Change Begets Change

If you spend much time around education, you'll hear it.  "Education hasn't changed in 200 years," someone says, and people nod.  I roll my eyes.  Some of you reading this have said it, and yes, I rolled my eyes at you so hard I nearly sprained a socket.  It's an easy line to say, and all you have to do to get people to believe it is show two pictures of kids sitting in desks.  The problem is that image is silent and stationary and doesn't show what is really happening in the classroom.  All that image really proves is that humans still sit in chairs and need horizontal surfaces to write on.  Education has changed dramatically in the two decades I have been doing it.  If you brought a teacher from 200 years ago into 2020 (even before the pandemic), they would not recognize what school now is.

Expertise in Classrooms

Two hundred years ago, you had the same teacher no matter what grade you were in.  She read a lot, but she had no specific training in any one subject.  She taught you reading, writing, math, and science with no specific training in any one of them.  Now, your science teacher has a science-related degree and is required to engage in professional learning in both their subject area and pedagogy.  You may have the same teacher a couple of times (if you are in a private school), but you don't have the same teacher from kindergarten until graduation, which is what was happening two centuries ago.  It started to slowly change at the beginning of the 20th century, when cultural values shifted from the idea of Renaissance men to that of specialization.  People stopped being simultaneously farmer and architect and musician and philosopher and started being a farmer or an architect or a musician.  Teaching changed because culture changed.

Lab Science

In spite of the fact that all it did was send a beeping radio signal, the launch of Sputnik in 1957 changed a lot of things here on earth.  In the midst of the cold war, scared people increased the construction of bomb shelters, worried that it might be taking pictures of them from above, and of course, propelled us to the moon.  It also changed the teaching of science in America.  Seeing the need for engineers, schools were asked to identify those with aptitude early, and science instructions took a major turn.  Lab experiments were no longer the domain of university courses only.  High schools began building labs, and hands-on activities became valued.  Teaching science changed because culture changed.

Collaboration

In the early 90s, there was a survey of business owners, asking what they looked for in a potential employee.  In the top five of those answers was the ability to collaborate on projects.  Schools began to implement cooperative learning programs, in which each member of a group of four was given a role, like the recorder or the one we made fun of in my math classes, the encourager ("Go girl, multiply those numbers.").  It was a little clumsy at the start, but as we have grown to value collaboration, we've gotten better at it, and students are better able to identify what their contribution should be. Social values changed, so education changed with it.

Choice

Parenting changes with each generation.  In just my lifetime, there has been a pronounced difference from parents telling their child that the teacher is the authority and you should respect them whether you feel respectful or not to parents telling their child that the teacher works for us, and I will meet with them to make sure they understand you.  I'm not complaining because some of those changes have been positive, but if it it has changed this much in my 44 years, imagine how much it has changed in the last 200 years and the impact that has had on education.  One of the most recent is that of choice.  Parenting books and websites started advising parents to get behavior "buy-in" from their kids by giving them choices.  That training led kids to expect choice in a lot of areas, and teachers like the idea of "buy-in" as well, so we now incorporate as much choice as possible into our lessons, allowing students to choose from a menu of books and then allow them to display their understanding in a variety of ways.  The change in parenting values led to a change in pedagogy.

Shifts in Discipline

The changes in parenting also led to massive changes in discipline.  I never got spanked at school, but my brother did.  Corporal punishment has, of course, been eliminated from schools, but that is not the only change.  Detention and suspension still exist, but they are far rarer than they once were.  We are more likely to have reasonable conversations about feelings with students.  Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing.  I'd much prefer a heart change to compliance-based behavior modification.  What I am saying is that the change in societal values and parenting techniques led to a change in schools as well.

Brain Science Based Pedagogy

The invention of the MRI and the fMRI changed everything.  Many myths we had about the brain (use only 10%, logical left vs creative right) were debunked.  It has taken a long time, but we are now in a position to apply the information coming out of that research to pedagogy.  I have attended two Learning and the Brain Conferences, but they have been doing this work for 20 years.  When we started learning what stimulates dendrite growth, we could use less trial and error and more confidence in our knowledge while lesson planning.  Change in science and technology brought about change in education.

Use of Technology

Speaking of technology, what impact has that had on your classroom?  It's been quite a bit in mine.  From the ability to communicate with absent students to quickly googling the answers to questions.  From 3D printing projects to twitter chats and blogs.  From online editing tools, like Grammarly and TurnItIn.  From out of class resources like Crash Course and Khan Academy to in class communication like Socrative and Flip Grid, my students in 2020 (even before the pandemic) had a MUCH different classroom experience than my students in 1999, when there was an internet, but using it meant reserving time in the computer lab.  Technology has changed rapidly, and we have taken advantage of those changes for our students.  We haven't even talked about how well-positioned some schools were to move their instruction online (I know they all weren't and that there was a digital divide, but imagine if the pandemic had happened in 1990 instead of 2020).  Changes in technology always scare people and lead to changes in instruction. 

Projects that are both Socially and Academically Minded

Because of internet access, there has been a lot of focus on expanding projects from knowledge-based to social-minded.  Almost all school projects now have some aspect that includes either a creative or social component, usually both.  Things like the famous 20% time projects were not possible when my career began, but we are now using students' interests in and knowledge of the wider world to have them think about their interconnectedness.  This was made possible by changes in technology and widespread because of changes in societal values.

"Relationships are Everything"

Teachers on Twitter use the statement "relationships are everything" a lot.  They aren't everything, but we have found they are critical to everything else in education.  Those changes in discipline and choice and buy-in that I mentioned earlier are helped enormously by students and teachers building a level of trust with each other.  The aggregate of society's changes in values led to a big change in education.  We spend far more time during the first days of school doing relationship building (and I maintain that's why online instruction worked well last year.  We'd had three quarters of knowing each other and trusting each other and knowing each other's voices before we went virtual.  That made all the difference.  

Discussion

Look into a classroom today, and you will see discussion.  Teachers asking prompting questions to students who may answer out loud or sometimes online or in writing.  Two hundred years ago, teachers did not discuss things.  Children sat silently until called on, and that was to elicit a specific answer to a specific question.  It was not to ask kids what they think or to relate learning to their experience.  If they spoke out of turn, they might be hit with a ruler or asked to stay inside while others played.  Kids now have a voice in the classroom.  While it as different levels in different classrooms, it is far more than it once was because we now value their thoughts in a way we didn't in the time of "children should be seen and not heard."

I could go on, but this post is already longer than I meant for it to be.  My intent isn't just to list the ways education has changed, but to show why.  Changes in the world, whether those changes be in values or technology or knowledge, lead to changes in education.  Here comes another one.  We are going to figure out the hybrid thing because COVID-19 will require it of us.  One day, having a student who is at home sick join us online won't seem like a big deal.  It'll just be part of the normal course of school because we figured it out when we had to.  Those tweets with hand clap emojis saying that we cannot do this will seem silly in hindsight because we will have figured it out.  

Change in the world begets change in education.  Most of the time, the changes are gradual.  This one isn't.  Get ready to adapt.  It's what we do.  It's what we've always done.