Indeed. I come here (a lot), and I leave here feeling empowered.

I suspect that lack of time (read that as laziness) plays a factor in our teaching. Teaching the way we do is exhausting (at least if you do it right); it may be less so once we actually start allowing our kids to think, but there is a big hump getting them there.

I urge a lot of my bright students just to get through high school. Those determined to fail anyway (because they will not jump through hoops, a quality I find, well, admirable), I make sure their ideas are still welcome,that their voices still matter, and tell that I do not see them as just a grade. Indeed, it is often their voices that make a class work.

I tell them what I believe to be true, that they will be fine after high school, despite the barricades they face because of their reasoned obstinacy. They are told all day long they are failures.

Let’s be clear–I am talking about the bright kids, the ones who know why they are failing, the ones who could do well in Honors. There are more than just a handful buried in our low level courses.

Do I fail them? A few, yep.I figure out ways to sneak those through who show me they grasp the material–no sense having them sit another year doing the same thing–but a passing grade means you have some sense of the natural world.

Sad thing is, the opposite works in a lot of classes–you can know the material through and through, yet fail anyway because “we got to teach them a lesson about how the real world works.”

That “real world” described in school does exist, in corporations.

I work for the kids, though. I work for the government, a government originally based on our right to pursue happiness.

Equating an F in freshman science with a life of unhappiness makes no sense.

Michael Doyles last blog post..Proust effect