Recently, American public schools have become a battleground, mostly thanks to another blizzard of right-wing misinformation. Far-right media and Republican politicians don’t care how much damage they do to our society and our children, as long as they can frighten and enrage conservatives into voting them back into power. Conservative parents are screaming, crying and threatening teachers and administrators over CTR, masks and vaccine mandates, none of which would even be controversial if it weren’t for the lies being spread by the right. But it’s the children who are being hurt the most by all this.
Imagine being a kid, and being packed off to school by sullen, angry parents who tell you not to believe what your teachers are going to be teaching you. Being told that you shouldn’t have to wear a mask, but then having to wear one anyway to get into school. The pandemic may be contagious, but not nearly as contagious as attitudes.
Public schools already had plenty of problems. Teachers are often paid less than babysitters, and with the challenges they are facing in the classrooms now, only the truly heroic can persevere. Bullies dominate every hallway, restroom and schoolyard that isn’t strictly supervised, creating a hidden culture of fear and brutality.
The already pathetic funding the education system gets has been diluted more than ever to fund private charter schools, mostly run by churches. With our current situation, conservatives are sending their kids to church-schools in droves, where they can be surrounded by other white kids while they learn “alternative facts” and never have to hear about awkward subjects like evolution, slavery or civil rights.
This isn’t working. We need a better system, a better experience for our children. I’ve been pondering this problem for years, and I think I have a better solution. See what you think of it.
Instead of packing hundreds of kids into a big building full of unsupervised spaces where the Law of the Jungle prevails, I propose a scattering of small, one-room, neighborhood classrooms. Each classroom would have one teacher. There would be no more than a dozen kids attending in each classroom, of all ages and grades. Any small, modest office space with a restroom and an internet connection could be a classroom, and dozens of them could be leased for far less than the expense of buying and running a large school building.
The students would learn on computers, equipped with headphones. Lessons would be designed by America’s top educators, and would be universal for each grade, across the nation. Each lesson would be short, twenty minutes or less, with a brief quiz at the end. If the student fails the quiz, the lesson will play again, followed by another quiz. After each 20-minute segment of lessons, the recommended time limit for most attention spans, the student would get a break. They would be offered a selection of age-appropriate computer games to play, or books to read, or videos to watch, for 10 minutes before beginning the next 20-minute cycle of lessons. For younger children, more physical activities could be made available at the back of the classroom for their 10 minute breaks. The subjects of the lessons would be mixed together, to help prevent boredom. For brighter or quicker students, a broad array of additional lessons, on their choice of subjects, would be available for extra credit, after they finish the requisite lessons. Advancement to the next grade would not be age-dependent, so a smart student who finishes all the required courses, and perhaps a minimum number of extra-credit lessons, could move on to the next grade’s course-work at any time.
The teacher in each classroom would mostly supervise their students. They would be there to help if a student gets stuck or doesn’t understand a lesson. These teachers wouldn’t need to know every subject for every grade, they would just need to know how to look up information on an academic network, and have some skill at explaining the more difficult concepts to their students.
Instead of big yellow school buses, each school district would have a fleet of minivans, to take kids to classes in the mornings and bring them home in the afternoons, as needed. At midday, these minivans would pick up free school lunches from a central location and distribute them to the scattered classrooms. Class hours could be adjustable to suit the parent’s work schedules, and parents could pick their kids up themselves after work if they prefer.
With these classrooms scattered across town, with the small class sizes and constant supervision, there will be no opportunity for bullying. Bad behavior will be spotted and dealt with immediately. Kids will learn to deal with both older and younger children, and will have an opportunity to bond with their little group. Quick learners would no longer have to wait for the slower kids to catch up, or waste months finishing out a school year when they’ve already learned all it has to offer. If conflict occurs between students, a child can easily be switched to a different classroom nearby.
Special-needs kids could have programs that have been adapted for their issues, and with such small class sizes, would receive much more personal attention than kids do in our present system. The classroom would be a parent-free zone, so difficult parents wouldn’t be part of the equation. Sports would become a community thing rather than a school thing. There’s no reason sports need to be tied to academics as they are now.
While we’re re-designing our school system, this might also be a good opportunity to re-examine our curriculum, and have our education experts decide what our children need to be taught, in light of our rapidly-changing world, and what should be discarded. Critical thinking would be a nice skill for our children to have going forward, and might help the next generation to discern when their biases are being pandered to.
Having the same lessons taught to all children, coast to coast, would also be a major plus. When those kids grow up, they will have common ground from which to negotiate with each other, instead of the vast factual and cultural divide that separates our nation now.