Well, first of all be realistic about this cool project. An educational institution, or those in charge do not give a darn what you want. They have been dumping down the schools of the United States for almost 100 years, relentlessly, mercilessly. You look kindly on efforts to improve education. You think you’re arrogant and provocative. You are responsible for education, you do not, and that’s all. So you should assume that you are misled, they obstruct, song and dance yourself, treat, and generally, as silly, nobody indifferent about who you know.

Nevertheless, the educational system will improve? Ok, let’s get started:

Reform: The most important change we need is for teachers major / minor must be in the subjects they teach. Be sure that no major in education. You need all their careers in education, experts in the subjects they teach. Only in America can someone important in education and teaching at the end of chemistry. It’s so ridiculous; you can immediately deduce that the people who made this possible were not serious about education.

Two measures of reform: reform of the second most important is we need the states require that teachers now for the NEA (a highly politicized trade union) must change this law. Forced to join them sounds much like a UN-American abuse of power. Take the politics out of education, particularly the ideology of the extreme left which has always been more social engineering than true education.

Reform Three: fix reading instruction. Reading is the most important skill, education may not have really learned to read, is to begin. Phonics proponents have always said they teach almost all children to read at the end of the first class. On the other hand, proponents of Whole Word, not Sight Words, Dolch Words, and all approaches phonetic never claimed they were teaching children more than a few hundred words a year to read. That is what lawyers call for first offenses. The victims of this wrong-headed approach to participate in large percent functionally illiterate, dyslexic, or can not read with great difficulty.

Reform of four: the next most important skill is arithmetic, which should be taught in a smooth transition between songs the simplest to the more advanced aspects. Reform Math Programs (A k / / a new New Math) should be withdrawn from school because they are the fundamentals, advanced concepts in simple terms, combined with the confusion and prevent children master even the simplest arithmetic. (It is worth noting here that tend private schools and homeschooling community to reject New New Math.)

Reform Five: Children must learn the facts. The school has existed for decades, many in war against memorization. “You can read it is” the reputation of this agreement anti-intellectual. No. “You do not” direct the search, because “they” know. From the first year the children should learn the facts most basic (the names of oceans and continents, for example). You will learn basic information, they rely on this subject, and then they build another layer on the first layer. Jump over the years, they are what they are trained previously mentioned. And they want it – because making fun facts and knowledge is power.

Six reforms: the root of all the wrong ways, by the school in the 20th Century, set in place. Considerable energy has been devoted to the development and promotion of subtleties, its actual impact has been negative. There are dozens of this clunk, each having a devastating than the other. Self Esteem said that you praised the child, even if incorrect. Constructivism said, children had their own skills, an absurd project requires many more years to create. Multiculturalism said that knowledge was about faraway places as important as knowledge of their own city, a young student or … The fact is that all these subtleties are destructive. They are a kind of spiritual quack grass growing everywhere in public schools. This was the first work, it is clear the weeds.

Well, suppose we have accomplished these six reforms. What would look similar schools that result? Like almost all the best schools have looked for several thousand years. But less serious, perhaps more ingenious in the use of teaching assistants (thank you to the digital era; we have a lot of them now).

Point is the old school works very well. Ordinary children learn the basic information they needed to make the people who read the newspaper daily and continue to advance academically, if they wished. So did a lot of chatter in the public schools of the last century did not change with education, social engineering. All these ill-advised amendments have our opinions on what a school should look like and distorted, yes, we can all hope of a school requested. What we must do is get the best of the past, mixed with the best of new opportunities.