When I was in high school (a long time ago), we had a concept called open space classrooms and independent study. There were a lot of classes in which we were basically told at the beginning of the year what work we were expected to complete by the end of the year in order the pass the course. There was very little classroom teaching. My school was a round building with no windows. There were not individual classrooms; instead, there were large open areas for each subject, i.e., a social studies area, English area, etc., which were broken down into separate teacher areas by partitions. You could easily hear what was going on in the other classes, as well as easily talk to people in other classes. For highly motivated students, it was a great concept; many people could graduate in 3 years because they would complete 2 years of English, for example, in one year. Many people finished in 5 years or had to attend summer school because they weren't that self-motivated (how many 14 and 15 year olds are really motivated enough to complete an entire year of English with no classroom instruction?). When they rebuilt the school a while ago, they made it much more traditional - classrooms, windows, etc.
If you tell students to devise their own curricula, you'll get the motivated few who come up with something difficult and challenging, and you'll get those students who choose to learn nothing. While there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to learning, I thought the idea of having schools and teachers was so that there would be some standard for the students to follow, and teachers who were responsible for ensuring that the students were learning the assigned subject matter.
Sign In
Create Account
