All this talk of PE got me thinking. With all this talk of the crisis in our schools, it seems to me that what’s being held up as an ideal is the kind of schools my friends and I went to- frequently small and private, no metal detectors, but with blatantly dumb pedagogical methods which seriously hold back any students with an interest in learning just because so much of their time is tied up in useless activity.
If you were going to rethink how education is done in America, how would you do it? I’m not asking about how you would uplift the worst schools so much as how you would rework the average schools, where the problem mostly seems to be that the teachers just don’t think about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it (that’s probably not the real root of the problem, but it certainly seems like a big part of it, at least at my old school.) What subjects would you want taught? How would they be taught? How many electives?
I think my ideal high school would be the one that I went to. I spent most of my freshman year at a mainstream public school, so mainstream that it was featured in “Seventeen”. I got out of there as soon as I could by transferring to the alternative school across town. That was a wonderful school were students and teachers were all allowed a great deal of freedom.
We had no dress code and the school’s rules fit neatly on the back of our ID cards (we thought it was very funny to offer to show visitors our “student handbook” and then flash our IDs at them). There were couches instead of desks in most of the classrooms and we called our teacher’s by their first names. We had no required classes and could sign up for whatever we wanted, although we couldn’t graduate unless we met the district requirements for each subject. The teachers could teach a class on just about anything they wanted within their own field. For instance one of the social studies teachers taught a semester-long class all about the Vietnam War, and one of the English teachers did a class on novels that had been made into movies where the students read the books then watched the movies.
Of course this program wasn’t right for everyone (some students couldn’t handle that much freedom and chose to return to their old schools), and I don’t know if a school like mine could have worked as anything other than an alternative program. Since it wasn’t a mainstream school the faculty was able to keep the student body small (never more than 150 students) and could refuse to accept students who they didn’t think were right for the school. They could also kick real troublemakers out of the program and send them back to their old schools. And we did have a problem with funding due to difficulties with the school board – we couldn’t afford to have driver’s ed, home ec., music, any lab sciences, or any foreign languages other than Spanish. During my junior year I had to spend half my day taking classes at my old high school in order to get all the classes I needed for college.
That sounds a lot like what I call, “college.” While harder, I have found it much more enjoyable. Mainly because you are given more choices in which classes to take. And the people that did not want to be there, didn’t have to, making for a better learning environment.
Many states now have public boarding schools specializing in science and mathematics (other subjects are covered too, of course). Most of the teachers have Masters degrees in the subjects they teach, not in “Education.” I would dearly have loved to attend a school like that, but I didn’t know they existed until years later. The Maine School of Science & Mathematics is one example.
I attended a statewide math-science magnet for my last two years of high school, and it was the best decision I ever made. Unlike most of the state math/science programs, it was actually located at a university; an average state school, not the greatest, but sure better than any high school I’ve ever heard of. All of my classes were taught by university faculty, and all but four (English composition, which was taught like an AP class, and Precalc and Calc I) were regular university courses (I took one upper-level German conversation course in which I–as a high school junior–was the only non-university student in the class). We were all required to take the same core: math through Calc II; two semesters each of chemistry, biology, and physics, with labs and all the classes for majors in their respective fields; four semesters of English (two composition, two literature); two semsters of American History (taught by a professor who was the best lecturer I have ever had, a truly gifted speaker and storyteller) and one semester of political science (American government). No health, no PE, no silly state-required gen-ed classes (though this was a publicly funded program).
Beyond the required courses, we were allowed to take whatever electives (provided our GPA was above certain cutoffs) we wanted, selected from the full university offerings. As far as the university was concerned, we were regular, undergraduate freshmen and sophomores. Since tuition, fees, and books were covered by the state, I got three semesters of music lessons from people well-known in their fields free. I also was able to do research for credit with a chemistry professor for a year; several people in the program have publications by the time they graduate high school.
So such things are quite obviously not for everyone, and really aren’t practical on such a scale that would permit everyone who would benefit to take part, but I’m very, very glad I had the opportunity available. It got me out of an average, large public high school to a place where I could actually be challenged and interested for the first time in my educational career.
All systems have their pros and cons. The only one that I’d outlaw is home schooling. It is such an abused system and has horrible social ramifications upon the children that participate.
Better to throw them into a big auditorium and see how they fare.
i think and accounting/personal finance course should be mandatory in junior or senior year. after graduation people have to make financial decisions, credit card companies bombard college students, have to sign leases, etc.