Why Education Is Not Like Medicine

Ed Week

There are three bad ideas popular among education writers in the United States right now. First is the idea that American public education should learn from the medical profession. Second is the idea that better skills are the route to higher income. And third is the instructional core, an idea that teaching consists of three elements—teacher, student, and content. For each of these ideas, there is a better way that will set us on a more constructive path.

Take the idea that American education should learn from the medical profession. This is appealing because over the last hundred years, doctors—bolstered with rigorous medical education, high professional standards, scientific research, and a growing arsenal of powerful drugs—have shown amazing results in healing sick people. It seems logical that if we brought all the same elements to bear on teaching, we could produce similarly impressive results. Indeed, the extensive training of physicians is a useful model, but there's a problem. Education is not like medicine.

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