{"id":267040,"date":"2024-12-19T05:10:15","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T05:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/19\/the-necessity-of-self-criticism-in-education\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:09:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:09:59","slug":"the-necessity-of-self-criticism-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/19\/the-necessity-of-self-criticism-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"The Necessity Of Self-Criticism In Education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n                <\/aside>\n<p>            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><!-- HFCM by 99 Robots - Snippet # 9: Recommended Books --><\/p>\n<p><!-- \/end HFCM by 99 Robots --><\/p>\n<p>To grow, teachers must be able to reflect critically on their own performance.<\/p>\n<p>Education is \u2018actuated\u2019 by teachers.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">It makes sense, then, that education should also be able to reflect critically on its own performance as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Currently, this occurs through the comforting precision of analysis and numbers. The language of math, data, and statistics provides a universal language that (ideally) resists rhetoric and insists on facts. This also provides a footing for research and natural anchoring points for the kinds of strategies we use to improve our schools.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/pedagogy\/evaluate-your-teaching\/\">To be whole<\/a><\/strong>, however, this critical reflection\u2013this self-criticism\u2013needs to be qualitative and quantitative. This means right now, we\u2019ve only got half the picture.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-self-aware-system-of-education\"><strong>A Self-Aware System Of Education<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Criticism is a harsh-sounding word, but it\u2019s close enough to the word <em>critical\u00a0<\/em>to see that they belong together. To think critically is to result in \u2018criticism\u2019 of some kind, but note that criticism can happen without thinking critically. This seems to be where education gets itself in trouble.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">See also <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/education\/education-needs-more-than-reform\">Education Needs More Than Reform<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Self-awareness is a precursor to self-knowledge; self-knowledge is a precursor to context; context is a precursor to understanding.<\/p>\n<p>Applied to education as a whole\u2013as a system\u2013self-awareness seems awkward. It is a uniquely human trait that depends, in part, on being able to isolate one\u2019s \u2018self,\u2019 and dissolves once one person becomes two.<\/p>\n<p>To be self-aware requires that you can see around \u2018yourself\u2019 without missing anything. That you see all the parts from their beginning to their end, and in a scale that doesn\u2019t obscure their function. Otherwise, you\u2019re not self-aware but fragment-aware. Piece-aware.<\/p>\n<p>For a school system, whole awareness would mean every school, cafeteria, classroom, athletic field,\u00a0assessment, textbook, IT policy, grading policy, bus route, parent concern, committee,\u00a0federal guidelines, and budget item. Every course, course title, bell schedule, class change process, and school mascot.<\/p>\n<p>And students, too\u2013their history, their interests, their reading levels, their affections, curiosities,\u00a0habits, sense of self-efficacy, and their own patterns of living in native communities. Every book they loved and book they hated\u2013every bad habit, source of academic apathy, and cause for intrinsic motivation and source of intrinsic motivation.<\/p>\n<p>And teachers. And higher ed. And technology\u2013and each of these can be scattered into ten thousand pieces themselves.<\/p>\n<p>So many moving parts obscure the whole, and the whole obscures the parts\u2013which means that self-awareness and self-criticism remain beyond our reach. The best we can muster is survey.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s clear that a self-aware system of education is impossible, as currently designed\u2013which means then that a self-correcting system of education is also impossible as currently designed.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-settling\"><strong>Settling<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Instead, awareness for education\u2013and educators within education\u2013tends to come in a series of glimpses and corrections in a series of jerks. The broad vision that leads to day-to-day, semester-to-semester, and year-to-year continuity is replaced by artificial streaks of agitation, enthusiasm, and trend. Glimpses and jerks aren\u2019t leading to the transformation that our funding, technology, and collective expertise and passion might otherwise be capable of.<\/p>\n<p>Scale will be a challenge to creating a self-aware system of education that is capable of iterating and transforming itself through baked-in mechanisms that actually work.<\/p>\n<p><em>Let\u2019s create something huge that care-takes the intellectual and creative growth of millions and millions of little human beings, and then be surprised when the results are mediocre and the students are anonymous.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>For education to become self-aware, it will have to see itself and all of its own gears. If we insist on a national system that is monitored at the state and district level, it will depend on national, state, and district efficacy and efficiency. We\u2019ve designed, then, a system of teaching and learning\u2013of human improvement\u2013that is unmanageable by that very design.\u00a0A system that, incredibly,\u00a0wants to globalize itself.<\/p>\n<p>Whether this is a challenge of size, scale, hubris, or design, \u2018whole\u2019 self-criticism isn\u2019t possible. As long as that\u2019s true, neither is anything but minor spurts of serendipitous improvement.<\/p>\n<p>For now, in your classroom, school, or district, imagine what self-criticism and self-correction currently look like. It\u2019s probably a mix of data teams, lesson planning feedback, and more data.<\/p>\n<p>What are you doing to get a full picture of who you are, how you\u2019re doing, and the kinds of corrections your craft as an educator demands? If we can\u2019t come up with a good answer for this, we shouldn\u2019t be surprised when other people (purposefully vague) come in and do it for us, stop believing in what we do, or design and fund alternatives that have thinking and design of their own.<\/p>\n<p>An underperforming teacher eventually gets replaced. Underperforming schools, districts\u2013and most critically, learning models\u2013are perma-funded and untouchable.<\/p>\n<p>Why?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/education\/self-criticism\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] To grow, teachers must be able to reflect critically on their own performance. Education is \u2018actuated\u2019 by teachers. It makes sense, then, that education<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":267041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}