Education Agenda vs. Research

The act of creating public educational policies is political by default, because the whole of a democratic people are oblidged to follow the laws of that policy. This would be simple if there was a whole consensus of what to teach, when to teach, and how-to-teach-what-to-whom; of course, there is not. Public education is a sociological sculpting tool used to shape our future, and there is no consensus of what that “shape” should be. Conflicts are inevitable as factions hold orthogonal or even antithetical beliefs of what constitutes a healthy human society, and each faction fights to reign control of the sculpting tool of tomorrow. Public education is the critical tool for political leaders to push their agendas onto the public, i.e., to sculpt their future societal ideals.

So, how do we resolve these conflicts? How do we reach a consensus as to the best methods of teaching our children?  We can’t unless we can agree on what should be learned. One would think educational research would be the ultimate mediator. One would think that the  science of learning assessment, the detailed analysis of how we learn, when we learn, and why we learn would be the objective heavyweight that would be the authority on how-to-teach-what-to-whom, and knock out the conflicts, but it is not.