I was watching a fun twitter conversation going on the other night between Gary Stager, Bud Hunt, Scott Floyd and others about reading lists. One could make a critique that the educational technology conversation focuses too much on new authors and, too often, is a bit ahistorical. It’s one of the reasons that Gary is such an interesting person — he often serves as a grounding voice, reminding us of the history of both educational computing and progressive education.

I think that’s really important. I’ve got Ken Robinson in my bag next to Maxine Greene for the trip down to NECC. And I think those two authors can and should dually inform the way I think about education.

I come back to this idea over and over again. Education is often ahistorical, and for whatever reason, too many teachers and educational leaders don’t view themselves as scholars of the history of education. That has been a costly error in many respects. In terms of educational technology, there is a lot to learn from the successes and failures of the first twenty-five years of computers in classrooms, (Gary would probably want me to go further back than twenty-five years) and from an overarching standpoint, we can look deeply at the last hundred years of education reform to frame what we’re doing now.

All this is to say that I talk to a lot of people who are hoping for, waiting for, revolutionary change in our schools. Maybe that will happen. Maybe there is an education revolution waiting to happen. But revolutions are often very messy, and in the case, the body count may just be a metaphor for the kids who suffer through it.

I think we have to understand that what we need is evolutionary change. But that’s not as sexy, it’s hard to get as impassioned about it, and the evolutionary change is, I believe, harder. It’s a quieter reform. It’s a more measured, scholarly approach that requires careful, thoughtful movement. It requires us to honor and learn from those who came before us. But it also allows us to innovate and change without quite as much upheaval and pain for those who are undergoing the change.

And I’ve long, long said that we can never, ever be revolutionaries at the expense of our kids.

Tags: change, schoolreform