The myth of standardisation

Mechanisation: Learning as a belt conveyor (illustration developed for my MA dissertation, copied from a 19th-century factory diagram and re-labelled)

We educators have bought into the myth of standardization for too long. I cannot count the number of times I have commiserated with brilliant students whose test scores barred them from their universities of choice, despite months of preparation. Similarly, I cannot count the number of times I have commiserated with passionate educators frustrated that the "need" to cover the same material as schools around the world meant that they couldn't deeply explore a theme that had emerged in class and seemed far more urgent. At the same time, news outlets are filled with statistics and warnings that teen depression and anxiety are rising, attributable to social media, perfectionism and, yes, the pressure of standardized testing.

As a former history teacher, I've been fascinated for years at the notion that the world history textbooks used in high schools around the world (written in the West by scholars raised in a school system saturated by standardization) consider markers of "civilization" partly, if not primarily, in terms of the emergence of standardization. For example, the Indus River Valley settlements "qualify" as civilized, according to many textbooks and exam curricula, because they developed standardization of weights, measures, and symbols across a wide geographical area, mostly to facilitate trade. Similarly, our textbooks mark the century-long emergence of standardized spelling and language in English, Spanish, French, and German as a mark of civilization and progress facilitated by the technology of the printing press from the mid-fifteenth century (borrowed from China, incidentally). I would suggest that perhaps we equate standardization with progress a little too quickly. After all, academic Latin--a standardized language of scholars and theologians--was in use across Europe for a millenium before the printing press and contributed mostly to the continuing power of the Church and the loss of troves of medical knowledge, philosophy, and even fundamental technologies like the making of bricks and the pouring of concrete. Diversity of thought was systematically weeded out as heresy. As with almost any facet of human life and development, standardization can represent positive or negative growth; civilization or its opposite; humanism or authoritarianism.

Our current model of schooling developed at the turn of the last century, as a well-documented response to and facilitation of mass industrialization. At the time, the promise of standardization enchanted experts. As educators, we have grown to accept the need for standardization to the degree that we no longer question, instead viewing it as a heavy but inevitable burden. While standardization offers certain undeniable benefits, it also cannot meet the profound needs of young people today for flexibility, meaning, and a versatile imagination--all qualities they will need to navigate current and approaching global crises.

Standardization has played a critical role in developing commonly held language and ideas around education.  It allows us to measure whether individual teachers, schools, and schools systems are in line with each other.  We now rarely question the need for alignment. In fact, we often assume that the value of a particular education cannot be determined without reference to standardized test results. Not only do students face standardized testing, but teachers are continually assessed using standardized measures, their worth often determined by the production of standardized curriculum documents or test results far more than by the quality of their interactions with students.

On a more fundamental level, standardization cannot adequately meet the need of young people to be known as individual, whole human beings. It's time to shift the paradigm of education radically toward personalization, and this is already happening--particularly in schools for the elite. The challenge remains in training teachers for a new paradigm and in creating a framework that permits and encourages universal access to this new, personalized approach. Schools all over the world are experimenting. I'm interested in how we can collect, analyze, and draw on the wealth of prototypes.

How might we most effectively share our adventures in developing a more personalized, human approach to learning and teaching--the approach so many of us educators wish we had experienced ourselves?