I recall being asked what the purpose of school is and actually having a fairly drawn out explanation for the question. Although there is significant amount of research and a multitude of great thinkers have classified each of these purposes. I found out what i believed when I concluded a prerequisite course for my credential program. At that time, and up until now, I believe that school is the laboratory for adult life both academically, politically, developmentally and socially. As mentioned in previous posts, public school is supposed to create successful contributors to a democratic society.
I will focus on certain trends that I have been started such as the free online classroom. During the course of the previous year I, as a student, was subjected to a paradigm shift toward a "flipped" classroom. The essential view is that all school work is completed during the student's time away from campus but has weekly access to their instructors for assistance. There is a significant reliance on student collaboration and creativity, therefore, could be a beneficial change to education. Since then I have seen other whisperings and some programs that have taken that idea to the next level.
There is a resource that is online instruction of classroom materials completed through video. From this site you can load particular subjects and lesson based on need and availability. It can be concluded that this would be a middle ground and would assist the flipped model, or something like it.
While commuting to my student teaching assignment a few weeks ago I overheard a commercial for a public high school that is almost entirely online. It seemed that there are structure social activities throughout the year.
I do agree that increasing the online exposure and the stress on collaboration and creativity are tremendous benefits and economically a shift toward online will save money but I question the rationale of removing classrooms. I believe that high school should mimic adult life at some level and therefore the students should be in personal contact for many hours each day.
Somewhere in the combination of these principles that may improve American education.
Spoken like a true Social Scientist. Public schools provides us with one of the broadest representations of our society, albeit in a claustrophobic setting. Although they're missing private school kids, juvenile detention kids, kids in cults, and now kids in flipped classes, public schools prepare MOST of our kids for the real world (waiting in line at the DMV). Honestly though, I agree that our public high schools serve an often unspoken purpose of teaching kids how to navigate social landscapes.
ReplyDelete