Nurture Shock

By Aaron Hurst on October 22, 2009 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Po Bronson's new book, which he penned with Ashley Merryman, is shockingly insightful. NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children walks through the latest research on parenting and education.

It reveals everything from how our fear of discussing race with kids makes race issues worse to how new pedagogies for pre-k and kindergarten have breakthrough results.

Taken on the whole and through a public policy lens, the book clearly lays out some major changes we could make to our education system that would have a tremendous impact. These suggestions, coupled with the learning from programs like KIPP that were described in Gladwell's Outliers, really start to create a clear picture of what our educational system should look like going forward.

It is incredibly encouraging to imagine the potential of our education system, but one worries that despite this knowledge, politics will prevent progress.

For example, NurtureShock points out that starting high school an hour later has a significant positive impact. This was reported at least ten years ago, yet many school districts haven't made the change. The reasons for this range from additional busing costs to teachers wanting to drive to work before rush hour.

As a father, the idea of my kids going to schools where the teachers and principal don't act on this knowledge is beyond frustrating. It feels like they are hurting my kids for no good reason.

The challenge is partially political and partly just a product of the change management process. We can't change all the schools as soon as a new study comes out.

Reason is no longer the basis for policy decisions. Since when is teaching science considered liberal?

Obama spoke to addressing this but it is not clear to what degree he will. Clinton once talked about how the solution to every social problem has been solved somewhere, we just need to find it and bring it to scale. Newt Gingrich even created a site to capture these ideas.

There needs to be a new media model that is a hybrid between the New York Times and Wikipedia. It would catalog 'what we know' about every issue that is related to public policy. It would be comprehensive and ever-green like Wikipedia but have the editorial oversight of a world class newspaper.

This new media model could serve as a database to help voters make informed decisions.  It would leave room for differences of opinion but not of facts.

This new media would need to be bi-partisan and able to report facts that are not popular. It would also have to be heavily marketed to have any power.