This Isn't Your Father's School System Anymore

"People cannot be expected to learn one expertise and just apply it routinely in a job. Your expertise is in steadily renewing your knowledge base and extending it to new areas. That lifelong cycle of learning really is the foundation of the new information organization and economy."
George Gilder, American author and founder of the Discovery Institute

"Why can't I just be left alone so I can shut my door and teach?" I hear this all the time, and used to say it myself sometimes. It's a phrase that tugs at the heartstrings of every teacher, and it's usually used in response to the news of another federal mandate, or another "flavor of the week" from the AEA.

Instead of this surface-level emotional response, I support the notion that we need to carefully evaluate every initiative, every grant opportunity, every available training to determine whether or not it warrants an investment of time, resources, and personnel.

Using wisdom, intellectual honesty, and cooperation, educators and administrators need to sometimes abandon the materials, strategies, and thinking of the past in favor of what we know works in the present, and what we believe will work for the future.
 
Case in point: our language arts teachers have decided on their curriculum for the next seven years, and in doing so have given up printed books. No more eight pound textbooks to lug around. That's one change.
 
More significantly, they have agreed to give up the explicit teaching of grammar. Lessons centered around predicate adjectives, for example, will no longer occur. "But THAT'S what you teach in English!" cry out the folks at the coffee shop.
 
Truth is, it's been proven that traditional grammar instruction not only produces almost NO improvement in skill-building in writers, but it DIMINISHES reading comprehension skills. And that's the last thing we need.
 
So, they're giving up an institutionalized but ineffective practice in favor of contextual writing and other strategies. Will this trouble some of our students' parents and grandparents? Probably. But we're not educating them--we're preparing their children and grandchildren for the future. And as educators, we must stay focused on our duty to the "lifelong cycle of learning" that Mr. Gilder speaks of.
 
If we consistently apply this concept of lifelong learning to our own professional growth, and actively pursue and implement ways to improve our teaching, our students will reap great benefits. This will require abandoning materials and strategies we like in favor of materials and strategies we're unsure of. But we aren't in the business of Yesterday; we're doing the work of Tomorrow.