|School (Photo credit: The Library of Virginia)|
"Currently, I have a directed reading course on neuroplasticity & learning. The change in an adolescent’s brain is immense, with large portions of the executive function and the prefrontal cortex maturing. There is also a significant proliferation in dendrites & synapses that causes the adolescent cortex to thicken, before it goes through 6 or so years of intense pruning. It’s vitally important that our students be deeply engaged cognitively during this period. The brain works on a use it or lose it principle. So you can see why a boring environment having a more powerful thinning effect on the brain cortex than an exciting or enriched environment has on cortex thickening is a big deal. Boring classroom environments might actually be harming our students ability to think."
Increasing the low-level democracy within our mass institutions is critical: families and kids need far more control, a greater ability to shape their learning and social lives in ways unique to their situation. Granular control by families is the opposite of standardization: it works by having decisions made by those closest to the child. This would strengthen families and also communities. Mass institutions raising and training kids for an ever-increasing length of time are very new and not likely to survive in their current form.
- homeschooling is the real legacy of holt, kohl, et al and why compulsory attendance laws are limiting our ability to change schools
- voluntary attendance
- real school reform (and a changing view of attendance)
- side effects of the literacy factory model
- make public schools truly public
- what's wrong with the schools?