Alternative schools- will they ever work?

The Washington Post, Thursday 17th July had an article which set me thinking, (not that it takes much to set me thinking). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/16/AR2008071601269.html Alan. M. Shusterman is planning an alternative school to be opened in the Md, USA area in 2009. Not that the idea of alternative schools is new either. But that is just what got me thinking again about educational reform. I am still looking for an answer to why the education systems around the world do not seem to be reforming, despite all the efforts and the huge amount of mental and emotional energy expended throughout the world. And I know I am not the only one who wonders this almost daily.

I looked at the article carefully to see what would be different about this school. According to Mr. Shusterman-: “students will set their class schedules, enabling them to learn at their pace and in their style. Teachers will act as advisers, not taskmasters” As far as homework goes, the School for Tomorrow as it is called, will have a home reading requirement and “encourage and support individualized student-initiated homework”. Other ideas presented include, ‘students will ally with teach to decide what and how to study”, and “ subjects such as maths and science might be studied together when it makes sense”, and “class periods won’t necessarily adhere to strict time frames as students take large chunks of time for individual and group projects”.

None of this is particularly new or innovative or unique. So I wondered how will this school be different from other attempts at alternative schools, (names like Summerhill and Sudbury come to mind), and why will this one work or perhaps more importantly why have the others not worked. It seems that if so many people share these ideas of how schooling should be then there must be some merit to the ideas. Why then the continued resistance to change in education systems globally, or to set up schools and learning in a way that makes so much sense to so many people? And why continue to go around in circles and run behind a system that is failing so many of our young people and teachers?

I tried to review in my mind why alternative schooling has not seemed to work yet. I have thought of four so far. One is that there are always too many students to the amount of teachers available. Put seven or eight hundred young people in one small space with barely a hundred adults to support their academic, social and emotional needs for so many hours a day just cannot make sense. Related to this is the lack of training that persists in every system. I have not seen any teacher training system anywhere that is not too heavily focused on pedagogy and the cognitive aspects of teaching and learning that it does not have enough room for adequately addressing the affective domain. Teachers enter the classrooms with little emotional space and training to deal with their students all day long. The competition amongst nations affects the quality of schooling. Wanting to be ranked highest in the world in maths or science drives a nation to create an education system that is all about testing and standardized learning. And maybe not the fourth reason but really underlying all of the above is the almighty dollar. That is the most complicated factor to unravel. How has greed messed with young children’s excitement to learn and creativity? Or maybe the question is why?

This led me to look for an interesting, easy to read history of education to help clarify my thoughts about what will be effective in reforming education. I found one that you may want to read – http://www.educationrevolution.org/history.html

Read my complete article on this at my website- http://www.ajoyfulplace.com/