If you recognize the name, I applaud your literary diversity.  For those of you who don’t know the name Sancho Panza, don’t feel bad.  Sancho Panza was the pudgy, comic relief sidekick who accompanied Don Quixote on his journeys in Miguel de Cervantes’ satirical novel, Don Quixote, written in 1602, that inspired the Broadway musical and movieThe Man of La Mancha.

I’ve often felt that 21st Century Schools’ Director, Anne Shaw, is somewhat like Don Quixote in her philosophies where education is concerned.  Where Don Quixote was “tilting at windmills” (his dragons) Ms. Shaw’s dragons have been slow change and the continual barrage of excuses such as “that’s the way we’ve always done things”, “Oh that’s wonderful, but WE can’t do that in our school”, “we don’t have time, we have to get our students ready for their tests”, “we can’t do that because of our schedule”.

Other dragons are misconceptions about professional development.  Most educators seem to believe that "one-shot", "drive-by","muti-pack" professional development, or one day per year devoted to professional development, is adequate.  The research, and the reality in classrooms, clearly show that this type of professional development will not make things better.

We are constantly being asked how to incorporate change into the curriculum without changing the curriculum or how teachers can “just add something” to what they are already doing to bring their classroom into the 21st century.  The short answer to those two questions is, you can’t.  If you are going to build a house, you start with the foundation, not the roof.  The same applies to education.  Click the Read More button . . .

MY questions are, WHY can’t we do new things in the classroom? WHY is the schedule sacred?  WHY do we have to teach to the test?  WHY are we determined to ruin education not only in this country, but around the world, doing and teaching things the same way our parents and grand-parents did fifty to a hundred years ago?

For the most part, our education systems have been obsolete for almost 100 years! WHY do we keep teaching the way we did before the Internet?  WHY do we stick to textbooks that are out of date when they’re published?

We are going to have to re-structure and rebuild our education system from the “ground up” as soon as possible, or face the fact that we are willing to produce students unprepared for life in the 21st century.

Why do we, as educators of the people who will be running the world governments in the not too distant future, fail to realize that what we have been calling education for the last three decades (especially since the beginning of the NCLB Act in the USA), is anything but? 

Why are we so determined to send our children to school and assume that as long as they get good scores on “THE Test”, that they are getting a good education?  Why should we assume that they’re getting a good education, especially when, as educators, we usually recognize the fact that they aren’t?

Do we really want the students we are teaching today to be running the world without the abilities to think critically, innovatively and creatively?  These students are going to be facing problems that we don’t even see as problems today.  We must give them the tools today so they can solve those problems tomorrow.  If we continue schooling our students the way we are now, not only in the United States, but worldwide, humanity could find itself on the endangered species list!

Ms. Shaw and I had the opportunity this last year to travel extensively around the world, visiting schools, and meeting people from ministries of education in several countries.  I was astonished to discover that everywhere we went, no matter which country, what language was being spoken, what subject was being taught, the underlying theme was “We have to get our students ready for “THE Test”!

I agree that some testing is necessary, but not to the point where it causes our students to end up academically short-changed! 

If anyone pays attention to statistics, it’s obvious that the United States has been on a steady decline where academic achievement is concerned.  Why?  Because school administrators, parents, teachers AND students, have lost out to politics and big business. 

Standardized testing is a hugely profitable industry when you stop to think about it, and it’s destroying our abilities to give a relevant, engaging and real-world education to our students.  So much so that some states are starting to opt-out of the NCLB programs, losing federal funding in order to give their students the education they deserve!

This act of defiance on the parts of some states prompted The House Education Committee to move towards legislation that will gut the No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) accountability system and highly qualified teacher definition and in its place give states free rein to establish their own methods to measure school quality and impose turnaround fixes. These bills, the Student Success Act (HR 3989) and Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teaching Act (3990) both need our support.

As educators then, what do we do about the situation?  There are a number of things we should be doing.  One thing we can all do is continue to contact our elected representatives at the state and federal levels and ask them to fix the problems that they helped create.  Another thing we can do is to learn all we can about how to bring our classrooms into the modern world, and that means professional development and a major paradigm shift in the way we teach as well as think about teaching.

It’s not going to be fast, easy or cheap to make the changes (both physical and mental) that we have to make in order to bring our classrooms into the 21st century.

So, I will continue to ride my donkey, pick up the broken lances of MY Don Quixote, and keep betting that one of these days she WILL cause one of those windmills to fall and topple all the others like dominoes!

Humbly,

Jerry Self, uh, I mean Sancho Panza
Executive Manager
21st Century Schools

Ankara, Turkey, May 1, 2011 -  Anne Shaw presents her keynote at the International Innovation in Education Forum II.  The entire presentation may be viewed here.