Lessening Lessons

A friend of mine in the education business suggested I look into the writings of John Taylor Gatto as an insight into the views of a grade school teacher. Here is what I found:

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

As we begin the long, arduous task of examining reformation of the child education process, it helps to see multiple views on the subject. Of course, we adults have ourselves as children to remember what schooling felt like and whether it helped (or hurt) our learning process. Many of us have children getting a formal education somewhere, including in classrooms, homes and on the street.

Standardization and cookie-cutter education make for factory-style processes with economies of scale for society at large. Is it good for you? Is it bad for you? It provides a common frame of reference for millions of people, good or bad.

I have only been teaching formally for a few months but have friends and family who've taught for dozens of years. Thus, I have spent time separating their perennial work-related complaints from their observations of the teaching process.

What have I concluded? We as a species want conformity and individuality at the same time. We want children who find creative ways to live in sports, music, medicine, academics, etc., and we want children who conform to good behavioural patterns. We label children early and reinforce our own conformity by enforcing the labels through a variety of methods - testing, grouping, encouraging, chiding.

I remember being a child. I thought for myself at an early age, just as most of my peers seemed to do (or at least most of them externally displayed this capability). We also reflected the early behavioural modification of our parents, including their beliefs and habits. When in school, our individual behavioural patterns were slowly brought together into a group norm. The more an individual resisted conforming to the norm, the more recognition the child received from the school authority figures - some resistance was encouraged to be acted out in sports, arts, music or academics while other resistance was punished because a child had no readily-usable, categorized outlet for the abnormal behaviour.

Resistance is not futile if we can find ways to allow students to be individuals in a manner which encourages their growth into adulthood. Destructive behaviour can be creative if the student is allowed to find out why s/he is acting out destructively (without physically harming others outside the sports field, for instance). In other words, teaching kids how to succeed in real life situations rather than massive slow-burn rote learning.

I don't have answers. I only have personal observations of myself and others who've succeeded in the education business, both as students and educators. I watched kids disappear from the system and never heard from them again. If they're alive, they display the results of an education system that couldn't support them.

Some people will not succeed in a formal learning system. Some people will succeed without a formal learning system. Most of us are going to have successes and failures in any system because of our innate capabilities. How do you create an education system that accommodates and encourages our successes without punishing us for failures in areas that we have to participate but have no regular or exceptional capability with which we can succeed (or even survive)?