The School Revolution (12 page)

Think of American history. The course in civics should be tied to it. There should be a separate course on the Constitution and its development. There should be representative examples of American literature. These should be taught as representative examples of historical trends, not simply as stand-alone documents for
literary criticism. The student should understand why a given book or short story was important in the era in which it was published. American literature should help illustrate the story of America’s history.

If you find a curriculum designed by somebody who shares your worldview, and if that curriculum is self-reinforcing, then this is an ideal approach to homeschooling. This is what
I provide in the curriculum I have begun putting together. The history courses interact with the literature courses. In American history, there is a parallel course in constitutionalism. There are also courses in economics that interact with the main courses in history and government. All of it together comprises what some people call a package deal.

If, as you have read what a well-designed curriculum should be, you thought, “I wish I had taken a curriculum like that,” you can still do it. There is nothing that says that this curriculum is limited to teenagers. Maybe you don’t have teenagers in your household any longer. But there still may be a student: you.

Parents can get the education that was denied to them when they
were teenagers. Maybe they went through the public school system, and the textbooks used in that school were hostile to what they believed. They can now take a course along with their children and get introduced to a different interpretation of the materials.

While parents may not be able to spare the time to watch videos, they can download videos into audio files, and play them during
the day. These become ideal drive-time podcasts. If the videos are structured on the assumption that the audience may choose to listen to them, rather than watch them on a computer screen, they become materials that parents can adopt for themselves.

Obviously, this is not going to be possible in a course on mathematics. There, you need to be in front of a screen, and you need to watch
the teacher’s numerical manipulations on the screen. I am speaking here of economics, history, government, literature, and the liberal arts in general. It would also apply to courses on starting a small business.

If you are interested in finding out more about my curriculum, send an e-mail:

T
he key issue is this: which students? A second important issue is this: at which stage in their academic careers? The student in the first grade does not want the same kind of education as a student who is a junior in high school and preparing for college. The student preparing for college does not want
the same kind of education as a student who expects to go into the trades immediately after graduation, or who plans to start a little home business.

This is why anyone who runs a school must be clear before he starts regarding which students he wants to serve. Some students want to go into the liberal arts. Others want to go into the sciences. Some students want to start
a business after graduation. Some are interested in the fine arts. How can one school, or one curriculum, satisfy all these desires? Furthermore, whoever runs the school must keep parents happy, if it is a profit-seeking school. It is not enough to keep students happy. This is why one size does not fit all.

I am convinced that students are probably ready by the age of fifteen to make
the decision about what best suits their needs in terms of an academic program. Some students will be mature enough to make this decision; others will not be. Children have to persuade their parents regarding what they think is best for them. At some point, parents will have to defer to their children. This usually begins no later than the junior year of college. But, in deciding which college to
go to, students have considerable input.

There are certain aspects of every school that the vast majority of students prefer. One of them is safety. What do students want to be safe from? The obvious answer is bullies. Bullying is a common feature in tax-funded schools. We have heard the tragic stories of students driven to suicide by bullying.
Public schools have repeatedly proven themselves unable to deal with this problem effectively. This has led some parents to remove their children from the local public school, despite the expense.

Students also do not want to be subjected to what is sometimes called busywork. Busywork wastes students’ time. It accomplishes very little, except to fill the day. Students resent it, and
they have good reason.
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They have to spend seven hours per day or longer in school, and when they have little to show for it except having spent a lot of time on useless activities, they feel they have been cheated. They are correct.

The older a student is, the better his judgment regarding what he ought to be studying. We understand this when the child begins
his sophomore year in college. He must select a major. He has to meet the major’s prerequisites. In the junior year, he must begin his major. This is usually at age nineteen. Parents may not believe that a child of fifteen is capable of making such a decision, but brighter, self-disciplined students are in a position to make it. The student needs to consult with his parents. He may take an aptitude
test. But, ultimately, the student ought to be able to make this decision, as long as he fulfills basic requirements for education that will enable him to advance to the next level of schooling.

Here are some of the basic features of every school program that benefits students who have advanced to the level of self-discipline required for success in education. I am not in a position
to assess what is needed by students who are not self-disciplined, and who are C-average students at best. I am talking about students who want to go to college, or who want to start a business immediately after graduation from high school. These are students who have some idea of what they want to do after high school graduation.

A student wants to be confident that, assuming he performs
adequately in terms of the school’s curriculum, he will be able to advance to the next stage of education. If he wants to go to college, he wants a high school program that will get him into college if he gets a B average or better. He wants to know that he is not wasting his time in the program. Most high schools offer programs that enable students to achieve this goal.

Inevitably, education is a form of competition. This is why most programs issue grades. If they don’t have grades, then they have milestones: matriculation. A student wants to know that he will be competitive with his peers after graduation, that he will not find himself playing catch-up. He will not want to walk onto a college campus ill-prepared. Therefore, a student
knows that he needs academic skills that will let him compete successfully in college. Here are a few of the skills that every high school program should impart to its students.

The student needs to learn how to read effectively. This means he must learn to read fast. Most of us are slow readers. We did not learn the skill of speed-reading and rapid comprehension
when we were in school. We are burdened with this throughout most of our lives. It takes a systematic program of speed-reading, begun at an early age, to enable a student to overcome the bad habits associated with reading. This is why my curriculum focuses every day on exercises that will help a student read much faster than normal.

Then there is the other burden of reading: the requirement
that we understand what we read. This is usually achieved by techniques that are the very opposite of speed reading. We have to learn when to read rapidly and when to slow down, think carefully about what we are reading, and even write outlines in order to increase our knowledge. We cannot possibly apply techniques of careful analytical reasoning to everything we read. We have to understand
the difference between material that can be read rapidly, and stored effectively in electronic format, and detailed written material requiring specialized techniques of analysis.

It is not good enough to be an efficient reader. If all we do is pour knowledge into our heads, and we do not learn how to organize what we have learned in order to get it down on paper
or on a screen, then we have wasted our time. Maybe we have not wasted all our time, but we have wasted a great deal of it. So, basic to any curriculum, beginning no later than the fifth grade, should be weekly writing assignments. Every week, a student is required to produce an essay. It need not be a long, detailed essay, but it should be the equivalent of an essay that can be posted on a website.
It should not embarrass the writer.

Every student should be required to set up a blog. Of course, a lot of students already have blogs by the time they reach high school. But every student should have a blog and post his weekly writing assignments on that blog. This lets other people see what he has written. Over time, the quality of the writing will improve.

Parents should
read the essays, but they need not do detailed grading of the assignments. If the student writes on a consistent basis, week after week, year after year, he will improve his writing ability extensively. By the time he reaches college age, his basic writing skill will be intuitive. He will not have to go through the normal learning process that colleges used to require, and all of them still should
require, to produce students who can express themselves in print.

In addition to writing, a student should learn how to speak in public. This is an extension of his ability to write. In high school, there are not many opportunities for a student to learn how to speak, unless he takes a course in public speaking. Very few students do this. Schools should
require students to produce regular verbal exercises. Not only does this dramatically increase a student’s ability to remember materials, but it also teaches him how to summarize material accurately and persuasively. By the time a student graduates, he should have a basic understanding of how to communicate verbally in public. He will be way ahead of his peers, who get very few opportunities to do
any kind of public speaking in their high school years.

If a student can write and speak, he ought to be able to translate these skills into publicly available formats: media development. The technologies keep changing. There is no way anyone can be sure a particular communications medium is going to survive over the next ten years, let alone the next one
hundred. But we do know that two of them have extensive advantages. The first is YouTube; the second is WordPress. These two outlets are widely used and have extensive user support.

The ability to produce effective short videos to be posted on YouTube is an important skill for business. Most businesses do not have decent websites. If a student can master the basics of the technology
of producing an effective YouTube video, and also learns the basics of advertising copywriting, he will always be able to earn a living. Students should be taught how to do this by the time they graduate from my program.

A student has to learn the basics of academic research. These techniques can be translated into a business environment. Students have
to learn how to learn. The Web has made it possible as never before for students to do extensive research. They have to learn how to cut corners. They have to speed up the process. Business requires rapid production, and students ought to learn in high school how to do effective research in a brief period of time.

They also have to learn the kinds of research techniques that are important
in college. While it is true that modern colleges do not require the same number of research papers they did half a century ago, enough colleges do require research papers so that students had better be trained before they go to college to write such papers. These techniques used to be taught to advanced students in high schools, but because they involve a great deal of time on the part of
teachers, there has been a tendency in high schools in recent decades to deemphasize term papers. This is a major mistake. It cheats the students.

To accomplish all this, students need to know the basics of time management. These techniques are not taught in college, except as electives for no credit, and they are rarely taught in high school. The sooner
a student learns how to manage his time, the sooner he is going to advance his academic performance. People who go into the professions or into business have to become experts at managing their time. They usually learn this on their own…late. They may even read some books in time management. But the problem with this is they are forced to learn this skill on the job. It would be far better if students
learned these techniques in high school, mastered them in college, and were ready to go into the business world or the professions without missing a beat with respect to their ability to maximize the efficiency of their time.

Time management is important, but even more important is goal-setting. This is not taught in elementary school, high school, or college.
Goal-setting is one of the most important single techniques that anyone can master, and the earlier he masters it, the better it will be for him. No student should enter college who has not already developed the skill of goal-setting.

I believe that students are capable of beginning to set goals for their entire lives by the time they are twelve or thirteen years old. Not all students
can do this, but some students can, and the ones who do this gain a major advantage over their peers. If a student sets lifetime goals by the time he begins his sophomore year in high school, he is going to maximize the time he spends in formal education until he finally graduates. Goal-setting lets the individual make effective use of his time, which then is made more efficient by techniques of
time management. But just mastering techniques of time management is insufficient. A student has to know early in his career what he wants to do with all his saved time. Students are not taught this, by either parents or teachers, so they are hampered in their careers until such a time when somebody finally sits down and helps them learn how to set lifetime goals.

As important as goal-setting is, there is something even more important: being able to distinguish between an occupation and a lifelong calling. Remember, the calling is
the most important thing someone can do for which he would be most difficult to replace
. If a student learns the difference between the job and the calling before he begins his advanced high school work, he can begin
to assess the importance of both time management and goal-setting. The student must understand that, in most cases, he must be proficient in two areas. He must be proficient in whatever he does to put food on the table, meaning his job. But he must also be proficient in his calling. This is where he makes his legacy. This is where he achieves significance in his life, but it probably is not tied
to high monetary compensation. It may be, but it probably will not be. A student who learns early in his career the difference between a job and a calling has a tremendous advantage over his peers, because this makes him more effective at setting his goals, and it also enables him to make better use of his time.

Students are not taught early enough
the basics of effective study habits. They develop poor habits, and then it becomes very difficult for them to shake those habits. When they use ineffective or inefficient study practices, those practices become almost instinctive for them. Then, when they finally get to college, or even out of college, those bad habits are etched in cement. This is why it is crucial that students be trained in
the techniques of effective study at the beginning of their high school career. Actually, it is probably better to get this kind of training no later than the seventh grade, but not many online programs provide these techniques. The student at the high school freshman level should be introduced to the basics of effective study. These basics involve time management, but also certain techniques not
taught in high school and used effectively only in a homeschool environment.