two in a row

As is typical of me, I have 4 blogs now, none of which I keep up on. Should I be writing this here? Which blog is for what? Egads, the indecision of the undisciplined mind has cursed me all my life. When I was 17, I attempted to enlist in the Army. I was squandering my life away, much as I am now, and really wanted discipline. I took the ASVAB. I talked with a recruiter. I told him I wanted discipline in my life. It weirded him out and he advised me against viewing that way. My mom refused to sign the papers, and being under 18, my hopes for getting motivated and the ability to achieve what I later came to call longevity of intention were not to be realized in the military. By the time I was 18, I was a full blown peacenik protesting like I write blogs. Which brings me to the topic at hand I suppose, well after another diversion. Flipitoff was meant to be a project of using machine metaphors to characterize the human collective. Cryyoureyesout is for personal reflections. And Flipiton was inspired by Obama's election, and is for expressing my views on and suggesting solutions to the social problems of the day. Then there is my music blog to journalize my journey to finally completing my first CD. I have picked a title: Never Been Done. Ok, now that I've completed the long set up, I can get to the short point.

Our school system sucks. In yesterday's blog, I discussed the money spent on soda pop, and suggested that money would be better spent on youth programs. Come on America, quit buying soda pop, and invest in your schools. Money is not the what's needed most to improve the schools. We need a new focus. We currently shove our kids all through the same basic curriculum. If a student has what we call disabilities, we accomodate them (yeah right we do) so they can accomplish the same work as all the other students. For the majority of students, this system works, but if your on either end of the bell curve, your needs are not being well met. An easy way to address this problem (and discover new ones) is to change the method by which we group classes. Chronological age is not the best indicator of which social/emotional and cognitive development stage an individual has achieved. What I propose is we group children on other criteria. Three I'm suggesting are interest, learning style, and ability. If curriculum covers topics that children are naturally interested in, internal motivation kicks in and assignments are less dreaded, even enjoyed. Common learning style makes group presentations much easier to produce. The oral lecture, perhaps supplemented with handouts, or more likely today, powerpoint presentations works well for students who can process spoken word at the delivered rate. They also must possess the skills to produce notes while listening. For a student who gets new skills best by doing, listening should not be the primary delivery method. Putting a student at a 6th grade reading level in a class requiring 9th grade reading skills and trying to catch them up is a really bad plan. And one last suggestion, if a student gets inspired on a particular project and wants to focus the majority of their time on it for a while, by all means let it happen. That student can work on the "missed" assignments later, or maybe even never. Do we really need all our citizens to be proficient at all the skills. If someone can't read Of Mice and Men and write an essay about it, but can skillfully run every machine in the woodshop and produce a beautiful table, I say we minimize the focus on the essay, and maximize the time spent in woodshop.

Two caveats: I work in education, and I don't have much formal uneducation, and nothing I'm proposing here is backed up with any meaningful research. In short, I'm making it all up from a limited amount reading and discussions, and a LOT of thinking about it.