viewtopic.php?f=43&t=22009&start=105#p319117The "Founder is not your obscure man of letters. He is a "character, " in the true Hyde sense that his ambitions are loftier than his abilities.
Founder’s Findings #13: A vision for future education in America.
11/18/2008
Last week I proposed a new focus on character and unique potential for American schools.
The focus first on the student would revolutionize our schools. Some teachers would drop out or be left behind. Others would blossom. A new breed of teachers with the capacity to deeply understand kids would also be attracted to our schools.
The role of students would be revolutionized, to assume increasing responsibilities in terms of self and classmates. By the high school years, students would be actively involved in teaching, governance and discipline, as well as advising in curriculum and program development. Schools would be much more of a student–teacher partnership.
Since in character development, parents are the primary teachers and the home the primary classroom, a powerful new bond would be created between family and school. This bond is desperately needed by both and long overdue.
America is a unique country requiring a unique educational system. Schools that engage students’ hearts, minds and souls would clearly become a world class model.
It's time will come.
Found a longer version of this missive posted in the
Home Schooler's Curriculum Swap (scroll down to view replies), and in the
Portland Press Herald:-------------- • -------------- • --------------
MAINE VOICES It's possible to create a truly American system of educationIf we shifted our education focus to hearts and souls, our students' minds would follow.JOSEPH W. GAULD November 19, 2008Throughout my 58 years of teaching, Americans have been increasingly dissatisfied with our educational system.
The solution is simple: America's deep reverence for the individual built a great nation; our schools must primarily learn to respect the character and unique potential of each child.
Our schools currently develop students academically, utilizing competition.
But since only roughly 10 percent are naturally gifted at academics, this practice unwittingly disrespects the unique potential of the rest.
While they accept academics as necessary, they seek their spirit elsewhere.
Great learning and teaching requires passion, as Vincent van Gogh reminds us: "I put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process."
Having been a very uninterested student myself, as a teacher I became determined to help my students find their heart and soul in school.
Like Hank Warren, a student I taught math to 50 years ago. Hank disliked school, had previously flunked algebra, and a test said he had a very limited ability in math.
But my focus on Hank's character and unique potential amazingly opened up a passion in him for math.
Hank recently dedicated his sophisticated book on computers, "Hacker's Delight," to me, his "high school algebra teacher, for sparking in me a delight in the simple things in mathematics."
If students' hearts and souls are not really into academics, neither will their minds be.
American students have been consistently out-competed academically by international students because their hearts and souls are not in it.
A survey found 70 percent of American teenagers want to start their own businesses. Doesn't that reflect the American spirit?
But this vision requires skills such as selling, managing people and creative ideas, none of which are taught in our schools. So their hearts and souls live outside school.
In contrast, another survey found 76 percent of French youths want to work in government, allowing their hearts and souls to reside inside schools.
At our Hyde boarding schools, for example, our international Chinese students spend their free time studying, while our American students want to socialize. But isn't socializing helping them learn how to sell and manage people?
As for creative ideas, don't we Americans pride ourselves – and win admiration worldwide – for our courage to think outside the box? Doesn't that explain some of our resistance to being in school?
But suppose we were to radically change our primary school focus from subject to student, that is, from academic comprehension to the development of character and unique potential?
Clearly, our schools would then fully engage the hearts and souls of students – and thus their minds, as well.
We would then produce students of character who not only realized their deeper potentials, but who developed world-class academic skills in the process.
To support this contention, it would be fair to say home-schooled students put their hearts and souls into their work.
A University of Maryland study of 24,000 home-schooled students found them scoring by 8th grade roughly four grade levels above both public and private school students on national proficiency tests.
While our schools employ the lesser "ego" motivation of competition, home-school students utilize the more powerful "heart-soul" motivation of curiosity.
This deeper motivation could transform our schools.
To focus first on the student would revolutionize education. Some teachers would drop out or be left behind.
Others, however, would blossom.
A new breed of teachers with the capacity to deeply understand kids would also be attracted to our schools.
The role of students would be revolutionized, to assume increasing responsibilities in terms of self and classmates.
By high school, students would be actively involved in teaching, governance and discipline, as well as advising curriculum and program development. Schools would become more a student-teacher partnership.
Since in character development, parents are the primary teachers and the home the primary classroom, a powerful new bond would be created between family and school.
This bond is desperately needed by both and long overdue.
I'm not speaking theory. I've seen all this in Hyde public and private schools over the past 42 years.
America is a unique country requiring a unique educational system.
Schools that can engage students' hearts, minds and souls would transform education worldwide.
– Special to the Press HeraldCopyright 2008 by The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.
