Show Learning isn't for nine months its it's forever Jay Mathews The Washington Post Commentary Maybe our whole back- back to-school to tradition is the problem We think of education as asa asa asa a year-to-year year thing Start school in late summer Finish in late spring Then repeat Learning doesn't work like that Our fixation on the calendar is s getting in inthe inthe inthe the way When I was young I didn't understand that I accepted the rhythms set I by my parents and teachers i So it t was a shock to leave school and discover that when working and raising a family it no longer I mattered so much what time tune of year it was I had to get that kid trained potty-trained and soon I had to write that story had to convince the foreign editor I could succeed overseas I had to find a publisher for that book idea I had to master new skills and absorb new information quickly and competently or my plans v J q I for myself and my family were hi in jeopardy The Post tried giving standard job evaluations sort of up grown-up June report cards but they didn't last My job was to produce stories that interested readers a world real-world test not tied to the calendar As we welcome another to school day we should keep in mind how artificial that learning environment is compared with what students will find as adults At The Post for instance I have had to learn to blog For a while I pretended that I did not have to do this When I finally grudgingly started writing blog posts I acted as as' if they were just short stories for forthe forthe forthe the paper I sent them to my editor and asked him to put them on my blog I put off learning to do it myself I used vacation bad weather or sniffles to excuse myself from training But I wasn't in school anymore The Post wasn't goi going g to give me a report card with a minus C-minus in and ask me to do better next year The academic calendar inspires similarly bad habits in schools Parents and teachers conspire each spring to clean up weaknesses in the records of some children so they can be promoted to the next grade Some urban high school teachers have told me of panic attacks every April when only half of the senior class appears qualified f ed to graduate Extra- Extra credit projects materialize Grade book calculations are readjusted Magically the graduating class grows to about the same size as last years Educators have been trying for more than a century to ma make e lessons more like what students will find in hi real life Philosopher John Dewey started a movement with a concept he called experiential education His disciples have tried to introduce projects putting out a class newspaper has been beena a favorite so students learn by doing You can find examples s of this inmany in hi inmany many schools but the old j year through get year through mentality still reig reigns s. s It is difficult to cover all that I wanted to learn as a student and I wanted my children to learn in a nontraditional project-driven project format Deborah Meier Dennis Littky and other freethinking freethinking freethinking free- free thinking educators have made headway with impoverished urban teen-agers teen but they are exceptions Still we have some promising examples of teaching methods that have broken away from the back school back school to-school model The School District in Alaska raised reading scores from th the to the percentile in hi five years with a program that let students move at an individual pace mastering one concept before moving to the next Year-round Year schedules like those in a area elementary schools reduce the long summer gap that is so harmful to children whose parents arent aren't equipped to keep them intellectually active at home Rigorous exams independent of the classroom teacher like Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate are still tied to the calendar but present a world real-world level college-level challenge Some schools have senior projects or long research papers judged by outside experts like the oral final exams given to Meier's students A new school model called High Tech High is getting good early reviews for its project- project based teaching It is one of several ventures said to tobe tobe tobe be part of what promoters call the 21 century st-century skills movement Somewhere John Dewey is chuckling because he had the idea inthe in inthe inthe the The work not the season should be the focus Creating something useful to other people click on my blog should be part of school Everything should not ride on a l letter grade in J I June r I liked showing up up the first day of scho school 1 with witha a fresh binder and newly sharpened pencils But it might have been better if I had been told to raise a family of hamsters or direct a Shakespeare play or serve a three-course three meal How would school have turned out for me if I had been able to ignore what grade I was in and skip ahead to the pleasures pleasures' of JD J.D. or stay out outon outon outon on the ball field for a week until I finally learned how to catch a fly ball I would still have yearned for that school of report card which I used to justify my existence I would have comp complained that I was too young to handle all those new demands just as I now complain Im I'm too old But it would have been more intriguing and engaging I realize now than the same old to school day and its assumption that we can only progress in fi nine nine- ine- ine month month intervals Y s 4 J |