Search This Blog

Sunday, June 5, 2016

On Compulsory Education


For too many kids compulsory high school attendance is a form of imprisonment. More than 20 years after leaving I'm still traumatized by my formal education. How do I know? I recently applied to take a few classes at my local junior college and I had to fight off a panic attack just sitting at my home computer logging on to their website. As an adult returning to school you might expect me to worry about my grades, about the challenge of taking classes on top of an already full and established life, or the new social situation I'll be entering. But that's not it at all. I'm afraid of becoming trapped again. 

How can I be trapped by something I've signed up for? I know it doesn't make sense. But all of my my high school memories are connected to a deep sense of imprisonment. I was a gifted kid with a B+ average taking the most challenging classes they would let me. But I maintained that gpa without ever doing homework at home or studying...anything. I refused to do work at home as my only avenue of rebellion against teachers wasting so much of my time at school. I was deeply profoundly bored. 

People say trite things about kids who are bored, but I wasn't allowed to relieve my own boredom. I was trapped. I was forced to spend all day with people I didn't know who didn't care to know me. I lived by a bell schedule that told me when I could eat and when I could pee. I was doing nothing that was either meaningful or productive for the world. I passed the dreaded exit exams in my freshman year, one of only four freshmen to pass the writing test. Every day that I was compelled to attend after that was a day I felt imprisoned. 

It was too horrific for me to stay. Halfway through my junior year I dropped out and homeschooled myself to get a real diploma. I only had five classes left to take to get it so I graduated early. At the same time I took a full time job as office manager for two businesses starting up in the same space and got to learn the printing industry. Learning in the real world doing real productive and meaningful things was like coming out of a coma. I was engaged and excited. The real world is a much better place to learn than this artificial environment we've created to formally educate our children. 

I've become very involved in public education as the mother of 4 daughters. Our educational system has a lot of real problems that will take a lot of creativity to solve. Educators are beginning to ask how people would change the system  and this one thing stands out for me. We need to remove the 'compulsory' element of our public education system and create an 'opportunity' educational structure. If we want children to learn we must sell them on the subject we're presenting. We know that forcing them to learn by rote does not result in a retained education. They have to want to learn. We must promote based on mastery and build real world incentives into the system at every level. And we must get the kids who feel trapped out of the classroom and into apprenticeship learning opportunities. 

You may argue that if education isn't compulsory parents won't make their children attend! This is why real world incentives are essential. Many parents will send their kids simply for the free childcare, and others for the free lunch. But these parents drop their kids off and have no further involvement in the process. Parental involvement is one of the biggest factors in student success.   If there are real parent incentives for being involved in the education of their children, the education the children get will be more meaningful and effective. 

These rewards can be additional educational opportunities like trips to national parks or museums framed as 'vacations.' Or digital rewards like ebooks, music, and movies curated to expand engagement with the arts. It can be a system to reward diligence by providing students with the tools to develop their talents with options like musical instruments, art supplies, or sports gear. Advancing in core subjects can be rewarded with opportunities to take fun classes. The prison like bell schedule can be eliminated and the centralization of education broken up as each child navigates their own path through the educational opportunities presented in their region. The most productive and retained learning experiences my children have had have been out of school visiting museums and historic places. Anything we can do to take education on location, we should be doing. 

No, I don't expect anyone to give my proposal serious thought. It would create massive chaos within the existing structure. It's so fundamental a change I'm sure there are readers already writing their rebuttals before I reach the end of my argument. 'The system shouldn't have to change to accommodate a few gifted kids. They'll be alright regardless.' But there are so many impoverished kids that are also struggling, also dropping out, and also determined never to be trapped again by formal education. They too, feel imprisoned by it. Their schools even have metal detectors at the doors and police patrolling the halls. They are becoming more averse to education with each passing day. Our school system is shutting down the natural curiosity born in every child by forcing them to learn in one proscribed way on one expected timeline. 

I am daring to imagine something completely different. I'm imagining a crazy complicated system that we now have the technology to make simple if we had the will. I'm imagining a course of education that begins with the health of newborns and the simultaneous education of their parents and exends fluidly through childhood into adulthood along a variety of pathways to employment. I'm imagining a complete shift in the way we view education from teaching a set curriculum on a set schedule to teaching how to learn and coaching students down the path of lifelong learning that will prepare them to meet the challenges of the future. 

It has massive consequences, but it all begins with changing one word. Start changing it in your head and see what possibilities open up, how it demands we make school better suit the students. America should be the land of opportunity, not compulsion. Especially for our children. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Talk back. I'm a mom. I can handle it.