Fixing education, pt. 11: What might new American public schooling look like?

I know this last article has been a longer time in coming. Sorry. I needed to stew on it a bit. If you haven't read the previous articles in this series, you might want to give them a look. Here ya go: The primary focus of modern education should be to nurture each child's inborn love of learning. This should include vigilance toward any forces that either crush a child's own drive to learn or that effectively co-ops their chance at self-driven mastery. To do this, we must trust the child to seek the learning they need in this world. We must be patient and give them time to come to their learning at their pace. This idea is at the heart of the "unschooling" movement, which isn't about a child not learning. It's about child-led learning that avoids the authoritative top-down instruction of traditional schooling. This type of old-fashioned schooling starts suppressing a child's own curiosity and drive to learn at a very young age. By the end of high school, kids have learned to please adults by regurgitating what is fed to them and nothing else. There are several arguments against this old style of school. First is simply that it is counter to how children naturally grow and learn. Second, many kids experience school trauma as a result of being forced to learn in a way counter to their intrinsic self. Third, children are left not knowing how to find their way in the world, as their way has always been dictated to them by others. Fourth, in our modern world, people need to be able to reinvent themselves and their skills repeatedly over their lifetime. If allowed to self-initiate their own learning throughout their education, a young adult will develop exactly the flexibility skills they need. Fifth, we now know how diverse the learning styles are within each classroom. Our current schooling leaves behind close to 30 percent of the average class. That is a waste of talent. Sixth, our old system only tries to offer each child a "Free and Appropriate Public Education." It does not have a goal of helping each child develop to their full potential. Frankly, that is an achievable goal and worth working toward. I am not a purist and would argue a well-educated teacher can not only facilitate child-led learning but also offer material of importance a child might not initially pursue. With the careful caveat that the primary goal would be nurturing self-led learning, I think occasional topics are worth teaching. So what could all this look like? If one of our goals is to nurture the development of a child's full potential, we need to start with early screening for learning differences. Dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, auditory and visual processing disorders, etc. can often be picked up at quite a young age, 3 years old, if one goes looking. Finland screens early and intervenes early on all kids. It does not require a diagnosis to intervene. Finland looks for need and takes action. This is part of why it has the highest literacy rate in the world, basically 100 percent. The US literacy rate is 71 percent and ranks 36th globally. Until age 7, children should be in a play-focused environment with a lot of outdoor time. Teachers with deep understanding of child development should allow children much free rein while facilitating social, emotional and relational development. At this stage, didactic learning such as reading, writing and math should only be presented to kids who express interest in and seek out this type of learning. Furthermore, since social and emotional learning is an ongoing process through high school, we need to keep class sizes small throughout K-12. This allows a teacher to develop a closer relationship with each child. If we have students track with the same teacher over several years, this sense of community can be deepened. Democratic schooling is another movement in the US with much to offer. In a democratic school, students develop their own school rules and enforce them by practicing a judicial review of perceived violators. This ownership of the rules and conventions deepens a child's sense of efficacy and community. Both are integral to successful schools. Small schools are also key in helping create a sense of community for students. The movement toward larger and larger high schools has created unwieldy environments where teachers often have little real authority and some kids feel fearful and guarded. The merging of schools is often proposed as a way to provide more offerings at less cost. Football teams, drama departments and science labs can be supported in one rather than several locations. I would propose flipping the idea. Keep schools small and have the extras at a central location they can all access. Recess and lunch time need a revisit. Many Scandinavian countries give young kids outdoor free play for 15 minutes out of every hour of work. In addition, a larger block is given for midday recess. Studies of the most productive American adults have shown that they take a 15- to 20-minute break for every 45 minutes of work. So yeah. more breaks for kids who are actually growing and learning through that break. Lunch in American schools is a mess. We want our kids to eat healthy yet often give them only 20 minutes for lunch. We are teaching them it's OK to deny the needs of your body for food and rest. Just be a good worker! In addition, the quality of food offered at schools is horrible. As kids get older, the volume of food offered is also insufficient. My 6-foot-3 15-year-old is given portions more appropriate to an 8-year-old. Teens in mid growth spurt get one 6x6 inch slice of pizza. In some states, families still have to pay for this miserable school lunch. If we want kids to be fed enough to learn, then we should feed them. If we want kids to learn how to eat well, then we should feed them quality healthy foods with flavor! If we want kids to prioritize their health and wellbeing, then we need to give them time to eat and rest. Better yet, in many countries, children are involved in the making and serving of hot lunch for their classmates. So much to learn in this basic life skill. Physical education in America is also a farce. We teach the popular group sports of our culture. But there are many other ways for a person to incorporate healthy movement into their daily lives. In fact, most adults do not participate in a team sport. We can encourage class walks in nature. Community walks around sports fields. We can expose kids to weight lifting, dance, sword play, yoga, Tai Chi and so much more. At one school, my kids were taken to a nearby paved trail and told to run. No warm-up. No gradual increase in walking to running over time. Why? Because all the kids "had to run a mile" for the state PE test. So what happens? My son develops a tendonitis of his knee (Osgood-Schlatter's) and my daughter develops ankle pain. At another school, the PE teacher had kids running sprints and doing burpees on the blacktop in 100-degree heat. That blacktop was probably radiating heat around 130-140 degrees! My son dropped into my car flushed, sobbing and in heat exhaustion. Other kids get pummeled by dodge balls or always picked last for teams. Lots of unnecessary trauma. My 15-year-old girl wants a playground in high school, and time to go down a big kid slide or fly on the swings. Yeah, American PE needs a major overhaul. After extended kindergarten, by age 7-8, I think we can carefully start taking part of the school day to involve kids in hands-on teacher-led learning activities. I would suggest 60-70 percent of the day be reserved for child-led and teacher-facilitated learning. That leaves 30-40 percent of the day for exposing kids to art, music, interesting books, science experiments, math and reading /writing for those who have not yet learned on their own, geography with cultures of the world and all integrated with critical thinking and executive function skills. By middle school, we can start teaching history. But instead of starting with the colonization of the child's state by Europeans, we can start with early hominins, hunter-gatherer societies and the independent development of cities in China, the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia and South America. We can take a global and less US-centered view of history. We can bring them the history of marginalized groups who were previously left out of the stories of our human past. However, 50-70 percent of school time should remain on student-led learning. For high school we, can help kids access the increased levels of learning they want for pursuing their interests. So, offer but not require biology, physics, higher-level math, psychology, communications, business finance and development, etc. In addition, extensive maker space resources, kitchens for cooking, access to hands-on vocational resources would help round out a teenager's learning opportunities. Are you worried kids will just goof off if allowed to do their own learning? If they've gone to traditional schools that crushed their drive to learn and stole their opportunities for self-mastery, then yeah, those kids will need some time to rediscover their curiosity and capabilities. On the other hand, when that internal drive to learn has been allowed to flourish, you get something very different. Here's some of the things my kids have done for "personal projects" (Everything was student researched and skills self-taught. Detailed project planning done on all projects.) through their high school: built a computer from scratch, built high-speed first-person POV drone from scratch, including 3d printing many parts, used tinker CAD to design and then build driver gaming rig, obtain college-level text on veterinary anatomy and physiology, then gave presentation on first four chapters of book, did presentation on cat skeletal anatomy, presentation on snake anatomy, create detailed painted clay model of snake. Other students at the school have done: presentation on Palestine, write code for racing game, crochet and clay projects, presentation on ADHD, rebuild of 6-foot gas-powered remote-control model air plane, etc. etc. One kid's multi-year personal project was to get his pilot's license. He succeeded and is now a professional pilot. This is just a taste of the fully self-driven learning projects students have done in this high school. Just imagine what we'd see if we were to create environments that nurtured this innate capacity at a young age. These ideas form a rough outline of what I think might create a school system that produced young adults who are skilled in and invested in lifelong learning. To make it work, we will need to reconceptualize the training and role of teachers, schools and classrooms. So, what do you think? What are your ideas? What are the problems you've seen, and what are your solutions? How do you envision public schools going forward? I'm working on a book about public education reform and special education issues. If you are a parent, teacher or school professional, I'd like to tell your story. Everything will, of course, be confidential. You can reach me at 241kcawley2@gmail.com.