"Do you hear the people sing?"

Many people talk of revolution but do they really want to pay the cost that revolutions demand?

I believe that every single person that is a part of the educational system would agree and even argue that education needs to be improved. A significant number of teachers that I have interacted with over the years are not happy; they do not fully enjoy their work. Teachers will joke with students about the "dreaded Mondays" and classrooms are filled with countdowns until the next holiday. Similarly, many students are not happy; they do not enjoy school. Ken Robinson (2010) states that today's educational system in America dislocates people from their natural talents and forces students into a linear system that mandates conformity among its learners. Sadly, in the past 10 years that I have been in education, every improvement or change that I have tried to make (or seen anyone attempt to make) is an effort to reform the current model. These are slight enhancements or additions that have their benefits but never really address the underlying problem.

Robinson (2010) goes on to argue that educators ought to "create conditions under which they [students] flourish," which is a proper definition of a significant learning environment. If educators are able to tap into the passions of their students and trigger imaginations, true learning occurs. It simply makes sense that a person, especially a young person, requires a personalized learning experience in order to flourish. Forcing two completely different teenagers into the exact same regimen and pace will not yield the best possible outcome for those students. As referenced in a previous post, transformations are met with resistance. I believe one of the reasons we have only seen reforms since the industrial age deals with the notion of control. Significant learning environments require the learner to have freedom. As a teacher, I often felt that many of my students could not be trusted with freedom. While it is fair to say that these students displayed signs of distrust because of the system in which they were being taught, it was a terrifying thought to let them take charge of something as precious as their own learning. The industrial model allowed me to somewhat control their learning, no matter how unmotivated they were. Plus, I could get them to do well on a standardized test, which was how I was primarily assessed by the administration. While it may have made the school year more peaceful, I know that those students did not receive the chance to experience something better. As I look back on those years, I wish I could take a mulligan. I wish I would have known then what I know now and risked losing control.

In the very near future, many districts in the state of Texas will be offering some sort of incentive pay for teachers, giving them an opportunity to make thousands of more dollars. Each school district has the freedom to create the requirements for their teachers to earn this bonus. While I am extremely thankful that our government is offering more monetary support for education, I was intrigued by Daniel Pink's (2010) analysis of financial incentives in the workplace. His investigation in MIT's experiment shows that with tasks that require cognitive skills that bonuses actually produced poorer performance. I think we can all agree that the profession of teaching requires many, if not all of the cognitive skills available. While I will always argue that teachers should make more money, I'm not sure that Daniel Pink's analysis would support that this is the best method if we are wanting to see a transformation in education.

What grieves me most about the video "Bring on the Learning Revolution," is that it was recorded a decade ago. Robinson was pleading for an educational revolution in the same year that Obama withdrew troops from Iraq, the Chilean miners were rescued, and people watched the series finale of LOST. I know that things in education move slowly and that revolutions start with a quiet whisper before they creep through the masses, stirring faith and boldness. We can echo the call of Ken Robinson and the like by choosing to use what influence we have to make the changes we want to see happen. And let the revolution begin...

"When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums, there's a life about to start, when tomorrow comes."

References:

Pink, Daniel. [The RSA]. (2010, April 1). RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=youtu.be

Robinson, Ken. [TED}. (2010, May 24). Bring on the learning revolution! Sir Ken Robinson [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I&feature=youtu.be