Reply #260: My "radical" concepts have to do with the current

[TallahasseeGrannie]

model of education, which really isn't very old. I'm not an educational historian, but I'm guessing the one teacher/one classroom is only a couple of centuries old. I believe that we have over simplified and over specialized education at the same time. We have over-simplified by putting hundreds or even thousands of similarly-aged kids in the same place. I don't believe we evolved to be able to even DEAL with that number of individuals at one time. It is mind boggling and I think it leads to dis-ease on the part of both some (not all) children and most teachers. We have over specialized because once we GOT all those kids in the same place we then had to fragment them into specialized groups (ESE, gifted, music, art, PE, etc.) because we have so many kids in one place we can't begin to meet their needs without a full array of specialists. I think this warehouse approach is especially problematic in middle and high school where adolescents have so very many peer issues. Columbine wasn't just about guns..it was about alienation and isolation within a crowd. But the high school is almost mythical in American culture and my God, what about FOOTBALL? And marching band? And cheerleaders? But I submit that isolating each age group from one another fragments the process of educating the "whole child" (I am a product of the Sixties, after all.) I know the good old days weren't all that good in education, but one positive effect of the one room school house was that older students nurtured the younger and what better model for future parenting? And parenting, in the long run is the thing that drives success in education.

And that's my idea and it will never, ever happen. So my classroom is my kingdom and it's cool and I like it.