Conservative Donnybrook

Over the years I have given the education system a lot of thought. I have always thought it would be fun and rewarding to teach. Unfortunately, I have been put off of teaching because of the regulatory overhead that school districts erect as a barrier to entry. Quite simply, I refuse to sit through classes filled with psychological babble about a child’s self-esteem and self-confidence that ultimately results in undermining the fulfillment of the most able students’ potential.

I think about my own childhood education. I was one of those students who never did his homework, but tested very well. I had grades that reflected that – where a class was heavily graded on the homework assignments and less focused on test scores, I did poorly and vice versa. I remember one class in particular – I had an algebra class in 7th grade and the teacher (I wish I could remember his name – Frost Junior High in Schaumburg, Illinois, circa 1982) assigned daily homework assignments. Each day, at the beginning of class, he would walk up and down the aisles and check that each student had completed his homework – it wasn’t actually graded, he just wanted you to do it. And each day, he would pause at my desk, look down and say, “No homework today, Karl?” He would shake his head, mark my failure down in his grade book, and move down the aisle. After each exam in that class, when I scored perfect or nearly so, he would try to talk sense into me, telling me that I could get a great grade in his class if only I would do the homework. I would always respond, “Why should I spend my time doing homework for material that I have down cold?” One day he announced to the class that the math team would be conducting “try-outs” (i.e. take a test filled with tricky math problems) and anyone interested should come to his classroom after school. When I walked into the classroom, his look of disbelief was plain. He even asked me if I was serious. I assured him that I was and proceeded to score second highest on the exam and became one of the math team members. His disappointment that I would not do his homework assignments had caused him not to challenge me, but to dismiss me as a lost cause and he was astonished, I think, when I rose to the biggest challenge with which he could present me.

Teachers would routinely decry my failure to live up to my potential to my parents. The conclusion, according to the educational cognoscenti was that I was bored. Indeed, my nearly daily fist fight during lunch with Brian Brocce was proof of my boredom (either that, or I was a contumacious bastard). That was in the 70s; today I would be diagnosed as ADHD and medicated to treat my behavior problems. The one thing, even then, that never occurred to anyone was to challenge me academically.

If I were to suddenly win the lottery (which would be a miracle since I don’t play – after all, a lottery is only a tax on people who can’t do math), I would want to open a school along the following lines. If I learned anything in my algebra class (other than algebra), it is that capable students will surprise you when they are presented with a challenge. With that in mind I would love to start a school where the student is encouraged to proceed at his own pace. He would not be locked into a single class, segregated by his age peers, all year or semester long. Rather, he would be segregated into classes based upon his ability to master the material. Clearly, some students would master the material faster than others and those students should be passed on to the next level as soon as they demonstrate that mastery. The way the school would be structured would be that teachers would teach a particular subject (say, math) of a certain difficulty level (say, first year algebra). When a student demonstrated mastery of the subject, he would move on to the next level. Teachers would not be Fourth Grade teachers since there would be no such thing as grades based on age group. During the course of a year, a student may sit in three separate math classes while he progressed through the ever-tougher material. At the same time, the same student may only progress one classroom in composition. In the end, it would be the child’s capacity to excel that would determine his studies rather than some rigid age group limitation.

The way schools are set up now, the smartest students are slowed in their progress. The pace of instruction has to be determined by the least capable student in the classroom. To go any faster would be to frustrate that student and cause him undue stress (i.e. undermine his self-confidence and destroy his self-esteem). Meanwhile, the rest of the class becomes bored and perhaps spends its time getting into fights with the Brian Brocces of the world (what did bored girls do?). Under the plan I envision, the slowest student would be challenged, but not pressured by artificial demands to keep up with his age peers, while the brightest students would be encouraged to maximize their progress. Teachers would be chosen, not based on some state credential or possession of a teaching certificate, but on their ability to teach, their mastery over the subject area, and their ability to motivate students. A school such as I envision would serve the needs of the community better in that it would produce the high-flyers who could go on to push the boundaries of mathematical or scientific understanding or who would contribute to the culture through their superior literary development.

Some will say that a student benefits from being kept with his age peers, but I wonder how true that is. All of us of a certain age will have grandparents, especially if they lived in rural areas, who attended one-room schoolhouses where students of varying ages were instructed in a single room. It is not unprecedented to have different ages educated simultaneously. The plan I have outlined would, I think, be an improvement over those schools because every student in a classroom, regardless of his age, would be on the same academic level within that discipline. For instance, look in a college classroom on any commuter campus; one will routinely see a spread of ages present in such a classroom.

I would love to hear your thoughts.