Synthesis 3 - In the year 2025

In the year 2025, I'd really like to see schools that do more interdisciplinary work and cooperation between the subjects. Additionally, I'd like to see more hands-on projects. So many students throughout history up to today spend too much time hearing direct instruction and doing quiet work at their desks. Too often, students don't even get a chance to interact with a peer group or their communities. They have to be quiet and sit in their desks and do their work. I'd hope that in fifteen years, we could move further from that. For awhile now, the student-centered classroom has been more in vogue. Let's take it a step further.

The ideas put forth in Teaching to Change the World, by Jeannie Oakes and Martin Lipton, help support the trends in education policies through American history. At one time, schools were seen as factories, when cities were seeing mass industrialization. Later, they were seen as corporations, then markets. Today, schools are also seen as instruments of equity and social justice. "Even as policymakers have looked to assembly-line production, corporate management, and free markets for ideas to guide their efforts to make schools more effective and efficient, they have also sought to ensure that schools are fair and democratic (437)." Students need to be learning about proper behavior and their responsibilities to their communities and the world. There need to be more projects that students can do together, divise themselves, and learn to implement in their communities. Perhaps an 8th or 12th grade civics/government class could design and plan a service project to do for the community. Students need to be given the tools to empower themselves in their own communities. As technology improves and changes all the time, students will have access to more and more advanced machines. They will learn important job skills while they learn how to create.

Students should also be working in an interdisciplinary fashion. When a social studies class is learning about the Great Depression, English classes should be reading The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men. Lessons should make sense to students, and should flow seamlessly from class to class. As in the video 10 Big Ideas for Better Classrooms, students shouldn't have huge breaks between their classes, and teachers need to all work together on curriculum.

Both of these ideas should be an easy sell to administrators and other powers that be. Community involvement is incredibly important. Think of how many people don't currently vote. How different could that be if in school students got involved in their communities? Further, as has been discussed in Nine Shift by William A. Draves and Julie Coates, life has changed dramatically in even just 100 years. It is now changing exponentially quickly. Being able to implement technologically advanced projects will give students a leg up in the real world. Having classes flow together and make sense will allow teachers to become more of a community, even interdepartmentally. It will help projects span several subjects, and it will help teachers to understand student work load. It will foster respect between teachers of all subjects, and will help the students truly get into whatever subject they are learning.

A few small changes would really vastly improve student involvement and learning. With a little innovation, new technology, and teachers and administrators who aren't afraid of change, the entire educational system could be revamped and revolutionized.