Chalkbored: What's Wrong with School & How to Fix It

I recently read a new book on education and learning: "Chalkbored: What's Wrong with School & How to Fix It" by Jeremy Schneider.  This is a self-published book drawing on Schneider's experience as a high school teacher in both the U.S. and Canada.  It is not an academic research study but rather is a refreshing (some might say radical) commentary on the current educational system and vision for a solution based on data and experience.

While the focus is on K-12, many of the lessons and potential solutions ring true for all education levels: school reform will rely on some fundamental changes, many of which can be achieved with the help of technology and collective action. Many of the issues and solutions gel nicely with the idea of experiential and participant-centered learning, so I thought it was a nice fit with what has been explored here to date.  At the very least, those of us who design learning products and environments would do well to hear about the challenges of the educational classroom environment firsthand.

The book is organized as follows:

• The early chapters introduce basic issues and investigate public perception about schools and schooling. Schneider recounts why teachers often succumb to techniques and behaviors that do not favor heightened student learning.
• The next chapters explore the "fundamental flaws" Schneider feels must be overcome for school reform to succeed.
• The following chapters then explore how technology can be used to provide practical solutions to these problems.
• The final chapters then look at the history of failed school reform and provide hope for how historical trends can be altered.

I won't explore all aspects of this book and I would urge you to pick it up for yourself (see Chalkbored.com and also the book is available on Amazon). I'm also only going to focus on a few highlights, but those interested in general high school education will find lots more of interest within this book.

Here is a sample of the items that Schneider explores (again, see his book for his data sources). First, the "Fatal Flaws" in the current education system.

Flaw 1: Lectures

Lecture is by far the most prevalent classroom format but it is inherently flawed. Students are hesitant to ask questions in class for a variety of reasons, while faculty mostly ask questions aimed to elicit recitation (vs. reasoning skills). Lectures inherently favor one learning style at the expense of many -- "in trying to meet the needs of all students, they meet the needs of few." Teachers succumb to the "student copy blackboard notes" model because it is a method of classroom control, and the format meets students expectations as well because it is culturally ingrained.

Why are lectures used then?  Because the alternatives are not viable within the current framework.  "Discovery learning", in Schneider's estimation, "gives no instruction at all". True "discovery" takes too long and is not practical for the classroom. A sense of discovery, however, is needed.  That's what videogames provide that classrooms often do not.

"Cooperative learning" sounds good on paper but there are many challenges to trying to execute this in the reality of the classroom environment.  How groups are organized is controversial to students in ways that affect behavior, and the monitoring of concurrent group progress is difficult for teachers.

Individualized instruction would be ideal if it were practical.  But in the current classroom framework the only individualized learning model is individual reading.  But Schneider argues that individual reading, while effective for students, is inconvenient for instructors because it causes the class to get out of synch.  "The need for synchronization has subtle but devastating effects on learning".  Even giving individualized feedback quickly to each student is impractical.

Flaw 2: Using Grades to Sort and Punish

"As a teacher, I was reminded annually that my primary goal was to judge and sort students rather than educate them."  Schneider expresses concern that the need for grade consistency contributes to grade inflation over time.  He even argues that this contributes to the "learned helplessness" in students that is expressed by absenteeism and apathy.  He feels that grades should only be used when followed by clear explanations and the opportunity to correct mistakes.

Flaw 3: Lack of Choice

Some element of choice in learning, as in most things, would make it more meaningful.  Yet even rudimentary choice is impossible within the current educational system.

Flaw 4: Inability to Inspire

Adolescence is "a time of profound spiritual and emotional awakening", yet the current system of education ignores fundamental issues and questions and forces a mundane historical curriculum. As Schneider puts it: "Learning comes from doing, whether it involves performing an experiment or reading a book.  Yet we sit students down for a dozen years, talk at them, and then expect them to be literate, independent thinkers."

Flaw 5: Inadequate Feedback and Review

Schneider coins two types of feedback: confirmation and correction.  Confirmation occurs when students give an answer and the instructor agrees (common in lectures), whereas correction identifies the mistake in a student's response.  Schneider claims that data supports the fact that corrective feedback is more effective than confirmation. And in particular he claims that delayed corrective feedback given during the review of material is most helpful (in contradiction to the current course model where information needs to be mastered just once by students for an exam, etc).

Flaw 6: Misplaced Responsibility

Schneider firmly believes that the responsibility for learning lies with the student, not the teacher.  He believes teachers are inherently motivated beyond what any system can offer them in terms of incentives tied to student performance. And he argues that the diversity in student performance has more to do with their own internal quality benchmarks than it has to do with the discrepancies between teachers in the student's educational career.  It is the parents who should bear the responsibility of holding the students to higher standards than the school or educational system mandates.

The Technology Solution

Next Schneider explores how technology can counteract and help avoid some of these flaws. He details his personal experience introducing the use of computers into vocational classes and how his use of self-guided assignments helped increase student understanding and reduce the class time necessary to cover material.  And students felt better about their progress and feedback and hence were excited to continue learning.  He cites data to support this same finding in the research -- that, when using the right software, computers can aid and even enhance the quality of learning for students.

The type of online lessons that Schneider describes (CAI - "computer-aided instruction") address some of the flaws of the lecture model.  They allow for asynchronous student learning paces.  The learning can be individualized. He even argues that the grading issue can be corrected by replacing it with "levels" tiered to hours of computer-based instruction. He describes an ideal state where computers are actually assessing student performance during the learning and tailoring feedback -- he's in reality describing intelligent tutoring systems (I explore these a bit in an earlier post on assessing learning outcomes in business simulations).

Schneider then goes on to explore other elements of a vision of using CAI to enhance classroom learning, and he also explores counter-arguments and reinforces his vision with research. He also displays evidence suggesting that the promise of educational software has not been realized.

He also provides sections of the book that address how change could be financed  (in part by standardizing curricula).  Embedding technology into the classroom would free up time for teachers -- time currently spent largely using out-of-school time to prepare for in-school sessions. He even has radical ideas about creating a free marketplace for lessons where the best producers of instructional technology would win contracts and those with less effective lessons would be weeded out.

Schneider also reviews some urban teaching myths and applying his lens to the interpretation and debunking of them.  Pick up the book to hear his thoughts on discipline problems in school, on the problems with Gardner's multiple intelligences, on school size, and on "The Myth of the Great Teacher".  Some of these insights, like others in the book, are controversial.  But as a whole this book challenges a system that everyone acknowledges is broke and provides fresh insights on how technology can be used to deal with some of the issues.