It does not take money but being open-minded to allow individuals to be themselves. As a retired teacher in the state of Washington, I understand what needs to happen to education. It is not about tests, money, or rigid teacher training, it is about a balanced philosophy for left and right brain creativity.
There is a faction who wants to raise a labor force that does not think for themselves. Schools have been taken over by this agenda and infiltrated the curriculum and purpose of education. What is a real education? To “deliver information” as described by recent educators and Bill Gates is the opposite of the meaning of education. This is the intent of a controlling manipulative group who in our society wishes to govern.
Real education allows that inner person to come alive with imagination, inspiration, and feelings create real people. Free thinkers do not accept tyranny, laws that deprive freedom, and thought control. As a public school teacher with more than fifty years experience, I would like to explain about teaching. It is more important to have a teacher with a rational mind, a healthy attitude, and an open mind, than a trained teacher that is pushed through a restrictive set of curriculum that promotes everyone being the same.
In the fifties, we taught to the needs of the student, and then it changed to the school district decided what we were to teach, followed by the state mandates, then the federal government had “No Child Left Behind”. It has been a slow change of philosophy to create a limited mindset, therefore denying the whole child.
We need diversity and not similarity to make our country strong. We have to have people who think out of the box and are not punished for thinking beyond the current trends of uniformity. Test scores are only a number given to the results of the performance by a student on a given day on a skill learned. It has nothing to do with innate intelligence or ingenuity. To pigeonhole a student with a number and compare them to another person takes away the individuality of the student’s unique abilities and talents. It reduces them to a digit and takes away their personality and personal freedom to be themselves.
When did leaders come from the well-trained ranks? Only if they have the ability to be creative, intuitive, and offer ideas beyond the confined thinking of the times is there real education.
Our country has departed from our pioneers in education: such as John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Abraham Maslow. Friedrich Froebel’s philosophy was that humans are creative beings. These educators provided an innovative process producing real education for pupils. Teachers need to assist a student in finding their own abilities while discovering learning is limitless.
It is not teaching to fill a student with book learning. In addition, you cannot teach a teacher to think with his heart. However, a person who is able to encourage others to think from his heart did not learn it from a book. This is the real teaching and is not quantifiable. “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” Galileo.
The past movie. “Spare Parts” is a great example of a teacher who allowed high students to enter a contest and use their talents to achieve victory over Ivy League colleges in a national contest for underwater robotics. When the students were encouraged to think with their imaginations, they were not only winners, but gained self-esteem.
- Get the government out of dictating what a student needs. As a teaching when I began teaching in 1961, I identified the students’ needs and the teachers in that grade divided the students and met the needs by grouping the classes for certain subjects. It was not the state or Federal government telling what to teach. We did not teach as Bill Gates says, by forcing them to jump hoops that are preset and are not realistic for everyone. The students were encouraged to use their intuition, imagination and develop the individual abilities they had. Another words just a left-brain curriculum creates robots and children with poor self-esteem. People are individuals and no one is the same.
- The curriculum was not mandated from tests where many children cannot handle this form of evaluation. When labeled a failure for being a square peg in a round hole, the emotional damage may not ever be repaired.
- Our culture teaches failure, depression, and dropout for not meeting some one’s idea of who they “should be” instead of letting them grow in into being themselves.
- Creativity is discouraged because book learning and test readiness takes priority. This is a grave mistake if you want to build success within a child. Success breeds success I was taught when in teacher’s training.
- The cost of becoming a teacher does not match the pay other occupations with the same amount of college education preparation. For the salary earned compared to expense spent, it is wiser to go into another field.
- From my experience, I was born a teacher. A basic and diverse background with an emphasis on a major focus does not meant to create humiliating hoops to jump through as I just heard about from a person supervising student teachers. Learning when in a happy situation works much better. A good teacher will drop out of the field because they are sensitive people. What is left is a robot teacher teaching robot students. Is this what we want for education?
As an international speaker, international award winning writer, international author, international consultant, international columnist, international board certified regression therapist, artist, and ordained minister for spiritual counseling, I share my experience, strength and hope that everyone will enrich their lives.
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