Education

"It is almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom." --Albert Einstein

I am fascinated by a school in Massachusetts called Sudbury School that is radically different from the school you and I went to, yet it works; so well that schools across the country have adopted its style of operation. In this school there are no grades, no exams, no classes. The students can do whatever they like, within reason. And it is completely democratic so because there are more students than staff the students pretty much decide most of the day-to-day operations of the school, including who their "helpers" (teachers) are going to be. And these kids move on to university at a comparable or even better rate than regular schools and do very well there.

When our education is controlled, as it has been for most of us, we are not able to utilize our unique strengths or determine what the best learning style is for us. We are told what we are going to learn and when and how we are going to learn it. Having an individualized education plan for every child would be prohibitively expensive and take up all the teacher's time, yet this is really what would be needed under our current system. Every student is unique and can't really learn effectively without their unique needs being taken into account.

"It is almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom." The best learning occurs when a wide variety of subjects and approaches to learning them is available to the student so he has the freedom to choose what works best for him. Only he can decide what he is most interested in and how and when he can learn that subject best. Conventional education is trying to fit round pegs into square holes. It doesn't work. Some students get frustrated and give up, others simply lose interest. What these students need more than anything other than stimulation, is freedom to do what works for them.