Re: Helping a teacher

[Deborah Meier <dmeier@ESSENTIALSCHOOLS.ORG>]

Re "school to work", external learning, etc.

There are lots of extraordinary people and programs that see the very idea
of confining kids learning to the 4-walls of the school as contrary to what
we know about good learning, education and growing up.  Kids need to know a
range of adults and adult settings, to feel connected to the larger world,
to engage in useful activities that speak closely to their peronsla
interests, and so forth.  In interviews conducted many years later, the
kids who graduated from CPESS (a school I was connected with that had a
great mandatory communiy service program) cited their 6 years of such
experience as among if not the most critical in transforming their lives in
a positive direction, helping them meet some adults who changed their
lives, gave them a wider network of people and ideas, gave them a sense of
being apart of a larger world, taught them something about how adults work,
think and interact with each other, and more.  Kids came back to school
from such placements energized.  In short an approach I once saw as a mere
"convenienhce" (it gave us time in school for staff to meet!) turned out to
be a powerful democratic force, and a stimulus for better academic work too.

Dennis Littkey and Elliot Warhor have a program in Providence--the
MET--that has taken this idea several steps further, and built a school
around kids interests, which puts their field placements in the center of
their education and builds a "school" around it.  The results are
impressive--even in terms of such matters as getting kids into good
academic colleges and their aspirations for more learning.

Deborah

>This does not sound paranoid to me at all.  I, too, am leery of
>school-to-work, though I know that some decent (even good) programs are
>riding on this particular wave.  The whole history of public schools is of
>corporate America sorting, tracking, and indoctrinating kids into being
>"good workers" to meet whatever their laborpower needs of the moment.  I'm
>all for students being prepared to get jobs (until we can really change
>society so that -work- isn't reduced to "jobs") but they also need to
>prepare to understand and help change society.  Meanwhile, I'm inclined to
>resist anything that smacks of increased corporate influence over the
>schools.
>>
>> I know this sounds awfully paranoid, but do you think that the data
>> acquired from test scores could be used to track students toward
>> particular job training programs? I'm very leery of school-to-work.
>>
>> Let us know what we can do.
>> Carol
>> www.taasblues.com (still under construction, but we're working on it)
>>
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