Our Education System is a Kobiyashi Maru

Those familiar with the “Star Trek” universe know that the Kobayashi Maru is the name of a training simulation that is unwinnable.

Why did Starfleet Academy create a no-win scenario? To test the character of its cadets and to see how they would react as captain in the face of certain failure and death. Capt. James T. Kirk is the only person who has ever beaten the Kobayashi Maru.

How did he win a no-win simulation? He hacked into the training computer and reprogrammed it to be winnable.

As a math teacher at an urban public high school in Western Washington, I have come to believe that our current public-education system is a Kobayashi Maru. Standards, expectations and graduation requirements for students continue to be raised, while funding has stayed constant or in most cases been reduced. This is an unwinnable situation.

For example, my school district requires that all ninth-graders must take algebra or a higher-level math, yet test scores indicate that on average they are not actually ready for algebra.

With extra attention and differentiated instruction, these students could still be successful. But in classes with 30-plus students, I have found myself utterly incapable of giving every student the time and resources they need to bridge their knowledge gap. The result has been that just over half of my algebra students fail each year, on par with my high school’s overall failure rate for ninth-grade algebra.

Were there also successes interspersed with all those failures? Yes. Just under 50 percent of my students did pass. I have also gained an invaluable education.

I came to my teaching career as a perfectionist but quickly had to let that go. There are seemingly infinite tasks that need to be done in a school day, but not all of them can be done at as high a quality as I would like. Many will not get done at all.

I have had to develop my humility in being able to apologize to my students. And overall, I have simply had to learn acceptance. I have had to accept that I cannot control my students. I have had to accept the education system as it is and just to try to do my small part within it.

These experiences would make me a much higher quality employee now if I chose to enter the private sector. Indeed, I believe this is expressly the reason that programs like Teach for America have become so popular.

Our current public-education system has unintentionally become a Kobayashi Maru, a no-win scenario to test the character of those who work within it.

While I’m grateful for the personal development my teaching experience has afforded me, I don’t believe our country can afford to keep things the way they are.

I’ve hinted that it’s a lack of resources that prevents teachers from being successful in reaching all students. For the most part this is true.

Realistically though, funding for smaller class sizes of 15 students or fewer and the other resources our students need to be successful in our current system are not going to materialize anytime soon.

Instead we need to take a page out of Capt. Kirk’s book. He states, “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” Neither do I. We must therefore reprogram our education system.

My biggest hope is that we will be able to leverage technology in a monumental way to make up for the current deficit of resources. Though technology will certainly not be the silver bullet to cure all our education system’s ills, I believe it has the power to completely re-imagine the way we teach and the way students learn, and just maybe it can make that no-win scenario just a little more winnable.

Update [12/17/19]:

After teaching five additional years from the writing of the above Op-ed and after much reflection since leaving the classroom, I no longer have any hope that technology will considerably improve our educational system.

The fact is that many, if not most, of the students that struggle to be succcesful are coming through the school doors so compromised from trauma and neglect that they are unable to engage productively in their education, even if they see the value and opportunity it holds for them.

During the early years of my teaching career, Finland was often praised for its successful education system. Yet to have any hope of achieving Findland’s stellar educational outcomes, we must first look not to how the country has structured its schools, but to how it takes care of its citizens.

Since the 1980’s Finland has had a comprehensive social welfare system that ensures that no one is living in abject poverty. Until the United States decides to do the same, then I fear nothing will move the needle of our educaitonal outcomes; otherwise, we’re just putting tiny pedagogical band-aids on the gaping wounds of human suffering.