This month I’m proud to present to you a guest post from my friend, fellow writer, and gifted advocate Celi Trépanier. I think you’re going to love the metaphor she’s chosen to illustrate the worth of progressive education. I know I do!
Coughing, congestion and fever—symptoms that can send us to the doctor’s office, and so you go. You are ushered in and Dr. Stan Dardize’s nurse notes your symptoms and sends you to exam room 15. You open the door to a large room filled with about 25 other coughing, congested and feverish people. A stack of pre-filled, pre-scripted prescriptions is given to a nearby person by the nurse and told to pass one to each person in the room.
You and everyone else received the prescription for the same medication.
Then a second stack of papers titled “What to do for Cough, Congestion and Fever” are distributed—a list of of identical, standard behaviors meant to help you and all the others relieve symptoms of your illness. The bell rings and the nurse reminds you and all of the coughing, congested and feverish people in room 15 to fill your prescription, follow the given instructions and return exactly one week from today—all together—at the same time. She then shows you all the exit door and you file out coughing and shivering.
Ignoring preexisting conditions, not knowing what medications you are currently taking and disregarding any unidentified, co-existing conditions, the lot of you are treated the same, given the same instructions and expected to achieve the same results.
This one-size-fits-all approach to medicine is impersonal, clearly illogical and unthinkable. Treating every patient the same is sure to be ineffective, right? So, why do we educate our children this way?
Of course, the analogy above seems pretty absurd to us because we know all these patients are different despite the three common medical complaints of coughing, congestion and fever. We know there could be other medical factors that would make their medical treatment different from the other coughing, feverish patients in room 15.
Optimal, personalized and appropriate medical care should be a priority. And so should educating our children. It should be a priority.
Just like medical care, education is crucial for every person in order to have a sufficient quality of life. Education is needed to advance our world, solve our problems and bring about innovations. Shouldn’t it be personalized and not standardized?
Our traditional school system educates a group of students, the same-age, in one classroom, passively absorbing the same information, utilizing the same curriculum, but producing widely varied results. I imagine Dr. Stan Dardize’s coughing, congested and feverish patients, although treated with the same medical treatment, all had varying results—some got better, some got worse and some stayed the same.
These patients all expected to get well, not stay the same or get worse. As parents, isn’t this what we expect with education? For our children to do well? Not stagnate or fall behind?
Unlike traditional education, progressive or alternative education educates the whole child using methods and materials personally suited to that one child thus providing that child with the just-right tools to do well and to excel in his field of interest and talent. Also, a progressive education teacher needs to have the space and freedom to develop personal relationships with her students so that she can create a personal education plan that suits the whole child.
Tailoring a child’s education to meet his unique needs and interests is better than a one-size-fits-all approach, and many traditional school teachers do try to individualize instruction, but it is next to impossible with the onslaught of standardization and grade-level expectations which are required of schools today.
When we consider how we learn in ordinary situations outside of a traditional school, it is so dissimilar to the ways we expect kids to learn in traditional school today. Helping our child learn to ride a bike, muddling through building a birdhouse, learning about a new travel destination, figuring out our new cell phone, understanding a friend’s political views—we read, discuss or just jump in and just do it. Learning in these situations is active, engaging and motivating which also helps us to retain the newly-learned skills and information. I don’t think memorization of isolated facts can claim any such retention of information.
Just because we’ve always done it this way does not make it the right way—not for every child.
About Celi:
Celi Trépanier was born and raised in south Louisiana. She grew up with a strong Cajun French heritage, eventually married a French-Canadian, and has three wonderful sons. She currently resides in central Iowa with her husband and youngest son.
Celi has a vast and varied background in education. She received her B.S. from Loyola University in New Orleans and her M.Ed. from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, then taught in Louisiana, Ontario, and Alabama, in public schools, private schools, and homeschool co-ops.
Celi became a passionate advocate for gifted children after tiring of her family’s painful battles with traditional schools and the misunderstanding and neglect of gifted students. Through adversity came her passion, her strength, and her voice. She advocates for the educational, emotional, and social needs of all gifted children, and her dream is for schools and society to one day understand the truths about giftedness in children. Her writing centers on her advocacy for gifted children and her own journey with her three gifted sons. Her emotional and sometimes pointed posts can be found on her website, Crushing Tall Poppies. You can follow Celi on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Thank you for this post! I struggle sometimes to find the right words to tell people about our schooling choices. Celi’s post gives me encouragement and words/phrases to tuck in my mind to sue when we get another round of “why” and “isn’t ps good enough?”.
Just what the doctor ordered for you, Mia!
It is difficult to find the right words to say about our different educational choices. Just yesterday, I was spouting off all that I had learned while writing this post to a young lady who honestly admitted she did not understand homeschooling. She confessed that she only knew of the stereotypical homeschooler–a weird, stay-at-home child. She understands more now about educational choice and the need our children have to receive an education that fits them best.
Thanks, Mia!
Celi, I love the metaphor – it’s spot on. The education system needs a huge makeover and you are absolutely right “Just because we’ve always done it this way does not make it the right way—not for every child.” Thanks for the encouragement to keep doing what we’re doing! <3
Nikki, I learned so much from writing this post. Sometimes you know these things but it doesn’t always hit home. This time it hit home for me and the metaphor just fit. I had to wonder why do we expect clothing, medical care, what we feed our families and even career choice to be personal and the best fit for our needs, but not so for the education for our children?
Thanks, Nikki!
What a powerful, yet simplistic metaphor! This is exactly why I homeschool my 2e son. There is no way his needs could be met in our local schools.
Thanks, Jena!
Just as I said in my reply to Nicole, we personalize and make best-fit choices for less important things in our lives, why is it not common to do this for education for our children?
Well said and great metaphor!
Thank you, Nickole!
I worried about that metaphor, but it does make sense. Our children’s education should be a priority and their education should fit their needs and interests.
Thank you, Celi (and Jaade, for making the post possible). For so long, and until quite recently, people in my family, many of whom are teachers, thought I was weird when I advocated for individualized — not necessarily one-to–one — teaching, but rather, teaching geared to the needs of each student. it’s nice to see some professionals who don’t think that what I believe in makes me a whack-job-weirdo of some sort. Mind you, not that my family treated me in general as a whack-job-weirdo, but rather that we could teach children in anything OTHER than the factory-made, cookie-cutter model model still hanging around from the 1850’s was a whack-job-weirdo concept. I have seen five people, very close to me emotionally, suffer miserably under the 1850’s factory model of schooling. My parents, both of whom are extremely brilliant in their own right, speak very favourably about the results they achieved in school, but never about the process; in the late 1920’s, 1930’s, and 1940’s, you were generally taught to be grateful just to GET an education, and not to complain if the process was boring or gruelling in some manner.
I look at my son, the child of two gifted parents, both of whom suffered terribly under the yoke of the 1850’s factory model of education, going through the exact same problems and attitudes that we, his father and mother, went through.
AND IT’S FORTY YEARS LATER!
NOTHING CHANGED!
He’s still been considered, by some teachers, to be mentally retarded because he doesn’t learn the way most students do (oh, yeah, this “mentally retarded” child was reading at age 3, and after losing the ability to speak English because of a year in Mexico, re-taught himself English, having returned to Texas, and despite his mother and her friends only speaking Spanish to him — at the age of 3 1/2; yeah, this brilliant child of ours was mentally handicapped, alright). Other teachers diagnosed him as ADHD (he told me he fidgets when he’s bored, which is most of the time in school); some teachers claimed he was lazy, because, having mastered a concept, he saw no point in endlessly relearning an idea over and over again.
His mother is a teacher; we are both very frustrated with two systems (American and Mexican) that can’t seem to figure out this kid, and instead try to plug his eight-sided unusualness into a triangular hole, then being puzzled as to why he doesn’t fit.
There seems to be little appetite for change, either from a sclerotic teachers’ union (NOT the teachers themselves) that is afraid of losing members (read: cash from dues); or from politicians afraid, variously, of powerful teachers’ unions; of reactionary conservatives who want the educational system to revert even CLOSER to the 1850’s than it already is now; a Radical Left entranced by radical egalitarianism, and who thus deny the existence of giftedness; and parents, those of regular children who see no value in giftedness programs — because the children will do fine on their own, or parents of children with disabilities, who see each dollar (peso) spent on giftedness programs equals one less dollar for their disabled kids.
The whole system needs radical revamping, but I despair that the voices for change are too few, and are like whispers in a tornado, never to be heard above the maelstrom. Thank you both for you intelligent and so very intelligent approach to education. But I do fear that voices like yours will be ignored for many years and decades to come.
Think about why; in forty years since I finished elementary school, and thirty-three since I left high school, FOUR DECADES of research on learning styles, and how kids learn has been growing. When I did a post-baccalaureate diploma in special education and counselling psychology (1990’s), every single one of my education profs agreed that the current system was broken and required substantial changes. Yet NOTHING has changed. Not in a significant manner, at any rate.
And I see my son, struggling, and who sees me, his father, as one of the very few adults who really realizes what a miserable time he’s going through in school, and therefore as his “best friend” on the matter, his ally, and I can’t help but get very emotional about how I know exactly how he feels, as I did, FORTY YEARS AGO.
I agree with you, that change MUST occur, I just am at an utter loss to see how it could change. There are too many vested interests, and too much ignorance about the many faults and failures of our current system, at the moment, for any change to occur.
Meanwhile, as the vested interests fight turf-wars, kids are getting second-rate educations, and there are too few voices, very far apart, talking about change.
Thank you, despairingly.
Thank you, John!
Public education will change when more of us speak out with our words and more importantly with our actions as we move our children to better educational options such as homeschooling and Jade’s micro-school. Leaving the public school system speaks volumes about the state of public education, and these forms of alternative education are growing. There’s still hope things will change.
And even when we have found a more fitting education for our children outside of the public school system, we need to keep speaking out and voicing our concern about public education for those children who can’t leave the system which is failing them.
Thanks, John, as always! I love hearing your opinions and insights!
I *do* love the metaphor! And I think it’s very useful for spreading awareness about the need for vastly improved education on the whole. There can be so many blocks to seeking something out that is “outside the norm,” when frankly, it’s where most of us exist. I’m also thinking about how well this applies to the world of psychotherapy, including people’s preconceived notions of it.
Thank you both for being part of this educational paradigm shift!
Thanks, Heather!
I am so happy to be able to write this guest post for Jade and be part of this educational paradigm shift! And “outside the norm” is where all us cool kids are and boy, don’t we have fun!
This quote needs to be copied and printed a million times. So, relevant and succinct.
“Unlike traditional education, progressive or alternative education educates the whole child using methods and materials personally suited to that one child thus providing that child with the just-right tools to do well and to excel in his field of interest and talent.”
Thank you, Amy!