Sir Ken Robinson, an advisor to government and nonprofits on education, recently said, “What we need is not evolution but revolution in education.” The US public school educational system is positioned to incorporate revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of how we learn.
The current approach to education is hundreds of years old. It is setup as a factory with the goal of moving the maximum number of students from kindergarten through high school as efficiently as possible. It is a linear process. Students that do the best are masters at rote memorization and test taking related to standardized information.
The reality is kids do not learn at the same speed and most of them have talents that are not valued by the current system. Students that are not interested in the main subject areas often end up in the “problem learner group” even though they may be the most creative in the class. Sir Ken Robinson says we are dumbing down our students by using this linear approach when we should be looking at education from a more organic perspective. Each child has unique interests that should be fertilized and nurtured like a variety of flowers in a garden. This promotes diversity and creativity.
The establishment of an educational institution based on organic methodologies is a golden opportunity for Kilauea. It is difficult for current schools to migrate to new approaches because they are so vested in old systems. New schools are free of the old structures. They can innovate at will. The development of a K-12 charter school that uses innovative methodologies taught by a high quality faculty would positively impact the social, economic and ecological future of the community.
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