part 2: The Broken Model

From The One World Schoolhouse

by Khan. 

The author of this reading argues that conventional schools "cramp imagination" (p.62) and "completely ignore the wonderful variety and nuance that distinguish human intelligence, imagination and talent" (p. 65). He argues that it is past time for schools to change and evolve again. 

In the beginning the education system was designed to produce citizens to enter the work force. In the video on the History of school Laurie A. Couture described the Prussion model as one that created a military work force and a students only job was to "take their place in society, be cogs and keep the system goin".  In this same video John Taylor Gallo makes the strong statement that "Prussion schooling was our to destroy the imagination" of the students. 

JTG also stated a fascinating idea in the reading that students learning was put to an end by the end of the class period. The bell would ring and they would move on to their next class. "They had no choice but to break off their conversations" (p.77). If students were given too much time to think and connect with other students then wild and dangerous ideas they may come up.  School "by design, order trumped curiosity, regimentation took precedence over personal initiative. (p.77)

This quote brings me to the video clip I had found.  You can watch the clip here: How School Makes Kids Less Intelligent; TEDxyouth@BeaconStreet, Eddy Zhong.

Eddy Zhong describes himself as a straight C student, who was bad a math and science and wanted to be a professional Call of Duty player when he grew up. A random piece of mail one day inviting him to a business plan competition in Boston changed the course of his life. By the age of 16 he had started a technology company and was featured in the Wall Street Journal.  Over the course of two years, starting at age 14 he competed in several competitions in which he would win. His team was judged by a panel but the reason he believed he kept winning was that his team would build a prototype of their idea. He points out that the judges were both surprised and impressed by his teams creativity. He began to realize what kept him going was his "unrealized passion" that he loved to create things.  He was approached by someone a competition that offered his team an opportunity to turn his idea into a real life company. 

There are couple of connections from Eddie Zhong's video that sync up with the The Broken Model pt. 2 reading. On page 98 in the last full paragraph "creativity in general tends to be egregiously under appreciated and often selected against in our schools and many educators fail to math, science and engineering as 'creative' fields at all". (p.98).  Eddie Zhong stated in his video that he brought his ideas to his peers and he was mocked and made fun of. Next they showed their idea to elementary school aged students and they wanted to buy his prototype! They were excited and he was inspired by these younger students sense of business. He described young children as being creative but then turned into "teenagers who couldn't think outside of the box".  Eddie thinks educators only ever follow the traditional model of high school-diploma-college-job equals success. Creativity squashed.

The reading also talks about testing and how tests should not be a measure of future potential. Nadia, the authors cousin once failed a math test. Due to parental support and responsive teachers Nadia was able to succeed however if circumstances were different she would "have been excluded from her best chance to learn higher math and labeled one of the less smart kids". (p.100) This may have affected her confidence and led to a slew of other negative outcomes.  There is also no evidence to say that the best performing student will be the most successful student as well. Eddie Zhong talked about testing and intelligence stating that it "cannot be measure by academic intelligence alone". His success was self-motivated. Had he been a better student and inspired by his teachers would the outcome have been different?  

Eddie Zhong dropped out of school at age 17 and went on to create two businesses. You can check those our here and read about his inspiring stories. 

 https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-accelerator-teen-startup-founders-2015-1

https://www.leangap.org/

Zhong, E. (2015, February 6). How school makes kids less intelligent [Video]. TEDx Talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yt6raj-S1M 

Khan, S. (2012). Part 2: The broken model. In The one world schoolhouse: Education reimagined (pp. 61–124).