routine part of your operations. Be ready before the current is obsolete.
8. Reconsider your district operational boundaries. Technology breaks these down. Access to faculty.
9. Work towards student rather than district based funding. Parents will want to spend where they get value for their dollar.
10. Reconsider the concept of school as a place. Energy considerations make going to school financially impractical. School is no longer a place but rather a state of mind.

As school district leaders, we can keep living in the past or we can change the paradigm. The best way to forecast the future is to create it.

Dr. John Lundt is the author of Learning for Ourselves and co-author of Leaving School: Finding Education.