Friday, April 21, 2006

D.C. Public School Seeks Linkup With New Charter et al

D.C. Public School Seeks Linkup With New Charter - Washington Post

Educators Blend Divergent Schools of Thought - Washington Post

Learning on Their Own Terms - Washington Post

Tailor-Made Education - Washington Post

Everyday we engage over what is not working, what is broken, and how problems might be fixed. We do this oblivious to the amazing corrective phenomena of evolution. In reality, the question is not if there is a fix, but only how long before the inevitable fix appears, perhaps with the impatient question of, ‘will I be alive to see it’?

Our bodies have done this over millions of years. Genetic mutations happen, not because our physiology is smart, but because random disorder follows order. If the change is advancing, the host survives. If there is no advantage, it dies. Progress is at least one part luck.

Whether it is vouchers or charter schools, these qualified disruptions to the educational status quo spring up. They fight for a toehold to prove their worthiness. Some win, others lose – on their merits and despite the rhetoric.

The notion of a hybrid traditional/charter school, first crudely housed under one roof, but ultimately trading methods and curriculums, is inevitable. From this we will retain that which advances learning, and discard that which fails us. Our trial and error, frustrating as it is, is nothing more than evolution at work. Resistance may be futile, but it also is inevitable.

The biggest challenge of any advancement is that its introduction will always offend someone. But what is offense anyway – but feedback. However, evolution does not care about our preferences. It only cares about the increasing and efficient accumulation and transfer of information to the next generation, and so on. The immortality of knowledge. But for this, we would not exist.

James C. Collier

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