Kids will learn when they get to choose the way they learn.  And different kids will choose different methods.  It’s as simple as that.

I didn’t minimize the value of a good teacher.  I’ve known too many amazing teachers and I’ve been lucky enough to work with some, too.  And none of them would think that their students’ futures were “entrusted to them.”  And none of them would be “entrusting their kids’ futures” to the teachers they sent them to.

That doesn’t mean a teacher can’t have a life-long effect. It just means kids need to learn that their lives are in their own hands and that teachers are their to help them in any way they can.

And it’s kinda funny how much that ‘perfect’ system resembles the inhuman wage slave factories it’s so obviously descended from.

As long as there are significantly more than something like five students to every teacher (who incidentally should enjoy a status more on par with doctors), you can’t tell me this ‘perfect’ system is anything more than a glorified childminding service.

I seem to recall a figure like $7 made for every $1 spent on education… well, at what point do diminishing returns kick in? Has anybody bothered to establish that? And why aren’t we pouring every available cent into such a great investment?

I suspect education isn’t the real point of the exercise.

Furthermore, if you consider some of the glowing testimony you’ve doubtless seen to the impact a single good teacher can make on a student’s life, perhaps you might not be so quick to minimise their potential role.

I’m not surprised, but I disagree. My position is that the method of learning that a child most enjoys is most likely the best method for that child.

Your assertion requires that you, somehow, have come to know what every single child on the planet desires in their learning experience.

I, alas, am not privy to such a superior understanding of the unknowable, and so I’ll defer to your power to read the minds of millions of children you’ve never met.

Oh wait, no you’re not, now you’re merely stating some kids love it and thrive in it.

My assertion that such a system is inherently incapable of being optimal for anyone stands unmodified.

I do not believe in compulsory attendance.  I also don’t believe that teachers are or ever should be “folks we entrust our future to.”  I think teachers work best as facilitators and counselors for learning the things kids want to learn. I think that many teachers are underpaid and many are overpaid. I worked alongside both kinds for several years, though I’m unaware of any who are “paid like menial laborers.”

But it is also unrealistic to expect an underfunded system filled with overworked people to fulfill the needs of every child.

I merely posit that it’s unrealistic to expect such a system to meet the needs of any child.

See my reply to aikimoe below.

Excuse me if my bitterness shows when I see such unimaginative endorsement of the status quo.

What you said is akin to a Christian asserting that some interpretation or other of the Bible can actually hold water. Okay, I’ll grant it’s possible, but then again the chances are too infinitesimal to take at all seriously…

But maybe we’re talking at cross-purposes? Let’s see… if by ‘traditional method’ you mean compulsory attendance at an institution where the folks we entrust our future to are paid like menial labourers and have to divide their attention amongst 20-30 kids at a time, and any kid who demands more than their allocated 1/25th of a shit is deemed a problem, then yes, your opinion has earned my scorn.

If you consider the possible ROI in education, a general lack of imagination would appear to me to be the fundamental crime at the heart of this travesty. Too many people consider far too much of the reality they know as inevitable and immutable.

I will integrate it into my theories of education. 

If anyone is interested, I started a company that uses live action role playing (larp) for learning. We are just starting, but looking to roll out a few of our games (curriculum) via Kicktarter in a few months. 

Seekers Unlimited: http://seekersunlimited.com/

It was specifically and explicitly designed to “acclimate” more immigrant Americans to work on old-style factory assembly lines.  Hence, the bells, rigid time schedules, “assembly line learning,” etc.

Factories have largely moved on from the Henry Ford days (team approaches, etc.) but schools (largely) have not.

Further, a common aphorism in architecture schools is, “You design a school exactly like you’d design a prison.”  I spent years listening to promos on NPR for a local design firm, which bragged about how it had  designed this public school and that public school — and the state’s new maximum security prison.  

Lastly, as an unschooling parent, I used to be regularly asked about my family’s homeschooling, by various education experts, with great excitement at the university where I worked.  As one would often say, “Well, the one thing we know about education is that everything we know about education… doesn’t work.”  So they loved to ask if we did this or that; I’d explain it was basically a Montessori approach, and our house was as much a library/museum/computer lab as it was anything else.  They loved it, and the questions continued over months/years.

Until one day, the head of the state’s teacher union was there in the same meeting.  

She listens politely as the questions and praise continue, blablabla, getting more red in the face, until finally she announces, “Well, homeschooling is well and good, but I don’t think that we should forget the one thing that public schools can provide that no one else can.

“Free day care.”
That was the end of the questions, at least in her company.  I am pleased to find that my kids are now at the tops of their programs in college.

You’re absolutely right that these methods can’t work for certain kinds of kids from certain backgrounds.

I think the value they bring comes from addressing the fact that most kids get some support from home and that there lots and lots of kids for whom programs like the Independence Project would make school a more positive experience.  

And let’s remember that there are millions of kids who absolutely hate going to school, and it’s not because they simply haven’t learned to enjoy it yet.  It’s precisely because of the experiences like the ones described by Eldritch above.  There are even lots of kids who do well in school, but who hate the experience.

(As far as “doing well in public school,” what is the metric for that?  Test scores?  Happiness?  ”Success” after school?  These are huge and largely subjective topics in and of themselves.)

I think that if a kid says, “I hate school and I hate what they make me do and I don’t want to do well there,” the problem isn’t with the kid.  The problem is that we, as adults and educators, haven’t examined our own expectations for these individuals and to what degree they have a role in how and what they choose to learn.

The whole point of alternative education approaches is that different kids learn in different ways.  I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the majority of kids learned best outside the arbitrary and bureaucratic requirements of the predominant paradigm.  But we shouldn’t ignore the needs of the kids who really respond well to that kind of structure.

In CA she can issue a 90 day notice, once unsatisfactory evaluation has been written, and the teacher is gone.

If the teacher is so bad they can be removed from the classroom without being fired.

Don’t tell me how hamstrung principals are.

Oh, and good luck replacing that fired teacher, cuz nobody wants to work that hard for that little in such a hostile environment.

When I entered school at eleven, I was either top of the class, or at least in the top ten percent, at english, math, woodwork, the sciences, geography, and most other topics, than those who had been doing those. I was good at those sports which were non-competitive and non-team-based (swimming). My first day in french class, a subject I had never studied, the teacher was giving a test. I got full marks, because, at eleven, the schools are just starting to teach those terms that are considered general knowledge to those of us who live in the real world: “Bonjour, je m’appelle Marie” etc.

In most of these topics, I feel I have advanced only a little, since then.

There were topics I was not as good at, because they *do* require concerted training. Music. Team sports. Social skills. These are the things that schools are good for, if the child has the desire to learn them.

School didn’t work for me. I was a kid with undiagnosed ADD and an IQ of 140+. I thought I was nuts. My teachers thought I was lazy. A few thought I was cheating when I would score A’s on their tests after doing no homework. Another few were clever enough to squeeze a bit of effort out of a child who had given up on himself. Was this a failure of the system? Perhaps. But it is also unrealistic to expect an underfunded system filled with overworked people to fulfill the needs of every child. I was extremely bitter about education. But the knowledge I did gain (and I gained a lot despite my best efforts to shrug it off) was precisely because it was forced onto me. Left to my own devices, my wandering mind would have flitted from one flower to another.

I eventually became a teacher, with the idea that I would change things. I left teaching five years later. Not because the system was flawed (though it is in many ways), but because I was flawed. I had a lot to offer the children. We read together and wrote books. I taught them chess. And we talked about the wonders of the universe. I’m sure I inspired them in many ways. But I didn’t have the organizational skills necessary to really track and analyze the educational needs of each child. I was doing them as much of a disservice as the system had done me. I was treating them as little versions of myself. I saw so many teachers working hard to differentiate their curricula to meet the needs of individual students. I wasn’t doing that. I failed, and I couldn’t do that to the kids. Plus, the pay really sucked and I was tired of living with my parents.

My daughter has a wonderful mind. She needs the structure of school for the same reason that I did, and she thrives with it. But her education doesn’t end with school. My wife and I continue it at home. School gives her a chance to bring the mad monkey that is her brain under a little control when she needs to. Then I give that mad monkey time to play and explore. It is important for her to learn how to work when she needs to accomplish something. The world isn’t going to care that she needs to play. I care. My wife cares. And we make sure she does. But as parents, we also make sure she learns to control her desires, and objectively view her own needs and the needs of others.

Anyway, I think I get where you are coming from, and I’m sorry your experience was so negative. But negative experiences are an opportunity to learn if you allow it. Growth can only be stifled if you give up on yourself. Children need strong parents to support them. That’s the key, in my opinion.

Make reality so fucking incredibly heinous, and bam! There’s your plausible deniability.

You are absolutely right that, for many kids, the traditional method works best.

I would be fucking amazed if there ever lived a single kid for whom the traditional method actually. works. best.

I suppose those who were easily broken early didn’t find it too bad on the whole, and nostalgia finishes the whitewashing.

But not us. We remember. And our blood boils for those who suffer still.

I’ve read other articles about how they mix the ages up, older kids mentor younger etc.  Swedish people usually seem balanced, smart, self-reliant and capable.

I’ve got two kids in school now; they’re at an outstanding primary that subscribes to the mores of unstructured education, and they’re batting well above my averages for their ages.  I was fortunate enough to cruise elementary school with high grades – assisted no doubt by my vivid imagination and experimentation gifted to me by my artistic and creative mother.

My big beef horsemeat is that so many of my compatriots were so bright and quick, yet during high school they switched off and learned … nothing.  Great school, but utterly failed them, and did so quite happily.

My behaviour wasn’t perfect, mostly down to family ructions, but I was again lucky enough to fall in with the right crowd of teachers, who assisted flexibly whenever they could.

But the system is full of vicissitudes, and come the grand discussions over university applications etc, the dark-cloaked, concealed and shadowy background characters played havoc with my intentions, taking their revenge.  They’d never enjoyed that someone like me could function so well in their system – I really didn’t fit the mold.

So it’s vital that the education network not only educate, but prepare and act as a springboard into the next phase of life, by supporting and helping people understand what might make them happy.

Also. We are not hunter gatherers. WTF.

There are too many people who have devoted their lives to meaningless “standards” and other mythical concepts in education.  Only when we can insist, demand that our local schools implement new, experimental, and individualized programs, while ignoring anything politicians say on the subject, will anything happen.

It would actually cost a lot less than we’re currently spending, and there are too many people who think we’re not spending enough.

The traditional method should be completely available to any kids who need it, but until a variety of methods are available to all the kids, until educators and politicians stop pretending that every single 8-year-old needs to be reading and doing math at a particular level, then for many, if not most kids, school will forever be a prison.

I have a hard time blaming teachers and/or administrators, not least because my parents were both teachers and my father was an administrator for many years.  They brought passion and commitment to their jobs, but also struggled with paperthin budgets, endless re-structuring of the curricula (not always bad, but always after an election), absurdly large class sizes with kids who needed specific support but had no funding to get it.

By the end of their careers they were exhausted, tapped out.  My mother had heart problems, my father was spiritually at his lowest point. 

On the other hand, I didn’t fit into the school system at all.  The curriculum is aimed at the middle chunk of the bell curve.  Kids with challenges fall behind, get labelled and fall through the cracks.  “Over-intelligent’ kids get bored, act out, get labelled and fall through the cracks. 

I got a lot of grief from an English teacher because I finished reading the entire year’s worth of stories and books by November and was reading novels in class.  He had me disciplined for not reading the specific three pages that were assigned on a particular day.  In Grade 10 I researched the exact minimum average I would need to get into college, then did exactly the right amount of work to get that grade on graduation (I thought I was so smart).  I ended up seeing the entire exercise as hoop-jumping training, and I still do.

On the gripping hand, my 8 year old did terribly last year with a loose, open minded teacher who let the kids go at their own pace.  This year he is really excelling with an enthusiastic and excellent but very strict teacher who has clear expectations – something I always rebelled against. 

Every kid is different.  My older son does well in a structured environment with clear expectations.  I suspect my younger son would do very well with a self-directed learning program, but we can’t home school him because that means someone at home and we need to work in order to home-feed him.