The Flight School: Reimagining the Path to Adulthood (Abby Falik); Is Micromanaging Classes a Recipe for School Success? (Troy Closson and J. David Goodman); Rethinking civics education starts with inviting teens to co-create (Tyler Samstag and Fernande Raine)
The Flight School: Reimagining the Path to Adulthood | Getting Smart – Abby Falik
One of the more compelling ideas I came across this week wasn’t a research paper but in a piece of writing that I felt at times came close to marketing. Despite its, at times, promotional tone, this article offered an interesting perspective on education in the age of AI – one that aligns with my thoughts regarding a transformative history pedagogy and student agency.
The core argument was that education must do more than prepare students for tests; it must equip them to challenge the status quo, imagine alternative futures, and cultivate what makes us authentically human. This resonates with the reparative and generative approach that history pedagogy must adopt – one that goes beyond merely transmitting historical facts and instead empowers students to ask better questions, navigate complexity, and see themselves as agents of change.
The idea of an “education higher than higher ed” which is raised by the author is particularly interesting. A future-oriented, student-centred approach must help learners define success on their own terms – developing historical consciousness, ethical reasoning, and civic agency.
When I was 18, I was what we’d now call an “excellent sheep” – head down, collecting gold stars, marching toward what seemed like the only destination that mattered: admission to a selective college… But standing at the finish line, the achievement felt hollow. I couldn’t shake a nagging question: Whose race was I running? I was in somebody else’s hurry. I knew what I needed was to pause—to step off the conveyor belt and figure out who I was beyond my identity as a “good student.”
Finally, the call to support “dreamers and do-ers” aligns with my consideration of how we might best foster global and personal agency through teaching. If we are to rethink history pedagogy for the digital age, we must ensure that students don’t just consume narratives but actively construct meaning, engage with multiple perspectives, and see history as a tool for shaping the future.
While the piece ultimately felt like a pitch to me, it raised important ideas: history education, like schooling itself, should not merely aim to optimise test scores but aim to ‘do more’ and ‘be more’.
In the age of AI, this imperative is more urgent than ever.
Is Micromanaging Teachers a Recipe for School Success? – The New York Times – Troy Closson and J. David Goodman
This week, a provocative New York Times headline asked: Is Micromanaging Classes a Recipe for School Success? My immediate response? A resounding ‘no’ – or at least, not if success is measured in any meaningful way beyond test scores. The approach described feels deeply industrial-age, neoliberal, and reductive, reducing learning to regimented mechanics rather than fostering curiosity, agency, and genuine intellectual growth.
In comments that remind me of the McNamara Fallacy*, officials implementing this approach claim it has “paid off,” citing test score improvements. But at what cost? Parents and teachers are infuriated, and many see the process as hollow, uninspiring, and harmful to students. Key critiques include:
- A movement of parents and teachers argues that the new model’s emphasis on test preparation damages students’ desire to learn. English lessons now exclude novels, and school libraries have been closed, which disproportionately harms disadvantaged students.
- Leaders implementing these reforms are accused of “bulldozing beloved programs and shrugging off criticism.” This is not only poor leadership but a failure to respect the expertise of teachers and the voices of the community.
- Parents report their children are miserable. As one mother put it, “This is not an education. My kid’s miserable.” Teachers are leaving. One middle-school English teacher was so convinced the new model would harm children that she resigned. Others lament the loss of time for developing social and emotional skills.
- Students themselves feel trapped. The president of the Houston Education Association summarised it starkly: “Children are saying that school is a prison. They hate it.”
Education must be about more than compliance and regimentation. If students are disengaged, if teachers are resigning, and if schools are stripped of creativity, can we truly call it success? Standardised testing metrics do not equate to real learning, and the price of short-term statistical gains may well be long-term damage to students’ well-being and intellectual growth. This model may boost test scores, but it certainly erodes the deeper purpose of education: to foster inquiry, agency, and a love of learning.
Surely, we can aim higher than that.
* The McNamara Fallacy refers to the over-reliance on quantitative metrics while ignoring qualitative factors that are harder to measure. Named after Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, it describes the flawed logic of prioritising measurable statistics (such as body counts) while overlooking crucial but less quantifiable elements (such as morale and political legitimacy). In education, this fallacy manifests when test scores are treated as the sole indicator of success, ignoring essential factors like curiosity, engagement, and student well-being.
Rethinking civics education starts with inviting teens to co-create – The Hechinger Report – Tyler Samstag and Fernande Raine
This next article, co-authored by Fernande Raine, is a call to action. I deeply respect Raine and follow her work on LinkedIn. The piece’s key arguments resonate strongly with my desire to see history education reconnect and re-emphaise connection and students’ capacity for civic agency. In fact, Deweyan inquiry’s focus on social meliorism – something I explore in my own research – aligns closely with the core directions of this article. In other words, the ideas of here which seem to represent a new direction in history education are in fact core themes in history pedagogy which have exist since the late 1800s!
There are a number of important insights that struck me as I read this article. They are worthy of some specific attention.
“What has been missing from [history?] education for decades is deep civic learning, in which students come to understand what a good democratic government looks and feels like and deeply connect with their own capacity to shape the future.”
While the original wording of this quote referred to civics education in the USA, I believe that this is equally true of history. It’s my belief that technology, especially through the use of flipped learning approaches and via wise and reflective use of AI, can support history students in enhancing their capacity to shape the future, rather than passively absorbing the past.
This is especially important because…
“Many students feel disconnected, left out of the discussion, disengaged from community resources, unwelcome, bored, and ignored.”
Samstag and Raine point out that this sense of alienation fosters disillusionment with democracy itself. The solution? We must focus our attention on developing a history pedagogy that centres engagement, community connection, and purpose-driven learning. The advent of artificial intelligence is profoundly disruptive to the industrial models of education that have generated such disillusion. Educators must seize this historical moment to embrace the use of technology in ways that rewire history pedagogy and what happens in our schools! Responsibly building AI-infused classrooms means that teachers must lead a conversation in which we prioritise amplification of what we value most and what we prize in humanity.
“The key is, as learning science has proven, that civic identity cannot be achieved without young people first feeling a sense of belonging and agency in their communities.”
Knowing how what happened in the past, how to read sources like historians, how political institutions came into being, and hoe “government works” is not a grand enough goal for history pedagogy in an AI world. We must work to create a pedagogy that is reparative, generative and future-oriented. Our classes must do all that is inherent in established historical thinking approaches, but as history teachers must seek to ‘do more’. We must work in ways that amplify humanity – ways that cultivate within our students a strong sense of identity, rich connections with a range of communities, and agency in their world. We need to intentionally design history learning experiences that teach for tomorrow.
The good news is that the article identifies several U.S. organisations are actively working in this space. We can all learn from their work:
These organisations offer valuable models for re-enimagining history and civics education. Educators should explore their work for inspiration. The call to co-create civic and historical learning with students is a powerful one. If we want young people to care about history and democracy, we must design learning that makes them active participants, not passive observers.
Disrupted History 