Time on Task: Innovation and an Argument Against Seat Time

 Monday, October 26, 2009

 

Do you believe that students learn more or even better, because they sit in front of their teacher for “X” amount of hours each day? Our first impression of that thought would provoke the answer “no.” Most people would believe that a single teacher or even the amount of time on task is not the ultimate answer to learning. Given today's educational environment and the virtual technology world we live in, it is inconceivable that there is only one answer.

Today, our school curriculum along with many school districts is based on the Carnegie unit system, a unit of academic credit used in college admissions decisions. The unit was introduced by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1914 to provide colleges with a standard measure of students’ course work in high schools. A Carnegie unit represents the equivalent of one academic year of study in a subject in a class meeting four or five times a week for 40 to 60 minutes per meeting, a minimum of 120 hours of total class time.

That's pretty simple math, do the time, make the grade and graduate. The only problem is, we know that the students who are graduating are often less prepared today then we want them to be. So then the argument is to change our current practices and create an environment where teaching is allowed to be instructionally innovative and learning is measured not by the amount of seat time, but by what the child is thinking, what's in their heads, their ability to express themselves freely, and exponentially. This is not a new paradigm in the philosophy of education, no. this is an age old battle of the wits. On one hand, we can sit idly by and let mediocrity permeate our minds and those of our students or we can get out from behind the desks, get our students up from their seats and get out there and be somebody. Take charge and learn, teach, and grow.

In 1993, Ernest L. Boyer, President of the Carnegie Foundation stated, “I’m convinced the time has come once and for all to bury the old Carnegie unity. Further, since the foundation I now head created this academic measurement a century ago, I feel authorized this morning to officially declare the Carnegie unit obsolete."

Indeed the Carnegie unit has become obsolete. The National Education Commission on Time and Learning reported in their document “Prisoners of Time” (1994), that “The six-hour, 180-day school year should be relegated to museums, an exhibit from our education past. Both learners and teachers need more time-not to do more of the same, but to use all time in new, different, and better ways. The key to liberating learning lies in unlocking time.”

It is this approach to learning, to designing the educational environment and the educational day, that will provide our students the keys to the doors to which they will open and walk into a world ready to take it on. Our schools are indeed institutions of learning that provide children with not only the tools to develop their skills, but a place they are connected to, a place where they feel safe, a place where unconditional acceptance of who they are and of their individual potential for learning and growth are celebrated. Today we can't be expected to sit idle and accept the practices of the past. This is also evident in President Obama's current desire to lengthen the school day. His plan is not a concrete solution to student achievement by any means, but what it does signal to most people is that there is a grave concern about our 'attitude' towards education. I have always believed schools should not be about wrote learning practices. I am a firm believer that the Carnegie unit is nothing more than an idea that seemed to work a hundred years ago and has long since been inapplicable to schools today. I am also in agreement that schools should stay open longer, that beyond the core academic subjects there is a plethora of opportunity for students to learn. That programs for members of the community to teach in extended day programs without traditional credentials are needed, that schools should be open into the night for students to participate in virtual classrooms, reinforcement, and alternative education, that new methods for demonstrating student competency or earning credit should include end-of-course exams, culminating projects, and alternative assessments aimed at content knowledge and not only the required seat time.

It has long been said that 'learning never stops', so then, why do we close school each day in the afternoon? All across America schools and school systems are creating new rules of the road, year round schools where students are able to graduate at a self pace approach, schools where students take classes never before available to them because now they have the time and the choice, students who are receiving college level instruction at high school. These are all results of forward-thinking educators who are embracing change and driving that educational train of innovation into the future. For me, I'm going to climb aboard, what I want to know is, are you coming?