After reading that the governors are thinking a bit more innovatively about education (see my last post), I decided now is as good a time as any to review some of the recent education reform proposals that have been developed in recent months. I’ll be spending my next few posts on this endeavor. But before getting to the proposals, I wanted to consider some criteria for evaluation – so I picked up a copy of John Dewey’s classic, Democracy and Education, and found his thoughts on the “Aims in Education.”

Dewey notes that the aims of education “must be an outgrowth of existing conditions. [They] must be a based upon a consideration of what is already going on; upon the resources and difficulties of the situation.” For us today that means that we have to look at education through the context of our society, our world, our time. Certain aims may no longer apply in an increasingly globalizing world – we may have to rethink what our goals are for education.

Dewey then goes on to say that any aim for education must be tentative because the very process of “acting upon [them] brings to light conditions which had been overlooked. This calls for revision of the original aim; it has to be... flexible; it must be capable of alteration to meet circumstances.”

These two ways of thinking about education are as applicable today as they were in 1916 when Dewey wrote Democracy and Education. We need an education system that grapples with the realities of today. We shouldn’t hold on to old structures and systems just because they’re old – we need to make sure they’re useful too. Second, we need to be willing to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. The plans developed today may not work as we expected – but the answer isn’t to give up and stick with a status quo that isn’t working. The answer is to constantly evaluate and innovate.