Education 101


We have been hearing a lot about improving public education in the United States during this election campaign. It is certainly true that the state of public education in our country is one of our national disasters right up there with global warming, the lack of Universal Health Care and the abandonment of its role of unbiased informer of the American electorate by the corporate media.
The condition of public education is probably the most basic public policy problem that not enough is being done about. Charter schools, vouchers and the like are simply avoiding the problem. With out an educated electorate we have little hope of accomplishing anything on the other major problems that face us, to say nothing of the individual fulfillment of our young people. We talk a lot about the lack of discipline and the insufficient funds for education but those, in fact, are not the core problem. More money would be great but the basic problem is that we are using a 19th century paradigm to try to teach 21st century children. We are using an industrial age method of training children to be future workers to try to educate information age future citizens. Sitting children in rows, training them to be still and follow orders is not what it is all about any more. We know how people learn fairly well now, but our method of educating our children does not reflect this. We could have the best-educated children the world has ever known, we have the knowledge, we have the talent, but we are not even coming close. I do not like people who point out problems and then do not offer solutions so I will spell one out for you. (Yes, that was a pun.) This will take awhile so I will divide it up into several sections so that you can comment on each section and hope you will bear with me. Please chime in with your ideas but do us all a favor and resist the temptation to go off on a tangent that will tempt you from time to time.

Part One: Structure

There are two types of schools in our country, the enlightened and the unenlightened. The enlightened know the difference between theory and belief and the unenlightened do not. To be plainer about this, an unenlightened school is one in which evolution is not taught or neglected or is replaced by Creationism or some other form of thinly veiled religious belief. The unenlightened schools are almost always overly influenced by their school boards. School boards are a vestige of the past when they raised the money for the school and hired the administrator, who ever that was, a teacher or superintendent. Those tasks are now largely the jobs of other agencies. School boards are often looked to as representing the local citizenry in school policy. I can think of no better way to keep schools in the dark ages. In an age where information and technology are growing at an incredible rate it is not possible for any but the luckiest school boards to keep up with the newest educational information and opportunities. School boards are not usually made up of educational professionals and should never, never be allowed to dictate curriculum. PTA's are there for the voice of the community and can be a great benefit to the process as a whole. In many places school boards have now been abandoned or are appointed groups of people who can act in an advisory capacity such as professionals in the community or college professors if the community is lucky enough to have them.
A public school should be able to educate children regardless of their socio economic back ground, but it is a sad truth that better off families usually have better educated children. Not only does this come from the fact that richer school districts can afford better facilities and teachers but that these children are often better motivated and have better support for the learning process at home. A great deal of learning takes place at the dinner table. A teacher can do a lot more with a child who comes to school better rested, better fed and who gets better help with its home work. Nothing however, replaces motivation and the will to learn. The most disadvantaged child will learn if the will is there. We need a system that is as fair to everyone as it can possibly be.

Another very important item is the amount of time a child at school actually spends involved in the learning process. In public schools today a great deal of time is spent passing from class to class, going to lockers, in study hall, at lunch break and recess. It is during those times that children spend the time THEY really go to school for; socializing, forming clicks and otherwise engaging in behavior that has little to do with the learning process. This is a huge waste of educational time and money. Each class should have its own room where it stays for most of the day with one main teacher and specialty teachers should go from one class to another, not the students. There are exceptions of course, but not only in the primary grades, but in all grades it should be the teachers who bring their special skills to the children, the children should not have to go to the teacher. We will be calling these teachers resource teachers later on in these articles. (There will still have to be hall passes for bathroom visits, but eventually we can hope that school rooms will be built with a boys and girls bathroom off the room instead of down the hall.)

OK, lets start with an ideal first grade class. They stay in the same room all day except for lunch when they go to the cafeteria, eat lunch, return to the classroom and nap or rest for the remainder of the hour. They will have had a snack at mid morning and will have another at about three in the afternoon. Yes, I did mean to say “three in the afternoon”. Lets face it folks, this is a nine to five society, there is absolutely no point in sending a child home to an empty house or baby sitter when there is a lot to do and learn in this new paradigm. Children should be in school all day. A great deal of the way schools are organized these days is for the convince of the teacher, not the educational needs of the child, which is our primary focus here. Teachers of course, need all the help they can get, but that will be addressed as we go on.

Look at the situation of the average child starting school. They are little sponges, ready to absorb what ever they can, but they need to have that sponge like quality directed. A child going to school for the first time has had only a few primary sources of information at home (not counting TV), people from whom they have been able to learn, one on one. They go into a classroom where they have to share the attention of one teacher (and possibly an assistant) with sometimes 25 to 30 other children. No wonder classes are structured to benefit the teacher and discipline is so important. A first grader should come into the class room for the first time to find there is a teacher, no less than two teachers aids and several volunteers and/or helper children from the upper grades to make a ratio of at least four first graders to one older person. More of the reason for this and how it works will be made plain further on.

Let me pause here and say that what I am setting forth is not pie in the sky or imaginary. It can, has and is being done. There are good reasons for everything I am outlining here for you but time and space preclude me from explaining every detail. One thing I am going to take the time to do is set up an analogy that we can use to help explain how learning takes place.

When we take in information it is processed by our brain along neural pathways and traces are established in various areas of the brain. We can use the net, a fishing net will do, as an analogy. The more often we send an item of information over that net, and the more of it we stimulate, the more likely we are to be able to retain that information. But there is a catch, an emotional component is always attached to the information and we are likely to remember the information if we enjoy acquiring it, unless of course it is traumatic and we certainly don't want to teach that way. The other big thing to remember is that the more senses that are stimulated and the more connection that are made with other information already in the brain pattern, the more likely we are to remember the new information. Example: if I am given a red block and told that the number on the side of it is a 3, if I can handle it, and stack it with other clocks that have numbers on them that I already know, knock them over, line them up and build things with them, I am more likely to remember the number because I have used most of my senses; vision, tactile, hearing and probably smell (enamel paint or wood from the blocks). If I already know the color red and the numbers 2 and 1, this new information is very easily fit in to the patterns already established in my brain. Repeating the experience enhances it but the fact that I am having fun doing this is actually more important. I am adding to a net that is already established and making it stronger and larger.

The technique we use most often in schools now is what I refer to as the spoon feed and regurgitate method. Believing that we need to stimulate one set of neurons over and over we spoon feed information and have the learner regurgitate the information to be sure they got it (tests or write a report, etc.). This leaves us with a trace of taste in our mouths and little else. It is true you will remember the information for a while but unless you keep using it, it will not last long and will be forgotten as soon as possible except by those few learners who are interested in the subject already or have a facility for memorization, which some people do. Most people read or listen to the material, have to refresh the information for the final (called cramming, right) and as soon as that is over largely forget the whole thing. A completed task is the most easily forgotten. The information will not have become part of our repertoire of things we know that help us understand and navigate the world we live in. With information that we continue to use, we will remember it, but so much falls under that use it or lose it category.

What we need to do is establish a net of information in the learners brains using as many senses as possible, making as many connections as possible, in an environment that makes the experience as enjoyable as possible if we want to maximize learning. To repeat, we can have the best educated children the world has ever known, better able to lead this nation to new height of inventiveness and enterprise that American independence has always nurtured, with the knowledge and understanding of the world we live in, so that we can live in peace and harmony with our neighbors both at home and abroad. With out the education that it is fully possible to give every child we are going to continue down the road to being an oligarchy of the rich supported by the unenlightened and as some one said the richest third world country the world has ever known.

Education 102

This is the continuation of the article I started in Education 101, an outline of how we could have the best educated children the world has ever known.

I am going to take you through a school day with a class of new first graders using the new paradigm. We will be establishing systems here that we will use on up through the grades. Depending on the level of socio-economic development, this class could actually be a kindergarten class or some of the basics such as learning the alphabet could be left out, but don't leave our working with the number system. If a child has been watching Sesame Street since it could sit up and has the advantage of sitting at the family dinner table and discussing the days events every night it will have an advantage over a child who has been watching network cartoons and sees its family only in passing. You need to start where the child is. An aside here is that all children should be given eye exams and hearing evaluations before starting school. This should not be just a screening but a real exam, it will save a great deal of trouble later on. (Be nice if had Single Payer Universal Health Care to cover this, wouldn't it?)

Classrooms should have low tables and chairs arranged around the back and sides of the room. There should be personal storage boxes on one wall where the child can keep personal items and materials (including cell phones and other electronic gear which should never be used during class times). These boxes should replace hall lockers from here on until High School. There should be no assigned seats, children should sit where ever they want. You can tell a lot about a child by where it decides to sit and they will not be sitting much anyway. They will find on the tables tag board name signs with a cord attached to them for hanging around the neck or sticky backs. At this point the tag board will be blank. The teacher will write on the board “My name is Mrs. Smith”. The children will be writing this sentence substituting their own names with the help of the teacher's aids and helpers. The teacher will start by making a capital and small “m” on the tag board that she has, explaining about capitals and small case. The teacher will then ask the class for words beginning with the sound “m”. Monkey is a good word to use, stay away Mother, there are likely to be home sick little ones there. When you have all decided on a word, the teacher will draw or paste a picture of it on her tag board and the class will draw the letter “M” on their name tags. The teacher will tack the tag board with the picture on it up in the time-honored place above the black board. Then the class will find a word and picture for the letter “y”, and so on. When you have worked your way through the “s” in “is” you can start on the children's names. By the time you are through the children should be very involved and you will have a lot of the alphabet above the black board. If you have a large class you may have to choose some sample names and have the helpers work with the other children. Best part, when the child goes home that day it can boast “I wrote a whole sentence today.”

This may seem simplistic and obvious but it is not. The teacher has demonstrated her place as the leader of the pack and the learners have had the experience of processing the letters in the context of how they will be used. The child will have learned something about reading, writing and yes, spelling. If you hear a child going around chanting, “le-lee-lee-leaf” over and over you know you were successful. In today's schools very often those placards over the black board are mass-produced commercially and just tacked up as references or held up for feed and regurgitate drill. They are of little learning value used in that manor. Information needs to be used and processed to be retained.
Remember to tell the older helper children that they are role models as well as helpers and that little children never make mistakes or are wrong but just need another try. The older children will be having the experience, in a very supervised way, of working with the little ones and are learning skills that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.

And now we are going to build a Lion! Not a little lion, but a big lion, about three feet or so at the shoulder. The children will be divided up into four groups, one of which will work with a couple of helpers and start to frame up the body of a lion. They will be using scrap lumber from a lumber yard that the school has established a relationship with. It will be a good idea to establish a relationship with various places in the community where you can get used material. You will need roll ends from the newspaper printers; all sorts of used objects from scrap yards and second hand building and recycling places among other places. You will also need a sink in the classroom or some substitute for one. We are going to be studying lions in depth. One group will build one from scrap lumber, chicken wire and Paper Mache. Another group will be drawing a large world map on panels of newsprint so that you can place lions around the world where they occur, (in Africa and in the Zoo, right? Wrong!!!) The teacher's assistant who is supervising this project needs to be knowledgeable about maps. You will need a world globe in the classroom. The teacher's assistant will discuss the projection you will be using to flatten the globe our but don't belabor it. This will be done a lot, introduce a subject but pass over it fairly lightly because you will be coming back to it later. Now you have to deal with lines of latitude and longitude. The children should be the ones to do the drawing on the map and if it only slightly resembles a world map, so what? The children know what it is and they learn much more from doing it themselves than having someone else do it for them. We can't put lions on the map just yet, we have to wait for that other group that is doing the research. Yes, research!

The research group should be arranged comfortably as best suites your situation. You need space for the aids and their charges to sit and look at books together. Cushions on the floor, seats around a table, what ever suites you best. This is also a place for the use of the computer. The teacher or other adult needs to assemble books that deal with lions; every thing from a children's encyclopedia to books on fossil lions and children's story books about lions. Later on the children can go to the libraries and other sources (both school and public) and find their own books and information. There should be two or three children reading with each aid. The children should find pictures of lions in the books and the aids should read the information for the children always being careful to have the children follow along on the page. As soon as they are able the children should do some of the reading. When enough information has been obtained, the children and helpers can construct a sentence to tell the rest of the class what was learned. “Lions live in -----”. Fossil lions have been found in ---”. “Lions are at the top of the food chain and eat ---”. “Lions in North and Central America are called ---”. The children should write these sentences out with the help of their aids. The sentences can then be written on the board or better yet, printed out and distributed to the other children. The children that found the information should then report on it more completely to the rest of the class. Using the sentence as a starting point they should tell the rest of the class what ever they thought was important information about lions. (This can sometimes surprise you, but remember, let them do this, don't do it for them.). Now you are ready to put the lions on the map. Children who were not in the lion building, map making or research groups will be making a mural depicting the various habitats of lions.

After several days of this the lion has been built and it and the map and sentences can be assembled in a section of the room backed up by the mural and the project is complete. This is always a great time because the children can be very proprietary and opinionated about how all this should be put together. “No, you should have done it this way”, and “that should be over here, not there”. The older helper children tend to get involved in this as well so it is a time for learning social skills along with Lions! Don't do it for them, let them work it out. A little guidance is certainly necessary but let it be their learning experience.

At the quiet time at the end of the day the teacher should read from the story book on lions and have the class follow along on a projected image of the pages if the class has a projector. Some of the little ones will go to sleep at this point. That is fine, it means they are happy and the things they have learned will be soaking in. A net has been laid down now connection lions and all those other things that have been learned.

Skills learned here are reading, writing and other communication skills as well as research skills. Everyone learns at a different rate and in different ways. The program I am giving you uses the same old techniques of sight reading, phonics and kinesthetic learning but combines them so that any child will have a chance to develop the skills in a way that come easiest to it.

Next we change groups and build a different animal. Different children do different tasks with each animal; children who were in the map making group go to the research group and children who were making the mural now work in the research group, etc., mix them up, don't keep the children in the groups the same. Children who start out slowly will improve over time but will not hold back those who want to move ahead. In this environment slow learners do not stand out and there is time for everyone to find their own way. It is also possible to spot a child who is having problems and let them repeat the research group or map group or what ever seems to be bothering them, more frequently. Never have a child repeat a group twice in a row however. Also, never force a shy child to be a presenter (tell what it has learned in the research group) if it is to embarrassed. They can stand up with some one else or just wait until they get more in to the swing of things later on.

And on we go to Zebras. Zebras are good because they give you that precious “Z” for the alphabet cards above the board. They also ARE limited to Africa and the Zoo and you will have to extend this to horses to go to other continents and the important fact that until recently, horses have been man's helper in most of his endeavors in the world. There is a wealth of information to be mined here. More sentences to be written out, more reports to be given to the class and of course a Zebra to be constructed. Do not do these things for the children, they must do them for them selves or the experience is wasted. New groups will learn new skills and everyone will learn information and another net will have been laid down in the brain. When you have finished Zebras you can move on to cows. They are a great place to learn a little physiology by pasting the cow's multiple stomachs on it's side.

If I have explained this well enough and you have let it be a learning experience rather than feed and regurgitate, these are some of the subjects that you have laid down a foundation for:
Anthropology
Biology
Botany
Cartography
Ecology
Geography
Geology
History
Paleontology
Physiology
Zoology

And after lunch ---! By the way, some business schools and others are finding it necessary to teach their students table manners and other social skills because manners are what enable us to get along in the world and many students come to college level schools having very few of them. Lunchtime, in the cafeteria, would be a great place to start. Enough for now, we will take up “after lunch” next time.

Education 103

This is the third in a series of articles on how to make American schools the best in the world. We will talk about a very good way to teach numbers among other things.

A young child's brain is organized to learn languages. It has just learned its native tongue when it comes to school. While this pattern is still fresh is the best time to learn new languages. Mathematics is a language, music is a language and now is the time to take advantage of that pattern that is all set up to learn those skills.

Numbers and math skills should be learned using as many senses as possible. An absolute essential for learning numbers are blocks or other objects that can be manipulated and written on. As a minimum you can use three sets of blocks, each set painted in one of the primary colors, red, yellow or blue. On one side of the blocks should be a number, 1 through 9. There should be several additional blocks painted white or left wooden with a 0 on one side. These blocks should be used to learn the numbers, to demonstrate how 0 can be used for several things and how the numbers are organized so that we can get an almost infinite number using the basic 10 digits.

The blocks should be played with, stacked and counted, added and knocked over and subtracted, multiplied and divided. Once they have done that show them how to write down the results. Pickup sticks and wooden skewers also make good tools for counting and skewers can be broken in sections to demonstrate fractions. There are loads of games that can be played with numbers. Variations of Red Rover and Musical Chairs are great because they include physical activity. Everything in the room should be counted and measured. Sticky notes can be placed on everything. This will also entail learning to write the numbers.

Once the numbers have been fairly well learned talk to the children about why we need numbers. Tell them about the early herders that had to have a way to keep track of their cattle and how they went from naming them to counting them on their fingers but when they got to more than 10 they had a problem. In order to conduct trade a system of keeping track of goods had to be developed. Draw a man's foot on the board and tell them about the English King our ruler was named after. Draw a hand and number the fingers and show how from base to tip of the middle finger it is approximately 6 inches long. (That used to be the average length of a man's hand but we are bigger these days.) Draw an adult lower arm and show them that it is approximately the length of a yardstick. They have recently discovered that these basic body part measurements were what were used to build the Greek temples.

Most young children can go much further than is generally realized in math skills. They should be encouraged to go as far as they can but don't go to fast. They need to establish a very solid net here to build on. As long as you keep it interesting they will surprise you. There are computer programs for young children that can be of great help. There is one for the calculus for quite young children. Remember you are teaching a language!

Music is also a language. In many countries grade-schoolers are taught the violin. What a child has an aptitude for should be left to the resource teacher who will be teaching music, but all children should be taught an instrument. We have spent very little money on supplies so far, so the school district should be able to pop for child size violins for the first graders. Starting music here is not only an appropriate time for the child but it begins a musical experience that should continue on up through the grades with the musical resource teacher coming in every day in the primary grades and by the time the children have reached the fourth or fifth grade they should be ready to form bands and orchestras which will meet in other rooms with a different teacher. Music is essential to a child's development and should not be left out of any school program. The US is falling far behind other countries in this. Use every excuse to sing. After the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning, sing a patriotic song. Write the words on the board so that they can learn them and follow along. Change the song when they have learned to sing and write it. Learn a song from Africa to sing while they are working on the Lion. It is quite possible to have one small group sing quietly while the others are doing something else. This is a good reason for having the research group in a quiet corner of the room.

And “Art” you ask? Well, we have been using it all along but children should learn about fine art as well. Go back to the lion. There are many fine art pictures that feature lions. Get a print on loan from the local library or museum or if you don't have those resources get one from the sources on line “Artcyclopedia” is a good place to start; You don't have to buy prints although a good collection for the school library would be nice. If you can get a print, hang it up in the classroom and talk about it with the class; about the artist, when and where it was painted and, if possible why. Do the same thing every time you change subject. If you can't afford or borrow a print just look at the ones on line. In the early grades don't get to technical, that can wait until later. For now, just enjoy.

Music is not the only part of our children's education that is being neglected. All young children should be given some sort of physical development training. Something in the nature of Karate, calisthenics, gymnastics or ballet should be taught in every primary class. Young children need to learn to control their bodies and focus their minds. Karate and Yoga are excellent for this. Team sports are also essential but at a little later stage of development. Remember we are educating children here, not training workers. For some time now school systems have been abandoning their PE programs as cost saving measures. The military has been complaining about the phyical quality of enlistees and we have been hearing lately a good deal about the obesity crisis among our children. Physical excercize is good for the brain; it cannot be neglected as part of a child's development.

We have now followed our class through opening with the Pledge and a song; name tag building on the first day; lion building, with research, map making, mural painting groups and a midmorning pause for a snack. Then there is lunch, number learning, Karate, afternoon snack, music and if there has been time for a nature walk that is great. Now we close the day with story time. Its five o'clock and time to go home.

Next time we will start on the second and higher grades.

Education 104

This is the fourth article in the series on how to repair Americas education system and make our children the best educated in the world.

By the time the children have finished first grade they should be fairly proficient in reading, writing and basic math skills. By the time they reach midterm of the first year the children should be able to write their own small paragraphs when they are in the research groups. By the time the year is over all children should be writing several paragraphs at a time and short stories with the help of their aids. Use any excuse to write stories. If the class pet rabbit has babies, great, write a story about it. If the bag of tadpole jelly in the aquarium hatches (or not) write a story about that.

Second grade will be a major shift of gears. There will not be as much need for extra help although at least a couple of aids or volunteers will be necessary. Little children learn well from bigger ones and if it works out you may want to go on using upper grade students on an as needed basis. There will be more use of the science recourse teacher along with continued use of the music and physical development recourse teachers. Although you will still want to divide up for projects there will be more working with the larger group now that the basics have been taken care of. We will be starting a progressive study of history that will lay one layer of net over another, year after year, and serve as an anchor for the rest of the information to be acquired. By using history we can tie every thing else to it; science, art and architecture, music, political events and social movements, anything that came into the world in a given time period. It is possible to cover the same material hit and miss, by taking this subject and that and following where it leads (it will eventually lead to everything) but I like this organization of information because you are less likely to leave things out. So we start at the beginning.

I don't think there is a better way to introduce the story of earth's beginnings than to show it on TV. Here it would be nice to have a wide screen HD television set. If the school can only afford one, it can be moved from class to class as necessary but the TV has become an essential tool in the classroom, just like the computer. If there is one thing today's children come to school knowing, it is how to watch TV. There are some wonderful PBS and History Channel programs that show the violence and glory of the beginnings of the solar system and the formation of the earth. However, this will be remembered better if it is processed. Make a model of the solar system and hang it from the ceiling, build a volcano, etc.. Use your science resource teacher help to you out with this. Do your reading research as well. There is a wealth of material and information available on these subjects, just remember to keep the children involved. There is a lot to follow up with out there after you have started with the TV. You can collect rocks and start a study of minerals. You can research the origin myths of various cultures; there is a Chinese one that resembles the Big Bang Theory remarkably.

Now that you have an earth to work with you need to go on and populate it with the beginnings of life, and follow the miraculous development of the species. Now is the time to build dinosaurs. Little kids love dinosaurs; some of them never get over it and end up being Paleontologists. They love cave men too, build a cave. This is a marvelous chance to involve them in all sorts of projects and a teacher with a good imagination can have a field day. Keep them writing stories and drawing murals. Keep them working on numbers; there are lots of ways to work numbers into this subject matter. Have your science resource person set up a few simple physics projects to demonstrate gravity, velocity and more; make maps of the phases of the moon, globes that show the brake up of the original great continent, maps of the edge of the last ice age and so on. If you have a good Natural History Museum in your area or a paleontological dig take a field trip.

At this level we want to introduce a new project, our classroom town. Build a grocery store, a bank, a post office and any other building that is of interest, maybe a library if you have enough books. Use cardboard boxes or if the community can afford it, ply wood and two by fours. Do this anew each year, you can recycle the materials but the children need the experience of building their own town. (You may be able to work a little architecture in.) Lots of measuring to be done here. Set up the class with fake money to bank and use in various businesses you build. You will be using the bank to teach the use of a bank account, check book, savings account, simple contracts (loans) credit cards, etc.. You might even buy some penny stocks. You will be using the grocery store to teach value for dollar food buying, meal planing, and the nutritional value of food, which will lead into the whole subject of nutrition which is much neglected and badly needed in this age of junk food. I cannot stress enough that, “we are what we eat “and these days we have no idea what we are eating.

A good teacher can go a long way with this project. The aim here is to teach children the basics of functioning in the larger community. You might build and sell each other a little jewelry; furniture or pottery, or some other item to show children how private enterprise and the flow of capital works. You should also be using fractions and decimals by now. Learn to make change efficiently. Use you post office to send letters the children write to each other and pen pals; write to your stockbroker and Congresspeople. You can learn a lot from the study of stamps. Relate this to the letters you write and send or have a groups study it and report to the others.

Get out side as much as possible, nature walks are mandatory. If you are in the city, take a bus to the park or the water front. Form relationships with people who can help you here, such as Park Service guides. Botany is best learned on the hoof as it were. Grow things in the classroom.

That should give us a good plan for the second year and here we need to pause and talk about summer vacations. Summer vacation as originally planned was the time when children were expected to stay home and help with the harvest. The need for that is long gone. Most adults do not get three months off in the summer time. Most families have to find something to do with their children for the summer months. Most institution of higher education (collages and trades schools) have summer programs now. There is really no reason for K through 12 to shut down in the summer. This is the information age and we have a lot of it to cover. Schools should be in session all year round. It may work for some communities to have one month off so that children can go to camp or on family vacation. Or it could be a sliding month or two weeks so that children can go with their families any time during the three summer months. With what the rest of the class will be doing they may not want to go, however. Summer should be a time for field trips! Really big field trips. City kids should go to spend a couple of weeks on a farm in the country. Rural kids should spend a couple of weeks in the city and see the cultural centers they do not have access to at home; museums, theaters, land marks and other historical sites. Children that live inland should visit the coast; children that have never seen them should visit the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains and see some of the parks and landmarks they contain. How about following the Lewis and Clark or the Oregon trail? Schools can be turned into hostels for this sort of exchange program. Our future citizens need to be familiar with the land they live in and the people that live in it. Yes, I know that gas is expensive but there is always Amtrak and if these things are pre-planed well they can be done very cost effectively. Think of a classroom in a railroad car! Even if at the present time, you can't arrange such trips, you can visit everything that is with in your own locale, monuments, landmarks, digs, parks or any site of interest. Visit the local community that the second graders have been experiencing in their classroom. Some businesses are glad to have class tours. When the children return to class they can write up their experiences and create a personal book of remembrances. “Ah yes, the summer of '09”, the year we went to Washington D.C.”

Education 105

This is the fifth article on an improved paradigm for the education of American children. In previous articles we have covered the reasons for the need for a change and set out the basics of this way of instruction. We have abandoned the spoon feed and regurgitate method of teaching and adopted a spread the net analogy as a way to work with the neural connections of the brain. We have stressed the need to present information in a manor that is enjoyable to the learner. We have described the use of resource teachers and teachers aids and the use of older children to assist the teacher. We have discussed the importance of art, music and physical education in the learning process.

We have described the use of small groups within the class to build models, make maps, paint murals and do research on a subject. We have built a mini-town to teach the everyday skills of living in the modern world. With the help of resource teachers we have combined math and science more intimately with the other learning experiences. Perhaps most important of all, we have made the learner the active principal in the learning experience, not the lecture-teacher.

By now the child is used to being an independent learner, able to research a project and write a report and present information to the rest of the class. Having studied pre-history in second grade we now start a pattern that will continue on through 8th or 9th grades. The class will take a period of history and will again divide into four groups, the research group will gather information while others build models or dioramas or other representations of the time period. There will be the map group who may make more than one map to locate and identify the locale and possibly trace various influences on the area and the group that will paint the mural to represent the location background and environment. Some of you will have figured out that these latter groups will have to do a little research them selves. Teachers and helpers should provide informations sources, NOT DO THE RESEARCH THEMSELVES. The science resource person should help the class trace the scientific discoveries of the age and other influences and tie them into the subject matter. Remember you are building a net, the more interconnections you make, the better. When you have finished one topic the children will change groups and go on to the next subject.

In Grade Three we start studying the Ancient Civilizations:

Mesopotamian
Egyptian
Indian
Chinese
Mediterranean
Mesoamerican
Celtic

A great thing to do here is to have your model makers build replicas of the pyramids of the various cultures and compare them. The science resource teacher should deal with the introduction of metallurgy and agriculture among other things. These were the beginnings of civilization as we know it and should be inspiring to the children.

During the third grade you should introduce English grammar. Make a game of it: say something like “these are the rules that make it easier to write well and make ourselves better understood”. Then make a list of nouns with all the names of things that the children think of. Don't let this get to be a drag. It can be taught slowly. There are computer programs that can help but only use them as part of the game format.

In Grade Four we cover The Classical World:

Greece
Rome
Persia
China
India
Polynesia
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Americas

Spend a lot of time on Greece due to the fact that so much of our culture came from there. Write and perform your own Greek Plays and study the myths and literature. One thing that should be seen in every class studying Greece is a group of boys wrapped in white bed sheet, taking turns declaiming to the rest about their favorite candidate on American Idol (lets say) and eventually voting in the Greek manor with tokens. Just as many other boys, not in sheets are “slaves” that can be selected by drawing lots and the girls did not get to vote in Greece. This little performance should be used to point out the difference between a “true” democracy and our own republic.

There is a wealth of art and architecture to be studied in this period in all the countries. This was the beginning of worldwide trade and the time of the start of the Silk Road. It was the time of the first major exchange of ideas. It was also the first time large armies were formed and empires were carved out. The science resource teacher will be kept busy with all the discoveries made in this period but don't forget the import of new fabric like silk and cotton into countries that had known only wool and flax.

This is a good time to introduce basic Algebra. Algebra is a language and the brain is still set up to learn languages if you have been working hard at math skills and grammar. Make it a game to be played for the sake of playing it. Again, there are computer programs that can help. Take a long time with the basic concepts and use a many demonstrations of how algebra is used as possible at this level.

This is also a good time to start a new language. You want to be fairly well along with English grammar and usage before you start a new language but still at a stage where the brain is organized for language and susceptible. This new resource teacher should still come to the home classroom. If I have not been clear about the reason for keeping to the home classroom, beside the waste of time spent in the halls and the disruption of the learning process, it is essential that the children learn to deal with social relationships in the home classroom before they expand out into the rest of the student body. “Plays well with others” is something that is taught just like reading and writing and cannot automatically be expected to be there in the child when it comes to school. By this grade level children will probably be going out of the classroom for Band or sports or special events but this should not be allowed to take up a great deal of time or effort in getting reorganized.

In Grade Five we study the Dark ages and the Great Religions

Christianity in the West
Islam in the Near East
Buddhism and Hinduism in the Far East
Maya Culture
Norse Culture

These Religions dominated the development of Culture in the world after the fall of the Roman Empire. From about 550BC to 1100AD the organizing factor was religion. There were others but these are the main ones. You might want to include Japan and the Shinto religion. This was the time of the Byzantine Empire and Charlemagne. A great way to experience these happenings is to make costumes for the time periods. Nothing like strutting around in the costume of an Eastern Potentate to give a feel for the period. This is also a way to teach clothing construction and design to both boys and girls. If the school district can't afford the costumes, just do the headgear, they can actually be made from paper bags. The map makers will really be kept busy in this period charting the influences that sweep across the landscape and the marching armies.

By this time you should be able to start Geometry. Geometry lends it's self to being demonstrated with art and by building things. It can be a wonderful experience if taught slowly and with a lot of application.

In Grade Six we study the The Middle Ages

The Crusades and the Holy Roman Empire
Genghis Kahn and the Mongol Empire
Aztec and Inca Empires
Anasazi and Mississippian Cultures
The Ottoman Empire
The Song and Ming Dynasties
The Black Death
The Hundred Years War
The Renaissance

I have included the Black Death, the Hundred Years War and The Renaissance (along with the Enlightenment), as separate subjects because they had such sweeping effects and I think should be considered separately.

The Science resource person should certainly be able to do something with the Gutenberg printing press. You should also be building on the chemistry background and may need to go to a separate lab classroom for that.

In Grade Seven we study The Age of Exploration

The Voyage of Columbus
The Protestant Reformation
The Voyage of Magellan
The Voyages of Cook and others in the Pacific
The Exploration of the North American West coast by Vancouver and The Russians
Mogul rule of India
The Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan
Portuguese trade in Asia and settlement in Brazil
The Reign of Peter the Great in Russia
British settlements in Australia
English settlement in Jamestown and the American Revolution
The French Revolution

You may want to organize the explorations by the great exploring nations like Russia, Spain, Portugal, France and England. However you do it, you certainly want to spend a lot of time on early America. This is the place we learn to be good citizens. It is also very important to understand what has gone on in the rest of the world so that we can understand what we are dealing with today, but we must teach our young people what Democracy is all about and where it came from. They will have studied the Greek form of Democracy and will be able to understand the differences and the structure of our form of government. This is so important that as much time as possible should be devoted to it. Make it real, do as much play acting as you like. There are all sorts of visual aids and fine art pictures on this subject and they should be used to the full. Your background mural should probably include Plymouth Rock and as much of the early of life in the English Colonies as possible but don't forget the Spanish and French Colonies.

The United States is now the only remaining super power for a reason. The example of democracy we have established has become a goal for the people of the rest of the world. The whole class should study the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the Amendments. There should be a lot of research and a good long discussions about each of these and how they came to be. Study the Amendments along with what caused them to be enacted. You will be surprised at the wisdom and understanding of 12 and 13 year olds.

Being a free people we are also free to make mistakes. We have attempted to correct some of them with amendments to the Constitution but others are still with us. It is good to talk about the mistakes in class and what needs to still be done. We are free enough to learn from our mistakes and to correct them and children need to learn that this is an on going process. Times change and democracy is evolving just like everything else and children need to learn that we need to be constantly aware of that as well as attacks at the roots of democracy and the rule of law by those who would rather live in a theocracy or monarchy, not realizing that what we have here is so precious.

With the advances in Science in the Renaissance we now can deal with such things as anatomy and advances in medicine, (might be a good time to work in sex education) and with invention of gun powder (originally in China), which made a good deal of the colonization possible.

This is also a good place to introduce Statistics. We are constantly bombarded by statistics these days and very few of us really understand them. There is no reason to go into advanced statistics but a good basic understanding of statistics would be very helpful in understanding what is on the evening news, to say nothing of laying down an additional section of that net to further build upon.

In the Eighth Grade we study the Age of Imperialism

Rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire
Americas Westward expansion and the Civil War
English Colonies in Canada, Australia and India
The English, French, Germans and others in Africa
The Spanish, British and French in South America and the Spanish American War
Denmark and its colonies
The Russian Empire
The Franco-Prussian War

We need to shift gears again at this level. After we have studied the colonial world we should follow each country or area into its modern form. We still have the great world wide wars to deal with but most of the countries and their populations are still much as they were at the end of the colonial area in the 1900's It would take to much time to study each individual country but we can study areas such as Africa or the Middle East and watch the progression of colonies to independent nations. The journey of South and Central America from colonial dominance to their present form is especially important to us. As an example in a lot of classrooms today we study Argentina as that tear drop shaped country in the southern part of South America, who's principal exports are beef and ---. Who the Hell cares!!! The principal exports of Argentina will probably change by the time this Eight Grader starts working in the import-export market and there will be a lot of things he/she needs to know about Argentina. The mural group should show the varied landscape, ranging from the Andes to the Pampas to the coast and from the Gran Chaco to the Straights of Magellan. That will give them a good idea of what kind of crops can and are being raised there; what plants and animals can grow there. Other things they will need to know about are what is the difference between the urban and rural population; what form of government do they use; what is their recent political history and what are the events in history that are important to them? How is Argentina different from its neighbors and are there strains between them? Make what is present and real, alive for the students.
This is a good place to expand your study of food. Hopefully you will have had snacks from various cultures that families from your class have helped you with. But now you need to build on that second grade study of nutrition and do a little more food preparation. If you haven't already, you need to pay some attention to the foods that make up different cuisines and foods that were imported from various colonies to their homelands. A great many foodstuffs that are used around the world today originally came from South America. Eventually it would be ideal to have a food preparation area in every class room but if you don't have that, improvise!

The Science resource person will be kept busy in this grade with the huge scientific and technical advances; railroads, electricity, canal building and the industrial age in general.

This is a good place to mention the study of your home State. If you are living in one of the thirteen original colonies take up your study in Seventh Grade right after the War for Independence. If you live in the rest of the country fit it in with westward expansion and study it as part of the additions to the country starting with Vermont in 1791. It is hard for me to think of Vermont as a frontier state but it was at one time. Take a little extra time to get to know your state. Each state has its own flavor and geography and came into the Union under different circumstances. Going to see local landmarks is a must here. Don't forget that westward expansion didn't end with the Gadsten Purchase, everyone should take a look at the last two states to be added and the territories.

In the Ninth Grade we study the 20th Century

Exploration of the North and South Poles
World War I
The Great Depression(World Wide)
World War II
The Cold War
The Space Age
The Information Age

This is an age of conflict and the world needs to be reassessed after each one. Why each war happened and the result of each needs to to be considered. The short answer is that the result of the First World War was the Second World War and the result of the Second World War was that it must never be allowed to happen again but there is much more to discuss than that. There have been the founding of international organizations, such as the UN and the World Court, NATO and The African Union. This has been called the American Century; how and why did that happen? For these discussion times let the research group present it's information and let that lead into a discussion.

The Balkans; the former Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania, are an area that is a transition between East and West in a different way than the Middle East and worth a study in itself. The major changes during and after the Cold War and that are still going on there make this an important area to look at.

The World Wars brought a lot of science with them including miracle drugs and great advances in Public Health. The Space Age and Information Age will need a lot of help from the Science resource person, but don't forget that other things were going (like earth changes and global warming). You should bring the age progression up to date and talk about Terrorism among other things.
Next time we go on to a different format.

Education 106

Tenth Grade

At this point we are going to shift gears again. We have used history to guide us through a learning experience that has laid down net after net of most of what has happened in the world, its accomplishments and disasters. Children will have experienced as much information on all that has gone before as we could provide them with, including the science and math, and now are ready to be introduced to the more formal organization of knowledge. For the next year the young people will be exposed to as many introductory courses in The Arts, Letters and Sciences as we can fit in. The object is to give them a overview of the branches of knowledge to see where they want to direct further study or the occupation they want to pursue. They should have a good background but these courses will define subject matter areas that they will want to follow further. This will largely be a lecture and demonstration situation that will introduce them to the format used in higher education. You could have three classes in the morning, lunch, two classes in the afternoon and music (Band or Orchestra) and Martial Arts, Ti Chi or sports. If you have a large school you may have to arrange a sliding schedule but you should have five introductory classes in each half of the school year. Whether you want to teach an introductory lab course such as Chemistry I will leave up to you. What follows is a list of classes that could be taught as introductory with comments where necessary.

Anthropology

Physical and Cultural

Computer Science and Technology

Drama and Dance

Earth Sciences

Ecology

Geology

Climatology

Oceanography

Health Sciences

Literature*

Philosophy

Political Science

Psychology

Clinical

Comparative

Social Science

*Literature should be world literature, not just English literature. The world grows flatter every day and today's students are missing a lot. We should be teaching Shakespear and Sumi; Homer and Hemmingway; Hans Christian Anderson and Lao Tzu; Albert Camus and Mark Twane; Chinua Achabe and Charles Dickens; Leo Tolstoy and Orhan Pamuk; a wealth of Latin American writers and so on. I am fully aware that today's students study literature by looking up cheat notes on the inter-net but that is fine. Let them get a synopsis from the cheat notes. The impact of great literature is that it touches the soul and gives music to the language. Students who study literature should be reading parts from stories out loud in class or taking parts in scenes from a play so that they can feel and hear the effect. If they can get a feel for the music of the text they will go on to read the book (or play) for them selves.

To teach these subjects you need teachers that love their subject and are capable of imparting that love to students. They will also need to relate what they are teaching to what the students have learned in the previous 9 years.

Years 11 and 12

In years 11 and 12 the curriculum should be divided into six or more tracts that a student can choose from, the end result of which should leave them ready for jobs or prepared for college. We currently have a need for people in computer and other tech sciences. Because we will some time soon have a single-payer Universal Health Care system we are going to need a lot more Health Care professionals and technicians. We already have a shortage of nurses, General Practitioners and some specialties. Therefore I would start my list of suggestions with those subjects.

Technology

Health Care

Ecotechnology*

Social Sciences

Arts and Letters (for those who want to go on to Collage in other areas)

*Ecotechnology should cover everything that will improve our environment and is a rapidly growing field. It can include everything from house remodeling to habitat improvement and clean energy development

We should not, at this stage slip back into the spoon feed and regurgitate method of teaching. These subjects should be taught in a hands on, find the information for your self method. I was excited to see on TV the other nite that San Diego, California has developed a High Tech High School and is using a student initiated learning program. Congratulations to them for their wonderful effort. Their success is a great example of the possible success of the type of education I have been talking about. Students at this High School research and design their own technical projects and build them themselves with an advisor who gives help and advise if asked for. This is an example of what the tracts we were talking about above could look like. I notice however, that they have recently opened a similar High School devoted to Drama so I think they have realized that Tech is not everything. San Diego is an affluent community but I don't think even they can afford a High School for every discipline. It is quite possible however, to use these techniques in the schools we already have. This sort of program can e extended to any subject and is the natural out come of the type of format we have been using. This does not have to be an elaborate or expensive undertaking. What it does take is teachers that love children and have imagination. Organizational skills are also required. There are a great many teachers already out there who are using some of these techniques and ideas and more power to them. However, far to many teachers depend on the Textbook to guide their teaching and the test to evaluate the result and the information net that is spread in the childes brain is thin and short lived. .

Students in the Social Sciences and Health Care tracks will need to experience working with people in the kind of environment they want to work in. Some of these students will have already gained experience by having been helpers to the lower grades.

Some of you will have noticed that I have not mentioned textbooks or homework. When a child is going to school from nine to five there should be no need for assigned homework. As to textbooks, they are the backbone of the spoon-fed and regurgitate method of teaching. Current textbooks take a snapshot or sound bite of a subject presumed to be on target for a certain age group and in this day and age they are sometimes out of date by the time they reach the student. The information presented in this format will be remembered only long enough to take the test and very soon forgotten.

There are over 193 countries in the world plus territories and colonies. Many of them have little information available about them. Sometimes the best you can do is to get a travel book from the bookstore and that is a limited resource. Take the case of Estonia for example: this is a little country on the cusp of major cultural and geographic areas, which has changed hands many times and is a microcosm of the changes that have swept across Europe. There is not nearly enough information available on this little country. Instead of writing an age related paragraph in a text on Europe, publishers should put out beautifully illustrated books on the whole country, its history, resources and the many cultures that have swept through it. This is just one example, the point being that more attention paid to individual places is preferable to a dab of information packed together with a lot of other dabs. A lot of good books on individual places in the library are preferable to a textbook that is passed out with little information and that you did not have the experience of finding for your self. If the United States of America is called upon to be the leader of the democratic world then our future citizens should know as much about the rest of the world as possible and that world is getting smaller every day.

Another thing publishers could be doing for us is producing handbooks on some subjects that the students could be given to keep as reference books. These would be on Algebra, Geometry, Statistics and other math how-to books; an English Grammar reference book and possibly a set of literature paperbacks that the student can have to read in class and take home to explore further later. An absolute essential is a little volume that contains The Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights and The Constitution and its Amendments. These should all be slim paperback volumes, not the great heavy volumes that are giving our youngsters back problems from being carted around in backpacks. In my days at school we got lop-sided from carrying books on our hip.

A word about testing; tests are necessary to evaluate the program, to see if there are holes in the information that is being given, to see if a particular child is falling behind, and to see if the teacher is doing the job. Using this method you will probably not have to worry about keeping up to grade level but it is good to check now and again.

In closing let me say that I am in not in any way expecting what I have said here to be put into use in most public schools any time soon but I hope it will be of help to home schoolers and possibly to small schools that are struggling due to lack of funds and other kinds of support. I don't think that the politicians will take this up as a real way to help the children of blue collar families become some of the best educated children the world has ever known; or that the vaulted CHANGE that everyone is talking about will include the most meaningful change we could make for the future of our children, but I needed to put these ideas out there and see what kind of traction they could get.

When all is said and done children want to learn. If you instill the love of learning into a child and show it how to find the resources to learn, it will teach itself.