Andover Essay

Submitted By CeruleanFrost
Words: 520
Pages: 3

If you were to drop a 1890s elementary student into one of today’s classrooms, he would be positively terrified by the innovation surrounding him—TI-89s instead of chalky slates, iPads rather than books, Youtube instead of tutors. But if you asked that student from 1890 to tell you his favorite part of the school day, it’s likely he would give the same answer as a student from 2015. Recess. But surely with all the tools, all the ideas, the technology we've managed to come up with, kids like coming to school, right? Like Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “If [schools] were better, if they … had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles...we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.” It’s true that instructors now know much more than they did 40 years ago, but we haven’t come so far from the model back then—where order was the fixation, and students were receptacles for information emptied on test day. The difference? Students have learned to combat this poor learning environment by navigating standardized tests and hiding their boredom. Most know how to give seven different teachers the answers they want to hear, but not how to discover passions, stand out, or live their life differently. The truth is, a one-size-fits-all curriculum fits no one. In my ideal school, classes would be limited to 14, providing a sense of community but allowing teachers to offer individual attention. Guided, students would complete individual non-graded learning surveys, giving teachers, trained in psychodynamic therapy, a sense of strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Grades would vanish, instead thought-out evaluations would take place. The motivation to work would arise from desire to establish positive self-identities, and not the desire to make an A. Instead of teaching concepts in a vacuum, there would be real-life projects—a context for every concept. Lessons would have