Waiting for Sputnik

Over at Flypaper, Stafford Palmieri asks, "What will be the next Sputnik?" Readers who aren't full-time policy types may not realize just how often this question is asked in education circles. The story, as it's (endlessly re-)told, goes like this: American schools were soft and complacent in the 1950's until the nation was shocked into attention by the launch of the 1957 Soviet satellite, whereupon President Eisenhower pushed through a series of teacher training and curricular reforms designed to breed a new generation of scientists so the United States would never be caught so unawares again. Sputnik became synonymous with "Huge important event that suddenly causes the general public to care a whole lot more about K-12 education than they did."

The answer to Stafford's question, however, is pretty obvious: Nothing. Sputnik was a once-in-a-lifetime happening, as evidenced by the fact that we're still waiting for the next one, most of a lifetime later. It was, almost literally, a deux ex machina event.  The "whither Sputnik" question tends to come at the end of a long process whereby a person or group of people chooses to tackle a particular education problem, spends a lot of time and effort arriving at a series of preferred solutions, tries mightily to enact that agenda, and fails. Having failed, they appeal to the heavens for help, which never comes.

Waiting for Sputnik is a waste of time. If the public won't embrace certain ideas, then the ideas need to be improved, or the communications effort augmented, or the political environment changed. These things are difficult and frustrating and take time--but not as much time as waiting for deliverance from God and/or a machine.