BOOK REVIEW: Disrupting Class

There are many common excuses in the eyes of the American populace that explain the major flaws in our country's education system. We have all heard them before:

• underfunded schools;
• computer shortage in the classroom;
• disinterested parents and students;
• a broken teaching model;
• overpowered teachers' unions; and
• flawed standardized tests.

In his book Disrupting Class, author Clayton Christensen explains that these issues are also prevalent in countries that continue to outperform U.S. students in national comparisons. As such, these excuses cannot be the whole problem. Christensen says that we need to "disrupt" the current structure of education.

The theory of disruption "describes how people interact and react, how behavior is shaped, how organizational cultures form and influence decisions." Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, applied his theory of disruption to the business world in his previous books The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution. In his latest literary venture, Disrupting Class, Christensen brings the same practices to America's education system.

"Disruption is a positive force," according to Christensen. "It is the process by which an innovation transforms a market whose services are complicated and expensive into one where simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability characterize the industry."

In Disrupting Class, the innovation in question is challenging our education system to take on a student-centric approach as opposed to the "monolithic instruction of batches of students" that it currently employs. The foundation for this argument stems from the research of Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences, which states that students learn in a number of modalities.

Disrupting Class is a chapter-by-chapter blueprint that demonstrates the dilemmas facing the education structure and the implications of adopting his disruptive theory. Christensen suggests that schools should be customizing education for each student's learning style -- "student-centric learning opens the door for students to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the paces they prefer by combining content in customized sequences."

Christensen writes that computer-based learning is a possible way to reach all the learners in our schools. While he raises many excellent points in his book and takes a refreshing approach to improving education, he also recognizes some of the limitations of such a paradoxical change to the norm. He says that despite spending upward of $60 billion over the last two decades placing computers in schools, "they have 'crammed' the new technologies into their existing structure, rather than allowing the disruptive technology to take root in a new model and allow that to grow and change how they operate."

The theory of disruption in education is more than a paradigm shift. Since disruption would change the face of education as we know it -- less student-teacher interaction, making classrooms irrelevant and removing administration from learning by creating personalized curriculum -- Christensen's theory is a paradigm jolt. While the theory has extremely insightful components that address many needs within our system, the reality of education does not make it viable.

This model would involve a complete overhaul of the typical school and classroom structure. It would also involve major managerial and organizational challenges, and Christensen is aware of the intrinsic resistance to change found in many schools. While there are moments in the book when the author seems to readily recognize that the reality of the status quo imminently looms over his theory of change, Disrupting Class should be valued as a unique and enlightening work of research that holds weight as a potential long-term solution to the deficiencies observed in U.S. schools.

Details: Disrupting Class
Author: Clayton Christensen
Publisher: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2008
Price: $32.95 Hardcover

*This story is from Converge magazine's Fall 2008 issue.