Jay Lemke Online

Is it possible that thousands of years from now, people (if any are left around and still consider themselves “people”) will look back and say that ideas about government changed from Egypt and Babylonia (god-kings rule!) to Greece and Rome (the rich vote, politicians decide), to Medieval Europe (landlords rule), to Enlightenment Europe (divinely anointed kings rule), to early modern times (the rich vote, parliaments rule), to now (everyone votes, politicians decide) … and then it all suddenly stopped and nothing ever changed after that??

Not very likely. Ideas about how to make good decisions keep changing. Facts about who has power (armies, landlords, rich people, managers) keep changing. And bad decisions keep being made. About when to go to war, about who doesn’t qualify for equal rights, about who should receive taxpayers’ money.

In our times, decisions are made by politicians, who are influenced by lobbyists for special interests and financed every expensive election-time by rich people’s donations, backed by media owned by special interests, and elected by voters who mostly know nothing at all about them and even less about the issues to be decided.

This is widely regarded as the best possible system of government. Not by me.

The purpose of government is to make decisions. Good government avoids making bad decisions. Decisions are bad if they go against the interests of most people or unfairly oppress any group or category of citizens. In order to make good decisions, you must:

1. Take into account the experience and preferences of the people who will be most affected by the decision (stakeholders)
2. Take into account the knowledge and projections of those who are most expert about the available options
3. Not apply decisions to people or places where their consequences cannot be foreseen or where local conditions require a different decision

The logic of good decision-making and the economics of power are generally at odds with each other. Decision-makers tend to become decision-makers because they have amassed power: economic power, political power, military power. People with power always want to have more power, because they know how they got theirs and they know someone else will grab it away if they don’t have enough power to stop them.

The result is that more and more decisions that affect more and more people are being made by fewer and fewer people. And that is basically why we are getting more and more bad decisions.

Our “democracy” is simply a justification for this bad system of government. We elect in the United States (and similarly in most other democracies) about 500 people to make all decisions about all subjects on behalf of hundreds of millions of people. That’s ridiculous!

So what would be better? For a start, a principle that each decision should be made locally unless it really has to be uniform across a nation. Each decision should be made at the most local level of social organization (neighborhood, town/city, county/province, region, nation, international organization) that it needs to be made at. Why? Because local conditions are different. What is the right decision in one place will be the wrong decision somewhere else. Unless you want to force the whole world, or the whole country, to become totally uniform in every way. I don’t want to live in that kind of country or world.

What else? Each decision should be made by a different group of people who actually know something about what they are deciding: A mix of experts, stakeholders, and elected representatives of the general interest.

Where local decisions or decisions on different issues come into conflict, and the conflicts really must be resolved, then there should be courts of reconciliation to find the best compromises.

These are simple principles. Allocate decisions to the relevant level of government. Make decisions through balanced groups who represent the relevant knowledge and interests. Reconcile differences when necessary.

Rule by power is outmoded and dysfunctional, but its what we’ve really got, even if it is well disguised. Rule by electing people you don’t know to decide things they are clueless about makes for bad decisions.

We can do better. The history of forms of government is not over. Something will follow next after today’s idea of democracy. And we had better start thinking now about what it will be.

What, in the history of Education, comes after the really bad idea of schools?

Do you remember how totally boring school was? In class. If it was ever exciting, that was usually somewhere outside the official curriculum.

How well could your teachers get to know you in 30 weeks? Or 15? Before you moved on to yet other new teachers? Your interests, problems, needs?

And if by chance there was something interesting to learn about, 40 minutes and 30 other students in the room made real learning almost impossible.

Gathering a few dozen students in a room empty of all but textbooks and worksheets, with one teacher, sitting in rows, all day, to all learn the same standard things at the same pace – was an idea invented by the Sumerians in about 3000 BC.

So much for the march of progress!

How else can people get an education besides sitting in the factories we misname schools?

And why in Hell’s name does everyone have to learn exactly the same thing week after week, year after year, for 12 very long years?!

The institution of schooling, as we know it, simply cannot possibly prepare young people well for the world of the 21^st century. There is no point in trying to fix it or reform it. It is structurally dysfunctional for our time in history. It needs to be replaced with something better.

Such as? More time spent talking with teachers and other adults, instead of just listening to them. Talking one-on-one or in small groups (small is no more than 6!). More time spent out in the real world, in internships, apprenticeships, and service learning. Doing. And then coming back to small groups with experienced adults (not necessarily always trained teachers) to reflect on and critique what they’ve done and seen other people doing. To ask questions. To put things into a bigger picture.

Such as … More individualized learning of subjects you are really interested in; more attention being paid to what you’ve missed and need to pick up in order to go on with what you want to learn; more learning online of what you can learn online, with teacher time reserved for what you really need a teacher for.

Schools need to be replaced with a mixed system that combines these elements in new ways, keeping only as much of the old system as can be proven to work better than any alternative. No large classes, at all. No standardized one-size-fits-all curriculum for everyone, at all. No ludicrous multiple-choice testing, at all.

I have been a professor of Education at leading universities for over 30 years. I know all the arguments pro and con. I have worked with teachers in public schools, sitting in their classes several times a week, for most of that time. I know that most teachers try really hard. Their job is impossible except under the most ideal conditions, and the best they can achieve is rarely good enough to produce thoughtful, critical, informed, and skilled graduates with a passion for understanding. The usual result is just the opposite.

Most experienced educators I have talked to agree with me. But they are afraid to try changing something as socially gigantic and historically entrenched as our failed system of schooling. They also fear, legitimately, that any changes will put those least well served now by schooling even more at risk.

We can do better than sending kids to schools. Now is the time to say so and to start talking about what comes after schools.

For more details see:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/papers/Re-engineering_Education.htm

This is the Debut of Making Trouble!