Learn Lots!

Allowing children to progress on their own level in core subjects and spend time learning about things they love is a great idea and is the direction I believe schools should take.  However, it doesn't take long thinking along these lines to realize this will require a lower student to teacher ratio.  Under the current model, this would be cost prohibitive.  However, schools could more easily decrease their student to teacher ratio if not all teachers were required to be certified up front. I'm not arguing for the abolition of teacher certification.  Instead, I'm advocating for a within-school teacher internship program where teachers in training spend part of their time studying and the majority of their time applying those concepts in actual learning settings. At present, I envision there being at least three levels within this program: 1) those who are fully trained, 2) those who have completed part of their training, and 3) those just beginning their training...

Perhaps this is cheating since I already wrote a post on the pain, however much has changed since then.  My goal for this course from the beginning has been to create an educational system that is truly unique; one that challenges all our current assumptions and ways of doing things, then keeps those that are working and changes those that aren't.  I was afraid that was too lofty a goal for this course, but David agrees that that's what I should have been doing from the beginning.  So, here goes! What causes the problem? What doesn't cause the problem may be an easier question to answer!  What I have seen is that school is painful for too many kids.  Children intrinsically love to learn, as evidenced by their insatiable curiosity.  However, too often our schools work against this natural curiosity and turn learning into something other people want us to do, not something we want to do.  As a result, too many children grow up thinking they don't like...