Schools are Essentially Custodial- and we may want to market that

Alvin Toffler, author of the groundbreaking 1970 book Future Shock, stated in a recent Edutopia interview:

"The schools of today are essentially custodial: They're taking care of kids in work hours that are essentially nine to five -- when the whole society was assumed to work. Clearly, that's changing in our society. So should the timing. We're individualizing time; we're personalizing time. We're not having everyone arrive at the same time, leave at the same time. Why should kids arrive at the same time and leave at the same time?"

It is an interesting perspective which underscores the changing nature of work in modern society and juxtaposes the logistics of school which are still mimicking the work model of the industrial revolution. This was the main point of his statement.

I see an opportunity here, though. Setting aside the logistical concerns of having students come and go at different times, I think Toffler's idea underscores how important the custodial nature of schools really is. I wrote about this in a blog post a while back when I asked if we were in the "Post-School Era."

"One important distinction between traditional K-12 schools and our online counterparts is the custodial function of K-12 schools. Much of the instructional function can be digitized and delivered online, asynchronously, but K-12 schools still have a custodial responsibility to care for children while their parents work. I think that in the past, we have seen this as a "degredation" of our profession, as if parents think we are primarily babysitters who happen to teach kids some stuff. (This feeling is reinforced whenever we call a snow day that parents think we shouldn't have called. 

"I propose that we focus on our custodial function as a strength that we can use to market ourselves. In an era when education can be provided easily without a physical school building, we will be hard pressed to compete with virtual charter schools who can hire anybody with a bachelor's degree to deliver canned content online. However, they cannot supervise students or take care of their physical needs online. Our facilities and qualified staff, which are our greatest expenses, must also be our greatest assets."

I cringe as I read my comments above, because they seem to accept the idea of virtual charter schools as being as good as highly qualified teachers and the rich resources of traditional schools. I don't believe that, but I also need to remind myself that not all of our customers (parents and students) value qualified teachers and rich resources as much as I do. (And I'm always mindful of Clayton Christensen's warning that disruptive innovations start out as inferior products.) The more competition we (educators) face in our marketplace, the more we need to be attuned and responsive to customer demands. If highly qualified traditional teachers and nice facilities are not highly desired, then we can't bank on them alone to keep us "in business."

Of course, we can inform our customers about why these are good things, the same way that any company informs its customers why their product's features are important. But we also need to be responsive to the other desires of consumers.

As we design schools learning environments, we need to market the value of schools, even if the value to the parents is not the same as what we value! This is difficult for us educators, since we are proud of our knowledge, our skills, and our qualifications. After all, we value education, so we are proud of the education and training we have received. But we should acknowledge that in the new world of competition, caring for children is just as important as teaching them.