There's No Place Like Home!
On September 3, 1991, the Washington Post ran a front-page article entitle, “Fixing Schools—One by One.” The article opened with the description of South Pointe Elementary School in Miami Beach, Florida:
“…the desks are never aligned in neat rows. No classroom is completely walled off from another. Each [classroom] has a television, computer, telephone, and a rocking chair in the reading corner.”
What's the goal of this unusual public school atmosphere? Beth Rosenthal, a third-grade teacher at South Pointe, is quoted as saying: “We want to have an atmosphere like home.”
It turns out that South Pointe is part of an experiment at redesigning the local school. Observers in education have realized that “the highly standardized strategies that were mandated from the top…did not produce the hoped for results.”
Experiments like the one at South Pointe are incorporating many “radical” ideas—like individualized learning, promoting classroom flexibility, reducing the role of textbooks, and not using lesson plans.
We don't know how this sounds to you, but to us it sounds an awful lot like what home schoolers have been doing all along.
Public school officials could learn much if they would simply recognize the successes of home education. We would be glad to consult with such officials who are truly interested in real innovations to improve education. Of course, the idea that home schools need public school approval or should be required to provide an equivalent education to that offered in the public schools would have to be disregarded.
Aren't you glad to know that home schooling is on the cutting edge of the latest educational innovation?