People sometimes ask me what I think what needs to be done with the schools. This is really a two part question for me. One part is the policy side - what should or should not be required. The other part of the question is what are my ideas of what a good school looks like, which does not imply I believe in mandating those ideas even if I could. In my previous blog, I addressed the first part of question. Now I will briefly tackle the second part.
A good test of schooling is whether one would send one's own children there. Those who have read my other blog entries know I favor progressive/constructivist pedagogy. That means that students have to be engaged in activities that matter to them in order to learn. The more those activities are connected authentically to the kinds of activities one engages outside of school, the more likely what they learn can and will be used beyond school. There is both the need of the student to follow their own personal interests and abilities, and expanding those interests.
One also needs to think about how the experience of school shapes both what a student learns about, and what kind of climate and culture they learn in it in. As psychologists such as Vygotsky, Bandura, Wenger and many others have shown, we learn more indirectly from how we experience the world, and watching how the adults in our world interact, as we do from any explicit instruction. Therefore, as much as possible the school should recreate the kind of culture, society we want our students to learn to be part of.
There is a built in tension of a democracy, between individual rights and pursuits, while recognizing that we are also a part of a larger society. Totalitarian and fascist states focus on the state over the individual, and so schools in such a culture would teach students to obey and focus on obedience to higher authority. In an anarchist or libertarian state is would focus on the rights and liberties if the individual. Would such a system even have public schooling, much less compulsory schooling?
In my school, build on the foundation of democratic principals, students work not just individually, but also with others who are both alike and different from themselves. That in itself is one of the most important skill that I see any citizen needs. Most of what we do in life is in collaboration with others, in both the work and civic spheres. Humans are, by nature, social animals. The way a school and its curriculum is organized takes that into account. It means assessments that are part of the learning process and that mimic or are actual real like products or performances for the most part.
Long term projects would be at the center of most learning activities, activities that require students to integrate a variety of skills and abilities across disciplines. This mimics the kind of activities and work people engage in for the most part outside of school. Real learning takes place when we work at real tasks that matter. The more in depth the project is, the deeper the learning will be, and the more likely it will stay with us. Such learning takes time.
Students would stay with the same teacher for a minimum of two years. Deep learning takes deep relationships, and when teachers and students only work together for one year, those deep relationships are hard to build, with the family as much as with the student. If you are changing whom you work with too often, it gets hard to put in the investment in the relationship.
The school would be run collaboratively among the faculty. While it is important for all members of the school community to have a say, how much would vary depending on the kinds of decisions. Major curricular decisions would be the purview of the teaching faculty.
Another aspect is school size. Most of the above is hard to implement in a large school. The larger the numbers of people the more such institutions must make decisions based on expediency and smooth running of the institution rather on the educational needs of the students. Additionally, the number of people needs to be small enough so that the school can be a community where all members actually can get to know each other over time.
Some people claim such schooling is only appropriate for the gifted, or is not practical, and could not work in the real world. However, as I have documented in earlier blogs the evidence is quite strong that it does work, and that actually such practices are probably more important for the disadvantaged than the advantaged, since the advantaged get so many of these advantages outside of school.
From personal experience I know these ideas are challenging but they do work. What do you think are the elements that make good schools?
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