Does making change count? | My Island View

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Does making change count?

April 15, 2013 by Tom Whitby @tomwhitby

An advantage that I have as one who is fortunate enough to attend many education conferences, or special education events is the contact I have with many of the thought leaders in education. Of course most of those folks do not think of themselves as thought leaders, but just educators. The fact is that we are often defined by the perception of others. This holds true for institutions as well.

I was invited to attend a special leadership event sponsored by Discovery Education. My association with Discovery goes back to a think tank group that they had formed last year on “Exploring Beyond the Textbook”. This year’s event, Future@Now announced that all educators were being afforded free access to Discovery Education’s Techbook. There were a number of featured speakers, mostly progressive superintendents who are all doing wonderful things in education in their districts. Of course the highlight of the event was a killer presentation by a third grader, Mary Moss Wirt, a Digital Learner from Cary Elementary School in North Carolina.

The very best part of this event for me however was at dinner the night before. I had dinner and a two-hour conversation with Dean Shareski on education. Dean is an educator and education technologist I have followed on Twitter from my first month tweeting. I have always found him to be thoughtful, innovative, reflective, personable, respectful, and an educator I would like to hang with. This night I did.

The question posed by Dean that intrigued me was one that educators hear time and time again: What do we say to people who ask; how is education working if the cashier at a fast food place cannot figure out how much change to give me?

This was not easy to hear as an educator because this perception is one that many people have. The perception is that since kids can’t count out change for a purchase, our education system has failed. My take on the question however was one I had not considered before until we needed to address it in this discussion. I told Dean that I felt that people were making a judgment about an education system that no longer existed. They were basing their assumptions on their father’s education system. It was a system designed for people to be able to count out change for customers. That is a task that is simple to people who are products of that system and it was a skill reinforced in many jobs in society at that time.

That same system however also created many technological advances. It produced technology that removes the mundane task of calculating change, as well as the possibility of making mistakes doing so. There is no need for a cashier to calculate change when the register does it faster and more accurately. It also allows individuals with lower functioning skills to move into positions that previously required a knowledge, if not mastery, of a fundamental mathematical ability. What people are now doing is looking into an area that no longer requires either limited, or for that matter, any math skills, and condemning the education system for not providing it with people who have mastered some math skills.

Come to think of it even people with math skills become complacent with the accessibility of tech tools to calculate. This is one area where the rule of, “If you don’t use it you lose it”, applies well. Then again, if you don’t use it because you don’t really need it, so what?

I think when we look to assess our education system; we can’t look to the system, as we knew it in past generations. In the world of today the needs are different. Higher order thinking skills, critical thinking skills, communicating skills, collaborating skills, creative skills all need to be emphasized. The ability to critically think in today’s society is more important than calculation skills accomplished by cash registers. The higher order skills are what will prevent our democracy from being driven by sound bites as opposed to thought and reason.

If someone needs to be in a position where fundamental math to make change calculations is required, they will have those skills before they are hired, or they will be trained after. If those skills were not required, why would we expect those workers to be required to have them? I am not bashing the Math people here. Yes, many people need math and advanced math is where STEM is taking us. I guess giving the correct change may be a first step, but it is not a step for everyone as a gauge of education. If perception is reality, let us make sure that people perceive things as they are in a technology-driven, ever-changing environment. We no longer live an Ozzie and Harriet world of the fifties.

If we want people to have skills and knowledge beyond the demands of their jobs than we need to create a culture of learning. We need students at the very least to be curious about learning, and at best have a love for it. Drilling and testing will produce neither. We need to shift the goal of education from testing to learning and align the public’s perception of education with the reality of education in order to gain support for a common goal.

Posted in Accountability, Administrator, Assessment, conference, Connected Educator, Education, PD, PLN, Professionalism, Reform, Teacher, Technology, Thought leadership, Thought Provoking | 10 Comments

10 Responses

on April 15, 2013 at 1:09 PM | Reply Deven Black

A few years ago I was a push-in writing teacher in a 5th grade special education classroom for students with multiple disabilities. I happened to walk in on a class in which the teacher, a very kind and patient man — just the teacher those kids needed — was teaching them how to subtract the amount of a sale made from the amount of cash tendered to pay for it so they could make change. He was teaching them to apply subtraction in that situation.

Mathematically, subtraction is the proper operation to use but that is not how the real world worked.

I was in my second year teaching after 25 years working in or managing restaurants and bars, businesses where change is almost always made by hand. In the real world people giving change counted up. Taking a $20 bill to pay for a $5.25 drink, the bartender would count three quarters, saying “50, 75, 6” then count four $1 bills, “7,8,9, 10” before adding a $10 bill to make $20. This was faster and less prone to error than doing subtraction and then counting out change to equal that remainder.This method was also encouraged in retail situations.

The cashier can’t figure out how much change to give because there was NEVER a time when doing so was required, or even the preferential way, to do business.

The net takeaway is that the person who asked the question Mr. Shareski posed know as little about business as he did about education.

My question is, why do we listen to people like that?
- on April 15, 2013 at 1:19 PM | Reply tomwhitby
  
  Devin
  To be clear Mr.Shareski did not pose the question as a questioner. He posed it as a topic of discussion. He to was searching for an answer as an educator and not maligning the education system.
  - on April 15, 2013 at 3:04 PM Deven Black
    
    I knew Dean wasn’t asking the question (give me a little credit, Tom). I meant why do we listen to people who ask the kinds of questions Dean was referring to.
on April 15, 2013 at 1:30 PM | Reply jsagel

Interesting question. What role do basic skills have in our world reality today? I wonder where it would lead to apply this idea across lots of different disciplines… Are knowing dates in history important? Just a general timeline? Basic geography in the U.S.? It is really important to ask why a student will need a particular skill or knowledge. We haven’t done this enough. Educators have spent too long being ok with others making those decisions for us.
on April 15, 2013 at 1:30 PM | Reply Michelle Irinyi

Your reference to Ozzie and Harriet is right on the money! The same argument may be applied to the argument over whether to continue to teach cursive. In a world where digital signatures are accepted, even by the IRS, the need to master beautiful (or at least legible) handwriting is no longer valid. If humans did not evolve with changing technology, we’d still be painting on cave walls or using papyrus or scrolls. Digital natives should be allowed to freely express themselves using the means with which they are most comfortable and not be forced to conform to conventional tradition simply because “that’s they way we’ve always done it”.
on April 15, 2013 at 2:53 PM | Reply Diary of an e-learner

Great entry Tom, and I completely agree that we need to re-examine both the skills and overall quality of education that we are provided our students. To be successful today means one has become a life-long learner. Basic reading, writing and math skills is an important start, but I would hope to think that our bar is a little higher than that. As a teacher, I feel as though I have not succeeded unless my students have adopted a positive connotation to learning. This is why I wish others would see the great level of importance and responsibility that comes with the teaching profession.
on April 15, 2013 at 4:59 PM | Reply Howard

I disagree somewhat Tom;
I think basic skills are important because, as those skills grow, don’t they slowly transform into mathematical or literate thinking? I think some foundation is needed because where that foundation becomes higher order is not clear. Each level superceeds but depends on lower levels. However, I do think that skill building should be gamified to take advantage of the wonderful talent you see in game coders today. It is also a great place to build both formative and summative assessment within a technological platform that can become an appropriate individualized pedagogy.
As for the higher order mental skills, I ground my thinking loosely in people like Vygotsky, Wittgenstein and Bakhtin. Here (Vygotsky’s higher order mental processes) I think practice leads cognition. That is, we don’t need better skills for practicing democracy so much as we need appropriate democratic practice into which students can be socialized. However, that may be a very politicized practice as too many institutions depend on docility in the population.
on April 16, 2013 at 1:06 PM | Reply David Fleming

Interesting post, Tom.

I think I generally agree with the spirit of your post, but I feel that some basic skills such as making change are vital prior to developing this higher order thinking skills. Yes, it may be true that computers do the thinking for us when it comes to making change, but I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where the computer is not working. These skills are vital. Having said that, I do agree that it is unfair to base one’s opinion of a whole nation’s educational system on a single issue.

I don’t think we need to make a decision between basic skills and higher order thinking skills. I think both are necessary, and it is possible to teach both.
on April 17, 2013 at 8:25 PM | Reply Does making change count? | Idea of... | Scoop.it

[…] An advantage that I have as one who is fortunate enough to attend many education conferences, or special education events is the contact I have with many of the thought leaders in education. Of cou… […]
on April 17, 2013 at 8:28 PM | Reply Does making change count? | Well of EduBlogs | ...

[…] An advantage that I have as one who is fortunate enough to attend many education conferences, or special education events is the contact I have with many of the thought leaders in education. Of cou… […]

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