I am really interested in the new schooling trends although I don't find "traditional school" as something intrinsically bad (typically, everything depends on people who work at school and parents being ready to cooperate with teachers and with each other). So I made an effort to go through that long elaboration and here is my 2 cents.
The claim that current school system "is based on a system that was developed over a hundred years ago to prepare people to be Prussian soldiers" sounds strange. Maybe that was the case in Prussia, but there is quite a lot of countries that didn't have particular reason to follow the Prussian way of education.
Another important thing. This school is not a school. "Pathfinder isn’t actually a school. It’s not accredited and doesn’t have a state license". Legally kids that attend this school are homeschooled so all the responsibility for passing legally required tests lays on their parents. It is hard to say how much work parents has to put into actual pupils preparation and what are results as compared to traditional schools.
This schools is also a private, paid school. The price and ability to pre-selects (recruit) kids automatically filers out many "problematic" kids. Public school system does not have such luxury, they need a system that will provide some way of dealing also with kids having various background (including aggressive, non-cooperating kids with parents with the same attitude).
It is easy to have "open" education and "free" collaboration without any "Prussian discipline" when all kids are smart and well behaving and you have parents that take active part in the education process.
"Consider that every county in America has standing armies of professionals paid to teach children how to read. Then consider that Sudbury Valley has no reading instruction whatsoever, yet its graduates all leave campus perfectly literate." The question is what would happen if they got kids with dyslexia, serious problems with concentration, luck of support at home, etc. Wouldn't they need someone from that "army of professionals" to actually figure out how to deal with such kid?
Next it seems this kind of schools fail often "Wilder says. Sudbury schools have a high failure rate. So, too, did the previous generation of free schools that arose in the sixties and seventies, characterized by their “brief life spans and the often loosely defined nature of their educational practices,” as one study put it.".
Apparently something is not working that well, although their approach sounds very cool and people behind that particular schools seems to be passionate about what they are doing.
This is a very important point. Private schools can simple expell troublesome students. At the public school one of my kids goes to, there's a 10 year old who sometimes gets very agressive and lunges at teachers, punching and kicking. The teachers are female, and not much bigger than him. The school is the only one in this district (small town), they can't send him to another town unless transportation is provided for. If it was a private school, he would have been expelled on the first or second episode.
right, the problem with most experimental schools is that they are not trying to provide education for everyone. until a school model attempts to scale and reach the general population without being selective we won't know if that model is really going to work.
> there is quite a lot of countries that didn't have particular reason to follow the Prussian way of education.
sure, but most didn't go and develop their own system either. i have seen (and experienced) schools in a few countries, and when i look at any of these, i can't see much of a difference.
the current school system in germany is as far away from that prussian system as any other in most places. if anything german schools are more progressive than some others, with smaller classrooms and more attention to each child than for example france or china.
so while the claim "it all started in prussia" is probably not true, it can't be to far from the truth either. didn't ford build schools for factory workers to train them to work at the assembly line? isn't that really just a similar motivation with the same outcome?
Thank you for this comment. It seems obvious, but we often forget, that the successes/challenges of a school often mirror exactly the challenges/successes of the community from which that school’s students are drawn.
The claim that current school system "is based on a system that was developed over a hundred years ago to prepare people to be Prussian soldiers" sounds strange. Maybe that was the case in Prussia, but there is quite a lot of countries that didn't have particular reason to follow the Prussian way of education.
Another important thing. This school is not a school. "Pathfinder isn’t actually a school. It’s not accredited and doesn’t have a state license". Legally kids that attend this school are homeschooled so all the responsibility for passing legally required tests lays on their parents. It is hard to say how much work parents has to put into actual pupils preparation and what are results as compared to traditional schools.
This schools is also a private, paid school. The price and ability to pre-selects (recruit) kids automatically filers out many "problematic" kids. Public school system does not have such luxury, they need a system that will provide some way of dealing also with kids having various background (including aggressive, non-cooperating kids with parents with the same attitude).
It is easy to have "open" education and "free" collaboration without any "Prussian discipline" when all kids are smart and well behaving and you have parents that take active part in the education process.
"Consider that every county in America has standing armies of professionals paid to teach children how to read. Then consider that Sudbury Valley has no reading instruction whatsoever, yet its graduates all leave campus perfectly literate." The question is what would happen if they got kids with dyslexia, serious problems with concentration, luck of support at home, etc. Wouldn't they need someone from that "army of professionals" to actually figure out how to deal with such kid?
Next it seems this kind of schools fail often "Wilder says. Sudbury schools have a high failure rate. So, too, did the previous generation of free schools that arose in the sixties and seventies, characterized by their “brief life spans and the often loosely defined nature of their educational practices,” as one study put it.".
Apparently something is not working that well, although their approach sounds very cool and people behind that particular schools seems to be passionate about what they are doing.