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Let's Help Academia Do What CAN Be Done!
Inasmuch as most of our well-meaning schools and colleges are
riven with anxiety, boredom, resistance, anger, forgetting,
and failure -- even as fewer than one-third of recent college
graduates are proficient in literacy, down from 40% a decade
ago -- it would appear as if it's time to stop Teach'em-Test'em SCHOOLING and start a growth-promoting EDUCATION instead:
So if we're serious about turning schools into mind-expanding,
ego-enhancing institutions -- producing children ready for the
rapid changes, high-skill requirements, information overload,
and the uncertainties of the 21st century -- we should first
announce, LOUDLY, that while schools and colleges COULD
educate, as CURRENTLY organized most of Academia is
seriously counterproductive.
And then:
1: - STIMULATE them with INTERESTING materials like
art, music, sports, computers, GOOD books, magazines,
work, people, exercise, microscopes, libraries, museums,
zoos, trips, and especially the daily newspaper
2: - Abolish all quizzing and formal assessment prior
to those NECESSARY licensing exams before doctors,
lawyers, and plumbers are let loose on the public.
3:- Or, make the compulsory attendance law apply only as
far as the playground and let them mill around until they're
bored to death after which the vast majority will come
VOLUNTARILY into the classroom and set up a whole new
dynamic between teacher and child including the fact that
they can be sent immediately back to the playground if
they fail to settle down.
4:- Always give them plenty of choice and control over
what they learn and when they learn it while we can use
Purkey's Invitational Education; i.e. "Show me what you
CAN do and then I, or another child, will HELP you do
better."
5:- Refer to the works of Gatto, Holt, Corsini, Dreikurs,
Purkey, Johnson (bros), Zimbardo, Shapiro, Mintz, Bergson,
Farenga, Meiers, Berg, Miller, Glasser, Mercagliano, Kohn,
Sara Bennett and others -- SINCE WE ALREADY KNOW
HOW TO DO IT RIGHT!
6:- Let the colleges, businesses, and graduate schools give
their own tests for admission because K-20 teach'em-
test'em is making a farce out of the term "education."
7:- Use choral reading, a.k.a. reading in unison, as the #1
method above all others combined with group arithmetic-
problem solving and writing together.
8:- AND/OR maybe have the government declare the
3Rs and button-pushing illegal (!) before age 14 because
then we couldn't stop those rebellious critters from
teachin' 'emselves how, just like they taught themselves
to speak the native tongue, the most difficult thing we'll
ever do.
9:- Have the public schools work with the homeschoolers/
unschoolers
10:- Note the success of experiments where the reward for
demonstrated learning is to be excused from all examinations.
Robert E. Kay, MD
robertekaymd@mycidco.com
Ref:
www.nheri.org -re results of homeschooling
WHAT DO I DO MONDAY?-John Holt
TEACH YOUR OWN-Holt and P Farenga
THE CONTINUUM CONCEPT-J Liedloff
www.openconnections.org -never ask a child a question if uou
already know the answer
PS Understand that the later the middle-class child enters school
the higher their achievement level while the deprived sometimes
benefit by early childhood education.
PPS Bottom Line -By forcing them into school, we're
doing to kids what the govt. wouldn't dare do to us!
More Bottom Lines:
CREATING LEARNING COMMUNITIES-R Miller
Let's Use Choral Reading-avail e-mail
Teach Poor Kids; Use a Newspaper-e-mail
1st - STOP Doing What We're Now Doing
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