In 1983, then President Ronald Reagan commissioned a group of 00:00:01.98\00:00:06.59 people to do a report on the assessment of basically what is 00:00:06.63\00:00:11.21 going on in the American educational system. 00:00:11.24\00:00:14.02 I want to read an excerpt from the National Commission On 00:00:14.06\00:00:17.50 Excellence in Education. How did they hand the report to him? 00:00:17.54\00:00:22.05 I'm sure he was shocked. It says If an unfriendly foreign power 00:00:22.09\00:00:27.01 had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational 00:00:27.04\00:00:31.76 performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as 00:00:31.80\00:00:36.68 an act of war. Stay tuned. We're going to be talking about some 00:00:36.71\00:00:41.56 changes that need to be made in our educational system. 00:00:41.59\00:00:45.03 Music being played. 00:00:45.06\00:01:09.49 Hello, I'm Shelley Quinn and welcome to Issues and Answers. 00:01:09.52\00:01:12.44 I'm so glad that you tuned in. No matter where you're watching 00:01:12.48\00:01:15.42 from around the world. We're going to be talking about a very 00:01:15.46\00:01:19.06 serious problem and probing some answers to the issue of the 00:01:19.10\00:01:22.64 direction of public education. Although we will be focusing on 00:01:22.68\00:01:26.31 what's going on in the United States, much will overlap and 00:01:26.35\00:01:30.10 apply to the school systems in your areas as well I'm sure. 00:01:30.14\00:01:33.86 Let me introduce to you our returning guest 00:01:33.90\00:01:37.27 Dr. Randy Siebold and Randy you have a Ph. D. in education and 00:01:37.31\00:01:41.79 you are the Vice-president of Education for Weimar Center of 00:01:41.82\00:01:46.56 Health and Education. Tell us just a little bit about Weimar. 00:01:46.59\00:01:51.11 Weimar Center for Health and Education is now working with a 00:01:51.15\00:01:55.12 partnership with Amazing Facts Ministry, another media ministry 00:01:55.16\00:02:00.91 and the three big entities on campus are an academy, a high 00:02:00.94\00:02:06.12 school, boarding high school, a college, a small college of 00:02:06.15\00:02:10.22 which I am overseeing those. Then we also have a Lifestyle 00:02:10.26\00:02:14.99 Center on Campus where residents come in and learn to eat in a 00:02:15.02\00:02:19.72 vegan kitchen and learn all sorts of different approaches 00:02:19.76\00:02:23.60 about health and how to live life better and longer and 00:02:23.63\00:02:27.44 happier. So it's good 00:02:27.48\00:02:29.30 Well it's kind of exciting to see what you're doing in the 00:02:29.34\00:02:33.84 development of your college. We know that our focus today is 00:02:33.88\00:02:37.26 not going to be on Weimar, but I just wanted to bring that up. 00:02:37.29\00:02:41.51 You have been in education for nearly 20 years now and today 00:02:41.55\00:02:46.31 let's go back and look at a little bit of the history of the 00:02:46.35\00:02:51.62 school system, if you will. When did common education come 00:02:51.65\00:02:56.04 onto the scene. In other words, when did people just quit 00:02:56.07\00:03:00.39 just teaching their children at home and decide to send them to 00:03:00.42\00:03:04.35 a common school room? 00:03:04.39\00:03:06.13 Well, I think it's an important question because the history of 00:03:06.17\00:03:09.11 education is one that most people don't think about. 00:03:09.14\00:03:12.82 They just go to school and it's always been this way. 00:03:12.86\00:03:16.47 But as you think back in history it has not really been that way 00:03:16.50\00:03:21.61 for very long. We go back to the mid 1800's, we start to look 00:03:21.65\00:03:27.62 back at when the most common method of education was the one 00:03:27.66\00:03:33.60 room school house. So they were in school and... 00:03:33.63\00:03:36.36 And that began about when? 00:03:36.39\00:03:38.05 Well that was up until the mid 1800's when what's called the 00:03:38.08\00:03:42.89 common school movement in the United States developed. 00:03:42.92\00:03:45.49 We had people coming from all different nations and coming 00:03:45.52\00:03:52.60 together in America. The idea of the leaders was to bring 00:03:52.63\00:03:55.79 together what we call this melting pot bringing people all 00:03:55.83\00:04:00.62 together and we want them to be Americans. 00:04:00.66\00:04:05.68 So the idea of a common school then was a lot about 00:04:05.72\00:04:10.80 socialization then, is that what you're saying? 00:04:10.83\00:04:12.84 Yes, yes, bringing that commonality and making sure 00:04:12.88\00:04:15.61 everyone had a basic education. That was the big focus in the 00:04:15.65\00:04:20.54 mid 1800's is when it got started heavily. 00:04:20.57\00:04:23.16 When you think about this then the old school system of the 00:04:23.20\00:04:28.50 blackboards and chalk and the teachers there, what happened 00:04:28.54\00:04:34.37 that began to distinguish one school from another? Explain to 00:04:34.41\00:04:40.21 us just a little bit about the whole history. 00:04:40.24\00:04:42.38 What's interesting is when the idea of public school became 00:04:42.41\00:04:48.18 more common and more popular, the focus was on whatever the 00:04:48.22\00:04:52.98 educators in the area felt was important. So some who were 00:04:53.02\00:04:58.20 trained classically would focus on the classics. Those with a 00:04:58.24\00:05:02.76 more basic manual training would do manual labor and they would 00:05:02.80\00:05:06.88 show them how to do manual labor So the schools were all over the 00:05:06.92\00:05:10.97 place. They were doing all kinds of different things and it 00:05:11.00\00:05:14.91 wasn't until a group got together called the Committee 00:05:14.95\00:05:18.90 of Ten and when this group got together it was led by the chair 00:05:18.94\00:05:25.82 of Harvard University and they brought all these people 00:05:25.86\00:05:29.11 together and their big study was what do we need to be doing 00:05:29.15\00:05:33.56 in high schools to prepare them to come to colleges because 00:05:33.59\00:05:37.33 think about this. Think about everyone doing their own thing 00:05:37.37\00:05:41.07 right, and then all of these colleges getting incoming 00:05:42.02\00:05:44.58 freshmen, one coming from a classically trained school, one 00:05:44.62\00:05:48.94 coming from a manual labor school, so the students were all 00:05:48.97\00:05:53.26 over the place. It was a challenge. 00:05:53.29\00:05:55.11 Yes. Their big goal was let's get a standard. 00:05:55.15\00:05:58.48 So now this is already into the industrial age then because 00:05:58.52\00:06:02.80 you've gone from an agrarian society of farmers and now with 00:06:02.83\00:06:07.20 the industrial age Harvard was the first college in the United 00:06:07.23\00:06:11.28 States and they're saying, Hey where do we even begin to teach 00:06:11.32\00:06:15.33 these children a college education when they don't have 00:06:15.37\00:06:18.54 an equivalent of basically your academics from school to school. 00:06:18.57\00:06:25.14 Is that right? Well and they didn't even know 00:06:25.17\00:06:27.23 what academics was. We take it now that term is just every 00:06:27.27\00:06:31.62 one knows math, science, English you know. But 150 years ago that 00:06:31.65\00:06:36.89 wasn't such a common knowledge. Well, what does that mean? 00:06:36.92\00:06:40.60 What does academics mean? That we're doing math but is that 00:06:40.64\00:06:43.90 taught just in grade school or do we teach it in high school as 00:06:43.94\00:06:48.50 well? Or do we teach it? So the Committee of Ten really tried to 00:06:48.54\00:06:54.47 establish what the curriculum is. That was the group primarily 00:06:54.50\00:07:00.25 responsible for taking that task and really making it real. 00:07:00.28\00:07:04.44 For coming up with out 3R's, reading, writing and 'rithmetic. 00:07:04.48\00:07:09.25 Well, you mentioned also the industrial age. We have a slide 00:07:09.29\00:07:14.03 that I'd like to show on this time line of what happens here. 00:07:14.06\00:07:18.89 Take a look at this. You see the agrarian age and this common 00:07:18.92\00:07:23.28 school movement comes in just about the same time that the 00:07:23.32\00:07:27.64 industrial age is coming. 00:07:27.67\00:07:28.66 Now, Randy, before you go forward, let's define what the 00:07:28.70\00:07:33.51 agrarian society was because I'm not sure everyone is catching 00:07:33.55\00:07:36.46 that. Yes, good point. It comes from 00:07:36.49\00:07:38.18 the word agriculture; so the idea of farming or tending sheep 00:07:38.22\00:07:42.96 or livestock. This is where most people earned their living and 00:07:43.00\00:07:47.71 it's what made the commerce go round. 00:07:47.75\00:07:50.27 So the agrarian age and the switch from the agrarian society 00:07:50.30\00:07:54.17 to the industrial society took place in the early 1800's? 00:07:54.20\00:07:57.90 Yes, early/mid 1800's. So what we had in America, this 00:07:57.93\00:08:01.55 industrial age was characterized by these large industries coming 00:08:01.59\00:08:07.01 in and obviously because of the name. 00:08:07.04\00:08:09.05 So essentially what was going on during the agrarian society is 00:08:09.09\00:08:12.75 that folks taught their young ones at home and that was 00:08:12.78\00:08:18.78 basically... That was the most common. 00:08:18.81\00:08:19.78 That was it, you learned with daddy on the farm. 00:08:19.79\00:08:22.00 Okay, and then at the beginning of the industrial age some years 00:08:22.04\00:08:25.97 into this... When was Harvard founded? 00:08:26.00\00:08:29.13 Well it was in the 1600's. Actually it was before we ever 00:08:29.16\00:08:32.55 became a nation that Harvard was over here. 00:08:32.59\00:08:35.40 I had no idea. I though it came up during the industrial age. 00:08:35.44\00:08:38.97 But Harvard then comes out with this Committee of Ten to... 00:08:39.00\00:08:42.36 Well, yes, it was actually the National Education Association 00:08:42.39\00:08:46.25 that was a commission. It was chaired by the president of 00:08:46.29\00:08:50.41 Harvard and so this group... and that's right in the 00:08:50.45\00:08:54.51 beginning of this industrial age if we can look at the time line 00:08:54.54\00:08:58.02 again really quick you can see how the Committee of Ten... 00:08:58.05\00:09:00.78 This common school movement, remember we talked about all 00:09:00.81\00:09:04.84 disparate school and they were looking for this common group 00:09:04.88\00:09:09.97 here and so the industrial age then really characterized this 00:09:10.01\00:09:15.07 whole approach. So then during the industrial 00:09:15.10\00:09:17.66 age is when the common school system really became important. 00:09:17.69\00:09:21.81 Now the quote that I opened the program with from the report 00:09:21.85\00:09:26.65 from the commission in 1983, that would still be considered 00:09:26.69\00:09:31.46 the industrial age wouldn't it? 00:09:31.50\00:09:32.89 Yes, that was right around the transition depending on who you 00:09:32.93\00:09:36.20 are, where you were at, whether you were in the information age 00:09:36.24\00:09:39.48 yet but that report was essentially measuring and 00:09:39.51\00:09:44.11 assessing education up to that point. 00:09:44.20\00:09:46.10 All right, so let's look at that quote again because what strikes 00:09:46.13\00:09:48.97 me is that this quote made during the information age was 00:09:49.01\00:09:53.24 basically the school system that the Committee of Ten had put in 00:09:53.28\00:09:57.14 place for the common bringing together of students and let's 00:09:57.17\00:10:01.00 look at that and see what that... 00:10:01.03\00:10:03.50 Yes, check this out. If an unfriendly foreign power had 00:10:03.53\00:10:07.28 attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational 00:10:07.31\00:10:10.99 performance that exists today we might well have viewed it as an 00:10:11.02\00:10:15.06 act of war. And this is the National 00:10:15.09\00:10:17.28 Commission on the Excellence in Education. When they gave Reagan 00:10:17.31\00:10:22.61 this report, were there any major school reforms? We've 00:10:22.64\00:10:27.02 gone from agrarian to industrial age. Here comes this report 00:10:27.06\00:10:32.49 that says, Hey this is a really bad situation. Were there major 00:10:32.52\00:10:37.92 reforms made? Well let's put it this way, the 00:10:37.95\00:10:40.48 repercussions were huge. It was a big splash in the educational 00:10:40.51\00:10:46.60 market. I mean, it was a big shock essentially. What they had 00:10:46.64\00:10:52.24 done in this report was taken a look at education in America as 00:10:52.28\00:10:57.85 well as in other countries and did comparisons. They were 00:10:57.89\00:11:03.39 thinking that things were not being done well. It was a shock 00:11:03.42\00:11:07.99 to a lot of people and the different reforms that have come 00:11:08.03\00:11:13.07 out of that, well not directly as a result of that, but just 00:11:13.10\00:11:18.35 in effect the whole reform idea has happened since the Committee 00:11:18.38\00:11:23.08 of Ten met. When they met, there were groups saying we need to 00:11:23.11\00:11:28.10 change it; this isn't right. School reform isn't anything new 00:11:28.13\00:11:33.98 it just changes and molds shape at least in the last 150 years. 00:11:34.02\00:11:39.84 So then if we look at the graphic from before where we 00:11:39.87\00:11:45.83 had the agrarian into the industrial age, now coming into 00:11:45.87\00:11:52.01 the early information age schools basically we're saying 00:11:52.04\00:11:58.11 there just hasn't been a whole lot that has changed yet, is 00:11:58.15\00:12:01.18 that correct? Correct. You can see in here 00:12:01.22\00:12:04.47 where the Nation at Risk falls. It's fascinating and very timely 00:12:04.50\00:12:09.25 and we have another graphic I'd like to put up also talking 00:12:09.29\00:12:14.93 about these three waves of commerce or these three areas 00:12:14.97\00:12:19.64 of society. You can see the transportation and 00:12:19.68\00:12:23.08 I hope this is large enough 00:12:23.11\00:12:24.25 so people can read it, transportation and how the 00:12:24.35\00:12:27.73 agrarian, industrial and information ages show how 00:12:27.77\00:12:31.08 transportation has changed, how families have changed through 00:12:31.12\00:12:35.49 these different times. Let me do this because we will 00:12:35.52\00:12:38.36 have a lot of people listening to this by radio so 00:12:38.39\00:12:41.16 transportation during the agrarian age was horse and buggy 00:12:41.20\00:12:45.23 and then it went to the industrial age the train and now 00:12:45.27\00:12:49.27 we have planes and cars during the information age. 00:12:49.30\00:12:51.57 Now the family once in the agrarian it was extended family. 00:12:51.61\00:12:55.92 Everyone living together. You got married and you built onto 00:12:55.96\00:12:59.43 the house and everyone was living together, it was all the 00:12:59.47\00:13:02.90 extended family. Then in the industrial age it 00:13:02.94\00:13:04.92 became more the nuclear family because people began to... 00:13:04.95\00:13:08.00 Mom and dad and the kids. When the kids grew up they went and 00:13:08.03\00:13:11.04 got a house of their own. 00:13:11.07\00:13:12.11 All right and now in the information age sadly it is... 00:13:12.15\00:13:16.02 Yes, well single parent, blended families are more common than 00:13:16.05\00:13:20.14 what we might call traditional, the husband/wife being married 00:13:20.17\00:13:24.22 with their children. So business during the agrarian 00:13:24.25\00:13:27.88 age was mostly family business, then it went to bureaucracies 00:13:27.92\00:13:30.92 and then information we're working with teams. 00:13:30.95\00:13:33.73 Now let's fill in the blank on education. 00:13:33.77\00:13:38.54 This is what's fascinating. You look at the agrarian age and the 00:13:38.58\00:13:42.72 one room school house idea or learning at the farm and in the 00:13:42.76\00:13:46.97 industrial age really, our current system of education was 00:13:47.01\00:13:51.15 built during the industrial age and so a lot of public educators 00:13:51.19\00:13:56.04 are saying, Wait a minute. We're in a new category, we're in a 00:13:56.08\00:14:01.04 new life. What does education look like in the 21st century? 00:14:01.07\00:14:05.30 What should it look like in an information age? We have this 00:14:05.34\00:14:11.08 school system designed and very clearly much of it was very much 00:14:11.12\00:14:16.09 designed to help produce what they needed. They needed a lot 00:14:16.12\00:14:20.62 of factory workers; people who would take directions, who would 00:14:20.66\00:14:24.77 do what they were told, who had a basic skill set, but they 00:14:24.81\00:14:28.55 didn't need a lot of problem solvers. That's not what they 00:14:28.59\00:14:31.84 really needed. They didn't need a lot of creative thinkers. 00:14:31.87\00:14:35.09 That's not what they needed. 00:14:35.12\00:14:36.89 So where is public education heading today. You hear a lot of 00:14:36.92\00:14:42.51 conversation about choice of schools. Do you think we are 00:14:42.55\00:14:47.93 going to do what like Germany and some other countries have 00:14:47.96\00:14:50.79 done where we are tracking students either to go into 00:14:50.82\00:14:54.97 vocational school or college. I mean, what do you see? 00:14:55.00\00:14:59.42 I guess I don't see America heading that way although 00:14:59.45\00:15:03.80 testing is absolutely huge. You know, we have in America No 00:15:03.84\00:15:09.22 Child Left Behind and that is and accountability movement to 00:15:09.25\00:15:14.92 try to help each child. The intent is that each child will 00:15:14.96\00:15:18.89 be held accountable for some test score growth. That's the 00:15:18.92\00:15:22.13 way they're going to measure whether teachers are doing a 00:15:22.17\00:15:25.30 good job. So they hold teachers and schools accountable for that 00:15:25.34\00:15:28.74 growth. That's the plan. 00:15:28.77\00:15:32.21 I personally believe part of the problem with that is that then 00:15:32.25\00:15:37.14 people begin to teach how to take tests. 00:15:37.17\00:15:40.29 To the test, yes. And that's not something 00:15:40.33\00:15:43.37 necessarily that's going to have any lasting effect on the mind. 00:15:43.41\00:15:47.25 Well and as teachers know there's some students... 00:15:47.28\00:15:49.97 What's interesting, as a teacher you work with the young person 00:15:50.01\00:15:53.41 every day and you're seeing they're starting to get it and 00:15:53.44\00:15:57.24 they ask questions in class and Oh, they're starting to get it, 00:15:57.27\00:16:00.64 Oh yeah, it's coming. Oh this is great and you give them a test 00:16:00.68\00:16:04.00 and they bomb, you know, what is the problem? Then you have 00:16:04.04\00:16:07.41 someone else who doesn't show up and they come and take a 00:16:07.44\00:16:10.52 test and they get it and you're like how do they do this? 00:16:10.56\00:16:16.32 There is actually a thing called test-taking skills that can be 00:16:16.35\00:16:22.82 taught that allows you to do better on tests. 00:16:22.85\00:16:27.53 So what do you see today that makes you even think that there 00:16:27.56\00:16:31.68 is going to be educational reform? What's going on? 00:16:31.71\00:16:35.93 Well, we talked in our last episode or segment about the 00:16:35.96\00:16:44.92 broadening of what it is we're trying to educate. There was a 00:16:44.95\00:16:49.71 book that came out called Emotional Intelligence 00:16:49.74\00:16:54.82 Daniel Goldman was the author. It wasn't written directly for 00:16:54.85\00:16:59.90 education, but his point, and we have a slide with a quote here, 00:16:59.93\00:17:04.32 centrally emotional intelligence has a higher correlation with 00:17:04.35\00:17:14.45 success than with IQ has with success. In other words we're 00:17:14.48\00:17:21.13 spending so much time trying to help our young people be 00:17:21.16\00:17:24.26 successful and we're trying to help them build their intellect 00:17:24.29\00:17:27.24 but we're not helping them build their EQ, their emotional 00:17:27.27\00:17:31.33 quotient. Okay, so explain emotional 00:17:31.36\00:17:32.33 quotient. Well, it's separated in some 00:17:32.79\00:17:36.59 fields into interpersonal relationships,... 00:17:36.62\00:17:40.15 We call them people skills. 00:17:40.18\00:17:42.27 People skills between you and me and how do we relate to each 00:17:42.30\00:17:44.98 other and then there is the intrapersonal skills, how you 00:17:45.01\00:17:47.78 relate to yourself when it's all quiet; what you're thinking, you 00:17:47.81\00:17:51.45 know, how you relate to yourself. That's the emotional 00:17:51.48\00:17:55.92 intelligence. You know, since we used Ronald 00:17:55.95\00:17:57.66 Reagan I will make this comment because I remember hearing 00:17:57.69\00:18:00.87 someone talk about him on the television. It was a historian 00:18:00.90\00:18:08.07 who said that Ronald Reagan had the highest EQ, emotional 00:18:08.10\00:18:12.28 quotient, of any president that we've ever had. He knew how 00:18:12.31\00:18:15.69 to get people to work together. He certainly didn't have the 00:18:15.72\00:18:18.90 highest IQ. I think they say President Nixon had a very high 00:18:18.93\00:18:22.35 IQ, but Nixon had a very low EQ. So I can see where the quote 00:18:22.38\00:18:27.57 that was just on the screen, EQ or emotional quotient, that 00:18:27.60\00:18:32.83 ability to have those interpersonal skills really 00:18:32.86\00:18:36.43 is probably, that was just right on. It is closely related to 00:18:36.46\00:18:44.21 success. Well, and so what this does for 00:18:44.24\00:18:46.22 me is... Think about this. So now, emotional quotient, 00:18:46.25\00:18:49.27 think about this, emotional intelligence, how is that being 00:18:49.30\00:18:54.54 taught in our schools? So the quick reaction of many educators 00:18:54.57\00:19:00.66 is to do this: Well let's have a class in emotional 00:19:00.69\00:19:04.23 intelligence. So we add another class. To think about this, I 00:19:04.26\00:19:08.56 was talking with an elderly gentleman recently and he said, 00:19:08.59\00:19:12.34 Oh, the school system is so different. And I thought to 00:19:12.37\00:19:15.93 myself, what. I mean, it's basically the same thing. 00:19:15.96\00:19:18.51 Well what he did was shared with me about all of these added 00:19:18.54\00:19:22.65 things that have been added on since he was in school. It was 00:19:22.68\00:19:27.00 the basics and then they went and worked. But now we just 00:19:27.03\00:19:32.13 seem to be adding another class. We find a problem, we 00:19:32.16\00:19:35.71 add another class, we find a problem, we add another class. 00:19:35.74\00:19:37.86 And then you have a quote I believe about that kind of 00:19:37.89\00:19:42.06 coverage, don't you? Yes, absolutely. That's what I 00:19:42.09\00:19:44.90 was thinking. This is from Howard Gardner. 00:19:44.93\00:19:48.64 The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage. 00:19:48.67\00:19:53.25 This is the difficulty of the teacher. Now think about this... 00:19:53.28\00:19:58.63 No Child Left Behind... Okay you're a teacher and so you're 00:19:58.66\00:20:03.46 being held accountable for student learning and how well 00:20:03.49\00:20:07.51 they score on the test. What are you trying to do? You have to 00:20:07.54\00:20:12.81 cover things, you have to cover that. 00:20:12.84\00:20:15.56 And you can ruin understanding. I see this. 00:20:15.59\00:20:19.17 You see, this so intertwined and... Howard Gardner, by the 00:20:19.20\00:20:26.58 way, the one who wrote that quote, a professor at Harvard, 00:20:26.61\00:20:30.36 was in a group called Project Zero and they developed a 00:20:30.39\00:20:35.36 strategy or a way of thinking about intelligence that actually 00:20:35.39\00:20:41.22 divided it up into many different facets rather than 00:20:41.25\00:20:45.19 just... so rather than saying intelligence and thinking about 00:20:45.22\00:20:50.28 something that, you ask anyone about intelligence, oh they 00:20:50.31\00:20:53.69 know what that is, that's the mind. Well what he did in their 00:20:53.72\00:20:57.93 group was they studied different brain functions of different 00:20:57.96\00:21:01.59 areas of the brain and said what is the intelligence that's 00:21:01.62\00:21:05.72 brought to the human experience from this portion of the brain? 00:21:05.75\00:21:09.20 So they studied people who were brain damaged with different 00:21:09.23\00:21:13.64 areas and what were the functions they were losing and 00:21:13.67\00:21:16.73 it was really fascinating. So we had logical mathematical, okay, 00:21:16.76\00:21:21.99 linguistic; those were two that we all knew and in fact if you 00:21:22.02\00:21:26.71 do well in those you do typically well in school and 00:21:26.74\00:21:30.34 that's what our schools are primarily focused on. Musical 00:21:30.37\00:21:33.90 intelligence, spacial and we now people like that who get 00:21:33.93\00:21:39.07 directions, they just know where they're at, you know. So there's 00:21:39.10\00:21:42.93 all of these different intelligences that we don't 00:21:42.96\00:21:46.24 recognize in school. You know I've talked before about the 00:21:46.27\00:21:49.62 curriculum cloud. What is it that we're trying to learn, 00:21:49.65\00:21:53.58 what's the goal? But what we've done is we've focused on just 00:21:53.61\00:21:58.99 logic, logical mathematical, the linguistic and getting it 00:21:59.02\00:22:03.16 covered. Focusing on the content rather than watching the 00:22:03.19\00:22:07.50 understanding of the children being developed. It's difficult. 00:22:07.53\00:22:09.52 So essentially what you're saying is that our high schools 00:22:09.55\00:22:13.83 we've got a lot of good people out here who are trying their 00:22:13.86\00:22:17.38 best to make certain the teens get a good education, but what 00:22:17.41\00:22:24.28 they're doing is falling back into that system of, well you 00:22:24.31\00:22:28.01 don't understand emotional quotient then we will give you 00:22:28.05\00:22:32.71 a class to cover emotional quotient. You had a quote from 00:22:32.75\00:22:37.17 Bill Gates and I'd love to put that on the screen right now. 00:22:37.20\00:22:41.07 It's right along this same line. This is an amazing quote. 00:22:41.10\00:22:45.37 Now you'll notice at the top of the screen it says Change in 00:22:45.41\00:22:50.47 Outcomes. The point of that is there are business leaders who 00:22:50.50\00:22:56.23 are saying we can't keep doing things the way we are doing them 00:22:56.26\00:23:01.96 now. We've got to change. Our high schools, he says, were 00:23:01.99\00:23:05.98 designed to meet the needs of another age. He's talking this 00:23:06.01\00:23:10.81 same conversation. Bill Gates understands what's happening 00:23:10.85\00:23:15.58 with our education system in the sense of this is an industrial 00:23:15.62\00:23:19.38 age design coming to an information age. 00:23:19.41\00:23:22.88 And if anybody understands the information age, Bill Gates 00:23:22.91\00:23:27.19 does, because he has become a multibillionaire. I'm sure where 00:23:27.22\00:23:31.06 his great understanding of this is coming in is just to see how 00:23:31.10\00:23:34.90 do we find workers who are coming out of this high school 00:23:34.93\00:23:40.07 curriculum system that was meant to train factory workers, 00:23:40.10\00:23:45.20 how do we find workers that are qualified for the 00:23:45.24\00:23:49.03 information age? Exactly. I was looking recently 00:23:49.07\00:23:52.79 at a report from an eastern state, New Hampshire, I believe. 00:23:52.82\00:23:59.11 They've taken a whole systemic relook at their high school 00:23:59.15\00:24:04.76 process saying that rather than just covering content in their 00:24:04.80\00:24:10.38 classes, they wanted their students to develop 00:24:10.41\00:24:13.09 competencies. Do you see the difference? 00:24:13.12\00:24:16.09 Yes I do. So now you're held accountable 00:24:16.12\00:24:19.02 not for the teacher covering it, but for the students actually 00:24:19.05\00:24:23.60 being able to develop the skills and the competencies. So they're 00:24:23.64\00:24:27.84 talking about a redesign in that report. That's interesting in 00:24:27.88\00:24:31.38 and of itself. In that report, there was a little graph, I 00:24:31.42\00:24:34.73 thought about oh maybe I should bring it here. What it did was 00:24:34.76\00:24:40.25 it showed in 1900 the percentage of manual labor jobs versus the 00:24:40.29\00:24:46.93 percentage of brain worker jobs. Then in 1950 it more equaled out 00:24:46.97\00:24:52.75 but still there were more manual labor jobs. Then in 2000 now 00:24:52.79\00:24:57.61 it's the other way around. So we have an educational system that 00:24:57.65\00:25:02.44 was actually designed for this group... 00:25:02.47\00:25:04.11 Now that's all being outsourced. All those type of jobs are being 00:25:04.14\00:25:09.94 outsourced. Yes that's part of the challenge 00:25:09.97\00:25:12.03 So is this a true statement? I'm think I'm seeing why reform 00:25:12.06\00:25:17.62 might be so difficult because we've got 100s of years of 00:25:17.65\00:25:22.42 education, a couple hundred years of education anyway, of 00:25:22.45\00:25:27.65 going with a certain system and it is an academic system, the 00:25:27.68\00:25:32.96 reading, writing, 'rithmetic and all of a sudden now if my 00:25:32.99\00:25:36.70 children are in school and you're telling me you're going 00:25:36.73\00:25:39.88 to change the whole way, I'm going to look at it and say 00:25:39.91\00:25:42.99 I don't like this system. That's not what I grew up with. So is 00:25:43.02\00:25:46.60 that... Sure absolutely. 00:25:46.64\00:25:48.10 And even from an educator's viewpoint was it hard for you 00:25:48.14\00:25:50.62 to make a mind shift? 00:25:50.65\00:25:51.67 Well in my Ph. D. program we studied how people learn and 00:25:51.70\00:25:57.64 then we took a look at how the education system ran and that's 00:25:57.67\00:26:02.25 when it because crystal apparent to me. It's not designed to 00:26:02.28\00:26:06.83 optimize learning; that's not what it's designed for. 00:26:06.86\00:26:09.17 Now wait a minute. Are you talking about the four different 00:26:09.21\00:26:12.66 learning preferences like auditory learning styles. 00:26:12.69\00:26:15.96 You did once tell me though that those are really preferences; 00:26:16.00\00:26:21.13 that we all learn in every way. Is that correct? 00:26:21.17\00:26:23.16 Yes, yes. In fact, learning styles, the research on learning 00:26:23.19\00:26:25.91 styles, the last time I looked at the literature about five 00:26:25.95\00:26:29.10 years ago, and there's been a lot of stuff done on learning 00:26:29.14\00:26:32.81 styles. What happens in learning styles is that people have 00:26:32.85\00:26:37.16 preferences of the way they like to learn, but the problem is 00:26:37.19\00:26:42.40 when we try to design a class that's specifically for auditory 00:26:42.43\00:26:47.51 learners and give them a lot of auditory everyone needs every 00:26:47.55\00:26:51.73 kind and so the best way is to make sure that we have lots of 00:26:51.77\00:26:55.99 variety. For teachers, learning styles is a nice way to help us 00:26:56.02\00:26:59.84 understand something, but the best thing that learning styles 00:26:59.87\00:27:04.93 tells is that we need lots of variety. We have one more quote 00:27:04.96\00:27:09.05 that I'd like to come to before we're getting close here. 00:27:09.08\00:27:13.13 Schools are Damaging. Look at this: 00:27:13.71\00:27:16.34 The present day educational system... look at the words he 00:27:16.38\00:27:19.35 uses... is damaging to young people. Evidence of this harm 00:27:19.38\00:27:22.31 is being presented from psychological, neurological, 00:27:22.35\00:27:25.18 sociological, statistical and common-sense perspectives. 00:27:25.21\00:27:27.97 That's amazing. So we can see there is a great need for reform 00:27:28.01\00:27:31.81 and reform is beginning, but we're not going to have time 00:27:31.84\00:27:35.57 to talk about it in this program so we're going to just invite 00:27:35.61\00:27:38.87 you to come back and we'll talk about that reform when you do. 00:27:38.90\00:27:42.90 Thank you so much for joining us. You know we are so glad that 00:27:42.94\00:27:47.01 you joined us today and I hope that this is... we're not trying 00:27:47.05\00:27:51.82 to be critical in the sense that we're pointing fingers or being 00:27:51.85\00:27:55.61 judgmental. What we are trying to do is do critical thinking 00:27:55.65\00:27:59.44 and get everyone to thinking about what can we do to have 00:27:59.48\00:28:03.23 the kind of educational reform we need. 00:28:03.27\00:28:05.19 May God bless abundantly. Join us next time. 00:28:05.23\00:28:11.71