of
How We Teach
“Why should I go to school?” my grandchild asks. “I am not learning anything useful.” Often, I have a hard time giving him an answer that makes sense. Why did I go to school in elementary or high school? And did I learn anything?
This is what I remember. I liked going to school in first grade because my teacher was nice. We did fun stuff and played at recess. Second through sixth grades are sort of a blur. I did like playing jacks and jump rope, and grounders and flies outside at school, but I don’t remember much about what went on inside. I do remember “Run Spot Run” so I must have learned some reading, and I do remember memorizing the multiplication tables in third grade so my strict teacher would stay off my back. But running and baseball are what I remember most. Surely, I did learn at school, but I remember more learning from my parents. They helped me get good grades by motivating me to do my homework using treats or comic books. But by middle grades, I went to school primarily to play with my friends. How was it for you?
If we are not engaging children in schools, what are we doing? I sometimes wonder if we are just housing the children and feeding them so the parents can go off and work or do other things. Are we just babysitting? Do parents care, or know, what we are doing at school so long as their children are being taken care of? Who is telling the teachers what to teach, how to teach? That direction is usually left up to the state legislature, through the local school
board, and down to the administrators. What do they know about how children learn? They are usually so busy trying to impress each other and their superiors about how intelligent they are that they don’t have time to get down to the child level. If any of the “powers that be” know how children learn, why are they allowing the system to remain as it is? What do children want to learn, and why? What do parents want their children to learn, and why? Instead of developing an educational system based on what a bunch of adults think children need to know (or more likely what children used to need to know when those adults were in school), shouldn’t we start with the ones being affected most to see what they think they need to know?
Some years ago, I came across a suggestion to ask students, parents, and community members what they would want their children to learn. I gave that question to some of my graduate and undergraduate classes, to parents, and to local businessmen over a period of three years. The way the question was posed was to assume that if their children were going to drop out of school, what would they want to be sure the children had learned? The writer of the suggestion had done a similar survey and gotten results. I found that my results were very similar. Responses varied but fell into four categories. People thought that children should 1) learn to read—enough to read a newspaper, 2) be able to do math—enough to balance their checkbook or do their income tax (probably using tax preparation software), 3) be able to get and keep a job—this was so they would be able to provide for themselves and their families and did include self-employment,
Perspective
Bob Rhodes
—Educator,
Founder, THe HoPI SChool
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