Failure by Design - The Great Teacher Resignation

One of the things that has struck me about typical educational offerings is that it seems to be designed to fail. (There is an irony in that the goal for students is to pass.) Of course, that wasn’t the intent of schools and initially schools did provide a standard for the basics like reading, writing and arithmetic. The model used, however, was built around a factory-like setting because ultimately a significant number of people would work in a factory. Bells, scheduling, testing, and productivity trained students for future employment.

Today, however, that mode of schooling seems woefully out of date as does the system that supports it. The New York Times published an opinion piece in November 2022 on a phenomena called the Great Teacher Resignation: 

Empty Classrooms, Abandoned Kids: Inside The Great Teacher Resignation | NYT Opinion

In this video the phrase ‘Failure by Design’ is used to describe how the institutions of education have been designed to fail their students due to insufficient funding and increased expectations. As shocking as some of the aspects of schooling in the US may be (students literally showing up to classes with no teacher), it shouldn’t be a shock that a one size fits all model is not working anymore, if it ever did.

Teachers are resigning because education has been institutionalized to the point that the priority has been about the institution more than the people in that institution. When watching the heartbreaking teachers’ testimonials in the video one can only imagine how bad it must be for the students.

What is surprising is that although we say we value education, we seem to do very little to make it important for those being educated. Our systems of education are all about keeping up, fitting in, performing, passing, covering. The metric rarely seems to prioritize learning or the well-being of the learners. 

We need a different approach to suit a different, current, and modern environment. The world needs creative and innovative approaches to help solve significant problems and issues. Self-directed learning is an approach that, by its nature, forces one to be creative and innovative by following one’s interests and skills. SDL is a way of learning that has the focus on the learner. This subtle, significant change in focus could make learning Successful by Design.