Changing education: the rumbles in the blogosphere

Well as some of you may know I have been in the "edutainment" biz for a long time– my "kid shows," as I like to call them, are programs for educational/family concerts, and have been reasonably successful.  Hard to make comparisons as I know of no one else who publishes such things.

Anyway, like John Holt before me I have been a longtime critic of what I now call the educational industrial complex.  And in the last week I have unexpectedly found kindred spirits. 

Just last weekend I met a woman at a party who was talking about education reform, and she said something that really struck me:  she said, "I can talk at length about how to 'reform' the Boston Public schools, but in reality, what we're dealing with is hospice care."

Wow.  That sure said a mouthful, and so poetically.  The system is intrinsically moribund and doomed to fail, and all efforts are palliative.  I love it.

Then David Meerman Scott did this post on "Professors are criminals" (note my snarky legal assessment in the comments– since the college only agreed to "share its passion," (oooh I could make a joke about the catholic church here but I'll abstain), there is no grounds for a lawsuit.

And then another blogger posted this item on how to completely revamp the college professor tenure system. 

And of course Jeff Hurt is constantly talking about how conferences need to abandon the old ways of one-way learning for the new. 

John Holt was one of the first to start pointing out the flaws in our traditional educational philosophies.  Now, with social media at our command, we can start to coalesce into a movement.  I'm thrilled. 

I am all for colleges, within reason.  They provide a useful function in society, many of which are social and not educational, but they are not perfect, and as human-run institutions they are prone to corruption just like everyone else.  They are not the answer to every problem, and let's not presume that they are doing everything right and don't need a little upgrading now and then.

©) Justin Locke