September 28, 2014

Imagine you play a centuries-old golf course.  Once highly touted as one of the best golf courses in the world, it has fallen into a state of disarray.  The first dozen holes have been made incredibly easier and easier over the course of several decades, and with scores of well-under par on each of those holes being the norm, non-golf architects have come in and re-designed the holes.  You encounter fairways that no longer make any sense in terms of laying up to greens; greens are sloped in illogical ways; pin placements are all over the place.  You are used to pin placements changing from day to day, but on this course, it's the green slope and fairway placements that change every days.  Heck, even a new pond appears out of the blue, the demand of an accountant somewhere on the other side of the world who has never golfed.

As you finish the 12th hole, you look for the 13th tee. It is nowhere to be found. You look and look, wonder if it is way across that chasm that is right at the end of the 12th hole.  Eventually you realize you have to take a helicopter for a 20 minute flight to get to the 13th hole.  As you fly over, you see lots of wide open land that may or may not be applicable to one, if not more, additional holes.  Eventually the 13th hole shows up and historical markers suggest that this stretch of holes is typical of tougher private courses, not the amateur public course you have played.  Testimonials all over the place suggest that birdies and eagles are rare scores, with even par perhaps out of reach. And yet as you play the 13th, it seems familiar. The more you think about it, the more the hole seems be identical to the 12th and in fact some of the challenges of the hole seem similar to what you saw on the 11th.

Yet, you keep playing and eventually by the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th holes, you realize you have finally encountered the tougher private course that was announced a few holes earlier.  In fact, over those last four holes, you have to pass a requirement to even play those holes. Initially, it makes some sense: show that you can drive the ball straight and for 250 yards so that the golf course's unique features are not destroyed by your hacking. However, as you progress down these last few fairways, you start to feel underwhelmed.  The course is unfulfilling despite its beauty and challenge.  It doesn't make you want to play golf anymore.  You don't feel like you have learned anything more about being a good golfer. 

As Johnny Rotten said in San Francisco in 1978: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

I returned today from a a national conference on concurrent enrollment, the fancy, and not always accurate, term for the awarding of college credit to high school students. It is a very hot topic these days (many past blogs have touched on this) with more and more pressure from legislatures to provide high school students college courses to close the opportunity gap that is education these days.

And I fully agree with that premise.  One speaker cited that the U.S. is ranked 16th in the world for graduates with a college degree and that we rank 26th in terms of our educational system.  I am sorry that I do not know the original source for these statistics, merely rely on the keynote speaker's expertise.  Ultimately, the exact numbers don't interest me.  What interests me is the national momentum to change the first number without really examining the inherent flaws in the system that have led to the second number.  It's a recipe for at least a double bogey.

In essence, we are being asked to produce more great, passionate golfers while still using that crappy golf course.

Let's say we wanted to fix that golf course/educational system.  Where would we start?

Would we logically start between the 12th green and 13th tee box, miles apart?  I seriously doubt it.  Why fix that huge chasm without considering the whole 7,000 yards of course?  Would we start with the first tee and slowly work from there, assessing the whole course as we made improvements to each hole?  Would we start at the 18th green and look backward, assessing what we want to do to give our golfers the best, most challenging, experience leading up to this?

To the last scenario, I would say "amen" (or maybe "amen corner").

And yet American education is stuck at the chasm, arguing student readiness for college and instructor credentials, with both sides making valid arguments.  Shouldn't college naturally be a harder challenge than high school?  And if it is a harder challenge, shouldn't it require a greater expectation for its teachers?  But it isn't often that much harder, as freshman math courses (our 13th hole) often cover what has for years been high school math/pre-calculus (our 12th hole), to cite one obvious example.

Where the hell do we want a graduate with the highest credential (a doctorate) to be when he or she finishes that degree (the 18th hole)?  What is the value to that degree?  Higher education isn't even really sure about that, with many people going for doctorates when there may not even be jobs waiting for them with that degree.  Back on the 16th hole, master programs in education are focusing entirely on educational pedagogy and not on specific content, when many of the people we need to have masters, need to have specific content knowledge.  At the 15th hole, depending upon the person (university) overseeing the hole that day, you may need coursework that was never available through the 13th and 14th holes you just played (at your community college).

Public education has been trying to respond to their own bean counters for the last several decades, those political leaders who have pushed for no golf ball left behind.  Their problems are exacerbated by the more direct influence of politicians.

(I know I am completely mixing my two bases of comparison at this point. I don't care anymore.  As with golf, eventually I just get tired of thinking about the stupid thing and just step up and swing.  That's often when my shots are better anyway.)

So, what I mostly heard the last two days was a bit of frustration, more real anger, a ton of cynicsm, and a boatload of "things gotta change."  The problem is that the most important thing isn't changing and that is the overall assumption of what a P-20 (pre-school through grad school) model should be.  Can you imagine how useless that golf course would be for probably a year (if not more) while it was completely torn up and re-designed?  There is no way we can do that with education.  Instead, we will get fingers pointing and fingers stuck in the holes of a damaged dyke. 

At one point, someone from a college challenged the Regional Accrediting Agencies to take a stand:  "They need to take this up."  "They are us," I said in response.  Our peers are the architects of our part of the golf course.  We've been protecting our turf for centuries.  When will we accept that it is the people's turf?