Learning's future is brightening. Teaching's future is dimming.

Education 1.0 - Adam and Eve up to 1994. This phase required a teacher since mother nature was not a very clear educational resource. Books were great resources, and needed to be locked up as precious. The teacher organized and presented the curriculum. Learning requires proximity to body of the teacher. If the teacher didn't know it, you usually couldn't know it. Student addition to the knowledge base are laughed at. Physical buildings are usually important to protect the teacher and the books. Supplying educational resources to the teacher is fiscally possible. The optimal educational result is a person that is able to step into every available job and supply value to the employer.

Education 2.0 - 1994 to 2008. This phase required a teacher since the scattered internet resources made little sense to a normal student. Computers connected to the internet were great resources and needed to be locked up as precious. The teacher drew in appropriate internet resources into the curriculum. Learning requires the proximity to both the body of the teacher and to an internet connection. If the teacher couldn't find it, even if you could, you usually couldn't see how it was important. Student additions to the knowledge base are allowed, but given little status. Physical buildings are very important to protect both the teacher and the internet access. Supplying adequate internet access for teachers is a great fiscal challenge, but is generally possible. The optimal educational result changes very quickly, shifting from general high level knowledge in as many areas as possible to even higher knowledge in one specific area, usually the maths or sciences, with less than 7% of college graduates in 2008 having a general knowledge education.

Education 3.0 - 2008 to today. This phase doesn't require a teacher since many excellent internet resources have already been structured to allow learners to acquire knowledge on their own via thousands of often free courses on every imaginable topic. Mobile internet devices are great resources, and are guarded in the clothing of every person at all times when not in active use. Those learners without such a device begin to fall behind in learning, even within the same class as those with such devices. The teacher, while still viewed as a knowledge store for the learner, doesn't know most things compared to the internet and is less and less perceived as a primary source. Instead, the teacher is seen as a liaison between the educational needs of the student and the vastness of the internet. If this support role by the teacher isn't required by a given student, the student is allowed to not use the physical teacher. Learning requires proximity to a live internet connection, and sometimes, a teacher.  Student additions to the knowledge base are frequently valued as equal in importance to those created much more experienced knowledge authors. Physical school buildings quickly fade in importance since the learner is active all the time and everywhere. Some learners eschew physical school buildings as unsafe and study at home. Supplying adequate and up-to-date internet access for students is often not fiscally possible which is leading parents to abandon that aspect of the school's prior role and supply their own children with internet devices and access. The optimal educational result of high level math or science with the most specialization possible is desired. Study in non-science and non-math areas are considered questionable.

Education 4.0 - 2010 to the future. At some time in the next years, parents could band together with their children's future employers and leverage the power of the mobile internet to facilitate learning outcomes that more closely align with industry needs. Both parents and industry may grow tired of schools' limited educational resources, the outdated general curriculum of Education 1.0, and schools'  inability to supply students with marketable skills. Employers may decide to leverage the power of the mobile internet directly and at historically low cost to build future employees into the employees with the skills that employers actually need. This will continue to be difficult to predict for the employer, perhaps leading parents to require contractual promise of employment for their children if they follow the employers' path. This is already done for high-level athletes. Schools might be able to change enough so as to preserve a portion of their former role and to slow their demise if they act much more aggressively to become ambassadors between employers and students. This would give schools a renewed social utility lost over time in education 2.0 and 3.0, as evidenced by the current high general unemployment. Schools might be able to become that link between students and employers. However, this role will require

• a very different model of curricular control in which schools seek out industry needs, both current and expected
• much greater flexibility in student/teacher ratios to enable the kind of depth of knowledge that industry increasingly prizes
• a rapid shift away from classrooms that hold 30 people or 2,000 with nothing in between
• freedom from the current seat time requirement for student funding This would allow all the learning that best occurs in various locations to be rewarded and to be an actual part of the learning
• much earlier clarity regarding each student's and parent's desires for their future along with student's abilities to learn in multiple modalities. This will require much better and greater use of learning analytics

Since the author doesn't foresee even one of these changes by schools as remotely likely, the future for the learner will be positive, but the future of the traditional teacher and currently formulated schools is dimming.

Can't do it?

What skills you have doesn't matter as much...
As how serious you are about using those skills.
You say you don't seem to have the abilities your life calls for.
Maybe not. But ....
Maybe you could more aggressive with the skills you do have. Right now.

A baby was born in 1880. Very few that knew her as she was growing up...
would have ever believed she would meet...
every US president in her lifetime.
Mark Twain ( yes, the author)
Alexander Graham Bell (the telephone guy)
Charlie Chaplin (google his massive success)

This baby from Alabama would never have been expected to be...
the author of 11 books.

She must have been very gifted.
Well, yes, and no.

But this little girl had determination.
For the path her life took, few others have gone down.
She was gifted.
But this Presidential invitee, author and world famous figure didn't have even a couple of things most take for granted.
She never saw the sunset in her backyard.
Never heard... even her own voice.
When this girl, named Helen Keller, was very young, she got very ill, and the results of the illness and maybe even the treatment left her
both blind and deaf.
Blind.
Deaf.
and it took her 7 years
and a special teacher
for her to realize that
while her ability to sense the world was limited to touch and smell...
her mind worked fine.
her voice worked fine.
and with help and
determination
that was enough
for the tasks that she felt had been put in front of her.
She must have been correct.
They don't put just anybody on the back of...
the state quarter of Alabama.


when helen broke through and began to communicate with her teacher,
she was 7 years old.

there can only be one person that was the first blind and deaf person
to graduate from any college.

But you know, we've all had breakthroughs of our own.
Helen's breakthroughs are really just reminders that we can have our own kind of success

Helen didn't own all the world's determination. I have some. You have some, maybe a lot. Maybe a Helen Keller sized bunch of passion for something.

We have all had Helen Keller moments that we can look back to when things aren't easy

Difficult tasks and failure today become ...
well, they become our past. They don't define us. Our past says where we've been, not where we are going.
Really all Helen had was a sense for where her life had to go that one day with her teacher.
That is really all you have, too.
Today.
and with your own kind of determination,
who knows...

NCLB = Hydra, but so do lots of human creations

Should NCLB be renewed? Changed? Properly funded?

Yes.

With one addition. Some significant tax deductibility for private tuition at the k-12 level. Maybe $3,000 per student could be deductible. Not a credit. And if you think that is too much a give away to the wealthy that don't "need" an $800 (aprox.) benefit, you can stop the benefit for gross incomes over, say, $120,000 (arbitrary).

Go ahead and fund public schools. They can't possibly meet the 100% proficient by 2014 standard, but go ahead. They have a rather carpe diem attitude about extra funding. But only if a strong message is also sent that non-public education is also acceptable.

Valentine's are hopeful

Though manipulation can't be ruled out, a simple statement to a loved one today isn't such a bad tradition. As a kid I actually thought that February 14th was a pretty good excuse to express friendship, and as I got older, to express more than friendship. School was where my friends were, so for me Valentine's day and school are historically quite connected. Not a bad thing to have happen. Positive associations with school. A good trend.

You aren't the only teacher that cares, Elijah

Passionate concern for a difficult situation in a school will always be responded to differently by different people. Elijah (the Old Testament Elijah) gave up and complained to God that he was actually the only one left in the entire country that was attempting to honor God.

My passion for a topic in school is , well, my own passion. I think that it is all the passion that is needed to solve the problem. Rationality breeds passion in others, and so does my own passion. However, over time, others' passion for my cause will fade unless the primary reason for their passion is from being correct. Mussolini was an empassioned leader. But it wasn't sustainable since his leadership was mainly hate and hot air.

My desire to make a change in my school may require the involvement of others at some point in the change process, but a communicatively-skilled dreamer that is willing to be rational can significantly direct the end result for good.

Student Services

I just got back from buying some paint brushes at a home improvement center. They have a new (to me) policy of just leaving all the shopping carts in the collection areas in the parking lot and having the customers bring them in as needed. While this seems unwise from a sales standpoint, it hit me as a very poor level of customer service. Is it efficient? Well, yes. But somehow my doing work before I even step in the store put a very bad taste in my mouth.

In school, it is easy to fall into patterns and systems that are defensible fiscally or on practicality grounds. Still, if student and parent services are actually our goal, "customer" service in our school and classrooms can at least attempt to take into account the perception that those parents and students have of what we do as a school.

Required School = Waste

Where does kindergarten excitement about school go by the time students reach the end of their education? A few people stay in school their whole lives. They must love it. A few see their interest begin to fade in 4th grade. In between is "most people". Requiring that either all students to go for 13 years or labeling the only public school they are allowed to attend as a failure is the current system. The primary interest supported by this plan is the school system, not the student, and certainly not the wealthy tax payers funding those public schools.