System failures?

I tend to want to make order out of chaos, so it’s not uncommon that I read two articles and find correlation. This morning it was Friedman’s piece in the New York Times, “The New Untouchables” and a very small note from the Bozeman Chronicle in Bozeman Montana “Montana regents look to reinvent university system.”

What Friedman points out is that the current recession may have its roots at least partially in the failures of the education system. The Chronicle article is about yet another effort for someone who is at least somewhat outside the system to encourage reform around the idea of student outcomes and what is best for the state.

I think both Todd Buchanan, the Montana Regent in charge of the effort and Friedman find a point of agreement when they say education in America must be reformed. I want to be careful to say that the failures in education are not the failures of educators, but rather a failure of a system that doesn’t work.

Nobody likes to fix systems. It is messy work. It’s like comparing plumbing with cooking. Fixing systems is like plumbing. Nobody really wants to do it but it has to be done and the consequences of not doing it are terrible. It’s messy, grimy work and at the end of the day the person only knows that the water flows the same way it did before. They don’t realize the damage that was occurring behind the walls, the plumber just fixed things and made it work the way it was supposed to.

Compare that with cooking which many people enjoy. It is creative and while it is messy everyone can see the work that goes into it, and when it goes well you have created something that people eat and are satisfied with. Teaching or any front line profession is a little more like that. I’m not saying teachers are paid enough, or get enough recognition but I am saying that when your kids goes into the classroom and you see that individuals life broadened and you see their progress you know something is happening. At some level you can demonstrate it in the life of one child, and that is enough to rally people around.

The problem is that we don’t do enough plumbing, and the wonderful smells from the kitchen are covering up the rot underneath. It’s time to figure out a way to tackle systems without sacking the folks involved. This will require a level of maturity few of us have (myself included).
We desperately need those inside industries like insurance, education, and others that may be broken to stand up and say, yes we can do better. We need to be honest about challenges and then work on actually fixing them.

The great professors and teachers can make any system work and they do. But in a way, they to become victims of their good work because everyone looks and says, “See it works.” The problem is the system is failing too often.

I think this analogy applies a lot of places.