The Social Structure of Schools

A member of the Davidson Gifted Issues forum recently posted this thought:

The whole concept of "acceleration" depends on acceptance of the premise that school should be organized around social education and not around intellectual education. […] Does it stem from the fact that we have a certain age for starting school--they all start at the same time, therefore they should all be in the same place for the rest of their education?

I think it was Descartes who advocated "methodic doubt", the removal of assumptions and the acceptance of only information that can be verified as true. The organization of school along social, age-determined lines – particularly at the primary level – is so basic to modern education that its rightness has become one of those things no one seems to feel they have the right to doubt. And yet, I wonder whether anyone has ever bothered trying to prove that it is right.

The reason schools in modern societies are age-segregated is quite simple: the overall societies are age-segregated. Most people seem to think of age as a natural demographic by which to separate people (personally, I suspect this emerges from the same "us-them" instinct that provides the evolutionary basis for racism and sexism, and I find it interesting that ageism is still socially acceptable). For the most egregious example, consider the fact that a person can, simply by virtue of being a single day short of his eighteenth birthday, be denied basic legal rights, property ownership, the protection of the Bill of Rights, even the respect of being considered capable of taking responsibility for his own actions. And somehow, the next morning, all of that changes.

When you have a society of which age-based rules are a ubiquitous fixture, it's hard to think about organizing schools any other way. Add to that the fact that so many people seem to think self-esteem is more important than education - what about the children who would, in a system organized around individual academic progress, leave school at 20 instead of 18? Sure, they might be better educated, more well-rounded, generally better people for it, but they might feel bad about themselves because they're older. Shockhorror.

Furthermore, the institutional nature of modern schooling pretty much precludes the possibility of individual pacing because once you're in a class, you're moving at the same pace as the other students you're with. No teacher can provide differentiated instruction for every child in a class of thirty. And it's simply unfeasible to begin bumping students up a level each term and have them learning in a series of leaps and plateaus.

Put all this together and the suggestion that we move students through school at an individually determined intellectually appropriate pace comes to border on heresy.

Don't get me wrong; I love the idea. But it would require not just a massive rethinking but a massive restructuring of education. Timetables and educational programs would have to be fluid and individual rather than regimented with exceptions for special cases. Classes would have to be smaller to make proper differentiation possible. Actually, hold on a minute; classes are social units. Supposedly moving toward a common academic goal, yes, but they're artificial social units that impose artificial social conditions. A school with truly academic goals would dump the whole idea. The school day would be based on independent exploration and one-on-one or small-group teaching.

When I started writing this entry, I didn't think such a school existed. It turns out I was wrong, and I invite you to take a look at the Sudbury Valley School, a successful school in Massachusetts that has become a model for several dozen others around the world. At Sudbury Valley, education is individual and self-initiated. Children learn what, how, and when they want to learn, and staff members act as mentors and helpers, guiding students through projects of mutual interest. There is no grouping by age. Children as young as five are given complete control over their own education. It's the kind of situation that would terrify most adults and the average teacher would probably liken to some grotesque form of child abuse, and yet 90% of Sudbury graduates go on to university, with many becoming entrepreneurs or ending up in other jobs that require initiative and creativity as well as a strong educational foundation.

Which is proof, to go back to my initial point, that at the very least structuring schools socially isn't the only way to do things. Yet the majority of adults continue to feel it is the proper way, the best way, for one reason or another – the optimist in me wants to say "because that's what they know", while the cynic wants to say "because it lets them remain in control". Either way, they are wrong. It should be common sense that the purpose of school is to meet the intellectual needs of each individual student. Until the day that it is, at least we have options outside the public school system.