Roles throughout the education system should be apparent and transparent through and through, so that everyone knows who and what everyone else is doing.
I wrote an article for the SoundOut website a while back that tried to highlight all the roles that I could make obvious. My concern then was that students didn’t have enough knowledge about who was involved with their educations and what they were supposed to be doing.
Now, years later, I understand that most adults have no idea either. The bureaucracy of education obfuscates general comprehension about the nature of the system, how it works, or the ways it may or may not actually work.
The challenges in this are countless. After their own careers as students in an educational system that denies their comprehension or capabilities to contribute meaningfully to it, schools further damn themselves by making their own structures, systems, and roles too complex for people to “get”.
The consequences of that alone are huge. Combined with the fact that many of these people are the very taxpayers that fund education, and suddenly we see the untenable nature of the problem. Not only is is the educational system too complicated, but by its nature, it does not make itself available, understandable, negotiable, or comprehensible to the people who are expected to support its function in society.
My proposal is to make obvious the roles throughout the education system. Both the broad categories and specific jobs that everyone has throughout the system need to be made plain. From there, let’s go forward…
Fletcher Engagement Services 