Blog: Education

Statement

I'm a retired teacher. I spent over 30 years in education. It will come as no surprise that I am an advocate for quality education.

Quantitative measurement of schools is doomed to failure. Teaching is a performance art. It is impossible to quantify art. Learning is individual. Every student has unique learning styles, abilities, and changing emotional states that affect learning. Successful education lies in complex classroom dynamics that defy mathematical interpretation. In quantum physics the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox shows that there exist experiments by which one can measure the state of one particle and instantaneously change the state of its entangled partner. Education suffers this same paradox. External efforts to measure educational outcomes alter the educational dynamic in a way that skews the measure of educational outcomes.

Outcomes based school funding results in worse schools. There is only a small correlation between the level of funding and the success of a school. While teachers deserve reasonably good compensation for their work, their reward is the intrinsic feeling of knowing they are making a difference in people's lives. Better pay indirectly affects performance because it is a show of respect from the community that improves the teacher student relationship. Attempts to base teacher pay or school funding on standardized outcomes will backfire by creating insecurity, rote objectives, and a climate of distrust. Merit pay, funding based on tests, and cookie-cutter goals make worse schools.

People are not programmable. Recently the world watched IBM's computer "Watson" defeat the all-time champions of jeopardy. There is a World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) held annually where computer chess engines compete against each other because human chess players are no challenge for computers. Computer-based algebraic systems solve math problems flawlessly in fractions of a second. Robots are the primary labor force in today's factories. Expecting schools to crank out human automatons programmed with a predefined set of information misses the point of education. People have thought processes and an ability to interact with each other and the world that cannot be replicated with a computer algorithm. The successful school will encourage these distinctions rather than try to program a rote database into the heads of students.

Clueless politicians are destroying the U.S. educational potential. No child Left Behind, standardized performance targets, punitive threats, and competition-based motivation hurt education because all are based on unsubstantiated theories and false beliefs.

The community creates the success of its school. When I first started teaching people sympathized with me about my pay because they knew I could make much more money in business or as an actuary. The school was the social hub of the community. Parents and others in the community expressed admiration for the work I did as a teacher. The students believed that if they were responsible and worked hard in school it would pay off for them in life. I didn't earn much money but I felt a lot of respect, enjoyed working with the students, and loved going to work. There were times in my career when I performed less well because of the negative feelings I met at work. I know now what makes a good school and what destroys a school.

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