What Needs to Change About Education

(I was wrong. I actually do have one more post for this year.)

What the organized Church and public education have in common is that there are several shifts that need to take place in both institutions to most radically and substantially bring about a "much greater" environment for the young people within them. 

Throughout this blog, I have written about some of the shifts needed in organized Christianity in our part of the world. Things like...

• From Emphasis on big events one day a week to Emphasis on making disciples 24/7
• From Measuring seating capacity to draw crowds to Measuring sending capacity to serve others
• From Professional pastors (staff-driven leadership) to Reproducible practices (where every member functions)
• From Publicizing what we are Against to Promoting what we are FOR
• From Ministry (works) done for Jesus to Ministry (miracles) done BY Jesus
• From "GO TO church" (as in a place and time) to BE the church (as an identity)

But what about our schools? Are there fundamental shifts that could make dramatic change for the better in education? I believe there are. Here are a few, in my opinion.

• From Giving grades (that generally offer no information on how to improve) to Providing feedback (that feeds forward to further learning)
• From Time as the constant (prescribed scope and sequence for all students) to Learning as the constant (asynchronous, self-paced)
• From Focus on teaching to Focus on learning
• From Career orientation to Calling orientation (more to come on this in a future post, but you can get a glimpse of this shift here thanks to the work of Adam Saenz) 

This is clearly not meant to be an exhaustive list, but these are examples of the biggest "bang for your buck" transitions that we can make in public schools. The only disclaimer is that they are not easy.