#AI@Work: K-12 is Broken
The K-12 education system served the United States well for over two hundred years. Who invented -12 education? Horace Mann is given credit for our modern school systems. He was Secretary of the State Board of Education for Massachusetts. Horace developed a standardized curriculum. He believed it was important to educate all citizens. Mann’s six tenets include: (1) Citizens cannot be both free and ignorant, (2) The public needs to pay for, maintain, and control education, (3) Children from all classes should have the same schooling, (4) Education needs to be non-secular (meaning not religious), (5) Education needs to use the principles of free society, (6) The educators and teachers need to be professionally trained. It was Mann who set up division by age (grades). He thought the lecture was the best way to teach. He built schools and reformed schools in Massachusetts. Other states adopted his approach. In over 200 years not a lot has changed.
The K-12 education systems have evolved in a variety of formats. They can differ greatly in graduation requirements. K-12 usually starts in preschool and runs through 12th grade (ages 3-18). States and local school districts decide the curriculum. They define the requirements for credits and funding. There is no final exam for graduation in the United States. This is unlike what exists in many other countries. There is a GED exam (General Education Development or Diploma). This can be a substitute for the normal graduation path. In order to attended post-secondary education, high school graduation or passing the GED is usually required. Standardized tests, theoretically, were developed to measure aptitude and knowledge. The SATs were created in 1926 and the ACTs in 1959.
Technologies have found their way into K-12 education, but it has not been an easy few decades. Children 2 to 7 spend an average of two to five hours a day looking at screens (Welsh, 2018). Where children focus and their expectations have changed. The inclusion of technologies in K-12 education is backed by some of the biggest tech companies. The Gates Foundation, Amazon Web Services and Google support it. But it is still lagging. This is a generation ready to learn, that has grown up with technology as part of their life.
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