On One Condition: Time Is Limited (and limiting)
You’re walking along the beach—possibly on your spring break—and you happen upon a rather odd-looking object that was left behind by the receding tide. As you pull the object from the moist sand, releasing it from its net of seaweed and shells, you begin to recognize that the object is not that odd-looking after all. In fact, what you are holding in your hand is a ceramic model of a one-room schoolhouse, complete with bell tower, separate entrances for girls and boys, and a picket fence in need of a little white paint. As you rub away the last grains of sand, the puff of smoke that emanates from the school’s brick chimney transmutes into a rather overbearing, stern-looking schoolmarm who, looking over her spectacles demands, “What is that you want?”
“What do you mean,” you ask, confused as to the nature of the question.
“Because you have rescued me from my watery prison, you have been granted one wish—a wish that will allow you to change one aspect of this place we both know as school.” She gestures toward the ceramic model.
“Only one wish? I thought that the standard allocation was three,” you timidly suggest.
“Cutbacks!” comes the sharp reply, accentuated by two short, violent swipes of the figure’s yellow-tipped pointer.
“Ok, let me think.” You cower slightly and she notices and purses her lips.
“Time is limited.”
“Yes,” you say, “Alright then, I think if I were able to change just one thing about schools, it would have to be the way we…”
My own response to the invitation would come rather quickly and would follow directly from our schoolmarm’s own admonition, “time is limited.” If I were able to change just one thing about schools, it would have to be the way we deal with time.
You know, we talk a great deal about encouraging an attitude of life-long learning, but schools are set up to give a very different message. In most schools, there is a very real sense in which learning is time-bound along both the X and Y axes.
On the one hand, grade level expectations define what counts as the acceptable package of knowledge and skills when you are six, eight, twelve, etc. Formal schooling pushes us along a horizontal plane from Kindergarten to Graduation and measures success based on a student’s ability to meet these arbitrary requirements within the time allotted. Time is limited, indeed, and the self-perceptions that we develop as learners (and as teachers) are tied up with staying on track, and on schedule.
I’m convinced that a major part of our school transformation conversation needs to address the “X-axis”. Imagine what might happen if, right from the beginning, we were to untether our students from their date of birth and, instead, were to allow them to develop personal paths based on something other than age.
When we look along the “Y-axis”, we’re faced with a model of schooling that separates knowledge and skills, divides them up into neat little packages and places them on a daily schedule with strict guidelines around how much time is devoted to each package. And the model does exactly what it is designed to do, allowing for discrete and focused attention, time management and a division of labour across a school staff. But as more and more teachers are insisting, the model does little to promote really deep learning, integrated curriculum, project-based opportunities, collaborative teaching or the type of critical thinking that can lead to connected understanding. Many educators will vociferously attest to the fact that this approach to time has led to curriculum—and learning—that is a mile wide and an inch deep.
So what might happen if we were to give educators the freedom to play with the way in which daily allotment of time is imagined? What if talking about learning time took the place of tracking seat time, and our schedules became just a little more porous and a lot more flexible? What could be drawn into the learning experience that currently sits on the sidelines? What could be drawn out of the experience?
I realize that these are broad and somewhat familiar strokes related to the concept of time within our schools. It is my hope that you might help me fill in some of the details, bring your own experience to the conversation and even push back on some of what is here.
Or, as I toss the ceramic schoolhouse back into the sea, you might wish to retrieve it and answer the “What is it that you want?” question in a totally different way.”
Meet the Expert(s)
Stephen Hurley
Education Consultant, Catalyst, voicED Radio
Stephen Hurley is a recently retired teacher from the Dufferin Peel District School Board in Ontario. Stephen continues to work to open up public spaces for vibrant conversations about transformation of education systems across Canada.
Stephen Hurley est un enseignant récemment retraité de la Dufferin Peel District School Board en Ontario. Stephen continue de travailler à ouvrir des espaces publics pour des conversations dynamiques sur la transformation des systèmes éducatifs partout au Canada.
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