Time Based Education

Winter 2006

In Elizabethan England, according to Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, crafts and trades such as tailor, smith, silk weaver, cutler, etc. were incorporated, “all such corporations were anciently called universities; which indeed is the proper Latin name for any incorporation whatever.” Thus, “the university of smiths, the university of taylors (sic)” are expressions we meet in the old charters of ancient towns. They set out all the rules for training, which was mainly tutorial and operated as an apprenticeship. Adam Smith goes on to say that “when incorporations which are now peculiarly called universities were first established, the term of years which it was necessary to study, in order to obtain the degree of mastery of arts appears to have been copied from the term of apprenticeship in common trades.”

In that era the principal type of education was the apprentice system in artificer training, as in a trade, such as blacksmith or weaver. The requisite skills were learned by the apprentice under the tutelage of the artificer. A characteristic of the skills learned was the ability to perform tasks to a certain degree of proficiency. The proficiency was attested to by the trainer, and the successful pupil was certified as a journeyman to be engaged in the specific trade in which he had been trained.

Organizations exist to aggregate resources for the accomplishment of specified objectives and to reduce transaction costs between buyers and sellers, presumably achieving competitive advantages over the superceded mode. In industry it may require acquisition of structures, machines, laborers, technology or integration otherwise not feasible or of higher cost. In education, organizations superceded the individual tutorial performer by aggregating students, disciplines and assessment procedures, Initially schools, as we know them today, were organized to reduce the transaction costs in educating the students, and competed against the individuals, home schools and one-room school houses. A price per pupil was charged which bore a relationship to the competitive environment and was governed by the forces of the marketplace In an attempt to define the education to be delivered, irrespective of the effect upon the recipient, municipal and governmental organizations prescribed content, through the selection of appropriate texts. Guffey’s Reader is an example.

The situation today is less clear. Within the K-12 education institutions there are Standards of Learning (SOLs) and legislation decreeing that no child should be left behind. However, there is no specificity to many of the SOLs, and for the education programs in general, no relation to terminal behavioral objectives. The education specified for delivery has not been framed in relation to the competencies the individual should acquire over a period of 12 years or so.

For example, one should note that the tutorial/apprentice system of the middle ages was time-based and performance specific. The system today, while still time-based (measured in chair seat hours), leaves much to be desired in the assessment of performance. Educational Testing Service (ETS) recently published “Standards for What?” which defined the education needs in K-12 to be academic readiness for post-secondary education and training after high school. In a sense, this is about as fuzzy a prescription as one can make. The paper does hold forth the need to train workers but is silent on the specifics of how this is to be done.

The foregoing brings to mind an insight by columnist William Raspberry where he compares the school bus to the local school system and the driver to the local superintendent.

The bus itself is in bad shape. It uses far too much fuel, in the form of school dollars, for the educational mileage it delivers. The engine is unresponsive because it is mechanically out of date and because important parts have been permitted to fall into disrepair. The gauges – the test and other devices that are supposed to tell us how well it is performing – have been ignored and at least partially disconnected. The starter, the steering and brakes all are suspect. We’re not even agreed – because we haven’t bothered to raise the question – as to where the vehicle should be headed.

Yet knowing the abysmal shape of the bus itself, we give our greatest time and attention to finding the best available bus driver. We hire one driver after another, based on their skills and experiences as drivers and then we get rid of them because the bus still runs badly.

Today, despite the capability for technology based instruction delivery systems and internet access to resources, the prevailing school model adheres to the “teacher in the classroom” delivery system and the lack of precision in defining what is to be accomplished, learner by learner.

The underlying problem is the lack of systematic analysis and delineation of precisely defined educational objectives and the specific factoids and content to be learned in accomplishing this. Present SOLs do not do this. The ever-increasing cost of education is mainly a function of this in that failure is perceived as a lack of funds and the solution is to hire more school personnel, build more structures rather than initiating and conducting a systematic development of educational needs as they relate to each individual.

This is a perfect prescription to prevent the introduction of technology based systems (which require specificity), individualization (which technology based systems could provide) and reduced cost – by utilizing machine oriented delivery, assessment, and management information systems.

Raymond G. Fox