On occasion, more often lately, when we are frustrated with state mandated testing and new teacher effectiveness hoops and SLO’s and on and on, my educator friends and I say, kind of jokingly, that we should just open our own school. We’d have most of the curricular bases covered. The article A Project in Learning by Jordan Shapiro covers a school that was formed in just that way. 45 years ago three frustrated teachers set out to form their own public school. Parents and teachers together formed curriculum and functioned as the school’s administration. Certainly PDE could not have that:
“Unfortunately, Pennsylvania was unhappy with this rogue institution because it did not adhere to state standards. But Allender, Fox, and Bailey believed in choosing the right curriculum for each individual student. They would not squeeze individuals into a mold designed in Harrisburg. They took their inspiration from the writings of the education reformer John Dewey, refusing to test students because they did not believe assessments should be comparative: Individuals should always make cumulative progress, but not be measured against their peers. Not surprisingly, the state eventually pressured the school to close its doors.”
But the doors did not stay closed. After intensive discussion, the school reopened as a private school intent on “ teaching children a way of being in the world. “ How about that? I was exploring a book this morning - Educating Angels: Teaching for the Pursuit of Happiness by Tony Armstrong PhD. In it he suggests that instead of growing workers, schools should be teaching toward helping every student to pursue happiness. The school highlighted in Shapiro’s article seems to do just that. Shapiro writes, “The conversation about education should not be all about the Common Core, testing, charter schools, and technology integration. We also need to ask: How do we raise a generation of children who use their academic skills in ways that reflect and reinforce the values that we believe should ground our society in the future?” When my colleagues and I dream of a different school this school is the stuff of our dreams.
