Sputnik? Let's not....

Sputnik.  

Our educational system is broken because it needs to be changed.  Nothing Broke it-- it simply has never worked.  

Sputnik!   Our educational system is sad because there is no passion.  

True motivation for learning come from with in, 

not from outside threats.  

 
Sputnik?   

 Our educational system  fails because it does not produce truly educated people. 

Students learn to manipulate the system, and live with spiritual hollowness. 

Sputnik.........

The answer is not Sputnik. 

Sputnik caused a panic that droves us as a culture into the craziness and unrest of the 60's. 

People were tested from all walks of life to see if they were the next undiscovered genius. 

There was a panic 

resulting in a generation of students 

who loved the word "correct."  

 They could get all the answers right--  

but felt the hollow meaninglessness of their lives.  

They found a voice in the music coming out of England. 

So that was good.

That and the Blitz gave us Rock and Roll.

But did we really have to have this "Panic?"

I think the crisis in youth is all spirit oriented.   

• They need to feel.  
• They need to have meaning. 

  By 3rd grade the excitement about the world is disappearing.  

Their eyes become glassy.  

I'm not sure how this solution  looks-- how to get kids what is lacking-- 

but it is not another Sputnik moment. 

Let's not go there.

Our kids have grown up too fast-- my generation grew up too fast.  Life Long Kindergarten  is a program at MIT to train teachers to preserve the creativity present in really young children.  As  a homeschooler I was an "Unschooler" --based on the teachings of John Holt.  My 3 kids are very different than others their age.  I did integrate them into public school when I judged the time right.  With each one, parents and teachers have asked me how I got kids like this.  What did I do?  What was my magic method.  I read the works of  John Holt  and David Elkind

In 1976, John Holt published Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better, whose conclusion called for a "Children's Underground Railroad" to help children escape compulsory schooling

Holt's philosophy was simple:
"... the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it."

David Elkind

His groundbreaking books — The Hurried Child,[1] The Power of Play[2] and Miseducation[3] — informed early childhood education professionals of the possible dangers of "pushing down" the elementary curriculum into the very early years of a child's life. By doing so, he argued, teachers and parents alike could lapse into developmentally inappropriate instructional and learning practices that may distort the smooth development of learning. He is associated with the belief of decline of social markers.


Now the Packers versus the Steelers!!!!