With the new school year upon us, students, teachers, and parents are all breathing a sigh of relief – a fresh start with new teachers, new books, new lessons, and for some lucky students, a new school.
For those enrolled in Michigan’s Little Lake Free School, new curriculum and new teaching methods are also on the menu. That is because at Little Lake, students make the rules. Yep, that’s right – the students make the rules. They also decide the curriculum and even mediate disputes between peers. Now, this too-good-to-be-true dream for students is not completely self-directed. Teachers and administrators still govern the school day and build the lesson plans. Only this time, the students get to decide what they will learn.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Little Lake Free School is the newest of about 40 nontraditional schools that have opened throughout the country in the past four years. The intent of these schools is to reign in students whose parents say have become disinterested and demotivated by traditional classrooms. Schools like Little Lake give their children a new lease on life – now they love to learn.
And wouldn’t you? As a student, I recall many bored moments and if left up to me, would not have participated in spelling, math, or even reading class. In fact, I probably would have become an expert on puppies and kittens. But would that have been so wrong? Not according to schools like Little Lake. For these schools, that is the whole point. I would have been fed activities and lessons that revolved around cute and cuddly creatures – and possibly been groomed to become a veterinarian. But I wasn’t and didn’t. And I don’t know that students should be left the option of what they are taught in school. What do you think? In a new age of learning, who should be calling the shots?
I would like to see these kids on the first day of a job and be asked to calculate anything and they look at their manager and say, “I can’t do that. I decided not to take math after 2nd grade because it was too hard.” Students who are 10 have no idea what the consequences are of opting out of reading and math, this is why educators need to drive the curriculum, not the students.
Correct me if I’m wrong but your doubt about creating an environment in which adults expect children to be self-directed seems to be motivated by the idea that children might be allowed to crawl down a hole and remain ignorant the rest of their lives.
The reality is that expecting children to cultivate the skills of self-direction have exactly the opposite effect. Children supported by a community that trusts them with the freedom to choose their own activities have the time and space to discover that there is a really awesome world out there and with the right attitude and a few skills they get to discover how to play in it. The experience of generations of families that have sent their kids to schools like Summerhill (founded 1921), Sudbury Valley School (founded 1968), Play Mountain Place (founded 1959) and many others, is that the skills of self-direction are far more important than any of the lessons of academic subservience that children are subjected to in traditional schools.
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Enjoy,
Don Berg
Site: http://www.teach-kids-attitude-1st.com
Free E-book: The Attitude Problem in Education
I see your point Don and those are probably great schools, but not every school has their resources available to them. Kids at some other schools do need to have more direction, for sure, because their families and communities around them aren’t encouraging them to make healthy, intellectually stimulating choices, no? If I am going to err, I would err on the side of strict academics in the early years and giving more freedom to choose in high school.
h think the answer lies somewhere in between and is very conditional.