Flip over and smell the coffee

Salman Khan, guru of the "flipped classroom"

If proof were needed that America is a temperamentally conservative nation, we need merely cite that when it comes to large-scale social institutions, such as education and health, we would far rather cling to an old system that we positively know is failing than try some new system which might fail, even though it might also work.  "Why even try?" we say.  "Since we clearly aren't doing this correctly now, Q.E.D., there is no possible solution and anything else we might try will fail."

So we cling to the 19th-century industrial factory model of school 40 years after most American businesses have dropped it.  Because we all experienced our pre-college education as tedious, dreary, pointless and mostly ineffectual, we believe either that all following generations must be similarly punished or that it is impossible to make early education engaging, valuable and "sticky" (that is, having lasting value throughout our lives.)

We worsen the problem by having our school districts led by educators who are forced to act as politicians defending the school system from the depredations of the mendacious hooligans we elect, which leaves them in a permanently crouching posture, trying to get noticed.  God forbid that the second most important thing government does (I will grant you that protecting our physical safety comes first) be done with intelligence, insight and the proper resources.  There is always a chance that a despised minority will attend public school and obtain some valuable tools in the perpetual conflict the overclass in the way that education can do.

Okay, I didn't reallly mean to get into this rant, but it does get me excited just how stupidly we do school and how we are unable to break the cycle of stupid even in the clear evidence of catastrophic failure.  But a few schools in Bergen County, New Jersey (where I live) are attempting one of the most workable and efficient of the proposed solutions I've heard since I began in the teaching racket.  Specifically, New Milford, Fort Lee and Northern Valley Regional are experimenting with the flipped classroom model which I first presented here in 2011.  And this idea only has become more mainstream with the advent of MOOCs.

Since I first wrote this, smart phones have become even more prevalent, and even in the inner city district in which I teach now, are all but universal.  Therefore, all materials for the flipped classroom, MUST BE AVAILABLE AS APPs on multiple platforms.  Most of my students do not have in-home access to high-speed internet on a computer.  They do, have these pocket computers, and those must be considered the primary delivery method of instruction for this system.  Which also means that visuals must be VERY LARGE and VERY CLEAR to compensate for these tiny screens.  No clusters of text or mathematical characters.

One of the great advantages pointed out by the linked article is the sheer time efficiency.  Students don't HAVE to take in the instructional videos at home.  Using their phones or tablets, they can view while traveling to sports events or between parents' homes, or while hanging out with friends.  (My students can listen to anything on headsets and absorb it while simultaneously tracking their friends' conversation.  Altekockers like me might not believe it, but I have observed that students can recall incidents and dialogue in detail from films in my media course even though they have been gabbing virtually all the time.  They were virtually born multi-tasking, whereas folks like me have had to try and learn it.)

Because the biggest downfall of our present system of education is sheer inefficiency from the student's point of view.  Sure, it's cheap and efficient from the state's point of view -- gather students in cheaply-built rectangular buildings in the largest aggregation possible and present them with uniform materials assessed with cheap-to-correct multiple choice and T-F tests.  But from the student's point of view, none of it makes sense.  We gather them at the times they are least likely to learn.  In high school, we randomly shuffle them from room to room from topic to topic for more time than it takes to absorb one new piece of data but less time than it takes to engage in and complete a genuinely valuable task.  Everyone hears the same thing at the same time and is subject to the same deadline for the same tasks.  And one is discouraged from using the fantastic communication and networking skills one is developing in one's "real" life.

I'd ask you to wake up but you won't remember anyway.

The sad truth is that high school, like college, is being run by interschool athletics.  The only reason anyone can give for high school to be from 8 to 3 is to allow time for athletics after school.  It has no other logic.  Dismissing students at 3, 3 or 4 hours before their parents return home puts them genuinely at risk.  Police will tell you the greatest number of arrests of school-age children is between 3 and 6.  Not hard to figure.

And worst of all, science uncontrovertibly demonstrates that these hours are BAD FOR LEARNING.  Does there need to be any other justification for changing a school practice?  The kids are asleep in class, and not just because they were up all night gaming and texting.  They're not designed to learn at 8 AM, and I wish the Christian conservatives would get on this issue, because our current school schedule is clearly in contravention of God's plan.  Sadly, I discover that this is not the first time I've discussed this here, but new data justifies repeating the point.  Our school schedules have no function except to facilitate team sports and keep budgets down.  They render positive damage upon learning and upon student safety.

I hope I live long enough to see this nation stop saying that children are important and start treating them that way.  Like by spending time and money on them, instead of empty rhetoric.

When can we stop acting like a 19th century agricultural society?

Although I grew up in a rural part of my state--I even had classmates who belonged to 4H--I did not have to return home in time to milk the cows or muck the stable or whatever it is that farm kids do in the late afternoon. Nor was it necessary for me to help bring in the harvest at the end of the summer. My dad worked at Bell Labs.

35 years later, we are still running our schools on a farm schedule. The summer thing is one of those impenetrable entrenched cultural habits, compounded with the cost of adding air conditioning to buildings built in the first half of the 20th century.

But the early morning start and mid-afternoon finish has ceased making sense generations ago. In fact, cops will tell you that most juvenile arrests happen between 3:30 and 6:00. Moreover, the schedule has a negative impact on student success, especially in high school. A much-reported experiment at a Rhode Island private school pushed the schedule back to start at 8:30, deducting five minutes from each class to keep dismissal time the same.

Among the results: The portion of students reporting at least eight hours of sleep on school nights jumped from about 16 percent to almost 55 percent; reports of daytime sleepiness dropped substantially, from 49 percent to 20 percent; first period tardiness dropped by almost half and students reported having more time to eat a hot, more nutritious breakfast. [Dean Patricia] Moss believed the healthy breakfast was a strong contributor in the increased alertness throughout the mornings.

So why isn't your district going to adopt this suggestion? First, it's all about the buses. Most districts in my part of the country are apparently bus companies which hold classes in order to keep the students occupied between bus rides. Bus schedules and costs drive most scheduling questions.

Second, and this is the bigger issue, schools are run for the convenience of parents, or more accurately, for parents' employers. Classes must start as close to when Mom and Dad leave the house as possible. Now that employers have found that society was willing to have both parents work in order to have the same purchasing power as one parent had 40 years ago, everyone has become yoked to the needs of business institutions. Wouldn't it be marvelous if a business took the attitude, as long as you're getting the work done we don't care when and where you do it. I understand a retail operation can't work that way, nor indeed a school, but I spent most of my life in the private sector where I believe the need to have everyone gathered in the same place at the same time is vastly overrated.

Maybe if we had to start at 8, we could start high school with a low-key discussion class, deal with character and ethical issues and community building, rather than start right in with cramming data down their throats along with the lattes. Assuming schools are interested in character and ethics, of course...