Issues -- Education

Let the Children Learn

Learning is fun.

For a preschool or elementary school age child, natural curiosity – the often-burning desire to create a world picture that explains everything he or she sees, hears, feels, smells and tastes –  can lead to the greatest level of learning in a person’s life. Unfortunately, our public schools do little to encourage that curiosity, preferring for some insane reason to stifle curiosity in favor of some adult semblance of order.

The central failure of our system of so-called “education” is not a lack of money, overcrowded classrooms, incompetent teachers, ignorant administrators, irrelevant tests, lousy curricula, or apathetic parents, although all of these factors exist and exacerbate the problem. The central failure of our system, however, is the way children are prevented from utilizing their natural curiosity and desire to learn.

Public elementary schools are too rigidly structured within the classroom. No two children learn at the same speed, or by doing the same exercises, yet a group of 20-25 children is expected to do the same things at the same time. The natural curiosity of the child, and the child’s desire to understand something thoroughly, is suppressed in favor of a uniformity of action that denies children the opportunity to follow their natural tendency and yearning to learn.

There have been loud demands for smaller class sizes. These demands have come from many quarters and over a long time. The rationale behind these demands is that smaller class sizes give teachers more time to focus on individual students. But if a student isn’t allowed to follow his or her individual curiosity, no amount of teacher attention is going to help.

Fortunately, there is a proven solution to this problem. Over a century ago, Maria Montessori began observing children in order to discover how they learned. Maria Montessori developed her education methods through decades of observation of children in many different countries and cultures, learning how they saw the world around them, developed a world view, interacted with other people, and absorbed concepts and skills that they needed as adults. The methods she developed, which are advanced and certified by the Association Montessori Internationale, have proven effective in countries around the world. A 2006 study, published in the journal Science, concluded that students who attend officially sanctioned Montessori schools do significantly better in every area tested, from academic abilities to social behavior.¹

While Montessori’s methods are still considered controversial, they work, and they should be implemented across New York from pre-K through junior high school.

It will not be simple.

The teachers’ union will demand, at the very least, that its members receive the first chance to teach in the new system. The union will also demand that the state pay for any necessary training. These are sensible demands. Teachers have already spent a long time training, they have shown a dedication to helping children learn, and they are already under contract; it stands to reason that since we would need to train huge numbers of people in the Montessori system, we might as well train those who are already teaching in our schools.

School buildings will also have to be revamped to accommodate the new system. The Montessori system puts children into classes in three-year groups, with very different materials from those currently utilized. Some schools will not be able to handle the demands of the new system, while others will require significant changes.
School boards will have to adopt new standards of achievement, for students as well as for teachers and principals. New methods of determining which students are meeting academic achievement standards will have to be implemented as well.

New concepts of teaching will also have to take hold. Currently, subjects such as physical education, art and music, when they are offered at all, are generally taught by specialists who either come into the classroom or have a classroom to which students must travel. This setup will certainly have to be altered to fit the new system.

In high schools, the most pressing problem is with the curriculum. In many classroom subjects, the approved curriculum is a horrible mess.

For example, the New York City math curriculum is abysmal. In the lower levels, children are expected to absorb concepts by osmosis, while they spend those years not learning the basics, such as arithmetic.

Meanwhile, children encounter vague terms, such as "addition facts," rather than straightforward terms, such as "problems." that they – and their parents – can understand easily. In middle grades, the curriculum fails to build on the foundation that wasn't constructed in those early years. In later grades, the curriculum becomes more and more scattershot, jumping between totally unrelated topics every few days.

The effect is that children don't get a good grounding in the basics, don't build on that grounding, and don't get the kind of systematic approach that allows them to retain what they've been "taught."

History curricula are just as bad. Children are subjected to textbooks that must first be cleared by special interest groups that have no interest in teaching children, or in explaining history. What's worse, these textbooks appear to be written for the sole purpose of being as boring as possible. As sociologist James W. Loewen writes:

"Our situation is this: American history is full of fantastic and important stories. These stories have the power to spellbind audiences, even audiences of difficult seventh graders. These same stories show what America has been about and are directly relevant to our present society. American audiences, even young ones, need and want to know about their national past. Yet they sleep through the classes that present it."²

If other subjects, like English, the sciences, etc., are as poorly planned as math and history is, our schoolchildren are doomed to fall behind. Without having checked these subjects personally, I'd say it's a safe bet that this is the case.

Is it any wonder kids don't learn?

More important than ending the proliferation of standardized tests and remaking the curriculum so that it actually imparts knowledge to students, the entire structure of the classroom is wrong. Students are either overstimulated with unnecessary distractions to learning in order to "keep them interested," or they are bored.

An entirely different approach to the classroom itself is desperately needed.

For lower- and middle-level schoolchildren, we should adopt the Montessori system in New York. In our high schools, we must revamp the curriculum so that children can learn.