Speaking from experience as the valedictorian of my private college-prep high school, a valuable skill that is taught in school is self-discipline (staying focused, finishing projects, being accountable, reinforced by observing the cause-and-effect between behaviors and outcomes). However many school environments abuse this and push children to be compliant with all sorts of useless “rules”. Give some flexibility for children to move around and express themselves… silence in the classroom does not equal learning!

The problem is not that we have a large state-run school system, it’s what’s being taught in those buildings. Ditch the current model of “training good factory workers” and start teaching the skills of an entrepreneurial economy: public speaking, working in groups, Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad” style financial education, debate and negotiation, salesperson-as-a-solution-provider, as well as reading, writing, computer literacy and arithmetic. Use Accelerated Learning Techniques, Kolbe Index results, and other latter-day discoveries to shorten the learning curve. Shorten the school day- spend less time in academic instruction and more time building a business (such as the Junior Achievement program). And, I do believe that basic education (through 8th grade, at least) should be available for all citizens.

I think one useful reason to go to college is to meet people from all over the world & learn about them as peers. When a person uses their college years to do that, they learn that no matter what people wear/eat/worship/speak, we’re all humans in the end. College can serve as a wonderful way to create peace in the world.

This archaic educational system hasn’t changed for well over 100 years. Sure, what we have in the classrooms has changed a bit, e.g. computers, calculators, etc. There are more subjects being taught in school. One might say that school has improved from a hundred years ago. But overall, the SYSTEM has remained the same.

We are still cramming information in our students’ head in the hopes that they’ll absorb it. Students are still trying to learn this information by rote memory; which is a slow way of learning. And yet, we are giving more and more information for them to learn.

As a student, whether you’re in grade school or college, doesn’t matter where you are, you have other obligations beyond school work. So, you’re trying to learn, by rote memory, all this information, and at the same time fulfilling your other obligations in life. It’s no wonder students are burning out.

The system has to change. We should be teaching them how to learn. There are a lot of techniques out there that help accelerate learning. We need to teach them how to use their WHOLE mind. For the most part, you’re only using your left brain in school while your right brain lies dormant. You process information more effectively when you use your whole mind.

There are two elements that need to be infused in school that will help students use their whole mind. They are FUN and CREATIVITY. Both of these elements go hand-in-hand. Schools squelch creativity. Sir Ken Robinson, a creativity expert, says, “We are educating people out of their creativity.” Ken challenges the way we’re educating our children. He advocates a radical rethink of the educational system that encourages creativity, and recognizes multiple types of intelligences. You can view his speech on TED here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

I’ll be very blunt here, most classes are boring. The classes I remember most, and learned and retained the most information in, were FUN. And fun fosters creativity. It was in these classes that I processed the information more easily. Infusing fun into your learning experience works wonders. You understand the materials better.

Understanding is another thing the system fails at. The system requires more memorizing than understanding the materials taught. Look back at the tests you took in school. It was more about how much you memorized rather than how much you understood. And think about how much of that information you forgot after you took the test. You forgot it because you simply memorized it, and didn’t understand it. You retain information better when you understand it.

The educational system might have worked for our great, great, great grandparents before. But it’s not working now. Times have changed. Our educational system has to change. We have to utilize understanding, accelerative learning techniques, creativity, and fun in schools. We should be churning out more innovators. Not more trained sheep for the workforce.

I went to a private kindergarten and a private university for my doctorate in education (Ed.D.) Everything in-between was public. In a state that’s considered inforior by most measurements. However, I’ve lived in several states in the US, even close to Yale University, and I’ve never felt like my education was inferior. Why? It’s because I had some kind of intrinsic motivation to learn, and my parents fostered this desire. They grew up during The Depression and had few opportunities growing up, but they stressed hard work in school and in life. No entitlement for us.

That’s one reason I get so frustrated these days. Kids these days really do seem to need “training” in basic social skills that we spend too much time with discipline issues and not enough teaching. And after seeing some of the parents in public places, it’s clear as to why. The issue of “children having children” is only getting worse. Can you imagine someone eighteen or nineteen, with no high school diploma and no real skills trying to Homeschool?

Then there’s the bureaucracy and politics in education. Accountability is important and has long been needed, but No Child Left Behind has forced us to focus on high stakes testing several times a year instead of in-depth instruction and learning. Each state is allowed to determine its own standards and testing. We can’t even compare New York to New Mexico. How can we compare our students to those in another country?

As for unions, I know that the stances taken are sometimes extreme, but I can assure you, if we didn’t have them, there would be many illegal employment issues going on. I have seen non-tenured teachers not renewed for reasons other than financial cutbacks or poor performance. Nepotism comes to mind, as does outright discrimination. Unfortunately, The Peter Principle is alive and well in education in many places. In addition, teachers are too often treated as “big children,” rather than professionals. It’s really hard to take someone seriously when you know they don’t have a clue as to what’s really going on.

I know I have ranted quite a bit here, but I think I can speak for teacher everyehere when I say I am tired of being blamed for all the ills of the Western world. I fyou could only see how hard teachers today work, in highly stressful environments, trying to make up for what kids SHOULD have known before they even started school but didn’t, you might have a different perspective.