Down the Pipeline

Albert Einstein said that when it came to science, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Richard Feynman, nobel laureate in physics, said, "Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but to comprehend those things which 'are' there."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says that to compete with other nations, we must accelerate learning and improve the "pipeline" from our public schools to college. The metaphor of the pipeline, narrow and enclosed, is disturbing, given that the problems of our time will require solutions that most of us cannot even begin to imagine. Just as disturbing is the push to accelerate learning. In fact, every drive to reform education since the National Defense Act of 1958 has been to accelerate learning. These reforms have obviously failed. The reason is that they were not reforms but more of the same. So-called acceleration amounted to nothing more than piling more work on students and pushing everyone to go to college. As Secretary Duncan also mentioned, the problem is that we don't have students going to college; the problem is that they aren't graduating.

A closer look at the goal for accelerated learning was never more than to achieve some pragmatic end. In 1958, the goal was to prepare children to beat Soviets in the arms and space races. In the eighties, the focus was to prepare students for the world of business. Today, the goal is to teach children to read and to raise their test scores so that they can become competitive in the global marketplace. None of this has been about the children. Its been about achieving political and corporate ambitions. And no one is challenging this shortsighted approach to education reform. Or that such use of our children is abuse.

In response to last Friday's Gullog about the importance of reflection, I received this comment from a scientist at a national laboratory. His B.S. and Ph.D. are both in materials science and engineering:

"Perhaps something you can address in your Gullog blog is the concept that what passed as a doctoral thesis 50 years ago in chemistry is now taught in 10th grade. The sheer amount of information being pushed on youngster's minds is not sustainable. At least that's my $0.02. I was looking at the curriculum at the university from which I graduated, and I'm not sure how the students have time to learn with the volume of information they are expected to instantaneously absorb. Some students also take 6 courses a term to graduate on time. There is no way one can learn at the depth required for critical thinking under these circumstances."

By Education Secretary Duncan's own admission, the performance of American students declines the farther along they get in school. Many fall behind under the load. Many find no relevance for their lives in the increasingly standardized curriculum. But should we take pride in the academic glories of those who not only survive the load but emerge with multiple degrees from our nation's most prestigious universities? What has the load of their learning brought us?

Mr. Feynman is probably most popularly recognized for his work on the panel investigating the Challenger disaster. He famously dropped the O-ring material in a glass of ice water to show that the shuttle had been compromised by cold weather. Some people working on the shuttle had warned of this. But the push was on to reach for the stars. Lives were needlessly lost, resulting in perhaps the most important and tragic lesson taught us by the teacher-in-space program. It's one thing to imagine great achievements. But we should also have the humility and wisdom required to imagine the consequences of our actions.

Where is the vision, the humanity, the wisdom in stuffing information down the young people's throats when the problems they are suppose to solve when they grow up are caused by the ambitions and carelessness of the adults who are supposed to be nurturing those children?

Perhaps the problems in America keep escalating and compounding themselves because sending our children down the pipeline over the last fifty years has narrowed our vision as a people.