From the Reform Kitchen

 

 

So, they let me off work tonight and you know what I'm in the mood to do? I'm in the mood to reform secondary education! I mean, I'm also in the mood to reform healthcare, but I'll save that for a later date. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. Not that I chew. Usually I just rip off a big chunk and swallow it whole. Which is why I get a lot of stomach aches.

 

Okay, so if I'm going to reform public education I need to throw everything in the garbage and just start with a clean cutting board and some really sharp knives. One of the main problems with education reformers in my view is that they begin with the system as it is and the problem with that is that that is sort of like trying to fix a pineapple-upside down cake when you mistook a box of Borax for flour. No amount of extra cherries is going to fix that sucker, you see? You have to throw it out and start over.

 

Apparently I'm also in the mood for food analogies.

 

So, I'm beginning my new education reform upside-down cake with two very simple observations I have made in my experience as an educator of adolescents and young teens. First, I can teach more to one kid in an hour than I can to thirty kids in a week, and second? How will I put it? Let's see...oh, I know! School sucks, man!

 

Let's take the first premise first. While my ratio may be a little bit off, the basic premise is an incontrovertible truth. If  you have a handful of those wriggly worms in front of you, say, a maximum of five, depending on the level of wriggliness of the participants, it is much easier to focus their attention, to engage them and to communicate complex ideas. In a classroom environment of thirty kids, or even fifteen, I am telling you, most of the time is wasted.

 

In further support of premise number one, I present to you my expert opinion on the nature of the adolescent. Who says I don't have any credible references? I know all about this subject first hand because, folks, I was one, and I'm telling you that the tendency of the average adolescent mind is to view the teacher as a blathering subhuman and to think of herself as the center of the universe. As the center of the universe, everything the adolescent says and does, even the position of her feet relative to the floor is on stage in front of her peers: her peers that she has ranked from most important to least important in terms of their opinion of her, and to whom she is either pandering for attention, ignoring, or attempting to smoosh deeper into the dirt, depending upon where the person is in her ranking system. Some of the teens, not thus engaged, are usually the ones who are being ignored or smooshed into the dirt and are spending their time thinking about how to subvert this inevitability.

 

In a classroom setting, the teacher is even less important than the peers that the adolescent wishes to smoosh into the dirt. The teacher is non-substantial. She is air. She may become human temporarily if she can be used for convenience to impact the status of the adolescent: if she can protect her, if she can serve as an object of ridicule, if the student is bored and has nobody else to talk to. Electronic devices, of course, have only exacerbated the problem. Minimizing peer distraction is the biggest obstacle a teacher has to overcome.

 

This brings me to my second premise. I not only hated public school when I was an adolescent, I hated it when I was a teacher. The second experience was worse because even though I hated it, I had to pretend that I didn't and, even worse than that, I had to defend it! At least as an adolescent I could say "this sucks" and keep my job. No amount of lamps and plants was going to turn that classroom into anything other than what it was: prison.

 

Adolescents need to be set free from this prison. The prison-like environment of most public schools says one thing to adolescents: you are bad. It also triggers only one desire: rebel! Fear and oppression do not foster learning. A more open, trusting environment which encouraged independence and freedom of expression would not only go further in producing life-long learners, it would probably quite paradoxically result in fewer disciplinary problems. Also, a more customized approach that embraced diversity in skill levels, interests, and learning styles could be achieved.

 

So, with those two factors in mind: really small classrooms for academic subjects (less than five) and an environment that encourages independence and freedom, this is how I see my perfect school. Oh, and, by the way, it could probably be implemented without any discernible effect on cost. Let me say that again: no extra cost. I know because I'm a brilliant mathematician and I've crunched the numbers. Okay, so I'm lying, but it doesn't seem like it would cost a heck of a lot more. Let's just go with that.

 

So this is how the upside-down cake approach to secondary education would work. Instead of a classroom of thirty or more students, each teacher would meet with three to five kids at a time for one hour, once a week (modifications to this basic plan could be made depending on individual need). During this hour, the teacher would sit very close to his students and discuss the "lecture" material for thirty to forty minutes. At the end of the hour, each student would be given an assignment that she would have to complete by the following week (or two weeks, or however long the 'lesson' runs).

 

From the teachers' perspective, teaching five classes a day like this, five kids at a time, five days a week would be a grand total of one-hundred and twenty-five students. That's about how many students the average secondary level public school teacher presently keeps track of. The rest of the day, of course, would be spent doing all of that "other stuff" that teachers do that people don't seem to realize takes up most of their time: planning, grading, offering extra help, meeting with parents, etc.

 

Under this plan, the students would have only one-two academic subjects a day, maybe six in a week: the same number of academic subjects that the average secondary level public school students presently takes. But, the question is, what would the student be doing with the rest of his time? This is where the second factor I mentioned would come in. He would be released into the wilderness.

 

Okay, so that would just be chaos, but while some of what I will call "open" time could be spent taking more "hands on" electives like art, music, shop, etc., which lend themselves to larger groups,  the majority of the students' time would be spent working on their assignments (remember those?) in "open resource" rooms, which would resemble libraries. Each open resource room would be equipped with an adequate number of teaching assistants/volunteers/tutors/responsible students and, of course, all of the resources necessary for the students to complete their assignments. Some of these rooms could be quiet rooms, and others could encourage interaction/collaboration. Students would be relatively free to roam, and could even go to lunch or take small breaks whenever they needed to (though they would be monitored, of course, and tracked at all times).

 

Of course, I'd leave the details up to people who like details, but some sort of incentive program could be built into the structure, so that students gained priveleges and earned trust depending on their progress. Students who could not handle independence could receive extra supervision. Those who needed more academic assistance could be matched with tutors or get extra help from teachers during their office hours. Assignments could be more "project" oriented and less compartmentalized so that they would require more critical thinking, creativity, and real-world application. Students might use some of this open time for apprenticeships, volunteer work, gardening, political activism. There is no end to the possibilities.

 

Reality check. Of course I know that most kids just want to make paper airplanes and fart. I'm not saying that they should be given complete control. What I am saying is that perhaps public schools should employ more guidance and less instruction. Perhaps the approach should be to work with the best of adolescent nature, instead of fighting against the worst of it. Also, and not incidentally, not only would the structure encourage happier, less stressed students, I think it would result in happier, less stressed teachers. That, when it comes to fostering excellence, is the most important ingredient of all.