Silos in Education

As I reflect on my time engaged in student learning, I am confronted with a stark reality: our educational system exists in silos.  I am not the first person to make this observation and I am not pretending to be “profound” in this blog post.  What I do know is that the more one thinks, reflects and looks to change the way we educate kids, the more these silos become evident.  We live in an interconnected world.  Information, knowledge, and social ties are all interconnected.  The way in which students learn should reflect this inter-connectivity that exists in the larger world.  Silos prevent connections from being made and are detrimental to student learning.  I will discuss silos that affect student learning through what students learn and how they learn.

How students learn. A typical student in America goes from class to class (or subject to subject in the elementary school) with very little connection made between the classes and/or subjects.  What a student learns in second period is often totally disconnected to what they are going to learn third period.  In effect, these classes (or teachers) are acting in their own silos; not communicating with each other regarding the education of the student. Compare the rich, contextual world that exists outside the school walls where different types of information and knowledge combine and then the “siloed” school where knowledge is disconnected pieces of information not grounded in reality.  Students are also faced with a silo (or wall) that has been created between school and the “real world”.  Again, the students are learning (or presented information) that is disconnected from their everyday lives.  The learning process is an inherently interconnected process where existing knowledge is expanded and deeper connections are made.  Learning in a “subject silo” where knowledge is presented as a distinct set of skills unrelated to other parts of a student’s life is unrealistic and harmful.  Our challenge as educators is to create a learning environment (or community) where learning is honored as an interconnection of ideas and knowledge across subject areas.  Creating such a learning environment is something that makes common sense and can be done by educators who have the will to do it.

What students learn.  For too many years, secondary “education” has been fragmented into two areas: “academic” and “vocational”.   Academic students are “tracked” into subjects that will lead them into a college or university, while vocational students take classes (often at a separate vocational school) that will give them the skills to get a job or go to a two year vocational school after graduating from high school.  This model may have made sense in the mid 20^th century.  At that time most of the jobs available to gain access to middle class privilege were blue collar jobs that required the skills and knowledge gained at a vocational school.  Toward the end of the 20^th century, a college degree became more important to gain the same access to the middle class in America.  Today I think the pendulum between vocational learning and academic learning is balanced between the two.  Educators (and those really concerned with student learning) understand that the best learning for students occurs when the two silos of “academic” and “vocational” are torn down.  In today’s interconnected world of knowledge and work, skills gained at a vocational school are an essential part of a student’s academic learning.  Let’s just get rid of the labels and call everything that a student can gain from a K-12 education as “learning”.  When we do this, we will not have to concern ourselves with labels like “academic” or “vocational”  because the learning of the students takes precedent over labels.  We know that the silos that prevent students from experiencing both academic and vocational are flimsy structures that must come down.