Week #2

READ:  

Khan, Chapter 2: The Broken Model

WATCH:  

Short History of American School

Reflection

Focusing on what he argues in Chapter 2, “The Broken Model,” and what that means for how we think about schools and learning. Reading “The Broken Model” is unsettling in an important way. It forces you to see how much of what we take for granted in education isn’t grounded in what helps students learn deeply, but in historical routines and systems that were built for very different purposes. Khan describes the traditional school structure as designed more to produce obedience, uniformity, and workforce-readiness than curiosity, mastery, or meaningful learning.  One of his key critiques, what he calls “Swiss Cheese Learning,” really stuck with me. We often move students forward based on the clock: a semester, a school year, or even a class period, instead of on their genuine understanding. What we end up with is a patchwork of partial knowledge: lots of students drifting forward without closing the gaps that matter.

Watching this short history felt less like a nostalgic glance backward and more like a challenge to ask why we organize learning the way we do. The film traces how school as we know it, public, compulsory, standardized, didn’t always exist: before the 1800s, many children learned informally, at home or through apprenticeship. Formal, government-mandated schooling gradually emerged in response to industrialization, immigration, and concerns about social order. What stands out is how the original purpose of this transformation was as much social as educational: to shape a unified citizenry, to instill common values and basic literacy, and to assimilate, especially immigrant and working-class children, into a shared national identity. That history invites reflection: if schools were created with those social aims in mind, often emphasizing conformity, standardization, and “what all children should know by a certain age,” then perhaps some of the problems people critique today (rigidity, lack of relevance, inequality, alienation) are baked into the structure.

Both the video and Khan’s chapter highlight that the structure of American schooling is not natural or inevitable; it was constructed for specific historical purposes, and those purposes no longer align with the learners' needs. The video shows how early American schools were shaped by industrialization, immigration, and a desire for social order and conformity. Khan’s argument picks up exactly where that history leaves off. He explains that the standardized, time-based model we still use is essentially an industrial-era system that prioritizes efficiency and uniformity over true learning. What connects them most strongly is the idea that the system was never designed around how children actually learn. The video illustrates how schooling evolved to meet societal needs, producing disciplined workers and assimilated citizens. Khan argues that this left us with a “broken model” where students move together at the same pace, regardless of whether they understand the material, creating gaps that accumulate over time.