Cool School: Where Children Love to Learn

by Jane Loosmore

Overview

The present school system is steadily becoming dysfunctional, and it’s time to improve that system, ensuring it becomes one in which every child feels safe, welcome, interested, and eager to learn. In Cool School, author Jane Loosmore presents a new, two-part approach to education that facilitates effective, child-friendly public schools.

Cool School outlines a plan called the Two-School System from Cost to Classroom (2SS)—a school concept that is flexible, holistic, and recognizes each child as a blossoming individual. This system is based on the decades of experience by Loosmore and her late husband, Robert—from their parenting and teaching in many different types of schools, from rural to urban and from grades 1 to 12 in a wide span of subjects. Collecting from their many experiences, Loosmore offers the best of the best of what they’ve learned, including discussion on class size, length of the school day, instruction methods, technology, curriculum, and class composition.

Loosmore communicates that the purpose of the 2SS is to educate each child to his or her potential for becoming a competent, caring, knowing, reasoning citizen of the world. It’s important to prepare this young generation for the usual challenges of adulthood and for finding and creating solutions to the problems with the environment and global enmity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469765990
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/30/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	124
File size:	2 MB

Read an Excerpt

Cool School

Where Children Love to Learn

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By Jane Loosmore

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Jane Loosmore
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4697-6597-6

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Chapter One

Assessing the Need for Change

In the last thirty (or more) years, a huge change in the way we raise and educate our children has taken place. New technology has changed our places of work, our schools, and our homes. It has changed what we eat, what we wear, how we communicate, how we travel, and even where we live. While taking on these new ways of living, we have unconsciously replaced some of our more effective ways of raising children. Adults have developed an exaggerated faith in the new technology as an answer to the inconveniences of parenting. But rearing and educating children are human problems. Machines are, of course, extremely useful in their right places. However, no matter how good they are, they cannot take the place of an effective teacher or parent.

We haven't taken the time to notice fully the negative impact our busy, comfortable lifestyles are having on child development. We are only beginning to realize that our car and air travel are contributing to global warming; that our very convenient food contains many dubious chemicals; and that TVs, computer games, and the Internet are connected to the waste of our children's precious learning time and to their poor health. So now we are often faced with ever more serious problems related to child development.

One obvious reason it is more difficult to raise children as well as we wish these days is that parents' former support systems are gone. Communities used to be stable and well established. Three generations ago, extended families, relatives, neighbors, churches, and schools were our support systems, as were our traditions, the continuity and consistency of our way of life, and a more natural physical environment. Children experienced little confusion as to what were the wrong and right ways to act and think. Families were large, and technology was primitive. So children were forced to face natural and logical consequences. If you forgot to do your daily job of bringing in the wood and coal for the heater in the house, for example, everybody began to feel cold, and you just knew what to do.

Three generations ago, young people learned about life from other family members. They learned

• how to find raw materials for food and clothing;

• how to work these materials into meals and clothes;

• how to obtain materials to build a complete home; and

• how to enjoy each other through stories told; songs sung; instruments played; plays acted; pictures drawn, painted, or carved; and games played with homemade equipment.

Children learned all these practical and enjoyable skills at home from close relatives and friends. Young and old people were very busy with these activities. Recognition for their efforts and successes was immediate; schools existed for teaching what children couldn't easily learn at home—mostly reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with some social skills.

Today, for our children, there is a huge wasteland of "free" time every week. Children will tell you that they have nothing to do and how bored they are. Educators have known for a long time that idle children tend to get into more and deeper trouble, which has a way of canceling their better development. We are neglecting to fill our children's time with important and interesting things that they need to actively learn. If our first priority really is children, then we must supply parents and teachers, now and in the future, with the amount of human and material support that is presently missing.

What a Successful Democratic Society Looks Like

The healthiest society is but a step removed from anarchy, a society bound together by the minimum of rules necessary to preserve order and maintain justice. This atmosphere of freedom seems especially to foster and encourage scientific and technological advance. —Mortimer Smith, in And Madly Teach the Humanist Library

Education is a social process ... Education is growth ... Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. —John Dewey, quoted in Time

The prime purpose of business—in the field of education, this refers to private schools—is to make a profit. Its path to profit is to satisfy some special needs of its customers. A business is privately owned and must function in favor of its owners. A public school, in contrast, is publicly owned and should be functioning in the interests of society (though as I highlight throughout this book, this is often no longer the case). Public schools, funded by taxes, are not there to make a profit or to break even. They are there to produce graduates who become competent, effective workers, who have also become interested in and knowledgeable about what is good for their communities, countries, and world. Public schools necessarily have a sense of the importance of community health and strength. The public school's overt purpose is to make possible community life in a democratic country, where citizens of different views and strengths can discuss their common problems and agree on workable solutions. A democratic way of life cannot exist for long without free, quality public schools and universal access to post-secondary education—both of which we are presently losing.

In a successful democracy, we need both public school education and private enterprise. We need a balance of both public and private interests so that they are able to work for the good of all concerned—for the good of people in business and for the good of other citizens like our teenagers, our young adults, and parents who work for a living.

Along with this balance between public and private interests, a democratic society must have community-minded, educated citizens who have the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to be able to discuss, and cooperate with people who have similar, as well as opposing, ideas. Our schools, therefore, should encourage open discussion of opposing views.

A successful democratic society also considers the welfare of all its citizens. Children need a solid understanding of geography and history in order to think about and discuss effectively what should be done for the good of all people. The world is full of serious problems that may lead to the end of all that we believe is good. Too many people ignore the destructive factors—bullying; wars; revenge; new communicable diseases; greed; deep poverty; and pollution of air, water, and soil—in our present civilization. The majority of citizens must be sufficiently aware of their democratic rights and be strong and concerned enough to exercise their democratic muscles. Our next generation of citizens has much to learn about democracy and how it works, if their children are to have anything resembling a happy life. Likewise, schools must set the example for this kind of democratic welfare. All schools, both public and private, should treat all students like equals (with equal rights) even if they are disadvantaged (economically, physically, or socially). Without free public school for all children equally, there can be no effective, educated public. Without an educated, thinking public, there can be no real democracy.

It takes an educated, skeptical, alert public, along with an openly operating, elected government to protect the future happiness and well-being of all citizens. An educated public would be aware of and concerned about the following issues—the environment; the public health system; our parks; support for single parents; legal and reasonable opportunities for the unemployed; hope for a productive future for all teenage children; substantial help for the children of the poor toward security, health, and education; and the problems of discrimination against immigrants and other minority groups in our schools. If we spent more time practicing fairness and generosity, we could save our precious democratic way of life. We need our schools to instill awareness; understanding; and the practice of such virtues as respect, tolerance, and support for each other when one of us is suffering unfairly. A democratic country with an educated public would be well placed to help solve many of the world's problems—especially by example.

In a successful democracy, personal responsibility is essential. With all the distractions in our lives today, many of us are not aware of our civic duty to foster democratic principles as a necessary part of our harmonious way of life. We still elect governments, and more than half the adults still vote at election time. At the same time, however, we have too many people who feel they have next to no say in what the government (that they voted for) does after the election—even when it results in drastic changes in their own living standards.

If our public schools are too busy to teach the importance of citizens taking an active interest in the affairs of their community and in the affairs of their governments, then real democracy will wither and die. As the adage goes, "If you don't use it, you lose it." If citizens are not bothering to exercise their democratic rights and duties, then democracy is not really functioning anymore. Criticizing the health system or complaining about public education in private does nothing to improve the situation—democracy is exercised only when citizens speak up in public in order to improve our methods of doing things or when they exercise their rights to vote.

Now take a look at education and our young people. After students graduate from high school, they want to get a job so that they can become less dependent on their parents. In addition, they very much want to be respected—be it at work, at home, or among their peers. Age eighteen or nineteen—when entering the world of adults—is a critical time. If in the past twenty years, homes, schools, communities, and governments have done their very best to prepare these young people for the demands on them in the next phase of their lives, then these graduates will welcome their new responsibilities with confidence and pride. But if they are facing a work world that they are unprepared for—where conditions may be steeply unfair, wages low, hours long, and they may be made to feel like failures from the start—they will not be prepared for this nasty change. We also have lucky graduates among us who had a very favorable start in the primary grades and for whom good conditions continued until graduation. Their parents were also able to send them to university for four years. These more fortunate students slide easily into salaried positions designed to keep ahead of inflation. In a functioning democracy, this minority would be a majority.

In short, democratic societies can continue to exist only if child education is high on the government's list of priorities. In a democratic society, it is necessary for the children to learn to think critically, be responsible, master useful skills, and stay healthy. Since children are unable to protect their rights, it is the responsibility of the citizens to demand free education and excellent learning conditions for all children, beginning soon after birth and lasting to about age twenty. Looking specifically at education, parents today can demand and effect an improvement in our public school system, or this is no longer a democracy.

What Our Society Looks Like and Where the Responsibility Lies

For good development, kids need time in the company of interesting, responsible, caring adults. However, children's regular free time is being spent with other children or with adults who are not to be trusted. We try vainly to solve our own child-rearing problems by buying more technology and more expensive clothes and toys. We offer children rewards. We send them to a different school. These techniques do not work for long because we are not removing the real causes of the problem.

Unprotected, unsupervised free time—in most cases (not all)—leads to children having "fun" at the expense and unhappiness of other children. This is harmful to children on both ends of this type of interaction. Because children are bored, they bully (or are bullied), have negative attitudes to most work, wish for new "toys," and spend time looking for some excitement; all of these activities end up costing time and having negative results. Additionally, students are increasingly arriving to class with lazy habits and lackadaisical attitudes, meaning teachers have to work longer and harder to gain their attention and interest. Such a discouraging atmosphere is an unnecessary waste of time to all students in the class, and teachers and parents lose precious time when they have to meet to discuss problems arising from free, unsupervised time for children.

Lack of proper child development and the problems associated therewith are not new. It's just that these problems are magnified and multiplied with the help of technology. The new technology's very attractiveness diverts adult attention away from the modern, unwanted, time-wasting activities children participate in.

Today's five-hour school day is regularly followed by two or more hours of free, unprotected time with bullies, TV, computer games, or a friend, when children think of exciting things to do, like smoking or vandalizing property. Some children innocently communicate with dangerous strangers on the computer. All the above activities help them to forget much of what they learned that morning.

As a society, we are not giving enough money, time, and attention to prepare our youth to eventually step in as intelligent, educated citizens and build a healthy democracy. We certainly need, and could have, twice as many teachers per school as there are now. A teacher with twenty-eight other students in her class will not have time to give a neglected child the extra consideration that such a student must have in order to learn. Sometimes both teacher and parent are expected to do more than is possible. Under present conditions, this is very common. It is not surprising that so many frustrated teachers have decided to go into some other profession.

Consider the problem for the experienced, well-qualified teacher. She has a new class of thirty students, grade five. One child, although rather young, is very advanced and eager to ask good questions. Three are very shy and patient, eight are capable and tend to keep going, but in wrong directions if the teacher is not right there to see what they are doing. Each of the rest of the class has a serious weakness in one or two of the following—reading, spelling, listening, number facts, handwriting, getting down to work promptly, and keeping learning materials in order.

Most of the children are more used to watching TV than to reading a book. They find writing a sentence to be quite burdensome. Many of them have a very short attention span. Respect for authority and for each other leaves much to be desired. Most of them are not used to keeping an organized desk. Their handwriting is not developed enough for what they should be doing, and they are still using "creative" spelling. They will say to you that written work to them is "boring." Believe it or not, all these characteristics are common in today's public schools.

This capable teacher is very limited in what she is allowed to do in order to alter the habits and attitudes of this typical class. Some children ignore parts of assignments whenever they do not feel like (or are afraid of) making the extra effort required. Teachers can't fail these students, for fear the tag of "failure" would crush their self-esteem. However, without some pressure on the pupils to produce, we are stagnating child development.

If we don't manage our children's time better, we will continue to have overworked teachers, overworked parents, overstressed social workers and police, and exhausted friends—all of whom sometimes think of giving up trying so hard because the situation is not improving noticeably. After worrying, working, and spending more time and money than we can afford, similar problems keep showing up. We need a better way—something that really produces the results we had in mind.

Children don't need more toys or more free time; this form of neglect can do much harm to their well-being. What they truly need are better school buildings, more good teachers, and more hands-on learning opportunities. These are the things that keep youngsters interested, safe, active, happy, and in a learning mood.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Cool School by Jane Loosmore Copyright © 2012 by Jane Loosmore. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction....................ix
Chapter 1. Assessing the Need for Change....................1
What a Successful Democratic Society Looks Like....................3
What Our Society Looks Like and Where the Responsibility Lies....................6
Chapter 2. What Is the 2SS?....................13
The Commute to School....................14
The School Yard....................16
The School Day....................16
Food at School....................18
Class Size....................19
Class Composition....................23
Curriculum....................23
Instruction Methods....................33
Assessment....................41
Additional Factors to Consider....................43
Chapter 3. How the 2SS Can Brighten Our Future....................45
Advantages for Students....................45
Advantages for Parents....................81
Advantages for Teachers....................84
Advantages for School Administration....................86
Advantages for Society....................87
Chapter 4. How We Can Make It Happen....................93
Managing Finances: Up-Front Costs, Long-Term Savings....................94
Order of Operations....................98
Piloting the Program....................100
Finding Good Leadership....................102
Cooperating with Each Other....................104
To All Parents....................107
Chapter 5. My Recommended Reading List ... On Bettering Our Schools....................109