I have been contemplating what education is.  The first thoughts that came to me are to consider what education is not. 

I have some fond memories of my public school education.  There certainly were some bright spots along the way.  I remember a few people that made great role models.

Most definitely though, my strongest feeling was how much I wanted to get through the day, week, year.  There is a mistaken notion of one set of information that everyone needs to know before they graduate.  The department of education brings this scope and sequence to us.  It seems this is almost universally accepted.  So a curriculum publisher makes sure the information is sifted, chewed and digested until it becomes a group of dull, lifeless, often unrelated facts.  At this point, an educated professional must spoon-feed all of these facts into their students’ brains.  Meanwhile, most of the students feel like I did…there must be something better than this.

This cycle plays out year after year.  Each year starts out the same way.  The first six weeks of the school year, (sometimes more) is dedicated to reviewing the previous years’ knowledge that either was lost during the summer or never really stuck in the first place.  After this, it is time to delve into the required knowledge for this year’s grade level.   Of utmost importance is being sure to get into each brain everything they will need to know for life.

I graduated in the top 10% of my high school class.  When it was all said and done, I could read well, perform higher-level math and at least write clearly enough to make my point.  I did not remember the vast amounts of facts that I supposedly need to be called educated.  I could only vaguely recall some bits and pieces here and there.   Probably if I could go back and analyze the information that did stick, it would have been due to some personal connection that I made to that particular information.  I spent 13 years in the system to learn reading, math and some writing.

It seems like my time could have been better spent.  Today in many areas our country scores far behind other industrialized nations, sometimes even in the ranks of the poorest countries.  Close to 50% of our population is functionally illiterate.  The public school system is failing miserably.  I do not want to copy this system.  My goal is to ensure that our children’s school years are better spent.