United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Miller, M. Rex, 1955- author. | Latham, Bill, 1971- author. | Cahill, Brian, 1958- author.
Title: Humanizing the education machine: how to create schools that turn disengaged kids into inspired learners / Rex Miller, Bill Latham, Brian Cahill.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016032571 | ISBN 9781119283102 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119283119 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119283126 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Educational change. | Classroom environment. | Students – Attitudes.
Classification: LCC LB2806 .M443 2016 | DDC 371.2/07 – dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032571
FOREWORD
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
I dare you to.
Buck the System. I chair the nonprofit Center for College & Career Readiness, working with hundreds of districts and thousands of schools across America and around the world. Every day, my team and I hear tales of these teachers – committed and caring professionals who buck the system to save a child. These brave souls often work against the systems that employ them in order to do their jobs – to meet the needs of real kids, in real classrooms.
Bridge the Gap. The Education Machine can see only a few “standard models,” but great teachers care for the kids as if they were their own family members. The Education Machine believes scientific application of generic teaching principals will “engage” students to “learn rigorous content.” You and I know that all of us are motivated by our imaginations, interests, and passions. Learning is human. The modern Education Machine is not. And we must bridge that gap – now!
This book raises a clarion call to a revolution of the heart and mind. Furthermore, Rex Miller and his intrepid team of educators, parents, and experts provide a vision of education with real children at its heart.
Embrace a New World. Grounded in the real trials and success stories of teachers and kids from around the country, Miller and his colleagues challenge us to set aside notions from the obsolete world of the textbook. In their place they call us to embrace a new world – a new culture – of dynamic learning and collaborative investigation. Miller shines a light on those educators who are challenging the system and lifting up the imaginations and passions of children – kids who live in a world of endless possibility constrained by schools with mindless rules and never-ending assessments.
Turn Insight into Action. Researchers collapse human experience into statistics and findings. But we do not need another research project as much as we need to act! We must – as human beings – do something to equip and empower our kids and the teachers who care about their dreams, their fears, and their futures.
Use This Map. We all need – and you now hold – a map that will lead you from the Industrial Age model of education to a culture of creative collaboration. More importantly, that map will get you and many others to the place where we can all join in uplifting the hearts and minds of teachers and students.
That is why, upon its publication, Humanizing the Education Machine will become required reading in my graduate courses for school leaders.
FOREWORD
We all know that excellent schools are the glittering diamonds of outstanding communities. They not only educate the young, but also help to build the symmetrical beauty of a community's physical and emotional safety, employment opportunity, rich cultural treasury, responsible governance, civic involvement, and more.
Unfortunately, we have too few outstanding schools, that is, schools in which teachers and learners are actively engaged in the exchange and mastery of knowledge. Yet we continue to support an educational system built on a failing business model.
An education system built around Industrial-Revolution-era ideas about conformity, interchangeable parts, hierarchy, strategy, centralization, and economies of scale no longer works in our time. We've all read the axiom, “Every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it achieves.” And our education business model is perfectly designed to produce nineteenth- and twentieth-century results.
But, of course, education should mirror twenty-first-century business realities! In other words they should reflect a wellness culture, intrinsic versus extrinsic values, fulfilling needs instead of creating wants, open communication platforms, Lean structures, niche markets, responsible sustainability, and rapid iterations of our products, services, and even ourselves.
Over two years ago, Paragon Furniture, Inc., was invited to participate in an extraordinary cohort of education stakeholders. The K–12 MindShift served as the locus for changing the way in which Paragon began thinking about our purpose. We now see that our company creates furniture that assists in the transformation of culture, helps to ignite student curiosity, facilitates positive teacher influence, and contributes to the health of the whole person.
Humanizing the Education Machine is like a perfectly built and tuned amplifier. It pumps out a pure, rich, and powerful message. However, our educational system is tone deaf to the music. But, with our front row seats on the concert of collaborative research and synthesis behind this book, we were blown away by the power of the book's signal transmission and broad range frequency.
Rex has created a high-fidelity story that everybody in any community should know and share. In that way, we can all help to create a relevant and rich learning culture. And remember, however great the costs of change may be, it is far more expensive not to change.
FOREWORD
Data from our K–12 schools in the United States sadly reminds us that, despite decades of well-intentioned education reform efforts, student achievement remains stagnant in America. Over 30 percent of our nation's youth fail to graduate from high school and approximately half of African American and Hispanic students fail to earn a high school diploma. Data also shows that students who do graduate are largely unprepared to enter the work force.
How is it possible that the greatest and most powerful nation in the history of the world built an education system that is now so ineffective, especially when compared to other developed nations?
As the CEO of one of the largest architectural practices in the United States that specializes in educational facility design, I've spent the past 35 years working with educators and students to create environments that facilitate all the activities associated with knowledge transfer. In twenty-first-century terms, what are those activities? How do children learn best in today's world? Is there a new knowledge-transfer paradigm that will lead us out of the doldrums of mediocrity? As a long-time admirer, I was thrilled when I learned that Rex Miller, one of the most successful and compelling research based futurists in the nation, would be exploring the very basic but very complex issue of education and knowledge transfer.
As evidenced by