Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 25, 1993 TAG: 9306280260
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BERT P. MILBURN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Before outcome-based education or restructuring or cooperative learning are dismissed as only the latest fads in producing motivated citizens to enter society from our public-education institutions, we must first assess where we are and where we hope to be in the near future.
If you are pleased with students being exposed to endless lists of general objectives, requiring them to remember volumes of facts to be successful, then by all mean stay the course. If you agree that students learn math best in a repetitive manner - starting in the fourth grade and continuing year after year, possibly until their freshman remedial math course in college - then stay the course. If you think that a student's written expression should be critically analyzed (with red pen) for spelling, grammar and punctuation until he either masters the perfection of our perfectly consistent language or his creative and critical-thinking skills wither away, then stay the course. Ah yes, what fond memories! Just look at how well-prepared we are as we enter the work force. Wait, what's that I hear? Rust growing on our industrial infrastructure or the hum of a finely tuned Japanese engine passing by?
Brackenrich implies that outcome assessments are flawed and have led to the failure of all who embarked on this path. He says that we rejected a similar plan in 1932 (a great year for the world with the Great Depression, totalitarian dictatorships and world cooperation), and we should look closely at new attempts before implementation. The institutions of public education have never been easy to change, but I believe if change does not happen soon it may come too late. "World Class Education" of the Virginia Common Core of Learning is not based on some "pie in the sky" hope of taking someone else's system and implementing it here. Rather, it is based on what has proved itself in schools all over the state. Look at the restructuring of Virginia's middle schools. The original 25 Vanguard schools have become models, not only for other middle schools but some high schools as well. Positive changes have been occurring all over the state. Magnate schools, governor's schools, and business-school partnerships have brought public education to a new level never before imagined. Much of this progress has been based on expected "outcomes," not general objectives.
Go out into the work place and ask what type of graduate is needed. It won't be one who knows the dates, places and people in history; it will be one who knows where to look to find that information. It won't be one who can spell perfectly; it will be one who can write persuasively with organized thoughts. It won't be one who can quote Shakespeare of Emerson; it will be one who is able to read technical manuals and editorials to determine a point of view or bias. It won't be one who can perform long division with precision; it will be one who can find creative solutions to complex problems.
We need to work together in cooperative groups to tap the talent of every individual. We can no longer sit there and be fed knowledge; instead, we must be given the tools to go out and produce our own knowledge.
Brackenrich is correct. We are not the consumers of our education but the owners of it, and we must hold the educational institutions accountable for what goes on within. But one point is essential in making this work. Education does not start and stop as schoolhouse doors. It includes parents, business, government, the media and students. Educational success depends on the active participation of all of those involved. When any of these groups expect the school to assume full responsibility for our children's education, they allow an institution to perpetuate unchanged in a changing world. That hurts us all.
Bert P. Milburn, is a teacher at Dublin Middle School and a geographic teaching consultant.
by CNB