Why Standardization Fails

[Reader Rabbit]

This is one of the most cogent explanations I have read on this subject.

Why Standardization Fails

Excerpts:

People’s brains are networks, connection machines, and new learning occurs when that learning is attached to an existing semantic network. You take a class in oil painting at a local community center. In the course of a week, you learn what gesso, a filbert brush, stippling, and chiaroscuro are. And the new learning sticks with you because it is connected in an experiential network that is meaningful to you. If, on the other hand, you tried to memorize a telephone book, you would mostly likely fail because brains are not good mechanisms for learning facts, concepts, and skills in isolation.

The second reason why the new standards regimen is likely to fail has to do with how people work. Let’s go back to business management theory for a moment. There is a body of theory in management called Social-Technical Systems Theory, the basic premise of which ought to be obvious: almost everyone wants to do a good job, to be able to be proud of what he or she does, to have his or her work recognized, and in order for that to happen, people have to have autonomy. Theodore Roosevelt put it this way (and here I am paraphrasing): If you want to get something done, find someone who knows how to do it and get the hell out of that person’s way. In other words, good managers don’t micromanage. They specify goals, but they don’t specify how the work is to be done.

[jody]

1. "Imagination [dreaming] is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now

know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” (Albert Einstein)

Several years ago I researched and wrote about how for every $11 we spent on students in the lowest 2.5% of a student body we spent 2 cents on the top 2.5%.

I don't want to deny benefits for the lowest 2.5% but I do demand parity, i.e. $11 for the upper 2.% of students.