A great approach to education

This article, A School That Ditches All the Rules, But Not the Rigor, captures a great issue we face in education: the love of learning.

We are all born learners.  We are all born to love learning.  But something happens, something about school, that begins to take away that love.

I'm seeing it in my two children.  It's not that they are no longer enjoying school, it's that I see what they are going through that will explain why so many students no longer enjoy school.

I used to look at my high school students and wonder:  "why don't you just...do what we ask you to do?  It's not that hard!  Just...DO it!".  I wondered what happened to them.  And I used to allow that wonder to make me judgmental.

But seeing what happens, and how early it begins, I no longer judge.  We take away choice, relevance, and intrinsic value from day one of school.  I get it now.

Unfortunately, our education system is unlikely to come close to even the possibility of embracing a model like this.  But as teachers, we can take away something and try to have a bit of it in our classes.