Each day my daughter walks into a mixed age kindergarten where she sings songs and recites verses. She plays half of her day on a lovely playground and then goes inside to grind wheat in a hand turned grinder. She has a natural snack of oatmeal or quinoa or bread made from the wheat ground earlier in the week. She watercolor paints using vegetable based dyes and fingerknits using natural yarns. In case you could not tell from the photos on the blog she was adopted from China and became party of our family at the age of 3.5 with an unrepaired cleft palate. Though we have a little way to go, she was recently released from speech for a break after about 18 months of therapy one day per week. Her SLP at a world renowned speech clinic told us that very few native English speakers who come to their clinic have the vocabulary and ability to speak and string sentences together that she has. Though I know that much of it is living in a language rich home there is no doubt in my mind that the verses and songs and puppet shows she sees and hears and participates in daily have given her an edge and vastly helped her in her language skills.
Our son walks in each day to a blank page and spends a full school year creating his own textbooks. His 4th grade curriculum was filled with animal studies, fractions, Norse mythology and essay writing. He learned cross stitch and played kick ball and studies Spanish. Each day he was taught experientially. He was never told something would be on a test. He was educated for the sake of being educated and learning to go forth successfully into the world. His world is more reflective of a classical education surrounded by the beauty of the Waldorf method instead of cramming knowledge into be regurgitated on a test to be forgotten the next day. He is submersed in subjects for weeks at a time instead of taking a leap frog approach to subjects skimming the surface enough to ring the bell before moving to the next lily pad.
Does it matter? To us it does. In today's educational environment children are being conditioned to "the test." I have not heard it from one college professor but from many. When college professors are teaching the hands go up. "Professor, is it on the test?" Last night a girl who has a Ph.D. and is a literacy coach in a large public school system said that in the current education environment that if she had children they would most likely also attend private school like she did. She said she could not send children into classroom where the test is the ultimate goal and teachers are held hostage to the percentages.
With that said, she also shared with us change is on the horizon in the public schools and that gives me hope. I have been studying news articles regarding education, particulary in TN and the greater Southereast. Though test scores do little for me I was happy to see that TN has gone from being 46th in the nation in education to 21st and that Georgia has made it to number 8. I have been hearing from friends who are involved heavily in public schools in Nashville that the high school we are zoned for has allowed the local Chamber to step in and help steer the school and created a series of "academies" that are the talk of the nation. In fact, they often host educators from all of the country wishing to recreate the model in their own schools.
These academies give real world experience and allow the children (high schoolers) to choose their potential career paths from 5 broad options. They are taught from the perspective of those paths and are even partnered with local professionals in a mentoring process. It's all about the experience and giving the children a larger view of education and providing hands on opportunities.
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