I'm so over our American education system that I'm reading books on unschooling which, I thought was absolutely bug nuts a few years back. Here's why: a little sprout heads over to kindergarten, feeling good, because he's a little obsessed with all things celestial & he was told school is all about the knowledge. So even though we know kids learn better in groups, older siblings teach younger siblings to talk, read, and ride a bike faster than adults can, all the classmates will be the same age as Sprout. It's okay though, because Sprout's incredibly curious, and really wants to learn about the stars, rocketships, lightning and the moon, so he'll put up with a lot, even the really bad food, if that is indeed what it is. Then the teacher asks Sprout to learn colors and circling what is bigger or smaller, and other things that would he would have learned the same way he learned what a plane and a car was, and very little of it had anything to do with rocketships, space, stars, moons, and lightning.
Entre first grade, Sprout declares, okay I can read a bit, I've got some basic math in me, I am ready to learn about rocketships, stars, space, moons, & lightning. Unfortunately, first he has to learn spelling, grammar, sequence, and other things he has no interest in, but would've likely learned organically anyway, and he does this sitting quietly at a desk for hours on end. He even learns how to tell time on an analog clock, which he's certain he'll have no use for. It's okay because Sprout is dedicated, and he caught a video on Youtube about the Milky Way, discovered what a satellite was, and zero gravity. These glimpses into what he wants to learn keep him curious enough to tolerate the drudgery until he can get to learning what he wants.
By the time Sprout get to third grade, he's certain that this is the year he'll learn all about galaxies, dimensions, lightning, thunder, suns, and rocketships. When he arrives Sprout's asked to learn how to prove he can comprehend stupefyingly boring articles, and cursive. Cursive?! No one in my family ever writes in cursive, why can't I just learn to sign my name?! Seriously when can I learn about rocketships, space & lightning?! Then our poor Sprout is finally told the truth : late high school if you can get into a magnet program or college, and he thinks fuck this!
I recently attended a workshop on youth organizing, I chose to, I wanted to learn more. There was pretty good food, no one griped at me for playing on my phone, or talking or passing notes, but it went on for four hours without breakout sessions, so I felt murderous rage rising in me. I'm pretty academic, I like learning about almost anything, I'm patient, I dig sitting, and even allowed distractions, I was still enraged by having to sit still and listen to predominantly one voice for four hours. So when I hear people wondering why so many youths are dropping out of school, I wonder why isn't it obvious. We the supposedly learned adults insist, on an archaic systems that don't work, we scrap resources, and remove the voice of the students & the community from school decisions, we making teaching such a shitty job, you'd have to be crazy in love with kids to do it, we scrap recess, music and art programs, force the students to wear uniforms and feed them what appears to be high fat, high calorie dog food. Then we become fool enough to ask why the youth don't value this education that you'd have to be either nuttier than squirrel poo, or incredibly self-depricating to appreciate.
Well I decided I'm paying for this so I took a hundred kids, many of their parents, and teachers, who were pissed about their neighborhood school closing down to the school board to talk about it. We never even got to Sprout's systemic problem, we focused on closing a school a community needed open. The board members, all business people, no educators, typed on their Blackberrys and smiled like it's so cute how you think we care. The city misses out on a lot of money when the kids aren't in school though, furthermore the state, so suppose we go out and get our own schools. I'm not talking about charters, because we don't want to privatize education, because it becomes profit motivated and for every good charter you can name, three bad ones spring up. I'm also not talking about our stereotypical view of homeschooling, because socialization is pretty important, and I think parents don't make the best teachers owing to them usually being pretty annoyed when the kids don't already understand something. I am talking about renting spaces in churches, community centers, etc., mixing age groups and prioritizing what the students want to learn first, and what they are required to learn as a chore of learning what you want. I'm talking about using the internet and letting kids teach kids and having a teacher there to encourage and gently guide. I bet we could find grants to cover costs, and I bet that we'd get a lot more thirteen-year-olds creating new surgical techniques, and Sprout may discover a new star or some celestial technology. I also bet that the loss income from these students being in school, will make the city and state more willing to listen. I know it may sound a bit utopian, or like a lot of work, and therefore a bit scary, but it's got to better than teaching our youth to be nuttier than squirrel poo, right?
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