America's School of the Future Matthew Saporito Drexel University

Saporito The crossroad that American education finds itself at is the product of many different forces, both national and international. The state of education in the United

States and in the rest of the world is changing and each are headed in different directions. The United States is no longer insulated by territorial boundaries and the policies it makes regarding education have consequences on a global scale. Globalization is indeed making our world smaller and the education that students receive in our country is directly competing against the education of students in other countries. India is now the largest democracy in the world (Friedman, 2011), (Kapur, 2012), and its GDP has grown at rates higher than expected for the last several years. Many new technologically advanced research and development firms are rushing to establish themselves in this thriving economy (Zhao, 2011). This is the case not just in India but in many developing countries. We must reinvent our system of education in the United States to teach students the skills necessary and impart relevant knowledge that will allow them to become thriving cosmopolitan citizens in a globalized world. In order to do this, we must shift our frame of thinking and look at education in a new light. It is sometimes proposed that high school should be abolished altogether (Botstein, 1997) since it is no longer capable of delivering a suitable education. I don't believe this is true and the problem is not with high school itself but instead with the structure of high school, especially with curriculum. Curriculum must be modified to meet the demands of a global world. It must be reflective on liberal arts and past human experience and also reflexive in its effort to bring high quality science and math education to high school students. This is not the same kind of math and science that administrators place at the center of curriculum. In the current model, students must place

Saporito 3 together disparate pieces of information that branch off from the subject which is at the center. In the new model, students will be at the center of the curriculum and they will focus on ways of thinking and relating to subject matter. It is true that our high schools are obsolete (Gates, 2005) and even when functioning at optimal levels are not imparting the necessary skills to students. We must work to change schools instead of abolishing them. Most are still run according to the factory model of education which was designed during the Industrial Revolution to train people to successfully work in factories and adapt to a world that was being changed by industrialization. The school set up in this way does not reflect the freedom that is required for intellectual and creative growth that is necessary for students to develop properly. The student can no longer be viewed as a byproduct of a series of steps through the factory (Serafini, 2000). We must make schools dynamic places of learning where creativity and innovation are valued and students are taught to cultivate themselves in order to reach their potential. This will engage students and promote interest in subjects. Engaging students in their own education and subsequently in the world outside of school will help us to prepare students for success in a shrinking world. Another reason high schools are necessary is that a globalized world means that students will interact with people from many diverse backgrounds. The socialization that schools provide is a necessary component to educating students to be successful in the global world. In order for innovation to take place, people must know how to work together and communicate efficiently in a productive manner. Students must develop these skills in school in order to use them in the future. If we take the scientific community as an example of progress through innovation, we find the need for teamwork

Saporito 4 and productive social interaction. The scientific community is a global collaboration of individuals and organizations that relies on each other to solve problems and make advances. It is inherently social in nature and students need the socialization that high school provides in order to flourish in a global world. The school of the future in America faces another major obstacle. That is, the No Child Left Behind legislation that was passed into law in 2001 (U. S. Dept. of Education, 2008). The goal of this law was to close the achievement gap through accountability by implementing large scale standardized assessments. These centralized and standard tests are the means by which adequate yearly progress is measured and determine whether or not the school is doing its job as described by the mandate. We must break out of the mindset of standardized testing for many reasons. These assessments cause teachers to teach to the test and often eliminate many other important subjects that are not tested. This stifles creativity and makes students focus on developing test taking skills and not the skills that they need to be successful in life. The tests also produce anxiety, cause students to become disengaged in their own education by distancing interest and learning, and cause teachers to change their pedagogical style, often for the worse (Zhao, 2011). While there is a widening education gap between white students and students from African American and Hispanic backgrounds, NCLB is not the key to fixing this problem. In many instances, the testing imposed by NCLB actually widens the gap since funding is related to improvement in test scores. These scores often do not get at the root of the problem of why students are doing poorly and funding is lost due to poor performance. No Child Left Behind thus creates a kind of self fulfilling prophecy in

Saporito 5 which economically disadvantaged and minority students that are doing poorly in school will continue to do poorly. A good education according to NCLB is one that is equated to good scores on standardized tests. In reality this is not the definition that we should be using if we are to prepare students to live successfully in the world. Another reason that No Child Left Behind is flawed is because of test bias. Tests are often biased against minorities because they use language that is typically understood by the majority group. By focusing on analytic abilities, tests often neglect creative and practical abilities (Sternberg, 1998). Creativity and practicality are often the strength of students from minority backgrounds but traditional tests, especially those that satisfy NCLB requirements, do nothing for the development and fine tuning of these abilities. Our system of education will continue to fall further behind those of other nations if we continue to segregate the vital abilities of certain groups of students. The success of education systems in countries such as China and India is partly due to the fact that they recognize the futility of standards based education. China is now moving toward a system that is based on innovation so that it can continue to grow and be successful. It is beginning to realize that its old system of extreme testing and discipline is outdated and should be more like Western education ("Huffington post education" 2011). The United States is backward in its approach as it is moving toward a more standards based system while other countries are abandoning these ideas. Our country must stop its pursuit of standards or it will continue to widen the education gap within and outside of our borders. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2007 the dropout rate for White students was 6.1%, for Black students, 11.5%, and for Hispanic students, 19.9%. The graduation rate of the United

Saporito 6 States ranked twenty-first out of twenty-seven countries with available data while in the 1960s it ranked first (A Stagnant Nation: Why American Students Are Still at Risk, 2008). A major reason for this gap is standards based curriculum which aims to produce a homogenized group of individuals and emphasizes the wrong skills. Our schools and curriculums most be modified to meet the demands of the global world. This means that we must move away from a standards based system to one that promotes creativity and innovation through human understanding. The liberal arts are an imperative component to our future system of education because they orient and relate us to past experience while giving direction for the future. We are able to place world history under a kind of creative lens that allows for future development. The creative learners that students must become will be well versed in the liberal arts as well as science and math. Having a one track mind and specializing in one area will not yield the results necessary for successfully competing in our technologically advanced and connected world. Integration is a driving force of innovation and we must be teaching students to be well rounded learners. Creativity is absolutely necessary for success in the world (Friedman, 2005). Advances in Neuroscience should also play a guiding role in the way we shape our curriculums. This fairly recent branch of science has already told us much about the way the brain functions and how we learn. Our outdated and ineffective system of education doesn't take into account what Educational Neuroscience is revealing (Dubinksy, 2010). By incorporating what we are learning about cognition and the optimal levels for learning to take place, the old models of education can be replaced with models

Saporito 7 of the future. These will provide stimulating and meaningful curriculums that optimize education based on best practices grounded in research (Fischer , 2009). I believe another curricular component to the education of the future will be the inclusion of philosophy in the classroom. A major tenant of philosophical discourse throughout history is the question of what it means to lead a good life. The answer often includes that a person leading a good life is a flourishing member of society. The word cosmopolitan derives from the Greek word kosmopolits and translates to citizen of the world. Undertones of it are found in Socratic dialogues, writings of Aristotle, Augustine, Hume, Bentham, and Kant and has now manifested itself in the form of globalism. Students must be made aware of their place in the world and the study of philosophy will allow them to think critically and creatively while schools are forming ethical decision makers (Lipman, 1980). By introducing these ways of thinking, it is possible to create a community of inquiry that is better at giving students the education necessary to live well in a global community. Creativity will be of utmost importance in the school of the future. Knowledge is something that is almost universally accessible so it comes down to how one uses this knowledge in a particular situation instead of what facts they have memorized. This is going to be what sets people apart from one another and schools need to be places that incubate creative learners. Schools need to teach students how to take the resources and knowledge available to them and use it to solve problems. They need to learn how to let their brains out of the harness instead of being taught how to harness their brains (Lehrer, 2012). The synthesis of thought and action will drive creative praxis in the globalized world.

Saporito Education must be viewed under a new light. The focus must be taken off high

stakes standardized testing and place it on building meaningful communities of inquiry in which students learn to use knowledge in creative and unique ways. We must make them understand that in order to live well in a continually shrinking world, they must become critically thinking, moral decision makers. We must make education relevant to students in order to achieve these goals and to do this means a drastic change in the fundamental aspects of American education.

Saporito References

A Stagnant Nation: Why American Students Are Still at Risk. (2008, April 21). Ed in '08, strong american schools project. Retrieved from http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/15444 Botstein, L. (1997). Jefferson's children: Education and the promise of american culture . New York: Doubleday. Dubinsky, J. (2010). Neuroscience education for prekindergarten12 teachers. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30(24), 8057-8060. doi: 10.1523 Fischer , K. (2009). Mind, brain, and education: Building a scientific groundwork for learning and teaching. Mind, Brain, and Education , 3(1), 3-16. Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat, a brief history of the twenty-first century . (pp. 316320). New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. Friedman, T. (2011, Nov 9). India and america, two peas in a pod. . Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/opinion/friedman-india-and-america- twopeas-in-a-pod.html?ref=thomaslfriedman Gates, B. (2005, Feb). Paper presented at National Education Summit on High Schools High schools, Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bill-gates-2005national-education-summit.aspx Huffington post education. (2011, May 25). Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/education-in-china-testing-dianesawyer_n_785016.html Kapur, A. (2012, March 9). How india became america. The New York Times Lehrer, J. (2012). Imagine: How creativity works. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. Lipman, M. (1980). Philosophy in the classroom. (2 ed., pp. 31-77). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Saporito National Center for Education Statistics (2010, July). Institution of education sciences. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010015/indicator4_18.asp Serafini, F. (2000). Dismantling the factory model of assessment. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 1-2. Sternberg, R. (1998). Teaching and assessing for successful intelligence. School Administrator, 55(1), 26-27,30-31. U. S. Dept. of Education. (2008). Retrieved from website: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/beginning.html Zhao, Y. (2011). Catching up or leading the way, american education in the age of globalization. (p. 7, 20). Alexandria, VA: Assn for Supervision & Curriculum.

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