The structure of American education has stayed much the same since Horace Mann designed it in 1893 based on what he saw during a trip to Prussia.
A documentary that explores where that design has brought us and what it means for today’s students, who are growing up in a vastly different world than Mann’s, will be screened Wednesday night in Durango. A panel discussion with area education leaders will be held after the screening.
One of the people analyzing the current situation in “Most Likely to Succeed” is Ken Jennings, who won 74 games on “Jeopardy!” and earned $2.52 million. He talked about going back on the game show to compete against IBM’s artificial-intelligence computer Watson.
“I had a pretty good idea I was going to win. Computers have a hard time with language, and ‘Jeopardy!’ is worst than most,” he said, before going down in flames in the two-day competition. “I felt like a 1980s autoworker in Detroit who’s become obsolete. I became obsolete on national television.”
That sense of obsolescence, he said, made him start worrying about an education based on content.
“What happens to society, when hundreds of millions have that feeling of ‘I’ve been replaced?’” he asked.
Shane Voss, head of school at Mountain Middle School, attended the premiere of the film in San Diego at High Tech High. Mountain Middle and Animas High School are both modeled after High Tech High.
“It’s important for people to understand that the film is not saying one model is better than another,” he said, “but it is an example to push the discussion about the possibilities.”
The film, which is being shown in communities around the country, shares some startling statistics:
Fifty-three percent of recent college graduates are under- or unemployed.
Student engagement in school plummets as they get to higher grades – from 80 percent in elementary school to 40 percent by the time kids start high school.
Students lose more than 90 percent of their creativity during their school years, according to a Lego Foundation study.
While 96 percent of academic provosts believe colleges are training students for the workplace, only 11 percent of employers agree.
Sixty-five percent of elementary school students today will end up in jobs that haven’t been invented yet.
Voss, who worked at Durango High School during its formation of Small Learning Communities, said he has found that project-based learning is transformative.
“Students gain a lot of confidence and further their engagement,” he said. “I look at my daughter, who’s in the seventh grade at MMS, and see how excited she is to get to school to create things.”
Voss sat next to one of the students featured in the film. The student did not get his project, which combine physics with a humanities study of the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, done in time for the public exhibition. Rather than a test, the exhibition is the assessment for project-based learning.
“Meeting deadlines is one of the soft skills that’s so valuable in life,” Voss said. “There was a lot of learning in missing the deadline, too, but he still got the project done later and presented it to his teachers.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
The “Most Likely to Succeed” screening and panel discussion will take place at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College.
The panel will include representatives from the four sponsors: Richard Fulton, director of the Teacher Education Department at Fort Lewis College; Shane Voss, head of school at Mountain Middle School; Sean Woytek, head of school at Animas High School; Lori Fisher, humanities teacher at Animas; and Dan Snowberger, superintendent of Durango School District 9-R.
Because seating is limited, the event is ticketed. Some free tickets are still available at the four sponsors’ locations. Some seats will be available at the event.
Mountain Middle School seventh-graders will be presenting a mini-exhibition before and after the event in the foyer of the concert hall.
To learn more, visit mltsfilm.org.
