We just had a discussion in my school age and adolescence class about education in the US. We watched a TED talk by Sir Robinson who described how the US and the "No Child Left Behind" policy leaves lots of children behind. He also compared our education system to Finland and noted that we seemed to be focused on the core education principle and all children are the same. We certainly do seem to be wedded to the manufacturing model.
I have often wondered about this problem we have. Why do we insist on moving children through school based on age graded classrooms? In all my studies of human development and how children learn, children don't follow a mold, nor do they follow a standard pattern! How do we expect that our children will learn if we are measuring them against STANDARD measures?
Why not try something new? I keep wondering why we don't move back to classrooms that are not based on ages, but rather based on family relationships, or neighborhoods? Or, just random assignment so that the older children can help the younger children during class. It doesn't matter if you're not reading according to other kids your age, as long as you are learning to read?
Could we stand the idea of NOT using standardized measures?
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