Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles by Santa Barbara writer Frank Sanitate on reforming education.
“Most of our formal education is a waste of time” seems like a harsh opening statement, but that is what I want to examine here.
To give you some background on where I’m coming from. I spent the first five years of my career as a high school English and religion teacher. After leaving teaching and another job, I formed my own company to teach management seminars to professionals, which I did for 40 years. The main seminar I taught was Time Management.
So let’s apply a time analysis to schooling. Let’s say that during 16 years of schooling (first grade through college graduation) you spent six hours a day, five days a week, 40 weeks a year in classes, reading or studying. That means you spent 1,152,000 minutes on your education. How many of those million minutes had the focus: “This is what I want to know. This is what I want to understand”?
I would guess that over a million of these minutes of my education were spent on learning what other people wanted me to know and understand, not what I wanted to know.
This brings me to a fundamental question: What is the purpose of education? Is the purpose of education to have individuals think for themselves or to have them know what other people think? Obviously, to me, it’s both, but the first purpose is infinitely more important than the second.
How much school time focuses on asking the student: What do you think? What do you think about? What are you worried about? What are you happy about? What would you like to find out about? What questions do you have about life, politics, religion, your body, love, relationships, the world or any particular area we are supposed to be studying about? What would you like to ask the author of this book or the teacher? My answer is a very, very small percent of that time.
Why is education like that? Here’s why: In order to pass from subject to subject, grade to grade, one level of education to the next level, students have to be graded or measured. The grades are based on what students can remember about what other people say — the teachers or the professionals whose books or information we have read or listened to. Those who can remember best what the other people have said and can put it down on a test pass.
Our reward system for passing tests is: moving from grade to grade, and graduating with a degree. It rewards those who can remember and feed back what other people have to say. Just as a side point, at the end of each seminar I taught for 40 years, participants graded me, not the other way around!
Of course, there is great value in learning what other people say. But is it what we should spend 1,152,000 minutes doing? It seems to me the greater percentage of time should be spent focusing on what students think and assisting them in developing their own thinking. Give them time to talk, to ask questions — questions that are meaningful to them personally. What questions do they have about themselves, their inner world of thoughts, feelings, desires, fears, loves, hates, etc.? What questions do they have about the outer world around them as well?
How much time should be spent on inside-out education versus outside-in education? I would be happy with a 50-50 split of our time. How can you teach people to think for themselves unless you get them thinking for themselves? The way things are going now I would be happy with even a 5 – 95 split!
It’s not as if these are new thoughts. Many schools and teachers already incorporate this purpose in their teaching. A friend who is the head of a middle school told me that they don’t call the teachers “teachers;” they call them “guides.” Just changing the name is a huge leap forward on what a teacher’s function is. I have a strong suspicion that her school is not an exception to the norm.
Good time management starts with being clear about where you are going, what you want, what your goal is. In education, my big question is: what is it that we are dedicating eight or 12 or 16 or 20 years of our children’s lives to? What is your answer?
Santa Barbara writer Frank Sanitate taught high school English for five years over a half-century ago! He has published three books and had a successful seminar business for 40 years, teaching his seminars in every state and province in the United States, Canada and Australia.
