It is our nature to be curious. Look at very young children, they are unstoppable! And I have never seen a bored newborn! It seems that when children are allowed to pursue their own interests and master their environment, which is when real learning begins. They are born with the ability to focus on and follow their own internal agendas. This was not valued in the industrial-era, and rightly so. But we are in a new era now and the game has changed.
Why are schools failing? Or you can ask why are so many students failing? I think the answer lies in asking one more question: Why are we trying to educate children that live in the information age in an industrial-era school system? The entire public school system was created by and for the industrial age. In order to exist in a functioning industrial society there needed to be immense standardization and acceptance by the students that all the “training” they were enduring was required by the industrial society in order to function effectively.
During the dawn of the post-industrial era, many children began to realize that the outdated techniques of imparting information as well as the information itself did not apply to their needs or the current social structure. This realization has been more intuitive than analytical, but it is nonetheless widespread. As a result, industrial era schools rapidly have been losing their ability to succeed at all in forcing a standard level of competence on everyone in the limited industrial subjects, no matter how many variations they introduced in the process.
“An effective education in the information age must be entirely free of the tyranny of segmented time.” Children in the information age must learn the exact opposite way they had to learn in the still present industrial schools. They must be allowed complete freedom to become self-directed people. The present society including the business world demands it.
If you are looking for alternative schooling in South Florida, look into enrolling your child at Sunset Sudbury, Florida’s fir Sudbury Model School. Contact Us for more information.