Restructuring public education… for learning!

Any effort to restructure public education for the benefit of our children today and those entering the system in coming years is doomed to fail unless the planners, administrators, and educrats recognize that in the public school day there are really only four hours available for serious classroom education. Once the four hours of classroom education is recognized and accepted, the curriculum can be restructured.

In addition, it should be obvious that a summer break of almost 2 months in a 180 day school year is not only counterproductive to learning, it represents the most extreme example of “two steps forward, then one step backward.”

After agreeing upon the goals for public education and the knowledge and understanding which every 18-year-old voter needs to maintain our Republic, it should be obvious that from the fourth grade through graduation from high school, that block of four classroom hours should be sacrosanct and treated as the precious resource they are.

Starting in the fourth grade, those four classroom hours should be divided into two 90 minute periods and one 60 minute period. Mathematics and physical sciences should be the focus of one 90 minute period, the life sciences and humanities should be the focus of the other 90 minute period, and the remaining 60 minutes should be devoted to communication as an art and writing and speaking skills.

By combining mathematics and physical sciences it becomes possible to develop skill in applied mathematics in the context of the solution of physical problems much the way applied mathematics has evolved throughout human history. There is time enough for consideration of abstract mathematical concepts should the student be interested during postgraduate education at the college and university level. Throughout the public school system, however, the emphasis must be upon applied mathematics in the solution of physical problems. At the same time, the historical context of the problems and personalities involved in the original solution integrates history, economics, and political science — social studies — in an informal and interesting way providing a basis for the student to understand the integrated whole of human activity since the dawn of history.

Integrating the life sciences and the humanities, biology, ecology, anthropology, economics, history, and political science, with geography and geology providing the link with the science and mathematics curriculum assures that the whole of a student’s knowledge is greater than the mere sum of its individual parts.

For three hours of each day throughout the year, every student will see that anything they are learning at the moment is part of a larger body of knowledge and all of that knowledge is connected and is the sum of human experience over time.

In the hour devoted to communication and the communication skills, the program provides every student with the skills necessary to present their ideas, demonstrate their understanding, and communicate with everyone they meet. It is here that the spoken language skills developed in the preschool and elementary school are integrated with the formal methods of discourse in today’s society. The written word is used as a means of communication and those written words of the past are read for the information they contain and the enjoyment they provide from that information rather than as some formal exercise unconnected with the real world in which the students are growing.

If the school day would begin with a communal breakfast appropriate for four hours of intense concentration and mental activity, followed by 30 minutes of exercise in the Oriental tradition moving from Qi Gong through the exercise form of Tai Chi, when the four hours of formal education conclude, it is time for a communal midday meal which, in today’s society which lacks the luxury of an evening dinner with an entire family seated around a table eating freshly prepared food, will serve as dinner at which the basic etiquette of eating and drinking with others, courtesy and civil conversation will be acquired without the need for any formal “teaching.”

After dinner, the students can participate in the extracurricular activities which can enrich their time in school and extend as far as they wish to go whether it is music, art, sports, or some other activity.

In most urban and suburban school districts, where parents, and even grandparents are required to work one or more jobs and the house or apartment is empty of adults for eight to twelve hours from the time the children wake up until some adult eventually arrives home, there is need for a full day in a safe and nurturing environment for almost all children of school age.

The public school system with its myriad of buildings has to become the place where that safe and nurturing environment for the students can be maintained. There is no reason it cannot.

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