21st Century
Schools
Daniel Greenberg[1]
What Im going to do here is go back to first
principles, and ask a few questions that I think ought to be asked and dealt
with before we get on to the business of restructuring schools. Im going to start with a question that may seem a little silly: What is the purpose of school in society? Why do we have schools? Im talking about the kinds of schools that are universal now that is to say, aimed at the entire
population and not just at a few specialists.
Such general schools havent existed throughout most of history, and the world apparently got
along very well without mass education until about a hundred and fifty years
ago, which is something that ought to give us all pause. The human race has somehow managed to evolve
from its earliest origins to a rather advanced state of ethics and philosophy
and literature and art and technology without the benefit of universal
education. So you have ask yourself, Why do schools exist?
I think the answer is rather simple.
The purpose of schools in society is to provide an environment in
which children can grow up to be effective adults. That leads directly to the question of what
it means to be an effective adult in society; and that, in turn, depends on
the nature of the society and on its culture.
Theres a really wonderful story that illustrates
this point. Its one of my favorite tales that I read many
years ago in Benjamin Franklins writings, and it puts this question of the nature of society and the
purpose of schools in a wonderful perspective.
Franklin tells a story of a meeting between the colonial leaders of
Virginias political establishment and some eminent
members of local American Indian tribes.
The Virginians were making a generous proposal: We would like to take a dozen of your brightest and best young people
and give them the privilege of a free education at Harvard College, so that youll be able to join in this great, modern
technological civilization that we are creating in the American colonies. The
Native Americans looked at them with amazement and said, We pass, thank you! Because weve had this experience already.
We sent six of our youngsters to Harvard college some years ago, and
they came back utterly useless. They
had no idea how to skin animals, how to tan skins, how to build tents or huts,
how to make a fire. They were
completely useless in our society. So
well reverse the offer to you. Why dont you give us twelve of your best young men and send them to us for
training, and well turn them into real men, who will learn
how to function in the Virginia surroundings? I think thats a wonderful story because it pinpoints so
precisely the relationship between the purpose of school and the culture. We cant lose sight of that connection.
Its totally critical to our understanding of
learning in the 21st century.
In the last three centuries or so weve been an industrial-age society.
There are three aspects of that society that I want to discuss, aspects
that are central to understanding the link between a culture and its
schools. The first is: what is the model of reality of
industrial-age culture? Its that of The Universe as a Machine an entity consisting of a great many parts,
all of which mesh together perfectly and operate in a comprehensible
order. Once you can discover the laws
governing that order you can gain a complete understanding of the
universe. This applies not only to the
workings of the planets and of the heavens, for which the idea was first invented, but to everything. The machine model even applies to every living thing, to
societies, and to the human nature. So
the ideal of the industrial age was to keep uncovering the rules and laws that
provide an understanding of how everything works in perfect harmony.
Within that model of reality, the second feature I want to look at is
this: what is the ideal that society wished to attain? The answer will give us some insight into
what an effective adult is considered to be.
Surprisingly, the ideal of society during the industrial era was stability. Once it is possible to understand
everything, you can position everything within an orderly, stable whole. People were looking to identify the
particular order of things that yields a good, i.e., stable,
society. Put in another way: the reason
for instability is a lack of understanding.
Knowledge brings with it the capability for a better meshing and
a better functioning of all the parts.
All the natural and social sciences worked to uncover the immutable,
perfectly comprehensible laws of nature and of society, and moral philosophers
worked hand in hand with them. The
moral philosophers of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th
centuries focused in particular on finding those immutable, fundamental ethical
laws that should govern human society.
You can look at the 20th century as a period in which this
quest for perfect order and perfect understanding on a social and governmental
level reached its peak. It led from one
experiment to another, in country after country, with forms of organization
that were designed to bring about perfect coordination between all parts of
society. Socialism, communism, fascism,
and even aspects of social democracy, all shared the underlying goal and hope of creating an orderly society in which every part produces and
consumes and relates in a way that fits smoothly without friction or internal
disruption. In the end, however, the
century in which the ideal of the perfect cosmic machine was pushed to its
farthest extreme turned out to be utterly catastrophic.
Schools depend on a third aspect of a culture namely, the model of the human mind
prevalent in that culture. Within the
mechanistic universe, the human mind also is a mechanism. Children are born with few skills and little
knowledge, and they ultimately develop into functioning adults. From the mechanistic point of view, the
brain starts out relatively empty of whatever it needs and has to be provided
with all the tools and all the content that it has to have in order to operate
as an effective mini-machine within the cosmic machine. Thats where the concept of universal schooling and a standard curriculum
comes from, because once you understand the whole universe to be a machine in
which every single element must fit in order to work effectively, and once you
think youve discovered how they fit, its your duty to make sure that each person has
inserted into his/her central control system the brain all
the equipment it needs in order to function suitably. The idea on which 20th century schooling was based
makes perfect sense within the framework of the mechanistic concept of the
universe, the ideal of society, and what is necessary to do for children in
order to get their brains working properly.
Table 1
INDUSTRIAL AGE SOCIETY
(last three centuries)
Model of reality:
- the deterministic universe/machine
Ideal of society:
- stability
Model of the human mind:
- fillable, trainable
- requires preparation
It is worth taking a moment to discuss something that most people
nowadays are aware of, but seem to manage to disregard as if it doesnt exist.
I am referring to the national curriculum standards of the United
States, which leading educators from all over the country came to together to
design material that every single child
should learn and know, in the United Sates of America, as they grow up. You see, as the 20th century
progressed, it was inevitable that more and more stuff had to be pushed into
childrens brains, because more and more stuff was being
known; and if your model is a mechanistic model, youve got to do it, you owe it to the children they need it, they cant possibly survive without it, in this world
that we are now increasingly understanding.
Standardized tests are being devised at every grade level, for every
child, based on this curriculum or its equivalent. Teachers
salaries, principals
salaries, school system funding, are all to be based on the test results the ultimate expression of the deterministic
industrial age.
Here is a list of the categories every child should master:
mathematics, science, history, language arts, the arts, civics, economics,
foreign language, geography, health, physical education, technology, behavioral
studies, and life skills. Who can argue
with that? It sounds like a reasonable
listing. Let me quote a few random
samples of the detailed material listed under these categories, and remember
that I am citing subjects that every child in the country has to
master: Uses basic operations on vectors, for example vector addition and scale
of multiplication. Uses properties of
and relationships among figures to solve mathematical and real world problems,
for example uses the property that the sum of the angles in a quadrilateral is
equal to 360 degrees the square of the frame for a building. Uses understanding of arc, chord, tangents
and properties of circles to determine the radius given of a circular edge of a
circle with out the center. This is something we all do
all the time: its a daily problem, isnt it, to be confronted with an arc of a
circle, of which we must find the radius?
Biology: every single child in the country should know the structures of different types of cell
parts, for example, cell walls, (cell membranes, cytoplasm, cell organelles
such as the nucleus chloroplast, mitochondria, etc.) and the functions they
perform, that is transport of materials, storage of genetic information,
photosynthesis, and respiration synthesis of new molecules and waste disposal. This
is just one little item. Do you
all know these things? I dont!
But then again, I probably didnt get a good education, since mine took place fifty years ago. History:
Understands the social impact of the second
great awakening [the second one, if you please], how great awakening
leaders affected ordinary people, how the belief in individual responsibility
for salvation and millennialism influenced reform movements in the plural. The role of moral suasion, social control and
compromise in reform. World history: should understand the significant
characteristics of early Chinese society and religion, for example the
influence of the natural environment, on Huong Hai civilization, compared to
its impact on Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley. Early Chinese urban societies and how they
compared to those of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, and the nature of [ancient Chinese] ancestor worship and what
it illustrates about concepts of life and death in [ancient Chinese] society. How
many of you would like to take a standardized test right now based on
this? I will not go on, because the
point is that this is not the work of frivolous people or foolish people. This is the work of people who are honest
and sincere in trying to make sure that every child becomes an effective adult
in society, when their concept of the world is mechanistic, their concept of
society is that of a machine in which all the parts have to fit and mesh
beautifully, and their concept of the brain is that of a mechanism which has to
have material stored in it in order to function. Our schools are the logical consequence of this world view, and
we entered the 21st century with this as our guide.
Lets look now at post industrial society, which
we started to enter in the last half of the 20th century, and were well into now. What is the model of reality of post industrial society? The answer is quite shocking for those of
us, like me, who were brought up in another age. The model of reality is that of chaos, randomness, uncertainty. Its a model in which nothing has a fixed place, nothing meshes perfectly
with anything else, because the concept of perfect meshing doesnt exist.
Id like to discuss briefly how this transition
happened, because most people think it happened rather abruptly. It actually started towards the end of the
19th century, when physicists were struggling with the problem of
how to understand the behavior of a gas, like the air around us. Its got zillions of molecules running around. In the mechanistic model, if at any given moment I knew where every single molecule was
located, what their properties were, and exactly how they were moving, and I
processed this information in some huge calculating machine, the laws of
physics would tell me exactly how the air would behave in this room for all
time. But I dont have that information, and physicists in
the 19th century knew they didnt have it, and furthermore that they never would have it. So, they said, does that mean we cant ever do any real physics? Does that mean that were stuck with just doing the physics of
idealized things[2]? After all, we want to know how gases behave,
we want to know something about them.
So they invented statistical mechanics, an esoteric arm of physics in
which the starting point is randomness.
They began with the assumption that these molecules are moving around in
a chaotic fashion, and they asked what would happen if that was the case. Lo and behold, they were able to derive all
kinds of wonderful laws of nature, for gases, liquids, and ultimately for some
properties of solids. If you read the
literature of physics in the early part of the 20th century you can
sense the tension between the spectacular results that follow from assuming
things are chaotic, and the belief that everything is determined. This was the first crack in the wall, after
which, piece by piece, the walls came tumbling down. By the middle of the 20th century, the whole structure
of determinism had broken down, and a completely different picture of a
statistical universe had emerged.[3]
What now becomes the ideal of society?
Recall that the old ideal was stability; that clearly doesnt work anymore. Instead, the ideal of society in the post-mechanistic age is adaptability
to change. Theres no longer the remotest hope of finding out
how everything meshes in a universe of perfect mechanical order. Theres no such thing in the new model of reality. Everything is change[4]. Everyone reading these words (with the
possible exception of the youngest) still constitute a transition generation,
raised on one model, and now overtaken by a new one. Were not really comfortable with the new one;
its not in our gut. But it is in the gut of young children, and anybody who works
with children under the age of twelve sees it.
Their world is a world of rapid transformation, and thats something they inherently understand. We older folks are struggling with it, we
understand it intellectually, but our insides say, We have to make sure that this or that
happens in a planned and orderly way.
Closely related to the capability to adapt to change is the concept of
decentralization. Just as the 20th
century was the century of centralization and organized political systems, so
the 21st will be the century of decentralization. Its a trend that we see going on all over the world. There is no longer the possibility of
controlling a societys many
activities. The only option is
decentralization and democratization, and this is true in business and in
education as well. The concept of
democracy is embedded in the concept of chaos, where all the elements are
fundamentally equal and equally indeterminate.
Lets look at the model of the mind that goes along with the new world
view. The model of the mind that we
have today is completely different, and utterly appropriate: its the model of the curious seeker. The mind is viewed as an active agent
reaching out to the world, creating models of reality for itself all the
time. From the earliest age, a child is
a self starting learner. Today, instead
of seeing children as beings whose minds have to be filled, we see children as
beings who are eagerly pursuing knowledge, eagerly trying to learn what their
environment is about, and to make working models of that environment. Thats the key: every single one of
us creates a model of reality for him/herself all the time; thats what being a life-long learner is
about. Its about recognizing that the mind, as long as youre alive, is searching for meaning, searching
for making a comprehensible picture of the world. It works on this every single minute of the day, and most of the
night too. This is an active process,
and is at the heart of our species survival.
In fact, the human race could only have survived by producing offspring
who eagerly want to learn about the world.
Think about that million years of human evolution before the 19th
century when mass education didnt exist. How did children ever
become effective adults except by finding out about whats going on around them? This is a crucial shift in our understanding
of how the mind works, and it implies the diametric opposite of the idea that
stuff has to be pushed into a brain thats a passive receptacle. On the
contrary, this is the view that says that the brain has to be allowed to
explore the world freely and create its own models of reality.
In short, the post-industrial world of the 21st century has
its model of reality based on uncertainty and chaos; its ideal for society is
based on adaptability to change; and its model of the mind is that of a curious
modeler and a self starting learner.
Table 2
POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
(21st century)
Model of reality:
- uncertainty; chaos; statistics
Ideal of society:
- adaptability to change
Model of the mind:
- curious modeler
- self-starting learner
So now the question is, having this new reality, what is needed to be
an effective adult in the 21st century? The answer to the question is a low-tech one. Lets examine it in light of what we have been talking about.
First, to be an effective adult in society is to be a good problem
solver and model builder. If youve got chaos, the only way to handle chaos is
to make for yourself some kind of order out of it. Thats how
we survive: we cannot live in
chaos. So weve got to become good model builders.
That brings us to the second point: how do you create model builders
and problem solvers? Actually, Nature
did this for us, otherwise we wouldnt be here today. Nature gave
us the ability to play. Play is the
essential learning instrument for model building and problem solving. And it is something that every child and
every human being is given as a birth right.
What is play? Play is any
activity that doesnt have a known outcome. As soon as it has a known outcome its not play.
If you take a piece of wood, and say, Im going to make a bookend out of this, and you make a bookend out it, you have not
been playing with that piece of wood; youve been making a bookend out of it.
If you take a piece of wood and say, I wonder what will happen if I start carving this, thats play; if your name is Michelangelo, all of a sudden you have a
beautiful sculpture. Virtually all the
important activities of life have an unknown outcome. When we wake up in the morning, we dont know how the day is going to unfold. We might have a schedule and a plan, but in
this world of change and chaos, we cant really be sure what is going to happen the next minute. To function in this world, you have to be
really good at constantly dealing with unknown outcomes. By contrast, look at how bad so many of us
are at this skill. So many of us are so
neurotic about this situation! I would
love my day to be orderly thats how I was brought up; I would love not to have somebody disrupt my
schedule, because thats how
I was trained. But in this day and age,
thats a handicap.
I have to tell a little anecdote about this. I completely missed the significance of it when it happened, and
I only understood many years later.
When I was a graduate student, one of my professors was a very famous
physicist who was highly instrumental in developing the atomic bomb. He was a brilliant theoretician, and a very
humble sweet and humble guy. One summer
back in the 1950s I worked for him as an assistant. I said to him, I see youve got
a National Science Foundation grant for the summer, to work. He
said, Yes, its a big grant. I said, What do you plan to do? He said, I plan to sail on my yacht. For the whole summer? He said, Yup. That was the whole
conversation. I was in shock. At the time, I felt it was crazy to give
somebody thousands of dollars to sail on a yacht. In fact the professor, who never saw the 21st century,
was a 21st century man, and the people who funded him had enough
brains to understand that the only way to get creative work out of this man was
to let him play. As he articulated it
many years later, When Im on my yacht Im completely free of any plans, of any programs, Im just enjoying sailing, and thats when my mind clears out and new thoughts
come in.
Play is something children do naturally. One, two, and three year-olds are always playing, always creating
tremendously imaginative games. You dont have to give them so-called learning games, games with known outcomes, games with things that are supposed to be
put together this or that particular way.
Just let them play. They can
play with sticks and stones as well as with the most advanced and expensive
blocks. In the natural course of
events, they become superb problem solvers, they learn how to build models of
reality. As they grow up, if you dont stop them, if you let them continue to
play, they retain that ability throughout their lives.
The problem with so much of this is that we all know it. When we read the biographies of great
intellects whom we all admire, what do we learn about all of them? They walked in the woods, they played the
violin, they did all kinds of crazy things.
They didnt spend that much time working, doing productive things with known outcomes.
The people we admire most played.
But we resist that lesson, because weve been told that most people are not that smart. Were told, That
stuff is good for geniuses, for creative people, but most children are just
ordinary kids. The
truth is, there is no such thing as an ordinary human being. Every human being is born with the ability to build models and be
creative. You cannot discover dullness
in a group of one and two year-olds playing around on the floor. There is nobody in the world who could point
to one or another and say, This one is going to be creative; this one is going to be an ordinary
drone, because they are all creative at that
age. The challenge is to let that
creativity continue to flourish.
So item number one that is needed to be an effective adult is knowing
how to play. If you know how to play
with clay and with stones, you can play with programs and computers, you can
play with metals and chemicals, you can play with anything, because youve learned how to build models and how to
create order out of chaos.
Lets look at the second item that you need to be
an effective adult in the 21st century within the new model of
reality. You need communication
skills. Let me explain why, because
this is something that is often looked at in a peculiar way. Did you ever ask yourself the simple
question, Why do children learn how to talk? Its actually a very interesting question. Because if you read accounts of the function
of human speech, people usually say that the human ability to communicate is
important because it enables people to do things together that they couldnt do individually. It enables people to form organizations for certain ends. For example, you couldnt build a bridge alone, but because you can
communicate with other people, you can all get together and build a bridge or a road, or have an army and win a war,
etc.
There is only one problem with this.
When a child is one year old, s/he isnt thinking about building bridges or armies. They have no concept that when they grow up theyre going to do things together with other
people. Nevertheless, they are dying to
learn how to talk. Why? Why do they work so hard at this task, which
is the single most demanding job that any human being ever does in their entire
life? You have done nothing in your
lives from the day you were born until now thats harder than the task of learning how to talk, and you never
will. Children take a number of years
to do it. They struggle at it all the
time, they fail at it all the time, and they come back and try again; failure
means nothing to children, because they are determined to learn how to
speak. So why are they so
hell-bent-for-leather to learn how to speak?
What is it that they sense about it that makes them feel its so essential?
The answer to that is actually rather simple. Children, in their own non-verbal and intuitive way, grasp that
speech gives them a window into your mind.
They understand that by communicating with you, they are obtaining an
understanding of the world that goes beyond what they get by operating alone,
because it enables them to understand what you understand. They realize that speech is a tool to
connect them to other models of reality.
Of course, they dont verbalize this, but they realize it intuitively. They want to know what you know, and the
reason they want to know what you know and what everybody else knows is that
this gives them a tremendous new tool in their model building, and in their
grasp of the world. Communicating
assures that every child doesnt have to reinvent the wheel.
It gives every single child the potential to access the entire range of
human knowledge. Thats why talk is so precious. It is the key that unlocks the door to
everybody elses brain and world model, thereby improving
their own understanding of the world.
What a tremendous tool! People
talk a lot in order to learn a lot. For
example, teenage kids are on the phone for hours. That annoys their parents terribly. What on earth are they talking about? What theyre going to wear to the prom? 20th century people
consider this a monumental waste of time, because from their perspective, they
cannot see a useful function to three hours of talking about what to wear to a
prom. The whole activity seems
peripheral and unimportant. From a
post-industrial perspective, however, such a conversation has meaning solely by
virtue of its importance to the participants.
They may be learning something significant about dressing, about what
clothes mean in a particular environment, about how other people relate to what
they are wearing a
whole gamut of things, all of which are an important part of their model
building at that moment. The skill of
learning through conversation is an easily transferable skill. It is the same skill that will enable them
to sit down at a later time and talk for four hours with a bunch of software
engineers about how theyre going to write their next program, or sit with a group of
philosophers and try to figure out the meaning of life. Conversation is central
to building models of reality that are effective, and its something every kid does naturally. So item number two essential to being an
effective post-industrial adult is being a good information processor through
conversation, communication, and interpersonal skills.
The third thing you need, in addition to being able to play and to
talk, is a sense of confidence.
Suppose youre a
child, and you create a model, and along comes somebody who says that model
stinks. Or you start playing on an
instrument, and some adult music teacher comes along and says, You cannot play worth a damn. What
does that do to your interest in continuing to play and explore? It tends to undermine it, unless you believe
in yourself sufficiently to go ahead regardless of the criticism. Empowerment is the key, and empowerment
implies a democratic environment.
Democracy isnt just
about the rule of the majority. Thats a decision-making process. The essence of democracy, as the modern world
understands it, is individual rights.
Democracy starts with the belief that all people are created equal, and
that they all have equal standing in society.
No person is inherently superior in any way to any other person. Every single person is fully entitled to
realize their full potential
The third key to being an effective adult in the 21st
century is to experience and feel full empowerment, full equality. Weve struggled in this country to reach that point. Even though we stated in our Declaration of
Independence that all men are created equal, at first that actually meant men, and that also excluded slaves.
It took time, and a war, for people of color to be included in this
concept, in this country. It took a
tremendous effort for women to be accepted.
The biggest argument against accepting women as equal to men was that women
are like children. It was said that
both women and children are inconstant, cant make up their minds, and dont have good judgment. Finally,
women got the vote and the
country didnt fall apart! It was a miracle! Now its time to reverse things and say that children
are like women
in other words, that they
are people and deserve to be an integral part of a democratic
environment.
Table 3
WHAT IS NEEDED TO BE AN EFFECTIVE
ADULT IN THE 21ST CENTURY?
Being a good model-builder / problem solver:
- play
Being a good information processor:
- conversation / communication
- interpersonal skills
Being empowered / self-confident within a
community:
- democratic environment
So play, conversation, and a democratic environment turn out to be
three essential components of being an effective adult in the 21st
century. Thats a rather interesting list, because it
contains almost everything the 20th century schools dont have.
That shouldnt
surprise us, because the models of reality are diametric opposites: perfect order vs. perfect chaos. We dont make provision for any of these three in our schools, and thats appropriate within the 20th
century model of reality. Were even cutting out recesses in the United
States because we want to add more courses, more days, summer, nights,
weekends, holidays, extra tutoring.
Play? No way. We tell children, Stop playing around. Work!
You can play after youve done your homework.
Conversation? Youre not allowed to open your mouth in school except to answer the teachers question.
You!
Stop talking over there! Kids never talk to each other
in schools except in the halls when theyre rushing form one class to another. Even in progressive schools, their talk is limited to the projects
that their teachers want them to talk about.
Theyre not really saying, What do you want to talk about? What do you care about?
And schools are the most undemocratic institutions that exist. How on earth can anybody expect to have an
effective adult empowered democracy when for more than a decade children are
spending their formative years in a pure autocracy, that is the equal of any
absolute monarchy in history? They have
few rights under the United States Constitution as the Supreme Court interprets
it today. They can be pushed around and
told what to do by adults. Nobody else
can be treated that way.
Thats my low-tech presentation. 21st century schools, if they are
going to prepare children to become effective adults, have to provide an
environment in which children are allowed free rein to play and free rein to
converse, in a democratic setting where each and every one of them is a fully
empowered participant in the community.
Only schools like that are compatible with the 21st century
model of reality. People who come out
of schools like that will be adaptable to change, will know how to communicate,
and will feel self confident and empowered.
1. This is an edited transcript
of a talk delivered at the April 2000 International Conference on Learning in
the 21st Century, sponsored by Arthur Andersen.
2. History is full of similar
situations. The first known one
occurred in ancient Greece, when the pre-Socratic school of thought known as
the Eleatics (based in the town of Elea), founded by Parmenides, got so tangled
up in their idealized physics that they quickly realized that it could never
apply to the real world. To solve this
problem, they studied real world phenomena, and wrote about them as the physics of the world of illusion!