Elementary Education: The Illusion of Change

Abstract

change and innovation. New programs, improved procedures, better forms of organization, along with an almost endless variety of alternate preparation programs for teachers, are but a few of the categories of change frequently explored and expounded-and expounded-and expounded. Yet, an examination of the eventual fate of most of these innovations reveals that the majority have been monumentally short-lived. This transience suggests several obvious but clearly contentious propositions: namely, that the important and highly publicized changes that have occurred in elementary education during the past fifty years have been of remarkably limited consequence; furthermore, that the structural task of initiating major changes today may well be of a proportion well beyond the usual understanding of educators; and, finally, that, unless a conceptual base of some substance for this applied field called education is developed, it may be impossible to realize lasting and effective changes. Fundamental to arguments such as these is the simple but realistic assertion that knowledge concerning the teaching-and-learning process is limited and that considerable resources are expended annually to explore a virtual infinity of alternatives in the hope that one of them will eventually uncover the educational mother lode.