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Re-Inventing Schools
Sun, 04/12/2009 - 22:51 | EducationAn article in Parade magazine reports on a school district that has decided to stop assigning age-based grade levels and, instead, match grade levels to how children really learn.
Starting this August, elementary and middle-school students in one school district in Westminster, Colo., won't be assigned to grade levels based on age. Instead, they'll fall into multi-age levels based on what they already know and will move up only as they master new material.Several other districts nationwide are considering the model.
The question raised by the article: should schools do away with age-dependent grade levels?
How to Make Black America Better
Comments
Re-inventing Schools
If there is going to be any discussion in regards to re-inventing schools, the enduring issue of making education relevant to the American system should be noted first. At this point education is the minorities orientation to assimilation. African Americans can not afford to release any more of their collective culturalized identity, before we bow to a system that already dominates us. America is rooted in capitalism, so American education should be designed to equip minorities to compete as business owners and members, not mangers and employees. Black America needs to end the cycle of "corporate-sharecropping" and begin the the era of corporate dominance. American education finding a better way to make working class minorities into excellent products, only continues the systems dominance.
Schools are for Learning
Children go to school to learn. Each child has a different need or direction to go in. Making a change in schools is not the answer. Making the change in the teacher to student connection is where the change must happen.
We cannot speak of democracy or fairness or equity in a broad sense. Democracy, fairness and equity comes only when the needs of each little boy or girl are accomplished.
Equating schools to hospitals can illustrate my point. When a patient goes to the hospital is it undemocratic to receive different treatment than what all the other patients receive? No! Of course not. Each patient has a different need for his/her cure. Similarly, students have specifically different needs for their learning. Only when we strategically educate each boy and girl will we achieve the result of a fully educated citizenry.
The partnerships required to teach each child must include three major supports: (1) the media and TV programming; (2) marketing of products that encourage children to be intellectually and morally excellent and (3) parents who are up to the task of raising outstanding children.
Schools as an industry or federal department ("Department of Education") completely misses the mark. Education is not a single element but the over arching goal of everything we do. The goal of Education is to ensure Learning...it is not enough to say we sent a child to school and college but rather we must ensure that we produced a high functioning, contributing world class man or woman.