The Neanderthal School of Wizardry Part One, Motivation For Change

"The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist."
                                                                                      ---Zig Ziglar

Schools have been around for a couple of thousand years, possibly longer. The idea of mass schooling for every child, on the other hand, has only been about a couple of hundred years old. This is a quantum leap that propelled the countries that practiced them to never before achieved heights. No longer is education restricted to a privileged few. Every kid gets an education which significantly enhanced his/her productivity and effectiveness.

As good as we have it in education today, there are a few drawbacks to the current education system. Drawbacks that could be remedied with today's technology and new approaches.

The biggest issue is the lumping of students of all abilities into a single class room. What this does is that the speed and depth of the teaching is targeted to the middle of the class. The slow ones suffer because it is too fast for them. The smart ones are bored and unchallenged.

Unevenness of the teacher quality is also an issue. Just as a great teacher has the ability to inspire a student, a bad teacher could really ruin the subject for the kids. I know this all too well as my kids have had both.

Kids always want to compare what they do to their peers. Problem is, they get discouraged if they end up at the bottom all the time. My son plays basketball. He is a pretty good player for his size. The problem is that he is small for his age. As a result, he feels that he is not making progress and year by year, he is losing interest in the game. When a kid sits together with his classmates, he can't help but to compare his performance with his peers. If he does badly, this could be pretty discouraging for a young person.

Developing character is the most important job of raising a kid today, but schools are mainly focused on learning knowledge. The teachers are there just to keep the order in school. In some schools, the teachers are afraid of the kids. Some parents also teach their kids things like cheating and bullying. Not only is this very bad for their kids to learn, but there is a echo effect where other kids would see this behavior and pick it up. School should do a better job developing the character for the kids.

Today, schools mainly push the knowledge to the kids. If a kid can pull the knowledge as he is ready to absorb it, then the kid develop discipline, self motivation and self direction. He has more ownership of the learning process. The kids also are used to make more decisions for himself and manage his own affairs at a young age.

Kids today are not given enough latitude to explore and find areas that they are interested. Not only does the school herd the kids into a few tracks, the parents are also imposing their idea of what is good for the kids. In areas where there are high concentration of Asians, parents are pushing the schools to go to overdrive. In these areas, kids don't have enough time to sleep, let alone do any sort of exploration. Parents also have their ideas of what is good for the kids. Unfortunately, most do not try to understand what the kids wanted to learn and try to cram this to their kids just because this is "good for them". For a kid that is already so busy that he does not have time to sleep, taking on extra-curriculum activities that he does not want to do adds to the burden without stoking their interest. Kids need some time to explore, uncoerced, subjects that might be of interest to them. Once they found their interest, they need to have the freedom to pursue it. This also means losing the baggage of learning things beyond the core knowledge that they have no interest or ability in doing.

Finally, while our kids spend the biggest part of their day with their fellow students, the interaction with their peers was a byproduct of having to learn at the same location instead of designed to teach them social skills which they will need when they grow up, and to help them mature. They spend the majority of their time sitting next to other students with minimal interactions while the teacher teaches. In some classes they do projects together with other students, but the focus is to complete the work. In recess and lunch they get together with their friends. Many learn their social skills that way, but it was left to their own device. Most kids did OK, but it could be a lot better. Some kids fall through the cracks because they are a little off. Most young kids do not want to associate with kids that are off. In the past, kids have time to play with other kids after school, but with the high intensity of after school learning and after school programs, kids don't have much time to play with their friends the way we once did.