Thursday 13 June 2019

School Story

There's this experimental school underway in Germany.....probably in the range of five to ten total across the entire nation.  The basic idea?  Well....you come in as a kid (after the fifth grade) and have a long talk over your interests, and you build your own 'agenda' or projects.  Yes, self-learn.....self-taught.

Most people will suggest that it's fairly doomed, but I think it's a bold idea.  If you'd come to me with just the basic algebra book, without wasting hours and hours of marginal teacher-to-student time, I probably would have achieved 10th grade algebra by the sixth-grade.  I probably would have spent five hours a day in some library....reading over European history, and asking a lot of economic questions.  I came to some point by the 10th grade of seeing school as basically a kid-sitter service, and that a quarter of kids hit their learning peak around the 7th grade.  You got tossed into a room with these kids, and the teacher just resorted to the most marginal level of teaching.....to waste an hour. 

The idea is that you will have a computer network.....some mentors in the background to review your projects....and somehow grade you enough for each year.

The potential that half the kids will be ready for college by age sixteen?  I suspect that might come out of this idea. 

But here's the thing....you can line up forty kids....to find that at least thirty-five of them need continual monitoring and this luxury of 'freedom' simply can't exist.  You might be shocked that out of 10,000 twelve-year old kids.....there's forty ready for 1st college courses.  It'll be curious how this works out or if they abandon this after five years. 

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