RE: The Wrath of Kohn

["Ivan Webb" <Ivan.Webb@bigpond.com>]

A gentle word of caution. There is potentially grave danger in equating
education with manufacturing. It tends to reduce the students to objects to
be processed by the teaching staff. It is not the purpose of education to
process students into machinists, typists, nurses or any other kind of
employee...

Rather the purpose of education to equip people to become all that they
might (want to) be including productive responsible members of various
employment groups, communities...

Schools can be understood as systems in which the core process is learning
(not teaching).  The outputs of learning are personal capabilities
(knowledge, skills, personal systems*, culture...) from which the outcomes
are shaped in lives of the people who have acquired the capabilities. (*The
personal systems include thinking, learning, doing, relating and being)

We work ON systems and WITH the people in the system (Myron Tribus).  A
school should never be a factory - it should be a purposeful community.  Its
purposes are teaching, learning and caring.  All members of the school
(staff, students, families...) have responsibilities to contributing to all
three purposes all the time. All members are accountable for their
contributions.

Accountability is an aspect of all relationships including working
relationships. As such accountability should not be reduced to isolated
testing of one party in the relationship.

Testing can be valid and properly done it is essential. The reason for
testing is to inform processes that improve this system. It should inform as
many people as possible of those who are involved in the improvement
process. Testing should help us learn how to learn.

We know that 85-95% of the outputs from any system are determined by the
system itself. The focus must remain on continuous improvement. Poorly done
testing can be counter productive. An undue emphasis on accountability
reduces the potential to learn about the school as the system. A focus on
enabling the people  in the system (staff, students, families and others) to
improve the system in an informed way can be powerful and wonderfully
effective.

I have the privilege of having experienced such a school. Incidentally
accountability was not a problem - it was a major component of every aspect
of the life and work of the school.

With due respect to all who have been engaging in this debate, I offer the
above thoughts.

Ivan Webb