Three Painfully Obvious Educational Reforms
Later starts; more relevance; no lectures
Anyone who has spent even a minimal time in the classroom has a visceral sense of just how little they control: There are resource constraints. There are tedious administrative tasks. There are unannounced fire drills in the middle of the period. As with any job, some of these uncontrollables are necessary evils that allow the whole machine to function.
But there are a few evils of modern schooling that seem not only not necessary but that few people are even willing to defend when pressed. Let’s look at three.
1. Later School Start Times
The average teenager’s body clock is delayed 1-3 hours behind adults’. The average public high school starts at 8:00 a.m. In crude terms, this means that for most young people, high school is the adult equivalent of being forced to clock in five days a week between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m.—not factoring the time it takes to get ready and travel there.
Of course there are some logistical advantages to an earlier school day—most obviously the possibility for parents to drop their kids off before the morning commute. Upending the status quo could require additional transportation costs, and would no doubt have some inconvenient downstream effects (e.g., less daylight for after-school sports and activities). For younger students,1 who need adult assistance to get from home to school, an earlier start makes little sense.
But these visible external costs pale in comparison to the diffuse ones internalized by typical, chronically sleep-deprived adolescents. Indeed, even modest delays to school start times are associated with higher academic performance and improvements to student mood and motivation. If making this adjustment means hiring more bus drivers or keeping the stadium lights on a few extra hours, surely that price is a small one to pay for its corresponding gains in student health and learning.
2. Promote Modern Literacy and Numeracy
In the past, I’ve detailed my frustrations with the chokehold that the novel and academic essay have on reading and writing curricula, respectively: Novels aren’t the only texts worth reading, and academic essays aren’t the only texts worth writing. Furthermore, as I’ve argued more recently, Large Language Models almost certainly mean that essay-writing is a less valuable skill than it used to be.2 By contrast, authentic self-expression (e.g., through poetry, personal essays, etc.) may well become more valuable in a world of AI-generated clickbait and ad copy.
Similarly, in math curricula, proficiency in trigonometry and calculus hardly seems as desirable as, say, basic financial literacy and familiarity with probability/statistics. Most of us engage in financial transactions and make chancey decisions on a daily basis (whether or not we explicitly calculate the odds of success). Very few of us calculate angle measures or the area under a curve with anywhere close to the same frequency.
To be sure, not every course necessarily ought to be “practical.” Extracurricular settings are often beloved precisely because they entail learning for its own sake, not merely as preparation for participation in the workforce.
Unfortunately, in most K-12 settings, the compulsory nature of core classes is fundamentally at odds with learning “for its own sake”; whether students are being forced to differentiate functions or forced to learn about 401(k)s, they have no say in the curriculum. As long as we’re forcing kids to learn about something, then, we might as well make it something we’re fairly confident they’ll use in the real world. Unsurprisingly, the lessons with clear relevance to students’ own lives also tend to be more engaging and memorable—even when the topic appears dry.3
3. No Lectures
A couple weeks ago, I attended a talk on ants. It was phenomenal: entertaining, informative, and completely novel—the embodiment of what a lecture ought to be. A good lecture is great.
Unfortunately, few lecturers have the charisma of a politician or stand-up comedian (a strong argument in and of itself for instructions that depends more on the learning activity and less on the person at the podium). More importantly, even if every teacher were also a great talker, it would be a mistake to rely on lectures as the primary vehicle of learning. This is not because lectures are inherently flawed but because they are inherently inefficient as a use of precious class time.
So let me specify: What I’m really advocating here is not a prohibition on lectures per se but a prohibition on in-person lectures. The live lecture model may have made sense in a pre-digital era, when it was one of the simplest ways to teach at scale—but its logic hardly holds in 2023 when the cost and difficulty of recording videos are trivial. After all, strong communicator can be nearly as effective in a YouTube video as they can in front of a live audience; by contrast, there are many learning activities that suffer far far more from asynchronous formats—that is, if they can be replicated at all: group projects; science experiments; class debates/discussions; working through problems in real time.
In fact, a recorded lecture is not only a passable substitute for a live one; it offers several distinct advantages. To name three: reusability across sections or semesters, perfect consistency in the delivery of content, and the possibility of rewatching/self-pacing for students.
Admittedly, “no lectures” is more of a pedagogical best practice than an educational reform in the classic sense of the term. I should also stress that even in a lecture-free classroom, there will certainly still be times when the instructor is standing at the front of the room giving instructions or answering a question. What I’m arguing for is not a ban on all teacher talk but a change in teaching mentality to reflect the capabilities of modern technology.
I don’t think these three reforms are particularly controversial. (Is there anyone who actually prefers learning passively, on insufficient sleep, about subjects with little relevance to their own lives?) I can only assume the current system persists for the the usual bad reasons: fear of change, intellectual laziness, and a variety of perverse incentives.
Still, we find ourselves now in a perfect storm of educational disruption—a coincidence of unprecedented technology and post-pandemic possibility. Perhaps, through the eye of this hurricane, we are finally ready to see the answers staring us in the face.
Or older students with significant disabilities
Not to say that essay-writing is now useless, just that many of the skills it teaches—synthesis, organization, mastery of conventions—have all become many times easier with ChatGPT.
Every once in a while in my high school classes, I would do a mini-lesson on etiquette and best practices for emailing—not exactly riveting stuff. I’ve rarely seen students more rapt.