The Changing Educational Landscape

It is the back to school season! Last week I wrote an article in our archdiocesan Catholic magazine, The Angelus, on the value of Catholic school educators. I was first going to write about initiatives and plans that we have for the year but it was suggested that I focus more on the human element of education and I am happy with how it turned out. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Education is a profession that will elevate you to extreme heights in one moment and bring you down to extreme lows in the next. I addressed our first year teachers last week and talked about how much education has changed over the past 10 years, and how that pace of change seems to be accelerating. I remember telling parents at the school where I was principal about 15 years ago that handwriting would be obsolete someday. At the time it was pretty radical, and I caught some heat for suggesting it. After all, Catholic schools are known for discipline and nice handwriting – thank you Sisters! But I think today no one would bat an eye at such a suggestion. In fact, we are closer to the moment where the only writing instrument people use in meetings is a stylus on their tablet.

I think the ‘radical’ concept educators are wrestling with today is the diminishing importance of teaching content. When I started teaching the essence of my job was to convey the knowledge from the textbook to the students in my class. If I am being honest it was passive (on the students’ part) transference of content. That aim has change dramatically in the past two decades. Today content is everywhere and students can get answers to any questions in seconds from a phone or device. Thus, the teaching of content isn’t as important so the role of the teacher has to change. The focus needs to shift to teaching skills, problem solving, creativity, communication and collaboration. The other skill that students need to learn is how to process and analyze all the data they are consuming. With so many different sources for data, and some that are not so reputable or reliable, students need to be educated about how to be savvy consumers of what they read on the internet.

At the same time we can never forget the human person – education is nothing without relationships to each other. With the growth of social media and technology we have become more connected and more distant at the same time. I know people who email questions to the person who is sitting 15 feet away from them. With students especially they need to be intentionally taught about how to collaborate and interact with others. The skill that is not going away is the importance of working in teams and collaborating to accomplish goals. Some of that will be done through technology networks but the majority will be done interacting on a one on one basis.

Finally, back to the start and the importance of the educator in the classroom. The impact of a teacher is tremendous and that impact lasts a lifetime. When I read the poem, Cloths of Heaven, by William Butler Yeats I think of the dreams of the students in our schools. He says it more eloquently than anything I could write:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.