Revolutionise education now! Ideas #2

Fourth year. Introduce handicrafts, engineering, mechanism and general things associated with building. Get more advanced with the abstract-specialized kids. Teach the mini-chefs about nutrition, start going in-depth with the musicians about theory. Teach the other artists about the greatest artists in history and all of that stuff. Arrange small circus-shows starring the little jugglers and acrobats. 

           And let the pupils studying management and leadership take part in the decisions of different events. Nothing too serious. Have more fun and be freer this year than usual. Make a lot of theme-weeks, each with focus on every single aspect of the many different subjects. Everyone participates on equal hands, but the “stars” of the week should in this year be taught to take responsibility for each other’s learning by teaching each other as much as possible.

 

Fifth year. Approximately nine or ten years old now. This is where it gets very untraditional.

Evaluate each individual thoroughly. Now is the time to see if some fall behind, or sprint ahead of their classmates. To save some virtual ink, it comes down to this; make mixed age groups. Put children that are, for instance physically seven and twelve years old in the same classroom, if they are of mentally the same age. I have experienced people with far too many failures and too much wasted time due to the current regime neglecting the fact that physical age SOME times has nothing to do with how people act, think, behave in general. After all, it is grownups that start wars, right? (;

A few schools are already doing this all around the world. Haven’t heard of a single negative example yet.

 

Sixth year. Still with the ½ – ¼ – ¼ system as stressed in post #1, now is the time to go really hard on educating and filling up the mind with good old school bench bookworm education. Make this the theme of the year, but make it fun. Be sure to spend a lot of time telling about your (the teachers and adults in general) personal lives, intrigues and excitements. Don’t be shy – sharing is caring, as they say.

When people are just about to enter the teen age, we love to be told stories about what’s on the other side. Don’t be shy to skip the scheduled subjects, if that’s what it takes to finish your story once in a while.

 

Thank you for sticking with me so far. This is really interesting for me to write about, so I definitely hope to hear your comments on this (:

To be continued… 

Revolutionise education now! Ideas #1

Some quick, unedited thoughts on how to possibly revolutionize education and help it up from the pit that it is slowly getting too caught in.

First year. Drawing, playing instruments, singing, juggling, cooking, very, very lowest level of exercising and stretching, helping the children making games they can control and expand themselves. Make fun things into small mini-projects. Fool around with it all, let the children make the activities their own for a year or two. Be kind and gentle, but fair and close to neutral in judgments and compliments.

Second year. Some kids may now show drastic improvements in either of the above skills and general creative skills. Let the teachers spend long time with the children to get the best impression of each individual soul’s preferred activities. Say 50% in a class of twenty show a drastic improvement in one or more of these skills – now teach those ten how to expand their work, how to explore different corners of their interests. Some of them may already know – just sit back, observe and follow these children, and, if possible, get them to teach the other kids of the same genre. The other 10 kids, the ones that didn’t show any special interest in these more… let’s call them abstract activities – now is the time for them to be introduced to the most basic math and language.  Teach these language/math kids ¾ language and math, and ¼ “abstract” skills. Teach the abstract kids in equal, but opposite proportions.

Third year of school. Now is the time to separate the language and math kids into different preferences as well, just like we did in second grade. Of course, for each year we also expand and intensify the subjects just as in every other system, but go a bit harder than usual on language, though. ->Here’s why<- (this is something that pretty much every scientist will agree upon.) But now that we have three groups it is time to do ½ of each groups’ main subject, while doing ¼ of either language and math, or abstract and language. You get the idea ;) Let the children reevaluate and change their main subjects as they want up until sixth or seventh grade.

Introduce the children to a lot of outdoor activities such as camping, fishing, sailing – everything possible the school can afford, and do this at least one time/week each year following.

To be continued (: <– click!