Can merit pay, new teaching strategies, or applying “what works” improve education, if we haven’t defined what it means to be educated?

I read education articles on the internet today. My head is spinning with the words of Jay Matthews, Susan Ohanian, President Obama, Arne Duncan, Thomas Friedman, and the late Gerald Bracey. Try it sometime. Your head will spin too. There is so much out there. It is all so contradictory, so arbitrary, so political, and so not-informed by a definition of what it means to be educated.

I should give up. Defining what it means to be educated should be our first concern, but it seems to be our last concern (or of no concern at all).

How did this happen? Where are the writers/analysts/educators who can cut through all the peripheral stuff about merit pay, new teaching strategies, applying what works, etc.? Does anybody see that addressing these concerns will not improve education until we have a rich, useful definition of what it means to be educated?

It is illogical to pursue our current definition. Higher test scores bring shallow satisfaction. Nobody says, “Test scores went up! Our children will have fulfilling lives! American schools are great!”

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