A - - What's Wrong?
 
Perhaps the strongest indictment against the traditional school
system is  its failure to make provision for individual
differences.  A subsequent section, which addresses this matter,
is devoted to the need for educational flexibility.  The lack of
it was the cause, at least the  "straw that broke the camel's
back," of an altercation with local school authorities, mentioned
in the introduction.  Our second daughter, Nikki, was a
precocious third grade pupil who was so bored following her 
completing her in-class tasks in less than half the time allotted
that she made a nuisance of herself by assisting her class-mates. 
This annoyed her teacher so much that she called our home to
request that we remind Nikki that she, Nikki, was not the
teacher.  Nikki asked the teacher if she could do more exercises
after she finished the ones assigned, to which the  teacher
responded, "Only those who are naughty are given more work."  

This attitude (1) deprives learners of enrichment activities, (2)
conveys the impression that learning is punitive rather than
rewarding and (3) is probably a consequence of the erroneous
feeling of many educators that the primary objective in the
classroom is to maintain rigid order at the expense of education. 
This incident occurred nearly twenty years ago.   Educators
should have had time to learn better, yet only recently the
principal of a local elementary school punished students with
additional math assignments.  It is no wonder mature adults have
math anxiety!  They had too few positive experiences and too many
negative experiences with it as youngsters.
 
Our older daughter, Kari, in sixth grade at the time Nikki was
deprived enrichment experience, had found school an unpleasant
place to be because her teacher frightened her with emotional
outbursts and lengthy, profanity laden criticisms of student
behavior.  These incidents are not uncommon in schools.
 
These problems led to my preparation of the following itemized
critique of several negative characteristics of the school
environment then noticed: 
 
Teachers vent anger and use profanity thus destroy
the atmosphere necessary for effective learning.
 
The obsolete grading system is still used, and the
grades issued do not reflect proficiency.  They
are based on the assumption that approximately 40%
of the students will be below average.  In these
students a poor self image is adopted, actually
contributing to a lowering of I.Q.  

Teachers inadvertently convey the thought that
learning is a chore, therefore undermine the
students' desire to seek information 
independently.
 
Sanitation facilities, including toilet tissue,
soap, hot water and towels are seldom available in
the rest rooms.
 
Showers necessary for cleanliness following
physical education activities are not provided. 
Dressing rooms are not available.

Teachers have not taken precaution to prevent
pupils' becoming sun-burned during P. E.
activities.
 
Poor speech habits of some of the teachers (ethnic
dialect) prevent the students from understanding
correctly and contribute to speech proficiency 
difficulties.
 
Too much time is wasted disciplining ill-behaved
students.  

Too little attention is given to individual
differences.  The fact that the same amount of
school time is required of every student is a 
manifestation of this.  This is tantamount to a
physician's prescribing the same medicine for each
patient, regardless of the medical problem.  

The P. E. program is not designed to accommodate
students' inclinations.   Schools fail to realize
that very few of the activities are designed to 
provide a basis for constructive leisure time
activities for the students as adults.
 
Success in school still depends on rote
memorization at the expense of involvement.  There
is too much emphasis on providing correct answers. 
 Pressure, stigmatizing effective learning, is
created through fear of failure and adult
disapproval.
 
There is too much irrelevant, uninvolved
confinement.
 
Sex education, although unnecessarily provided in
the public school, is imposed without parental
consent. 
 
Many of the teachers do not have adequate
grammatical and mathematical skills and
understanding to provide them to students in the 
upper-elementary grades. 
 
Although an effective learning technique, student
interaction in school work is usually discouraged.
 
There are too few "real life" experiences. 
Although more effectively available from other
sources, schools give the impression that the only 
valid sources of experience are provided
vicariously through books and teachers in a
classroom.
 
Educators have difficulty perceiving the point of
view of those not brainwashed by academic
tradition.
 
Although it has been over 15 years since prepared, these remain
relevant concerns about the failures of the schools.  Many of
these concerns will be expanded in the following chapters
treating some of them separately.  

            ```````````````` 
"To me and, I imagine, to everyone else
of my generation, school was dark,  sad
and unreal; unreal in the sense of life-
denying, in the sense that it  showed all
the truest and solidest things in life in
a completely dead,  abstract sort of way. 
It was therefore, profoundly, a non-
education.   Then there was the sense of
guilt  .  .  .  that time spent in class
was  all wasted."
       - - - - Federico Fellini
 
                         ``````````````
Observations made since have reinforced the observations made
then.   Educators and psychiatrists who similarly advocate change
in the system have agreed that the traditional school environment
deprives children of growth experiences.  Children are more
sensitive, perceptive, confident, independent, resourceful and
persistent before they attend school than after they are
enrolled.  Prior to their school years they have  miraculously
learned all they know through experimentation, discovery, 
mimicking, observation, involvement, interaction and asking,
attributes which are discouraged in the school environment. 
Learning to speak a language, in some countries, two or three
languages, by the age of six years, is no small accomplishment. 
Recent reports indicate that children and youth can continue to
learn effectively at home; those who have been  home schooled are
considered to have a better rapport with adults,  demonstrate
more social graces and score higher on achievement tests than
their counterparts in traditional schools.
 
Left alone, the mind is capable of amazing feats.  For example, I
was  recently introduced to the educational arithmetic game,
KRYPTO.  The game procedure calls for the dealer to deal five
cards to each player.  These cards contain the numbers from 1 to
25.  Following the dealing of cards to each player, a final,
object, card is drawn.  The objective of the game is for each
player to add, subtract, multiply and/or divide his set of cards 
in any card sequence using any order of the four arithmetic
functions in  order for the answer to match the object card.  If
the mind follows an organized pattern of sequencing the number
set and arithmetic functions, it will go through 30720
combinations of numbers and arithmetic function orders for each
set of cards dealt.  The mind is more random than sequential and
can arrive at solutions faster, in many cases, than a computer
programmed to play the game.  The intuitive nature of the mind 
still baffles psychologists.  The organized pattern of arriving
at solutions used by the computer takes 120 orderings of the five
cards:   1,2,3,4,5 - 1,2,3,5,4 - 1,2,4,3,5 - 1,2,4,5,3 -
1,2,5,3,4 . . . . .  5,4,2,1,3 - 5,4,2,3,1 - 5,4,3,1,2 -
5,4,3,2,1.  It takes 256 combinations of the arithmetic
functions: multiply, multiply, multiply, multiply -  multiply,
multiply, multiply, divide - multiply, multiply, multiply, add - 
multiply, multiply, multiply, subtract  .  .  .  add, multiply,
subtract, divide  .  .  .  subtract, subtract, subtract,
subtract.  256 times 120 is 30720.  The computer arrived at the
following sixteen successful solutions of the randomly drawn card
numbers 3, 6, 10, 24 and 22 to match the object  card, 7.  (The
first sequence is read and calculated without regard to 
groupings: 3 divided by 6 is .5; .5 times 10 is 5; 5 plus 24 is
29; 29  minus 22 equals 7.  An asterisk represents the operation
of  multiplication.)  

        3/6*10+24-22=7
        3/6*10-22+24=7
        3*10/6+24-22=7
        3*10/6-22+24=7
        6/3*24+22/10=7
        6*24/3+22/10=7
        10*3/6+24-22=7
        10*3/6-22+24=7
        10/6*3+24-22=7
        10/6*3-22+24=7
        24/3*6+22/10=7
        24*6/3+22/10=7
        24-6+22/10+3=7
        24+22-6/10+3=7
        22-6+24/10+3=7
        22+24-6/10+3=7
 
             ```````````````
"It is in fact nothing short of a miracle
that the modern methods of  instruction
have not yet entirely strangled the holy
curiosity of inquiry.   .  .  .  It is a
very grave mistake to think that the
enjoyment of seeing  and searching can be
promoted by means of coercion and a sense
of duty."    - - - - - Albert Einstein
 
             ```````````````
   .  .  The typical developmental
pattern [of genius] includes:... 1) a 
high degree of attention focused upon the
child by parents and other  adults,
expressed in intensive educational
measures, and usually abundant  love;
2)isolation from other children,
especially outside the family; and  3) a
rich efflorescence of fantasy as a
reaction to the preceding  conditions. 
[So]  .  our public school system is  . 
.  a vast experiment  .  .  to suppress
the occurrence of genius.
 - - - Harold McCurdy for SMITHSONIAN
 
              `````````````
Elsewhere herein, reference is made to the 1983 report of the
National  Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at
Risk.  It  recommends more stringent standards, tougher
graduation requirements and higher achievement.  The consequent
more coercive environments, according to Edward L. Deci,
professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New
York, will not encourage academic achievement, but will stifle
it!   In his article in the March 1985 issue of Psychology Today,
"The  Well-Tempered Classroom," he warns, "  .  .  our
educational system has problems, but many of the proposed
solutions are likely to exacerbate them.  Initiatives that
establish stronger controls in education will result in poorer
education."  He then reminds his reading audience about the more
effective results of intrinsic motivation, as opposed to the 
typical punishment/reward system that increases school pressures,
and provides concrete examples of experiments that support his
assertion.  The  article's sub-title is a lesson in itself: "How
Not to Motivate Teachers and Students: Impose Stricter Standards,
More Controls and Greater Conformity."

Jerome Bruner, in a quote published in Malcolm Knowles' The Adult
Learner: A Neglected Species, suggests that schools more often
interfere with learning than promote it:
 
The will to learn is an intrinsic motive, one that
finds both its source and its reward in its own
exercise.  The will to learn becomes a "problem" 
only under specialized circumstances like those of
a school, where a curriculum is set, students
confined, and a path fixed.  The problem exists
not so much in learning itself, but in the fact
that what the school imposes often fails to enlist
the natural energies that sustain  spontaneous
learning -- curiosity, a desire for competence,
aspiration to emulate a model, and a deep-sensed
commitment to the web of social  reciprocity [the
human need to respond to others and to operate
jointly with them toward an objective].
 
              ''''''''''''
Education is not nearly as sudden as a
massacre but in the long run it is more
deadly.
-------- Mark Twain
              ''''''''''''
As I was getting my physical examination prior to college
entrance, my  family doctor told me, "Be careful what you learn
and how you learn it.   Formal education harms as many people as
it helps."
 
I did not understand what he meant at the time, although
experience has helped me realize how people are hurt in many ways
by formal education.   He probably did not mean the type of harm
that is common-place in public schools: students' desire to learn
is ruined frequently by frustrated, emotional, over-worked and
under-paid teachers with too many students in their charge.  One
adult college student of mine confessed that she is still very
uncomfortable in the classroom because of several 
psychologically damaging elementary classroom experiences, some
of which she mentioned: 
 
(1) being spanked by a teacher because of receiving poor grades
on workbook projects,
 
(2) being embarrassed when volunteering to answer questions by
having a teacher angrily tell her to put her hand down, presuming
she did not know the answers,
 
(3) watching her friend with a bladder disorder receive corporal 
punishment each time she "wet her pants,"
 
(4) being shaken by a teacher for an unknown reason until her
shoes fell off and
 
(5) not being allowed to leave a third grade classroom to use the
rest room consequently "having an accident" that caused ridicule
by her classmates.
 
Fear that she would not satisfactorily comprehend material caused
another re-entry student to have nightmares.  In one of these
nightmares she was running about campus so rapidly she could not
see herself in her dream.   The dream ended as she bumped into a
door being opened by an instructor who announced in a loud voice,
"You have five F's."  She awakened crying.  As a psychology major
she wonders if the lack of understanding of a former sixth grade
teacher, 30 years prior, was the cause of the trauma.

Advice, possibly facetiously proffered but evidently accepted
seriously, to beginning teachers from experienced hard-core
disciplinarians, even professors in universities training
teachers, promotes the problem: "If  you don't want any
discipline problems, on the first day of class find the shyest
pupil in the classroom, get as close as possible to him or her
and deliberately frighten the pupil by yelling very loudly."
 
In spite of the recognition by educational authorities that
anxiety reduces students' ability to learn, teachers do very
little to reduce the anxiety level in their classrooms.  Indeed,
teachers are most frequently the primary cause of student
anxiety.
 
Administrators, too, contribute to negative learning
environments.  A father of a pupil enrolled in a local elementary
school delivered his daughter's book to her classroom at a time
that he witnessed the teacher verbally abuse his daughter.  The
pupil's mother consequently, and at the  invitation of the
principal, went to the school to assist the daughter in  her
classroom activities.  When the mother arrived, however, the
principal rescinded his invitation and ordered her off the
premises.  She refused, unless she could take her daughter home
with her, so he called for a police officer to evict her.  This
incident should be of concern to everyone.  It suggests that the
community is allowing its public servants in the education system
to exercise unwarranted authority over that which parents have
jurisdiction, their children.  The trauma of the school
environment, created by abusive teachers and dictatorial
administrators, frequently destroys a pupil's desire and ability
to learn, and parents ought to have the right to withdraw their
children from it and place them in an environment more conducive
to learning.
 
Although there are now laws preventing physical abuse, emotional
abuse is still common.  I recall when my own seventh grade
spelling teacher, from whose class I was excused most of the time
to allow me to rehearse with the high school band, attempted to
circumvent the consequence of administering corporal punishment
by having me slap myself three times.   She then asked what I had
to say for myself; I responded, "Ouch!"  The uproarious laughter
this evoked from my classmates made her so angry she gave me a
severe shaking.  I was lucky; the few traumatic experiences I had
in the classroom did not stifle my desire to learn.  Teachers'
lack of concern for the needs of the students, not only
educational needs, but social and psychological needs, is
harmful.  Teen age students have a  difficult time learning
respect for teachers if they are not shown respect by them.  This
example provides additional evidence of how instructors are not
concerned about the feelings of students:  A slightly over-weight
high school sophomore was insulted, embarrassed and perturbed
enough to walk off campus when his physical education instructor
yelled this demand to  him: "Hey, fat-boy, get your ass over
here."
 
Another example of the damage school can do is provided by this
quotation from an article, "When Love Begins Again," by Joan
Mills in the April 1985 Reader's Digest, emphasizing schools'
inability to provide adequately for individual differences:

"Before he was a year, he made a shambles of six
rooms every day, getting himself into unbelievable
fixes.  But he never broke anything or hurt
anybody.  He caroled his own songs at the sky and
danced with joy for morning.  'He always shines!'
I said to his dad. 'He wears mud as if it  were
glory.'.  .  .
 
"Not surprisingly, he was tossed out of nursery
school and kindergarten.   But by second grade he
was reading two years in advance of his class.  In 
third grade, however, he was expected to sit
still; keep his voice down;  'behave.'  Such
disciplines were beyond his control.
 
"He was shamed, punished and labeled.  Embattled
on the playground by classmates, he fought back. 
At home he'd crumple, a tear-streaked little boy. 
We tried private school, clinical review,
everything.  No one found a solution.  Those were
heart-breaking years.  School was his private 
agony."
 
And school is the private agony of uncounted myriads of others
whose creativity and enthusiasm for learning are hampered by the
rigid requirements of an archaic, inflexible, unaccommodating and
hostile educational environment.
 
Eighth grade students in a rural Arizona kindergarten through
intermediate school are exceptionally unruly and a problem for
every teacher they have had from the first grade.  The principal
of the school explains: "Their kindergarten teacher always called
them 'turkey-turds' and treated them as such."
 
Many of the problems facing public secondary education arise from
the fact that many, if not most, of the students do not wish to
be there.  The scholastically inclined will learn with or without
regular attendance; the others create havoc because they are
forced to comply with the law through presence in classes in
which they have neither interest nor aptitude.   Many would
rather be productively employed, but archaic truancy and child 
labor laws prevent it.  Manifestations of the consequent
rebelliousness are found in participation in negative peer group
activities like smoking, gambling, drug use, graffiti and abuse
on other students and teachers.  A  colleague of mine carried a
small canister of mace for several months following an attack on
him by an irate student (inmate) of the local high school (penal
institution).  Gangs of rebellious students barricade rest  rooms
for their exclusive illicit use.  Both they and the schools would 
benefit if they were not forced to attend.
 
              `````````````
Central among the institutions which by
their structure and limited concern have
encouraged  .  .  socially disruptive
developments, have been our schools.
  -  -  - U. Bronfenbrenner (Cornell
University)
 
              `````````````
The current difficulty of maintaining
school discipline and of teaching 
students reading and other subjects may
lie more in the antiquated structure of
the school than in a sudden change in
children's basic abilities or willingness
to learn.
   - - - Joshua Meyrowitz
 
              `````````````
The conscientious student will comply with the requirements he or
she tolerates, but many honestly do not enjoy the experience. 
They recognize that most schools' programs are irrelevant, waste
time, overemphasize grades, fail to make adjustments for
individual differences in rates of learning and are geared, as
mass entertainment, to placating those with average abilities and
ambitions.  They describe their school environment as 
oppressive, drab, grim and joyless.
 
Mass educations' accomplishments are dismal.  The U. S. Office of 
Education estimates that approximately ten percent of the
American adult population is functionally illiterate, incapable
of such tasks as determining the location of a street on a city
map or reading a bus schedule.  Roul Tunley, writing about
"America's Secret Shame" in the  September 1985 Reader's Digest,
estimates that nearly 20%, 27 million American adults, are
functionally illiterate.  He provides these examples  of the
consequences:
 
In Chicago a worker destroys a herd of cattle
because he can't read the word POISON on a bag he
thinks is feed.
 
In Syracuse, New York, a child is rushed to a
hospital after her mother, who can't read, mistakes
a pink dish-washing soap for a liquid antacid.  

A Navy seaman ruins $250,000 worth of equipment
because he couldn't read  the instruction manual.
 
More than half of college freshmen in California are placed in
remedial English.  In one study, the average word length of high
school seniors' essays was only four letters.  Nationally, more
than 20% of incoming college students require remedial courses in
reading, writing and mathematics.  In 1983, at four-year
colleges, 12% of freshmen took remedial courses in reading, 17%
in writing and 19% in math.  The percentages were higher in two-
year colleges: 19% reading, 23% writing and  28% math.  Paul
Copperman's The Literacy Hoax exposes additional problems:

Since the 1960's, academic performance and
standards have shown a sharp and widespread
decline,  Today's eighth grader reads
approximately as well as the average seventh
grader just ten years ago, and computes about as 
well as the average sixth grader of that period. 
On college admission tests, only about a quarter
of our current high school graduates attain  the
level of the average high school graduate in the
early 1960's.  

The decline in educational standards is as sharp
as the decline in basic academic skills  .  . 
 
Many traditional and rigorous courses have been
replaced with fare best described as educational
entertainment.  Courses in film literature and 
science fiction are replacing English composition,
for example.
 
An article in a California city newspaper about the dilemma
facing a local junior high school serves as an illustration of a
cause of declining standards: students are failing classes and
will consequently not be promoted, but there isn't sufficient
room nor counseling staff to take care of all those retained, so
the school board is considering lowering standards in order to
promote the students.

The following example of lowering abilities at the college level
is provided by a community college instructor of Freshman
English.  It consists of the misspellings of words on a 50-word
spelling test administered during the fall semester of 1985 to
students who were considered knowledgeable enough to avoid being
assigned to remedial English courses:
 
1. ache - everyone spelled this word correctly.
2. isle, ile, eisle.
3. bacholor, bachlor, batchlor, bachor.
4. beaure, buerual, bearu, bureu, beurue, beureu, burreau,
beaurea,  beureu, burearu.
5. catigory, catagory, catagorie, catagroice.
6. colomn, colume, colem, colom, colom.
7. decite, deceite, desenete, decete, deceat, decent.
8. dought, dout.
9. emphaise, ephizise, emhpasis, imfisise, inficies, enficise.
10. exergate, exagerrate, exzagerate.
11. Febuary.
12. foregn, foriegn, foreighn, forien, forein, foriegn, forieng.
13. grammer, gramar.
14. guidiance, guideness, gidens, guidence, gidence, giadance.
15. hieght, hight.
16. increadable, increbible, encredible, incerndiable,
incrediable.
17. intead, insted.
18. interupt.
19. likley.
20. loose - everyone spelled this word correctly.
21. marrage, marrige.
22. medicine - everyone spelled this word correctly.
23. mussle, musial, mussel.
24. nickle, nicle.
25. ninty, ninthy.
26. occassion.
27. optiomist, optasum, optemist, optitamist.
28. pamplet, phampt, phamplet, pamphet, panpite, phamlet.
29. preferance, prefference. prefrance, prefinist, prefinece. 30.
quite, quit [quiet, not quite (nor quit)].
31. recieve.
32. reigh, rain, rean, rane [reign].
33. resteraunt, resturant, restorant, restaruant, restraunt,
resturtant.
34. salairy, sallary, salory.
35. sargent, sergent, sergant, sargeant, chargent.
36. simular, similiar, simaler, simiular.
37. straight - everyone spelled this word correctly.
38. tendenicies, tendancy, tendasie.
39. thou [though]
40. throught.
41. twelth, twelvth, twelvle, twelve, tweath.
42. unamious, unaminous, unanamus, unaniminous, unnouse, unamous, 
unanomaus.
43. usaul, ussual, usualle.
44. vacum, vaccum, baqum, vaccume, vacumn.
45. vengence, venges, bengins, vengious, vegeance.
46. weather - everyone spelled this word correctly.
47. wiegh.
48. wheather, wiether, wether.
49. writen.
50. you're [your].

                   THE I-GET-SO-BORED-ADDRESS
(With the author's apologies to one of our tallest presidents)  
         Nobody kept score and many cheers ago, our poor
        teachers brought forth the concept, conceived in
         mediocrity, that all students are created equal
          and therefore need only be equally creative.
 
         Now we are engaged in a back to basics bedlam.
         We have made our bedlam, but it is the students
        who must lie in it.  Therefore, it is altogether
          fitting and proper that we should stop lying.
 
             But in a larger sense we can no longer
        demonstrate, we can no longer educate, we can no
        longer create in the classroom.  The brave minds,
          dead and dying, who struggle there, may never
              create but they can add and subtract.
 
       True, the world will little note nor long remember
       what we say here, but generations of students will
       be forced to memorize it verbatim and pass a true-
                false test.  And so it is ratherfor us, the thinking, to 
         abhor the dead minds and spreading behinds with
        our last full measure of revulsion: That we here
        highly resolve that there must be a new birth of
          free thinking, and that the creativity of the
         students, by the students, and for the students
                shall not perish from education.
 
[From _Get_ _Off_ _My_ _Brain_ by Randall McCutcheon.
Minneapolis: Free  Spirit Publishing, 1985]