The Subway menu offers two sizes, 5 breads, 17 fillings, each with cheese or no cheese, each toasted or not toasted, any selection of 8 salad fillings and 7 sauces. When I enter a Subway I am faced with a choice of one sub from an awesome 191,923,200 possibilities.
Imagine if a pupil could walk into a class and be given that range of choice.
In a talk to the RSA, Sir Ken Robinson has pointed that we model our schools on factories; the most important feature of a pupil is his age, which Sir Ken calls "the date of manufacture". We teach batches. Our quality control is built around the model of standardisation: teachers have to follow a prescribed curriculum using recommended pedagogies; students are expected to meet targets set on the basis of what other students of their age are meeting.
On another talk (to TED in 2010) Sir Ken says "We have built our education systems on the model of fast food". But what we offer pupils is worse than that. Subway trumps school.
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