4 Reasons to Change the Way We View Education

Mary Hickcox

The way in which we view education has a lot to do with our past; how we grew up, societal influences, and the way we were schooled ourselves. It is the legacy that we pass on to our children. Tragically, the current way our education system is engineered, it appears our children seem doomed to be unsuccessful.

We live in a time where our schools are failing, our children are unhappy and overworked, and the current system becomes more obsolete every year. Something needs to change if we want our children to be happy, and our country to be successful, once again. The system we have now was built on a fault line and it has become increasingly evident that the cracks are growing exponentially. It isn’t too late to change that model.

We could talk about how to improve schools, maybe more money or less political involvement, but in the long run those are not the things that stand in the way of our children’s futures. What stands in the way is an archaic mindset build on false education and an inability to look past the norm. With our country in a dire economic situation with mass joblessness and stifled innovation, it is time to step outside of the box that public education has put us in to find solutions.

1. Our schools are failing miserably: That's not to say that some students do not do well in public school and end up happy, but statistics do not lie. At an annual average cost of over $10,000 per student, the U.S. is lagging behind countries that don’t spend half that much. Money does not appear to be the problem, so throwing more into a broken system is just adding fuel to the fire. No Child Left Behind has been a total failure, where states are suing the federal government over this catastrophe. NCLB puts extreme emphasis on tests -- as if still trying to churn out worker bees -- yet, the U.S. ranks far below most industrialized nations. We seem to be wasting money letting political agendas decide what is best, rather than the parents or teachers who know what children need.

Unsettling Education Statistics
•Students are not faring well on national assessments. The most recent NAEP assessments indicate that less than one third of U.S. fourth graders are proficient in reading, mathematics, science, and American history.

•More than half of low-income students cannot even demonstrate basic knowledge of science, reading, and history.

•U.S. eighth graders ranked 19th out of 38 countries on mathematic assessments and 18th in science.

•U.S. twelfth graders ranked 18th out of 21 countries in combined mathematics and science assessments (Source: The Heritage Foundation)

History shows that modern-day schooling started with the Industrial Revolution, but many still refuse to accept that the people who funded its inception did not have children’s education as their main priority. Men like Rockefeller and Carnegie wanted good obedient workers to take the jobs they needed filled. They didn’t want free-thinking students to reach their potential; they wanted a large dumbed-down class, just disciplined and smart enough to show up on time and work their factory jobs.

John Taylor Gatto, teacher for over 30 years, NY Teacher of the Year, bestselling author, and homeschooling supporter, states: “The secret to American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, nor is it supposed to. Schools were conceived to serve the economy and the social order rather than kids and their families….that is why it is compulsory.” This is a system set up for all the wrong reasons, and it is a system whose goals were set deep inside of ulterior motives and still are today. Maybe schools are not the best places for our children to gain knowledge.

2. Our children are unhappy: Our children are unhappy, overworked, and not learning what they need in order to be successful. The first thing that needs to change is how we define that word success. We hear it all the time used as a measure of how our children are doing in life, but what if the way we define success has been wrong all along? What exactly are we as parents supposed to focus on? Is happiness even on the radar screen when success is discussed?

It seems most parents these days get so caught up in competition that they can forget that our ultimate goal should be our children’s happiness. Who's to blame them, as we are all conditioned to survive in the rat-race dog-eat-dog economy. But this ultra-competitive model seems to make school an unhappy place, as a record number of children are now on mood-altering drugs to handle their pressure-cooker lives. It is a place where strangers with corporate-government mandates are controlling the minds and bodies of our children.

We cannot expect our children to be free-thinking independent adults if they are kept under lock and key, segregated by age, fully controlled by rules, and forced to learn a federally-mandated curriculum. It is an institutional and cold conditioning of the mind. Americans have been taught to think of the word success as being dependent on excelling at school, but it seems societal success is more dependent on knowledge -- and the two are not synonymous. If we can change our thinking about success then it can equal happiness -- the ultimate human success.

In 2007, for the first time, UNICEF did a study on the wellbeing and happiness of children in 21 industrialized nations. The US and UK, two of the wealthier nations on the list, came in dead last. This alone should raise some eyebrows and prove the point that our children are not happy, and that more money is not the answer to the problem.

Another study was conducted in 2009 by the American Psychological Association to survey stress levels in children; they found some alarming information. To start, it showed that stress levels in adults and children have risen dramatically over the past few years, but even more upsetting is that parents seemed mostly clueless to the fact that their children were stressed at all. What were the main issues causing stress in children? Worry about grades, about getting into college, and family finances top the list. These problems are causing children to experience headaches, nausea, and trouble sleeping. If our goal is happiness, the school system is again, a failure.

3. School has become obsolete: The last 10 years has seen more technological advancement than in the entire century before. All of the world's information is now literally available in the palm of our hands. Almost the entire world’s wealth of knowledge is accessible through the Internet and integrated into our everyday life. Small improvements have occurred to incorporate this new lifestyle, but not nearly enough to catch up with the rest of the world. In fact, some researchers suggest that students would be better off with self-directed learning using the Internet, because we all learn better when it is something that we are interested in.

The current system is repetitive, memorization and test driven, and downright boring. It’s a place that resembles prison where, “Very little of what is taught is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered, and very little of what is remembered is actually used," as John Holt states in How Children Learn. Couple that with the fact that 50% (technological knowledge) of what is learned in the first year of college is worthless by graduation, and you just have to ask yourself: What is the point? And can’t we do better than this? Our children not only deserve better, they require better in order to compete in a market with nearly 10% official unemployment.

College seems to be less cost-effective every year. Rising college costs put our children in insurmountable debt due to the lack of viable employment. Tuitions have skyrocketed in the past few years (Harvard University is now $60,000 per year). To make matters worse, universities are now making kickback profits from credit card companies, while graduates aren’t even able to find jobs. With over 1/3 of college graduates now taking low-skill jobs, and over 65% graduating with crippling debt, it is now legitimate to question if college is the right path to put our children on.

4. The wrong people control the system for the wrong reasons: “The education system was deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace 'manageable.'" -- Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, Sr. Policy Advisor for the US Dept. of Education, and whistleblower on government activities to deliberately dumb our children down.

She also notes that the system is set up to make good consumers, as well as standardize people to keep them predictable and easy to control. Does this sound like something you want to support? Do we really want our children controlled and held back in life?

 

The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 were the first steps toward a large government role in education. What people failed to realize was that the money from these Acts became obligations to play by their rules and it continues today. Because the Feds were financially supporting the schools, they could control what was taught, thus bringing another facet of American life under their control. This is proven again and again when we see how difficult they make it for people to choose alternative education options for their own children.

It is clear that the purpose of school has become to serve corporations and government. This is evidenced most recently when we learn that BP played a role in writing the environmental curriculum in California. I think we all can agree that public schools should only serve the taxpayer's families and their children's best interests -- not the corporations that write the curriculum. When the day comes that the people in charge make families (and not greedy corporations) the priority then maybe, just maybe, our children will be learning what is really important, rather than learning how to serve the very people who set up this failing system.

Conclusion...

In a time when our economy desperately needs more innovators, how can we change education to expand the potential of each child? It seems we must do some things we did NOT learn in school: Question assumptions about education; think for and believe in ourselves; speak up against what we know is wrong; and challenge what we've been taught to believe is right. It is each parent's right and responsibility to decide the best way to guide their child to maximum human potential.

It seems that our modern world provides all of the tools to support a child's natural curiosity to drive their own education. Homeschooling and unschooling may be the most powerful form of revolt against an establishment which is terrified of individuals that question authority and refuse to be good little worker bees. John Holt said it well: “To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves . . . but most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” We also must begin to trust our own abilities as parents to guide our children toward happiness and independence, not to blindly trust the failed government standards that have resulted in anxiety and stress conditioning.

It is time for all of us to look outside the box for solutions to our education system to ensure our children's happiness -- this should be deemed the ultimate success.

Author Mary Hickcox is an unschooling advocate, mother, and life guide to three sons (11, 7, 3).

A DOSSIER ON THE CRIMES OF SCHOOLED SOCIETIES

Intense anger at the way science is taught in our schools, made Arvind Gupta, an IIT-trained electrical engineer leave his job in TELCO, in 1981, to look for alternatives in a broad spectrum ranging from Shankar Guha Niyogi's Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha, to writing books and making films on science. His collaboration with the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (Eklavya), in Madhya Pradesh led to a major breakthrough with 500 government schools adopting their format of science education.

Gupta's first science activity book, in Hindi, 'Khel-Khel Mein' later translated into English as 'Matchstick Mecano' was published in 1984 as part of the Eklavya experiment. A shift to Delhi in 1990 led to a five year teaching stint at Mirambika, a free progress school in Delhi, and to a fascinating collection of 'toys' resulting from his science activity classes. He was the first recipient of the National Award for Science Popularisation amongst children.

Gupta has been equally passionate about 're-birthing' classics on education and the environment. From the maiden effort of reprinting 'Danger: School!' in 1984, to Gandhian educator, Gijubhai Badheka's 'Divaswapna' and the blockbuster 'Totto Chan' by Japanese TV personality and animal rights activist, Tetsuko Kuroyangi, has been an eventful journey. Gupta, who is currently on a CAPART fellowship to write a science activity book, talks about the context from which 'Danger: School!' burst forth like a missile, 25 years ago, and which has again spurred the Other India Press to bring out a modified reprint this year. The signal is clear: the debate must go on.

MOST BOOKS soon pass out of fashion and die their own natural deaths. Some books, however, survive. They are reprinted and translated into different languages. The reprinting of Danger: School! almost a quarter of a century later, is to be greatly welcomed. The last decade saw it translated into Hindi, Marathi and Telugu. This book is not aimed at teachers and pedagogues alone, though they certainly could get a glimpse of how schools traumatise children. Every parent must read it, if only to ensure that the school is a safe and joyous place for their children.

This landmark book, first printed in the early 1970s by the Institute for Cultural Action (IDAC) based in Geneva, is part of a series of 'dossiers' published by IDAC on education. Paulo Freire its founder, was a Brazilian educator and reformer. For several years he had been teaching illiterate adult peasants to read and write, in remote and poor villages. His method was a politically radical, grown up version of the method Sylvia Ashton Warner described in her book, Teacher. Warner, who taught Maori children for 24 years in a New Zealand school, realised the incongruity of teaching language by using English primers that had little respect for or reference to their lives. She devised an ingenious method -- every day she asked the children which word they wanted to learn about. If they said 'drink' (many of them had alcoholic fathers), that word would be up on the blackboard and forever in the children's minds. Published first in New Zealand, Teacher's American edition appeared in 1963.

Following a similar method, Freire began by talking with Brazilian peasants about the conditions and problems of their lives, and showed them how to read and write the words that came up most in their talk. He found that it took only about 30 hours to teach before the wretchedly poor and demoralised peasants were able to explore reading on their own. Freire's teaching method, which he called 'alphabetisation', has been lucidly described in his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1969). Thirty hours. One school week. That is the true size of the task. Of course, the Brazilian army did not like Freire making peasants literate and politically conscious and threw him out of the country along with another celebrated Brazilian, cultural interventionist Augusto Boal, the dramaturg who devised and wrote Theatre of the Oppressed, a Freire like method of conscientising workers and peasants.

How many hours / weeks / months / years do our children spend in schools without even learning the basics. By nature children are inventive and full of curiosity. They want to explore and understand, make sense of the world they live in. All children have a 'gleam in their eyes before they go to school. But, soon this gargantuan Educracy (education + bureaucracy) fails them, calls them impaired and stamps an indelible scar on their hearts. Many parents have always felt that there was something seriously wrong with schools. But they have never been able to pinpoint the 'crimes' which schools constantly perpetuate. Danger: School! does exactly that. It is perhaps the world's most subversive cartoon book on education. Drawn by Brazil's ace political cartoonist Claudius, the scathing illustrations and crisp text graphically document the authoritarian, artificial world of the school.

The whole ritual of the school -- children in starched uniforms, backs bent with heavy satchels, school gong, morning prayers, principal's sermon, attendance, inane lectures, tests, exams, score-sheets, boring homework, has actually very little to do with the process of learning. Schools segregate a particular age group of children in one class. In real life, children interact with a diverse age group - at home children learn a great deal from their elders and in turn teach the young ones. In school the only adult they meet is the teacher. They not only loose out a lot on adult experience but are also unable to share their skills with young ones. A child coming to school is not a clean slate - a tabula rasa. He has experienced a lot of the world. Schools take no cognisance of this fact and seldom build upon their experiences. Instead, all children are doled out the standard curriculum. Could there be anything more illogical than all the children in the class buying exactly the same stupid textbooks? In the 20's a conscious educator Gijubhai Badheka did away with textbooks and started a classroom library with the same money. He wanted children to explore the wide world of books, rather than just textbooks. It is a shame that no school has built up on this progressive idea.

All children learn to speak and communicate naturally without ever being taught. It is they who need to talk the most, to develop their communication skills. But in any normal school, it is the teacher who does all the talking. The children meekly listen. Thus the greatest survival skill - to talk and communicate is learnt by children outside the school, never in it. This led the renowned American educationist John Holt to comment "I am glad the schools are just for six hours a day. If we had twenty four schools most of our children would turn out dumb."

There are very few schools where children can learn at their own pace. The Sri Aurobindo International School in Pondicherry is one such place where children choose their teachers and learn the subjects they like at their own pace. A child could be doing third class English, fifth class Hindi and seventh class mathematics at the same time. Thousands of primary schools are mushrooming in rural India every year. But most children feel happier outside these schools and, if forced into them, leave fairly soon. The official estimate of dropout rates al the primary level is 70 per cent. While earlier tile drop-out rates were attributed to parental poverty and apathy, recent research shows that children drop out because the school as an institution is downright boring and has very little to offer to a bright, imaginative child. With most village children dropping out at the primary stage, the social base for nurturing and garnering talent becomes very skewed and narrow.

The authoritarian structure of the school squashes the innate curiosity and creativity of the child. Parents have much more stake in the future of their children than any school can ever have. Realising this, many parents in the West are opting to home school their kids. In many countries the law makes it compulsory for children to attend school. Here, small groups of parents have taken a professional degree in education, pooled their skills and insisted on home-schooling their children. Their argument is "We don't trust any institutions public or private. We have given birth to our children, and we will teach them ourselves. We will give our children real life enriching experiences, which the schools cannot give". Though the home-schooling movement is gathering momentum in the West, it might be premature and unviable for a country like India.

Most parents -- especially the rich - are content if they can get their children admitted to a prestigious boarding school. If a school is charging Rs. 5000 a month, then, they feel, it must be good. This disowning of parental responsibility and subcontracting of children to alien institutions seldom pays. Parents cannot sit back. Only sustained societal pressure will change schools for the better.

Recent attempts at liberalising the Indian economy have had only a marginal impact on education. Under the able leadership of a dynamic director-general; the monolithic CSIR laboratories have adopted the slogan 'patent or perish'. The same is not true of NCERT an eternally sick PSU -- which has been foisting its fossilised curriculum as well as diktats on all the states, thereby strangulating all local initiative and innovation. As one ex-education secretary candidly remarked, "The most far-reaching and radical reform in Indian education would be to disband the NCERT. This cheapest reform unfortunately, will not be politically possible."

What teachers and schools do to children is:

They give them solutions but keep the confidence to themselves.

They give them memory but keep the thinking to themselves.

They give them marks but keep the knowledge to themselves.

The pity is that children are never asked any real problems in schools, and if they are, it is with the intention of hearing the same regurgitated solutions they are given. Danger: School! tries, precisely, to warn us against that.

Is homeschooling the right decision for you ?

Deciding to home school your kid is not a simple & easy decision to make.It means a lot of sacrificing & a great deal of change in lifestyle of all those involved. It is very important that both parents agree to try homeschooling & will be very difficult if one of you is against it.No doubt these will be your most rewarding & pleasant experiences ,as acknowledged by a majority of parents who chose homeschooling.You & your spouse will have to take into account & think carefully these points…

1) Time commitment - Homeschooling will take up a lot of time in your day. There are lessons to plan & prepare, papers & worksheets to assess, field trips, park visits, music & art classes, reading, playing & /or sports & the extra curricular activities. And then you also need time for your selves besides the other routine household chores.

2) Financial pressure - Homeschooling is relatively inexpensive; but if the family is used to two incomes some sacrifices will have to be made,as one of the two of you will have to give up your job.Homeschooling is a full time job with total commitment & no salary.

3) Personal sacrifice- Since your child will be with you 24 x 7,you shall have certainly very little time for yourself.You will have to make efforts to set aside time for your self .You will also have to switch off the TV & phone ringer during “school” time & this rule will apply to all at home.

4) Being organized- You have to be more than fairly good at being aware, prioritizing, planning & organizing your childs studies/ curriculum.Not only will you have to consider the current academics but also prepare the child for college & life ahead by guiding their thinking, value system and their habits.

5) Maths & science –Students will be at a loss if parents choose to teach only those subjects that they are comfortable with.Maths & science are two subjects that are most neglected.If the parents cant manage these it would be a better idea to hire a tutor than to neglect. 

6) Acceptance-This is one issue that dogs almost every homeschooling parent.Be prepared to get unwanted & unsolicited advice & fears & resistance towards homeschooling by people, friends, co-workers & also your own family who have never even remotely given a thought on this issue. Most strangest ideas about ruining your childs future ,how college admission will become elusive,how the child will become a social misfit,how a lack of competitive spirit will not get her in the rat race,how could you do this to your own kid…& other such concerns will crop up time & again as is the case with any out of the box idea .It would be interesting to know & quote others an American education survey that revealed ---One in twenty-five home school graduates is a National Merit semifinalist. In public schools, the national norm is one in every two hundred students is a National Merit semifinalist !

Isable Shaw a homeschooling parent sums it up very succinctly in her website school.familyeducation.com-“ Like any activity that challenges mainstream thinking, homeschooling may be seen as an oddity at best, or even as a threat to those who are unable to accept ordinary parents succeeding where trained professionals often fail. My family has developed a bit of a tough exterior over the years, but negative comments and criticisms still filter in occasionally. If you are unable to live "outside of the box," then homeschooling is not for you. “

    
          Be honest with yourself and your spouse and decide whether or not you are willing to devote the time and energy to the task. It may be best for some children to stay in school.

Why homeschooling ?

Homeschooling is fast gaining phenomenal popularity & growth. Parents find it as the perfect answer to give well rounded,superior quality & focused education that is attuned specifically to their childs needs, learning styles, personalities, and interests – at a far lesser cost than that of a regular private or public school, right in the comforts of home. Bad influences,bullying, teasing, peer pressure to fit in the group, incompetent school & lack of moral & religious education are some other factors considered by homeschooling parents for their decision.

Home-schooling has proved itself with the excellent academic achievements of home-schooled children. Obviously great care is taken by the homeschooling parents to do the best to ensure their children's work is of a high academic standard.

If you are a parent trying to explore the homeschooling option for your child, then consider the following questions to make a decision...

1) Are you dissatisfied with the ”one size fits all “ approach of conventional public or private schooling.

2) Do you believe that all & sundry that was drilled in your head in the name of education is or was ever at all relevant in your life.?...

3) Does your child’s education consists of drab homework, writing / copying printed notes, expensive & irrelevant projects & learning by rote .

4) Was teaching really an ambition for the teacher as a chosen career? Does the teacher really have an aptitude & competence to teach? Can she teach your child effectively in a class of 40…is your kid getting lost somewhere?

5) Is your intelligent & gifted child forced to slow down to average or does he need more help & instead overlooked & left behind ?

6) Do you have the time to devote for homeschooling?

7) Do you want to spend more time with your child living,learning,& playing?

8) Most important ?---Do you not feel that your child deserves something better than what the conventional educational system offers.