November 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Summer 2002 Vol. 11 No. 2
Editorial
Happy (?) Birthday
By Michael F. Sullivan, Executive Director, Agency for Instructional Technology
AIT is celebrating its 40th birthday in 2002. Surviving for 40 years is a feat unto itself, but there isn't much virtue in just surviving. We try every day to find ways to improve educational opportunities for students. That isn't as easy as it sounds. Improvement means change, and change never comes easy.
I'm fond of saying that AIT has reinvented itself at least four times during those 40 years, but really we've always been a nonprofit agency looking for innovative approaches to improve learning and the well-being of students. Education has reinvented itself at least once in those 40 years, and it was not a reinvention based on children and innovation; it was a reinvention based on requiring better outputs for the economy.
We don't usually get a very positive response when we tell educators we have an idea for a better way to help students learn. We could get a better response by telling them that we have a way to increase test scores. The great unspoken secret is that everyone in education knows that learning is no longer important. Student mental health and affective development are no longer important. If the students are cracking, we add security. If test scores are down, we do more test preparation. If the kids are healthy, happy, bright, creative, and have low scores on standardized tests, we put the school on probation.
AIT, like most organizations, has a choice. We can move into the test-score improvement business or wait for the next reinvention of education. We're used to reinventions based on market conditions, and we realize that education doesn't reinvent itself very often or very quickly, but we're going to wait this one out and hope that schools can get back in the business of helping students to grow as people. Watch this space for an announcement of our 50th birthday.
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