I was reading the always thoughtful, always thought-provoking David Warlick today. His new post The Big Buzz at ISTE This Year – A Fourth "R" suggests this year we are moving toward a much needed revolution in education. And certainly, I am someone who believes that change (and innovation) is desperately needed in education, but I find myself very wary of the word "Revolution." Perhaps it is because that’s the word being used by folks like Tom VanderArk as they call for a brand of education (and education management, really) that I cannot support, but no matter what I find myself less of a revolutionary these days.

I prefer to think that what we are doing is evolutionary.

So I threw that idea up on twitter, and it engendered some good conversation. Among the best is what Gerald Aungst (@geraldaungst) comments:

@chrislehmann But doesn’t evolution also imply gradual change over a long time? Could some things need revolutionary change now?

To which I say yes… evolutionary change is harder and slower, and there’s definitely many things about education that I would want changed tomorrow, but I worry that revolutions are often bloody. I worry that revolutionaries aren’t always the most reflective or humble types. I worry that the fervor of revolution doesn’t always lead to good things. And I worry that the rhetoric of revolution will lead us to ignore or devalue all the good work that has been — and continues to be done — in schools.

To use SLA as an example, I don’t see SLA as a revolutionary school, I do see it as an evolutionary school. SLA works within the traditions of Dewey and Deb Meier and borrows from the free schools and from the open classrooms, and we then try to look at the best potential of what is in front of us and wed those ideas to those powerful ideas of our past. And I believe that willingness to recognize the debt we owe to those who have come before us has served us very well… both in our best moments and in our most challenging ones. It means that in our best moments, we always were reminded of our roots and of where our ideas came from, and in our most challenging moments, it reminds us that others have stood where we stand, and not to give in to frustration, because we weren’t the first to struggle and we won’t be the last.

But then Greg Thompson (@akamrt) wrote:

@chrislehmann I think we need a word between the two. Can we expect the current system to evolve w/o it carrying the bad DNA along w/ it?

And perhaps we don’t have the word we need. Because even "evolution" suggests a natural progression, and that’s not what I’m calling for either. I want to see us change, grow, evolve, so that all our kids can have the schools they need. But I also want the adults to be smart and wise and kind in their desire and quest for that change. I want them to be respectful and understanding of how difficult that change is. I want them to celebrate the incremental changes those around them make while never stopping to work for greater change. And I want the (r)evolution to be done in a way so that it doesn’t require proverbial bloodshed, and I want it done in a way that does take the best of what we have been, the best of what we are… and marries to the the potential of what we can be.

I don’t know that "revolution" gets us there. I see its appeal. But I think we we’re trying to do might be harder than that. But I think if we strive for this kind of purposeful evolutionary change, we might get there in a way that is healthiest and sustaining for all involved.

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