What’s missing from the educational reform debate—Part 1
Fundamentally, education, schools and learning need to be rethought on a whole different level than we are on. Most of the proposals and theories to make schools better assume schools as they are: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., September to late May or June, classes of 30-40 students of the same age in a “classroom” for about an hour (in some cases 85 minutes), frequent tests of the students’ knowledge of mandated curricula, subjects taught discreetly as if they are unrelated to one another in real life, proms, sports teams, hierarchical (supt., assistant supts., principals, assistant principals, etc.), top-down management system that is mechanical in nature, run by elected boards of education, students with little or no voice in school affairs, etc. The features of the system are remarkably the same across the roughly 14,000 school districts in the U.S. And the Canadian system, from what I’ve read, isn’t a whole lot different. This is one way to do learning.
For some students, the system works well. But not for all by a long shot. What we need to consider is that school as we know it needs changing. What might we consider?
- learning studios instead of classrooms;
- service learning for an extended period of time;
- thematic learning;
- eliminate the distinction between teacher and student;
- an IEP for every student with frequent conversations with adults;
- schools open more: from 7 am till 9 pm, 6 days a week, 250 days a year;
- many different kinds of school with many kinds of curricula;
- return to the arts—music, painting, drawing, poetry, dance, improv.
I’d like to hear what you think so drop a line.