Our schools are turning millions of normal children into dropouts and failures. This isn't because of a few bad teachers or principals, but because the natural learning behaviors of children are routinely penalized instead of praised. Initiatives like "No Child Left Behind" and "The Race To The Top" won't change this, because they don't adequately take into account research about how children learn. As Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel says, children have "enormous capability that they're born with and often school takes it out of them."
Our classrooms are based on outdated ideas, functioning like mid-20th century factories. Each child is offered an identical curriculum, like a car moving along an assembly line. However, children aren't units of production and this approach is failing. Since 1970, the rate of high school graduation has declined, and the United States has fallen from first to twelfth among developed nations in education.
This is inexcusable given the well-documented research about what makes children effective learners. Contemporary neuroscience has confirmed the findings of Freud, Piaget, and Dewey: that children's learning is largely dependent on inherent interest, emotional engagement, social interaction, physical activity and the pleasure of mastery.
These findings are ignored in traditional classroom approaches. If children are not interested, they won't learn, but we don't structure our schools to capture students' individual interests. Instead, everyone studies the same texts at the same time. Teachers often reprimand children for failing to change gears with the rest of the class. Students are told to be quiet, sit still, and listen passively, when we know that social, emotional, and physical engagement enhance learning.
Freedom to make mistakes and benefit from them is the basis of intellectual growth. If researchers or entrepreneurs were forbidden to make errors, innovation would cease. But when teachers are required to prioritize standardized test preparation, children are necessarily taught that being wrong is unacceptable.
The traditional classroom needs an overhaul based on the findings of cognitive neuroscience. Rather than lecturing to passive observers, teachers should act as facilitators, introducing individual students to new concepts based on their interests and developmental state. Children should be free to move around and to choose when, for how long, and with whom they will work at each task. Instead of being told facts, children should learn by acting on instructional materials, experimenting and observing until answers are found.
Children need to experience themselves as emotionally engaged, triumphant problem solvers. This experience is, in part, what makes computer games addictive. As with video games, in an ideal classroom students should only go on to the next level after mastering the previous one, taking as long as they need to solve each problem, and staying with it as long as it holds their interest. The satisfaction of curiosity and the exhilaration of accomplishment are the inherent rewards of this approach.
While it may seem impossible to offer individualized, self-directed learning in public schools, it has already been done. The Montessori method which uses these approaches, has been successfully adopted by public school systems, including in inner cities. Students in these schools achieve equal or superior academic performance to children in traditional classrooms, and superior outcomes in social skills and engagement, at no greater per pupil cost. While this method isn't a panacea, it provides one feasible, well-tested basis for developing teaching methods grounded in child development and cognitive neuroscience research.
Scientifically sound, individualized instruction should be our new educational standard. It's time to shift our focus from administrative changes to fundamental classroom reforms that will truly make a difference. This is an urgent necessity - our children's wellbeing and our economic and technological edge in the 21st century are at stake.
A version of this article first appeared in USA Today, Wednesday, 10 November 2010.
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Read to a child.
Today.
In an ideal world, each individual would have a teacher follow them personally around and engage them and guide them. Cost is the main prohibitor to this. Most Montessori schools that I know of are private and the parents cover the additional cost that this developmental individualized program uses. It sounds to me like the best type of education would require each person to have their own personal teacher nanny to guide their instruction and provide opportunities to learn. Unfortunately public schools will never have the funding for this programming. I think you should write an additional article to this one outlining how many teachers, the cost of materials, and the cost effectiveness of this type of education in a typical Kindergarten. In Nevada the Kindergarten teacher have 35 students for half the day and 35 students for the other half of the day.
I would also suggest spending some time in a classroom for a few weeks and getting a pulse on all the craziness teachers must put up with and still be expected to be amazing in the end.
Have a nice day.
5) the purpose of an education is to provide each child with the widest exposure to the best of human knowledge in all disciplines; and the widest variety of the best artistic descriptions and expressions of humanity and the human experience; and to provide ample opportunity to experience, understand, and appreciate the natural environment and learn good stewardship of natural resources.
6) A successful education assists each child in acquiring the intellectual and social tools to traverse the world, retaining at least a cautious, if not enthusiastic, curiosity and become a person who is open to, and even desires, continuous life-long learning. Education enables learning. At its best, education inspires a joy for learning. Education does not subvert learning to a test score, a hurdle, an obstacle to be conquered, or just another difficult life passage that just has to be endured.
3) An education system has an obligation to allow, encourage, and protect generous amounts of unstructured time for a child to engage in child-initiated child-organized freely-chosen play, to explore, and to be creative in serious thought and fanciful imagination – both in solitude and in cooperation with other children. “Play is essential to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth.” “Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. Play is important to healthy brain development.” “Play is integral to the academic environment. It ensures that the school setting attends to the social and emotional development of children as well as their cognitive development.”
(Ginsburg, K. R. and the Committee on Communications and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health. (2007 January). The importance of play in promoting healthy child development and maintaining strong parent-child bonds. Pediatrics, 119(1), 182-191. Retrieved April 25, 2009 from www.pediatrics.org)
1A) The most important obligation of any education system is to recognize that each child is a unique individual – there is no such thing as a standard child. The uniqueness of each child requires unique accommodations. Instead of forcing a child into a predetermined or standardized schedule and set of expectations, we have an obligation to adapt to each child’s unique set of capabilities, boundaries, and rate of development. To do otherwise is counter-productive, if not harmful. Children are who they uniquely are. Children are not who we want them to be or who we think they are.
Miriam
Sincerely, Michael Gerety
Talk is cheap! What we want is education, but what we have is structured daycare when action is debated, parsed, discussed, or never taken! Read with a child, and reform one life at a time! Reading is Freedom!
It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” — Albert Einstein
Sean Taylor M.Ed
http://reading-sage.blogspot.com