A Recipe For American Education: Try Not To Burn It

Imagine waking up five days a week and reporting to a job you hate. Actually, it’s worse than that: you’re forced to be there. 

You weren’t given the opportunity to choose your job, your department, or your daily tasks. Your boss allowed you to choose how you spend one hour of your day. He gave you a list of options to choose from – and hopefully you chose correctly, because once you decide, you're stuck there for a minimum of twenty weeks. 

This is the current recipe for American Education. Tastes a lot like expired SPAM out of a can, doesn’t it?

So if adults blanch at the above scenario, why do we subject our children to it?

The solution? A new recipe for American Education. The great news? Other countries are already making similar dishes. 

The key to any great recipe is a solid foundation of base ingredients. This one consists of four: Choice, Technology, Collaboration, and Guidance. 

Choice.

Imagine your favorite hobby. Now imagine you get to learn core education through the lens of that hobby. Love reading Harry Potter? Your English and Literature class will use The Sorcerer's Stone to learn about metaphors, similes, and hyperboles. Obsessed with video games? Your math class will incorporate coding processes to help you understand algorithms and function notations. What about baking pastries and desserts? You’ll soon realize perfect cooking is perfect science; chemical transformations happen in your kitchen every day.

Here comes the big question: how can every student in every classroom have access to learning via the scope of their favorite pastime? Afterall, one teacher couldn’t possibly teach all of those things.

That’s where base ingredient number two comes in:

Technology.

So, how will a single teacher facilitate the education of twenty-five students who all choose a different lens through which to learn? The answer: they won’t.

Here’s how it works. 8th graders across the country will decide how they want to learn science. There’s a list of over 100 lenses from which they can choose — from gardening to baseball to photography. On the other side are teachers from around the country who will teach through their chosen lens. A teacher in Virginia may teach math via baseball to twenty-five students from thirteen different states.

Virtually, with technology, it’s possible.

Here’s where people feel resistance, though. Students sitting in a classroom on computers learning virtually all day?

Remember, though, we still have two more ingredients.

Next we add a heaping serving of Collaboration.

If you know anything about Finland’s education system – the best in the world, by the way – you may know that students there only have a few classes a day. The remainder of time is spent outdoors, collaborating with fellow students on community improvement projects, or simply resting.

That’s why this ingredient is perhaps the most important of all. Students spending entire school days online is the opposite of a successful education system. In this recipe, students will spend a daily maximum of four hours learning core subjects. The rest of the day is dedicated to team building exercises, mental and emotional health sessions, growing a community garden, or volunteering at a local food bank.

Our country doesn’t need 51 million students who can pass standardized tests that measure their ability to regurgitate information. It needs students who can work together, empathize, solve problems, and critically utilize the resources around them.

Students, however, still need an adult who supervises, leads, and guides…and that’s our final ingredient.

Guidance.

Speaking of Finland, teachers there are seen as mentors and family members. They guide the same students for multiple years, and it makes for relationships built on mutual respect, acceptance, and accountability.

Classroom facilitators in this recipe will, to put it frankly, facilitate. They’ll be there to guide students through the day, to answer questions about classes, and direct the collaboration time. They’ll share in the excitement of students’ learning and stay fully knowledgeable and engaged throughout the virtual learning experience. They aren’t just babysitters. They’re mentors, facilitators, and shepherds. They are the embodiment of guidance.

So there you have it: A Recipe For American Education. It’s different. It’s new. It’s definitely not a 30-minute meal. It will take decades to fine-tune, throw in the oven, and serve. It’s hard to swallow for some, but if assembled correctly, it can be a staple in every American household. Just try not to burn it.