Jim, I did not want to include your entire message in my response so I
edited it to keep the parts that I specifically respond to. I apologize in
advance if I misrepresent your thoughts.
>1. Truly teaching to a diverse population is very
>difficult - *especially* in today's educational system. (Most of which
>have little understanding of Deming or Senge).
I joined this list to gain a greater understanding of systems thinking
after several years of reading all the popular business management books.
My interest has been in finding business methods to apply to education to
improve it. While I have found much useful information, I have come to the
greater realization that education is unique. It is not a business, nor
should it be. I therefore feel a need to advise caution whenever someone
suggests a business approach to solving the ills of education.
>2. Standards: The same is true of standards. Educators are becoming
>more and more held accountable for meeting standards. So, like the
>ill-fated MBO process, the tendency is to set lower standards - to hedge -
>to minimize work. I think this is where real systems thinking has to
>enter the pictyure to examine the systemic impact of such artificial
>standards.
I agree that the issue of standards needs to be examined systemically. In
my experience, it has been the classroom teachers who have wanted to
maintain high standards but have been unable to do so for a host of
reasons. Lowering standards has often been a systemic response to the
failure-dropout cycle. It may not have had the desired leverage due to
other reasons.
>3. Measuring which standards? There is an educational futurist named
>Bill Daggett ...contends that educators need to be driven by the
>needs, skills, and competencies of the "community" receiving the student.
>In my case as a community college employee - that community is most often
>business and industry.
The community college is ideally situated to fulfill the needs of
business. For K-12 education, I do not think that the goal should be to
serve business, but rather to serve the individual and society. Standards
should not be set by business because they would be self-serving.
>4. How to measure? If the educational system (at least in my case) is
>accurately driven by Deming's Voice of the Customer - then we *will* have
>a set of competencies against which to assess both our programs and our
>students.
But is the customer of education, business? society? the individual? the
pa rent? As much as we say, "The customer is always right.", we know that
it is not true. If a business supplies what the customers want, it is good
for the business. If education supplies the workers that business wants,
is that always good for the individuals? How many of us would be happy
today if we had been trained for assembly line work (as so many of our
peers were).
A very interesting topic, Jim. Thanks for stimulating my thinking.
Ben Wagner
--Benjamin E. Wagner bwagner@umd5.umd.edu Baltimore County Public Schools Maryland
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>