Architects or Mechanics?

I have been very concerned about the school reform movement for several decades now. I have frequently pointed out that “when you lean you ladder against the wrong wall, you paint the wrong house.” By this I mean that if you misdiagnose the problem, you come up with the wrong solutions. Education “reform” is replete with these misdiagnoses that push us in the wrong direction. This has led to massive misallocations of resources and effort and mountains of missed opportunities. It has narrowed learning and minimized thinking. I had come to almost despair that we would ever get on the right track, until recently. I can thank Frank Lloyd Wright for my renewed optimism. Let me explain.

I was recently at a meeting sponsored by Evans Newton, Inc. held in Scottsdale, Arizona. The opening reception and dinner was held at Taliesin West, the home of iconic architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. It took place on the day that the passing of Steve Jobs was announced. Here were two major iconic and iconoclastic thinkers of the last hundred years confronting me on the same evening. What I learned from the visit to Wright’s home and studio is that he was very organic in his thinking. He believed that natural materials and natural shapes should be used in the design of things. Ironically, Jobs, considered a “techie,” really gained his edge by considering design as the major issue for all his work. His own beliefs as a Buddhist took him to view things more simply and elementally—just like Wright.

What does this have to do with education? Everything. The major problem with the so-called “school reform” movement is that it is very mechanistic in its approach. We make schools better by using industrial tools such as accountability and assessment. By the way, I use the words “so-called” with malice aforethought. It appears that a cabal of narrowly thinking, but broadly arrogant folks, has decided they, and only they, are the true school reformers. And if you disagree with them then you are labeled an apologist for the status quo and not interested in improving schools and helping kids. This, of course, is a bunch of hooey and should be ignored by the media and any right-thinking educator. The essence of being an educated person is understanding that there are multiple answers to most questions and that narrow minded bigotry in any form is the enemy of real learning.

The fundamental problem with the selection of mechanistic solutions to education is that, of all things, it is truly organic in form and action. Taking a classroom full of individuals with different, hopes, dreams, talents and liabilities and treating them as if they are the same is insanity. Education, of all enterprises, is a human endeavor. Trying to apply industrial solutions to something so fundamentally human is just madness taken to new levels.

So why am I now hopeful? The meeting I attended focused on the “Common Core” studies that are now being promoted by various states. And while the common core still relies on accountability and assessment, it understands and promotes the fact there are multiple solutions to most problems and that getting there requires collaborative behavior and innovative thought—organic behavior. This flips the script for schools, turns them upside-down and inside out. Rather than teaching kids there is one right answer to every problem, it teaches them to broaden and deepen their understanding of learning to realize there are multiple answers to most problems. A large part of the thrust will be to emphasize “meta-cognition”—thinking about thinking. This will make the children much more lateral in their thinking. It will encourage the creativity that has been pushed out of so much of the school curriculum and it will us give a chance to truly compete globally.

I once visited a high school math classroom in Singapore where the students had been working all week on one problem. They had spent four days analyzing one problem and going deeper and deeper into the solution and into their own thinking. If we really want to compete with the Singapores of the world it will be by being more creative and lateral in our thoughts and solutions—it will not come by doing better on a bubble-filled achievement test. The push towards a core curriculum has the potential to nudge us in that direction.

Steve Jobs, as a practicing Buddhist, understood the value in being at peace with ambiguity. Eastern thought teaches that things aren’t “either/or,” they are “and.” The essence of Eastern thought is to hold two competing ideas in ones hand at the same time and understand both are correct. If America and our students are to strive and thrive in a global economy, we must learn to make peace with ambiguity and that can only come from broadening our thinking. Flexibility and creativity will be the coin in this new realm.

And back to Frank Lloyd Wright for a second. Wright was an architect. He observed nature, imagined creative solutions to building and made it so. Any good educator or leader must be an architect. We must create solutions from what is. We must take the stones in our way, and build steps and walls with them. We are not mechanics, we are imagineers. Perhaps, we will be allowed with these new reforms to behave in a more organic way.