The Courage to decide...
I’ve been wondering…why do we, educators keep adding and not subtracting? We seem to get great satisfaction from adding things into this thing we call the education system. These things are usually added with the best of intentions, some have a sound rationale, and or research base, and some don’t. Why do we do this?
The New Zealand Curriculum is a walking, talking example of not deciding. As it currently stands we have eight learning areas with a total of 35 strands over these learning areas. This is to fit into 25 contact teaching hours per week without accounting for other activities we put on the school calendar, camps, travelling shows, sports tournaments and competitions to mention just a few. Then there is general school life, taking the roll, assembly, and handing out school lunches.
Therefore, in reality, we have a very small amount of actual face-to-face contact for quality teaching. In my time as an educator, to Maths and English, Science, Social Studies and PE we have added, Te Reo, Technology, Key Competencies, Digital Technology, Aotearoa New Zealand Histories and ICT. We think we’re being clever at times for example, when we added Digital Technologies; it was as a strand of the main Technology learning area. Who are we fooling, we still added more curriculum content without subtracting.
Please don’t mishear me. Each and every one of these ‘additions’ makes perfect sense when you consider it in isolation. I am a huge advocate for developing children’s key competencies, having a deep understanding of their own countries' past, and learning a second language. These in and of themselves are valuable experiences. However, the one resource that does not grow when we are looking at this is time. It appears that these changes are only considered in isolation, not the wider context and system.
One of the unintended consequences of what is essentially an overcrowded curriculum is we then spend more time managing how well we are ‘covering’ the content, giving less and less attention to the actual learning and the depth of said learning.
Basic Mathematics…
The basic operations of mathematics have balance to them, they have observable patterns. Arguably at its core, maths is about patterns. In basic operations, addition is balanced by subtraction, multiplication is balanced by division. It just is this way, as the throwaway line goes, it is as simple as 2+2=4, it just is!
If we transfer this idea of balance into the world of organisations, project execution, curriculum development, and strategy development then we find with little effort, imbalance. We see our ability to add is elite level, grand master without parallel, it is nothing short of exceptional.
Yet conversely we have this severe reluctance to stop doing something, to decide no to something. We still do this even though we know we have too much in the project, too many initiatives in the strategy or in my world, too much content in the curriculum.
Less done well…
The research discussed in the Four Disciplines of Execution demonstrates some interesting outcomes when trying to focus on too much. It shows that when the total number of goals we are working on grows then the number of goals actually achieved with excellence is disproportionately decreasing
Chris McChesney and his co-authors suggest that if an organisation is ‘focussed’ on between 4 - 10 goals, then only 1 - 2 will be achieved with excellence. Now that is not a great return on effort and energy let alone investment.
source: Four Disciplines of Execution
The context for this research is organisations and strategic goals. The principle at play, when we focus on too much, and attempt to do too much then we are highly likely to do a poor job executing those areas we are focussing on. Even at a common sense level, we know this to be true. As humans, we have a limit to the number of things we can do. Yet we choose to only add and not subtract.
To Decide…
To decide… simply put means to “make a choice from a number of alternatives” or “come or bring to a resolution in the mind as a result of consideration” Interestingly when we make a trip back to the original Latin we get better insight which I think links to the actions we should be looking to take. The Latin talks about to decide, meaning to cut off. In other words, when we decide something we are going with option A and cutting off option B. Going with option A AND option B is not a decision it is indecision.
As a country, we need to locate some courage and have a conversation about what is vital for our children to learn and what is nice to have. What is foundational knowledge and what is not? As it currently stands and if the past is a reasonable predictor of the future then we are destined to have more added to the curriculum and nothing removed. This means more poorly done.
It would seem to be an ideal time in the midst of a curriculum refresh for this conversation to be had and for us to decide to cut away, so we can do less exceptionally well.
