A Change In Education Must Take Place

Do we really think that by doing what we have been doing for the last 100 years is going to all of sudden change the interest children have in school and stop the alarming dropout rates being experienced throughout the United States? There is something critically wrong with the existing structure that is built around the adult’s perceived needs vs. the needs a child brain has, especially in their early years. The problems with early education can be solved not by blaming teachers and school administration but rather by looking at the structure of the stimuli we offer our children. Let’s look at some facts that point to these issues.

·America has moved forward throughout our history because we have freedom. We have prepared our youth to think for themselves, and to have the motivation and the willingness to take the risk to follow their own convictions. Today it is the group, not the individual that has the focus.

· The context of what is offered as curricula is by in large focused on what can be presented in a book and on a blackboard. What is offered today is academic content that is not typically useful to the students outside the classroom.

· All children are born with 100 billion brain cells and a child can lose as much as 30% of their brain cells if they are not ignited by age 6/7. The brain cells are ignited only by what the child’s brain finds to be necessity for preservation and of interest to the future endeavors of the individual. The brain will not remember what it does not consider to be of interest and use. Each child’s brain is different and fantasy and useless information will not find its way into long term memory.

· Learning requires that a child must be able to proceed at their own pace and see that they are making progress toward their own goals. Learning requires that a child finds their way into a successful place in the real world. Today this requires more than today’s linear structure of class organization by subjects such as English and Math. Skill development requires integration of many fields of knowledge structured that provides for automated critical thought.

How are these Issues corrected?

· First the focus must turn from group learning toward the specific focus on the individual. This can be done by understanding individual’s needs, interests, strengths and weaknesses on a real time basis and then providing the stimuli that can grow the individual, filling the potholes necessary for success.

· Curricula that are provided to the child must allow the child to see the purpose, value and personal benefit to be realized from learning –not being entertained or discouraged by present curricula.

· Modern multimedia technology must replace the book as the primary teaching tool used in the classroom. The book requires linear lines of communication with the requirement that the student remember a number of facts, which by in large have limited interest or use to the child. Further 3 out of 4 textbooks found in today’s classrooms are published by foreign owned companies who have no interest in the education change needed in America.

· Parents must take a more active role in their child’s early education. By the time a child enters school their brain has been 85% wired which represents the thinking abilities and areas of interest a child has. Do not expect a teacher to fill in the blanks it is a neurological impossibility.

· Washington State has thousands or wonderfully able and committed teachers. They need better tools to do the job they love. Those tools must provide the teacher with real time information, not historical tests, to allow them to help each child with their varying yet individual needs.

· Teachers need to be paid more as they are able to demonstrate their ability to take their classes to a 100% level of mastery of all subjects.