‘Downton Abbey’ lends metaphors to our school system

Anyone who knows me is well aware of my obsession with “Downton Abbey.”

Admittedly, I’m hooked by the soap opera elements of the TV show about an early 19th-century aristocratic British family and its servants. I want to know if Bates and Anna will have their happy ending and whether Ladies Mary and Edith will finally figure out what to do with their privileged lives. I wept when saintly, beautiful Lady Sybil and dashing, good-hearted Matthew met tragic ends.

But I’m actually more taken with the show’s central conceit of showing how people react to change. The appearance of a typewriter throws the servants’ quarters into turmoil, and the installation of telephones requires a period of adjustment. Social issues, from women beginning to assert themselves in a man’s world to the crumbling of grand British estates, are recurring themes, with the characters adapting in different ways and at varying paces.

I bring this up because, like these fictional men and women of yesteryear, we modern folk tend to welcome changes in the way we live, work and interact reluctantly, often finding ourselves confused by new developments. And like the “Downton Abbey” characters, we frequently don’t even recognize when we’ve already passed the point of no return —when the changes have taken root so deeply that we’ll never go back to “the old ways,” as the scrupulously proper butler Mr. Carson would say.

Such may be the case with the evolution of education.

Although much in education remains as it has long been, with teachers presiding over students sitting at desks facing forward, there are many aspects to how kids are taught and schools are structured that have irrevocably changed. These changes come with a mix of promise and peril. How much of each is debatable, but there’s no use pining for the old days and what we imagine was a simpler time when education was a more straightforward and understandable matter.

The most obvious way that education has changed is through the utilization of technology, which has broken down the four walls of a classroom, bringing the outside world in and the inside out.

Instead of weighty textbooks, students these days are turning more to laptops, tablets and smartphones, all of which offer immediate access to massive amounts of information online, and which facilitate new means of communication, collaboration and cooperation in learning.

And that cooperation isn’t limited by distance. Thanks to technology, students can monitor research projects half a world away, or talk to others outside their local communities who are studying the same topics.

In addition to changing the way we source information and materials, technology has also greatly expanded access to education through online learning, which is increasingly becoming accepted as a legitimate means of completing various requirements toward earning degrees. Technology is also contributing to the evolving role of teachers, who are seeing themselves more as facilitators or guides to student learning, rather than unapproachable dispensers of knowledge.

Another way that education has changed for the long haul is through the increased use of standardized testing. Like it or not — and I’m with those who don’t like it one bit — and despite a huge backlash against the outsized importance given to standardized tests, this is a phenomenon that isn’t going to disappear.

What will happen, hopefully, is that we’ll get better at it. And by “hopefully,” I mean that I really, really hope that is the ultimate outcome of the constant retooling and reimagining of the way we assess and grade both our schools and our students. From the hugely unpopular and little lamented “No Child Left Behind,” to the newly redesigned — again — affliction that is the SAT, it’s hard to imagine doing much worse.

So far, there’s little indication that we’ve learned enough from our mistakes when it comes to testing. Common Core’s new tests aren’t winning many fans. And despite calls from politicians and educators to reduce the number of tests given, and the punitive nature in which they are often used, nothing particularly promising has so far emerged.

The California High School Exit Exam is now dead, thanks to legislation signed last fall by Gov. Jerry Brown, and while no one is crying over its demise it’s just a matter of time before the next iteration is thrust upon us. Proposals have been floated to replace the exit exam with a new Common Core-aligned test, or to simply use the — no, please no! — SAT instead.

Whatever. The point is, I don’t like it, nobody really likes it, except, of course, the legions of “consultants” and “specialists” who make money off the assessments and study guides, but our reliance on standardized testing isn’t going away.

Speaking of those consultants, I come to yet another way that education has changed: It is now big business. Very big.

When people talk about the “corporatization of education,” they usually refer to the drive to make public schools operate more like businesses. But it’s really so much more than that. Corporations reap huge profits from everything from designing curriculum and assessments to advising educators how to do their jobs. What’s more, businesses are wielding greater power in determining educational priorities by dangling donations and offering free stuff.

As “Downton Abbey’s” patient housekeeper Mrs. Hughes might say to a disapproving Mr. Carson, “That’s just the way of the world now.”

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.