Creating The Perfect School

By Bruce Deitrick Price

As long as there have been schools, people have been asking, ‘So, how would we create the perfect school??’

I think the answer is obvious. You would not do any of the things that our Education Establishment likes to do. Indeed, you would do the opposite.

I believe I know exactly what they would do. They would sweep through the Warehouse of Current Educational Fads, grabbing stuff off the shelves with drunken abandon. Of course, their school would have Constructivism in all classes, with the teachers as Guides at Their Sides or, even worse, Facilitators. Lots of time would be wasted while students reinvent all of humanity’s discoveries, and teachers ascertain each student’s Prior Knowledge. Always, children would be encouraged to have deep discussions about the little they know, a fad called Critical Thinking. Meanwhile, the children would not learn to read, by using the method called Sight Words. They would not learn how to do arithmetic, by studying the fad called Reform Math. They would be prohibited from really knowing anything, according to the doctrine of No-Memorization. They would learn contempt for accuracy, according to the doctrine that praises Fuzziness. They would all get straight A’s, according to the doctrine of Self-Esteem. They would be made to work in groups, never learning to work independently, according to the doctrine of Cooperative Learning. And to top it off, the faddists would brag that their school teaches 21st-Century Skills! Unfortunately, this last cliche refers collectively to all the other cliches already mentioned.

My own take is that all of these fads are best understood as sound-good marketing slogans, more or less on the level of McDonald’s ‘i’m lovin’ it.’ Who could be against Self-Esteem? Cooperative Learning? Critical Thinking? Multiculturalism? Reform Math? Whole Language? 21st Century Skills? These artful slogans seem designed to make parents believe that something important is going on, and to convince students that they’re not wasting their time at school.

Unfortunately, none of these fads is much concerned with content, substance, facts, or knowledge. Our Education Establishment has a long track record of being gaga about social engineering, but dismissive of intellectual engineering. Predictably, their schools are to education what scooters are to long-distance transportation. As Professor Arthur Bestor noted more than 50 years ago, public schools will never get better, no matter who much money is spent, as long as the Education Establishment retains its hostility to content.

So, how do we create the perfect school, supposing we’re serious about this quest. First of all, we start from a profound love of facts, and a reverence for knowledge, We proceed in a systematic way to teach foundational knowledge, and then to build on that knowledge, wider and higher. With the results that typical students in the seventh grade will know more than the high school graduates that the Education Establishment turns out. Perhaps just as importantly, these young students will know what they do not know, unlike the Critical Thinkers who are encouraged to believe they know everything they need to know.

Throughout history, all the great schools are virtually identical in having great seriousness of purpose. Without that, everything is a joke and a squandering of money. The main improvement we can make on the past is to use the insight that you often accomplish more with carrots than with sticks. A smart school ensures that students have fun. They should look back and say, ‘Yeah, school was a blast.’ I think it’s a matter of keeping things moving, of creating a wave of learning, of being deeply serious but having a light touch, of mixing sports and extracurricular activities in with the academic work, of mixing field trips in with the class work. Mainly, in the digital age we have so many more tools for memorable presentation of information.

I think really successful schools manage a sleight-of-hand, an intentional deception if you will, so that students don’t realize that they’re actually in a very intense academic environment. It surely helps a great deal if a school is like this from kindergarten onward. Young children, treated as little scholars, will grow into the part. They’ll know that facts are fun, and knowledge is power.

Finally, the difference between the good school and the bad school is merely a matter of attitude and perspective. Good schools revere facts and knowledge, and want to inspire that feeling in children. Bad schools ricochet ineffectually from fad to theory to therapy, never committed to the reason that humans built schools in the first place: to transmit the best of the past to the future.

(For a discussion of Foundational Knowledge and other themes related to this article, please see ’43: American Basic Curriculum’ on Improve-Education.org. For a more sweeping statement of this article, see ’38: Saving Public Schools.’)

About the Author: Bruce Price is an author, artist, poet and education activist. He founded Improve-Education.org, which is now in its fifth year and has become a leading voice for education reform. This site explores many intellectual topics and is especially concerned with reading (see ’42: Reading Resources’). Article summary: To create a perfect school, avoid the common educational fads. Focus instead on basics, content, knowledge, and mastery.

Source: isnare.com

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