Recent incidents have reminded me of my days spent at school. Even though when I was young teachers were educated to teach their students certain things, the organized school system, whether public or private, failed most of the time. Granted I did learn to read and write, but I would have learned that anyway from my mother. I learned algebra and geometry and enjoyed learning them, but the only time I have ever used them was in helping my daughter with her school work. I studied biology and chemistry and loved those subjects but I've never really needed them in my adult life. And because I love to read and I love to learn, I have taught myself more about those various subjects than I ever learned in school.
However, unlike today my teachers believed they were teaching my schoolmates and me important stuff that we would never learn otherwise. Those were the good old days when the choice of curriculum wasn't led by the various standardized tests administered by the State. Teachers and administrators had more freedom to design their own classwork and decide what they believed was important for their students to learn in each subject. I received a fairly well-rounded education and graduated satisfied that my teachers and I had done well.
It was only years later that I realized I would have been better educated if I had been homeschooled or at least given more freedom to pursue in more detail subjects I was really interested in. I know now that it is impossible to educate students by giving them a little of this and a little of that and consider it done. Most students give up from boredom or a lack of understanding, and either fail or go on to graduate not knowing they have been given little opportunity to really learn. Who knows what our country would be like now if teachers had been educated in learning and then had been allowed to teach their students how to learn.
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