Alternative Education: Linda Chrsitas/Sports

[AmeliaFiori]

I am very happy to be able to express my opinion on this site.

The No Child Left Behind legislation for our public schools, although well intentioned, is missing the mark for several reasons.

There is little difference in the actual schooling methodology from one public high school to another. They are all top down structured.

By that I mean that school boards adopt curriculum with the advice of the superintendent, and without any knowledge of the individual child.

For example, a child that is not an auditory or visual learner (Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison) will appear very fidgety in the classroom. These children need to touch in order to learn effectively. And, of course, that is not possible in a typical classroom of thirty or more kids.

As a result, children who are what is called "tactile learners" become restless, and the child involved is quite frequently classified as ADD or ADHD and put on drugs like Ritalin. (This happens quite frequently to people who are good athletes because they tend to be tactile learners. Often low grades among athletes simply means that the method of teaching doesn't match their best method of learning.)

What a waste of talent. There is nothing actually wrong with the child, but the "system" just can't accommodate these kinds of needs.

Schools like Linda Christas, on the other hand, begin with the child. They find out what the child is interested in and how the child learns the best,and then designs a curriculum and methodology around that child.

Linda Christas calls that a bottom up approach, and in my limited experience, that is the way most of us must be treated to accomplish the most with the effort applied.

The United States has the best cadre of public school teachers in the world, but that makes no difference if we are dealing with a "system" that disadvantages approximately 50% of American high school student bodies. (I am not talking about racial disadvantage or physical disabilities.)

And, it's showing. We as a Country are almost dead last in the industrialized world in terms of public high school graduate knowledge and general accomplishment.

As a result, millions of jobs are going overseas and will continue to do so as American businesses find out that they can hire much better educated and motivated high school graduates in other countries at half the cost or less.

Schools like Linda Christas can't even become approved providers for public school districts because they, the approved providers, must agree to cooperate with the public school curriculum and methodology regardless of what the child actually needs.

That's an unhappy situation. Public school administrators and school boards have so much power over the lives of children that they will never meet or get to know, and this system just can't succeed.

American kids are encouraged everywhere else in their lives to be creative and independent thinkers, and then we put them in prison like boxes and apply a cookie cutter to educating them.

No wonder we have a colossal mess on our hands. And, there are too many powerful people with too much invested in the current public school system to really look at where the problems are.

Teachers need to be put back in charge of what happens in the classroom. They are the closest to the individual child and have the best chance of providing an education to kids that remotely addresses their learning style.

The way the system is going under No Child Left Behind, many public school districts are simply making the curriculum "teacher proof," ......not my term. That's scapegoating and sabotaging the people who have the most potential to help the children......our trained teachers.

I would like to see the Department of Education take a serious look at Linda Christas and schools like that. The place would have to be turned upside down, but that's what we want. We want to go from a top down system to a bottom up system.

Amelia Fiorentino

[Mark Christianson]

Wrong forum. Not interested.
I am here for hunting and fishing chat.