On ALL things Great and Small

It has been my personal observation that the huge campus style of high schools can be overwhelming to a student. One of my Daughters graduated from a high school that had a class of six. The Northern Michigan school is located on an Island and boasts some of the highest test scores compared to the national average.

That doesn't mean that the students are better overall prepared to met the challenges of the world head-on though. Life in any shape or size can be overwhelming to the individual if they are not properly prepared to receive it.

The real work is not in the rearangeement of the school building and what it looks like, the true work is one of immersing the students,their parents and society into an enriched learning environment. One that is both challenging and rewarding.

In Poland for instance the typical life of a students 12 years is that they attend grades 1-8 with the same kids in their class. And then if they graduate middle school and choose to go to high school as opposed to attending a trade school, they then finish the next four years with another group of 20 some classmates. So even though a student may attend a school with a population of thousands of students the learning environment is always kept small and manageable.

This also saves a great deal on resource management. To be able to provide economies of scale for the infrastucture rather than recreating hundreds of smaller and seperate buildings. The intent to create a level of comfort and familiarity for the student is thereby achieved and this provides stability to the childs learning environment and also better equips the teachers ability to understand each student and their family situation better.

It is expected in Poland that the parent will work with the students to comprehend and complete their homework. This is something that is gradually taught to both the student and their parents from grade one right on through graduation. So, you see there is also cutural and societal change that needs to take place. There are very few parents equipped to provide this kind of substantive support to their childrens education.

But it is imperative that their be interim replacements for after school to fill in the gaps so that the students can not only achieve parity on the global scale but excell. So, you can now understand that although we can make some serious inroads into a graduated change in the success of our educational capacities, it is important to understand though that the really stellar successes will have to be expected in 12 years when the first students of these enriched learning environments will have completed their primary K-12 education, free from the virus we presently call public education.

It will take that long to really let the disease run it's course. For although there is a great many people that truly wish the best for the students and all is not a devastating failure, the foundation upon which the educational endeavors were built are gravely flawed.

Moving on and to the core intent, any student attempting public life must have the basic fundamental self-actualization tools in place. The greatest tool is a very natural one and that is the question WHY? Most of the additonal tools that complement "why" are various shaped sharpening-stones that keep a keen edge placed on the "why" tool.

This is the personal motivation to understand and succeed to the next step or level of learning. There is no other way around it. So, this Gestalt of interaction with the world is the foundational element neccesary for the students success in life.

This begins with their own self-esteem and continuing with their public educational experiences and beyond. It is important to note we are creating the capacity for the student to carry on this awareness of "why" beyond the "school" environment.

When they "graduate" to each next level they will also have added a number of tools that they have apprenticed with and they are the other w's, the who, what, where, why, when and how. If properly accomplished (Pedagogy) the groundwork for forming the students educational experience will provide the student with the fundamental understandings that they are in school to experience life and to build upon their insatiable need to comprehend the world they live in physically and imaginatively, thereby all the while nurturing the "why" tool.

This is the kernal to success in education. It needs to exist solely for the support of the individuals "why," not their ego and not to find a hole to place a newly minted peg into (career focus).

People need to see schools for what they generally are in the public educational system, a means of perpetuating the machine (one that thanks to globalization, is evaporating before our eyes) and fullfilling the educational/prison complex's self perpetuation. So, without accomplishing the basic foundational precept of maintaining and encouraging the "why" any rearangment of the present educational system can only be seen as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

The new Think Green STEM Centers are designed so that they create flow in the educational systems and are a point of focus by which each step of the K-12 experience can be channeled into a rich and deep river of opportunity for all involved, the student, their family and society in general.