Education Reform: Retro-fitting & Revisiting

There are many ways to progress, and yet it can be summed with one word: change.  Putting that change in context to education, then it’s Education Reform you get.

This reform was ill-conceived to be a concept for stripping bare the old with its ineffective ways.  Yet, with inaccurate calculations, any observer could grasp the idea wrong.  For one, those targeted by the reform is not always ineffective; instead, it used to be effective, until it reached its exhaustion and failed to serve the current needs of the education sector.

This correction then leads an observer to a more impartial view:  that the change is in the sector’s needs, not just the Education Reform’s subject – be it a book, a teaching practice or requirement, or facilities.  Hence, reform is not for stripping; it’s more for retro-fitting – giving the old an upgrade.

This analogy evidently makes the reform work like recycling.  But if it fits the reform’s function, so be it.  However, students, teachers, parents, school administrators, and all other sectors cannot close their eyes from all other functions inherent with reforms.

For one, any Education Reform requires a visit on the past, an assessment of the future, an inventory of whatever’s left.  It is not just a standard reflex, but a means to learn where the reform targets are.  It makes sense as you cannot change what you don’t see as needing of any change.

Hence, every reform has to start with some hunting, a search for evidence that could validly carry with it a suggestion of which road to take.  This hunting activity practically brings with it the rationale behind the reform.  This is in contrast to the usual appeal of reforms: that certain stakeholders are crying for change.  In truth, the needs resound louder, louder than vigilant stakeholders.