Education needs to update its toolbox

As one reflects on National Education Week this week, one would have to consider Horace Mann, the “father of American public education.”

Mann targeted the problems of public school during his time. He set up a new public school system that spread rapidly during his tenure on a newly created board of education of Massachusetts in 1837.

Mann worked effectively for more and better equipped schools, extended school age (up to 16 years old), higher pay for teachers and a more diverse curriculum. These were all needed changes to improve public education at the time.

If Mann were alive today, I believe he would be fighting a battle he may have very well created inadvertently, as times have changed. He would realize education reform is needed again. I believe the last criteria, a diverse curriculum, has created a greater problem that has lost sight of the aim of higher education. Now we have actually created a system that does not provide the best education for our children and is in need of our attention.

That idea of a diverse, or “wider,” curriculum has actually created an inequitable value in our current education system. As an elementary classroom teacher, I have experienced a curriculum that has expanded beyond the framework of good teaching practices. To be more specific, I believe educators teach a far wider curriculum then ever before. I’ll use the analogy of the shotgun approach to explain my premise. We pull the trigger, spraying a full spread of concepts in hopes we knock something down. Basically, we cover a lot of area over the curriculum field, but don’t get much for our return because it is just too broad.

As educators, we believe it is time is drop that strategy and pick up better tools or techniques and change the approach. It would be more productive if we used a rifle with a scope. In that way, we can narrow our field, get a better image and, most importantly, a deeper look, instead of skimming the surface and covering lots of ground. In short, our children need to know more about specific concepts in greater and deeper depth. We have to give children the opportunity to debate, develop and justify ideas. With the amount of curriculum we cover, students have only the chance to repeat, and maybe explain, those concepts.

I could have used the analogy of the difference of using binoculars and a microscope. There is nothing wrong with using a pair of binoculars to scope out the territory. But, we have to put that down and allow children to use a microscope to really dig deeper into higher-level thinking. I want my students to construct ideas for tomorrow to solve the problems that we have now, and down the road. And just as importantly, to communicate and exchange ideas with other diverse groups to meet whatever challenges lie ahead.

Horace Mann was a man ahead of his time. I believe he was a man who advocated change and believed in redefining change when the time warrants a different direction. Mann would want us to get the biggest bang for our buck (education being paid for by an interested public). He would want our children to really know a deeper curriculum by taking wider and different angles to have thorough understanding and knowledge.

We can no longer give our students just a limited dimensional picture of their world. We owe it to them to provide them with multidimensional image of the world, to be a better world for every one.

Michael Carson is a veteran educator in the Mat-Su Borough School District.