It is important to recognize that doing school looks just like learning, so much so that it consistently fools teachers, who tend to be smart, thoughtful people.  

Think about a classic scene:  students are sitting in rows, staring ahead while a teacher presents new material.  Are they learning?  Perhaps.  But it’s likely that some of them are thinking about other things, or texting their friends with their phones hidden below the desk.  When the teacher asks a question, a few students may raise their hands and respond, but they are the students who are good at doing school and who already know the answer to the question.  The students who don’t know avoid eye contact with the teacher and hope someone else will be picked.  At some point, the teacher asks, “Any questions?” but the students who do have questions are unlikely to publicly admit they don’t understand, and the teacher moves on, thinking everyone has mastered that material.

Doing school is a simulation of learning.  Like all simulations, it may look real, but is missing the very heart of the matter.  It doesn’t enhance learning; it replaces learning with activities that feel hollow and pointless to students.  Of course, doing school isn’t the only thing going on in classrooms, but it plays a prominent and detrimental role in the intellectual and personal lives of far too many students.  If we are to deal with this damage, we have to first admit that doing school is imposed on students.  They did not walk into kindergarten believing that they should get as many points as possible or that cramming for a test is a useful exercise.  Teachers, administrators, and parents bear the responsibility of creating that reality, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.  We now have the obligation to undo the damage and create an alternative that does a better job of helping students fulfill their human potential.

To do that, it is essential to understand the nature of the problem.  What exactly is doing school?  What does it look and feel like?  Why does it happen?  And most importantly, how can it be replaced with a form of education that will actually nurture learning for all students?

We must become anthropologists and observe the strange rituals and customs of this little society to see what makes it tick.  It’s exactly because doing school looks so much like true learning that we need a way to discriminate between the two.  Just as a field guide for bird watchers describes the markings by which one species can be distinguished from another, the following sections will help us find the distinctive “markings” that will allow us to know doing school when we see it.  Only then will we know why schools are the way they are, and how they serve so many of their students so poorly.