The School Rant, Part One

Okay, so the question is, at what age does school go from being fun and exciting to being a necessary evil?

At what age, on average, is the joy of learning successfully squashed by grown-ups?

Let's face it: most schools suck. Kids would rather play. And they SHOULD be playing AS THEY ARE LEARNING. That's the ideal environment.

Worksheets suck. They're stupid and boring and made by people who haven't set foot in a classroom in the past fifty years.

The hours and hours of testing public school kids are put through is cruel and unusual punishment for them, as well as their teachers.

It gets pretty uncreative teaching to the damn test.

This is why I'm veering towards private schools. There's more room for creativity and less wasted test time. Still, though, even in fabulous private schools where teachers are happy at their jobs, there is still a lot of busy work for the kids.

They learn by doing, not by copying things down.

I've been implementing lesson plans by some gifted and dedicated teachers. But still? Most of it is b to the oring.

School should be a place where children are allowed to think, not where they learn to do what they're told without questioning. Detentions and time-outs don't really help. And rewards, as Alfie Kohn and others have proven, don't really work.

So why do have to metaphorically beat students into submission in order to maintain our tenuous and mostly illusory sense of control?

When are we going to get it right?