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The way schools are run these days, I'd be proud to display a bumper
sticker that reads, "My child is a disciplinary problem."
Our kids are still sitting behind desks, doing papers, raising their hands to ask
permission, and being sent to the principal for talking out of
turn. What a waste of creative energy!
In their book,
Smart Schools, Smart Kids, Authors Edward B. Fisk and Sally Reed indict our schools for operating like factories. Not even our more enlightened factories,
the kind that produced Henry Ford's original Model T.
What do we tell kids from the first day of school?
You proper place is behind this desks, in this rows, behind this student who belongs there
because the first letter of their last name happens to fall in front of yours in the
alphabet, or some such nonsense.
Operating schools like factories may have been fine during the industrial age, but today,
even computers are learning to do more than receive and spit back information. Scientists
in the field of Artificial Intelligence are applying the way
natural life forms work to the artificial systems they invent.
While we're hammering individuality and creativity out of our students, they're coming up
with methods that give computers the ability to perform more and more common sense
operations.
Why not grow an educational system around the way kids work? Use
all that seemingly inexhaustible energy to propel their education.
The disciplinary problem is a prophet, not a problem. These the Nintendo-wise malcontents
who rebel against boredom should be rewarded for having the guts to rise up against a
system that doesn't work.
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