Education - Part 1

This is the topic I've been wanting to cover basically since I started this blog.  Heck, this topic might be the reason I started this blog.  I've been scared to, though, because it's such a huge topic and I just didn't know where to start or how to fit it all in.

I've decided I can't fit it all into a single post, so I'm going to make a series of posts about it.

I began my journey as a child in the public education system, so I suppose that's as good a place as any to get started.  From a young age, I was always aware that I was generally ahead of my peers at school, especially in math.  My parents recognized this and fostered my learning.  My teachers recognized this, with mixed reactions.  Some of my teachers, like my third grade teacher, allowed me extra activities when I finished my work much sooner than other students.  My fourth grade teacher allowed me to help other students in the class understand their classwork if I understood the topic already.

This wasn't always the case, though.  Some of my teachers actively held me back because I didn't fit into their curriculum.  I struggled with other teachers because I would ask difficult questions that they either couldn't answer, or, more likely, didn't want to spend the time answering in class.  For example, in Trigonometry I was a lot more interested in the derivations of the trigonometric identities than their uses, but my teacher was not interested in deriving them in class.

I spent a few years in middle school in my school's gifted program.  Unfortunately, the program did not allow me to take advanced courses or test out of courses.  Instead, it was a program that took me out of homeroom with my peers and put me into a classroom with other gifted students to play academic games.  It was a good experience because it allowed me to befriend other students who were struggling to stay involved in the regular classroom, but it didn't allow us to get ahead in any way.  We stayed in the program our first year of high school, but then the teacher in charge of the program was given other responsibilities and the program ended.  At least in high school we were doing interesting things working with the LEGO robotics program instead of just playing academic games.

So, how is this relevant?  Well, my experiences are fairly normal for any students outside the norm in public schools.  Generally, students can find a few good teachers that really push them to succeed, but otherwise they're outsiders in the classroom.  The teachers either can't teach to them or won't because they're either too far ahead or behind the rest of the class.  Because the teachers leave them on the outside of their lesson plans, the other students pick up on the fact that this student is excluded and they push to exclude them as well.  This leads to bullying, and many teachers either cannot or will not do anything about bullying, which leads to de facto teacher sponsored bullying.

What's my solution?  Actually, it's quite simple.  There's a paradigm in public education that students of the same age should be in the same classes together.  Therein lies the problem.  It's widely acknowledged that all children develop at different rates in different areas.  If we allow children to develop at their own rates, study the areas that matter to them.  If students struggle with math, allow them to spend more time in the lower maths until the understand them better before moving on.  If they flourish in math, allow them to push through until them come to topics that are outside of their understanding.  If students are attracted to reading/writing, allow them opportunities to read and learn creative writing techniques.  Etc, etc.  Right now the system crams all kids into the same classroom, and some kids are capable of doing much more than others, while some are capable of much less.  Some of this is area specific, some is just developmentally specific.

The point is, there's absolutely no reason to expect that every 6 year old can expect to learn exactly the same things at exactly the same pace.  The issue is that child specific learning is a complete shift from our current system, and change is something that comes incredibly slowly in this highly bureaucratic education system.

There is more I want to address on this topic, but I think this is enough for today.  I'll come back to it again later to continue my train of thought.