Reforming Education

Primary Education

Formal education would begin with first grade at the age of six. Any “schooling” prior to that would be purely voluntary and would not necessarily be focused on educating children.

First and second grades (ages six to eight) would be focused on beginning and assessing children on all the basic subjects. These would include math, science, reading and writing, history and civics, athletics, language, and art.

Beginning with third grade and continuing through eighth grade (ages eight to fourteen) students would continue on the basic subjects, but placement and advancement would be based on progress rather than age. It would be possible, therefore, to be in grade four for math and five for language. During the course of this schooling additional efforts would be made to make sure that no student dropped too far behind, but it would not necessarily be expected that all students would be at precisely the same level.

Grades nine through twelve (ages fourteen to eighteen) would accelerate the learning process and would introduce additional subjects, including philosophy, debate, home economics, and shop. As with the earlier phase grade level advancement would be based on progress and knowledge/skill as opposed to age.

Graduation

Graduation from eighth grade and from twelfth grade would be contingent on having an overall achievement score commensurate with having reached a certain overall level of proficiency. Because this would be an additively arrived at score students would not have to be equally skilled in all subjects, i.e. great skill in one subject could mitigate lesser skill in another.

Extracurriculars

The business of schools is education, and activities that are not a part of education would not be the domain of schools. That being the case the majority of extracurricular activities organized by schools would be greatly curtailed. What after school activities there would be would be tied to subjects currently being studied by the students, e.g. school plays for those students studying theatre in art classes and sports for those students who wish to participate as part of their athletics classes. For communities wishing to provide further activities, traditional competitive sports for instance, it would be up to them to organize and run them.

School Year

For the preceding twelve grades the school year would be extended and modified. The purpose of this move would be to increased the amount of “guided” education time while at the same time reducing the amount of home work given to students to the bare minimum, and to minimize the “break” times in which students can fall out of the patterns of learning.

The fall semester of the school year would begin in July, following the one month summer holiday, and would run through the end of November. It would be broken in half by a one week autumn break during the month of September. At the end of the fall semester schools would have a one month winter holiday running through the month of December. In January the spring semester would begin, running to the end of May. March would include a one week spring break. June would hold the summer holiday.

National Service Period

After the completion of students’ primary education at the age of eighteen they would begin a four year National Service Period. During this time they would serve national needs in one of a number of tracks. Potential opportunities would include:

• military service
• emergency response
• infrastructure work
• teaching assistance
• social services

For the duration they would be trained and all of their needs would be taken care of, including an “allowance”, in lieu of being paid a normal wage.

The purpose of the service period would be to provide these young people with life experiences and useful skills while giving the nation a ready workforce to address various national needs.

• Service would take young people out of the insular world of their own communities with all of the prejudices and preconceptions that can exist on those places. Rural youth serving in urban settings and vice versa; northern youth working and living in southern places and vice versa, etc. In addition, service would force young people to get out into the world and experience things before they have the opportunity to decide what they want to do with the rest of their life.
• Service would address the military’s inability to consistently meet its manpower needs caused by not enough young people feeling themselves to be called to it. The armed forces would be far less homogenous in that volunteers would no longer come only from poor and under-privileged or conservative backgrounds. The resulting military culture would be far more representative of the country as a whole.
• Service would help to rebuild and upgrade infrastructure—a major need. It will take a commitment to civic-mindedness to rebuild and improve infrastructure. Service would both provide the workforce, but also build sense of pride in community and nation which would drive the improvement forward.
• Service would answer communities’ needs for workers to provide elder and child care, take care of the needy…

During the service period mentorship would guide the participants in continuing education. This pursuit of self-improvement would be to help students in making future decisions about their lives and careers.

At the end of their fourth year of service each participant would need to decide what direction they would go from there. They could decide to defer leaving the service period and instead sign on for another two years in a different branch so as to experience something different. They could leave the service program to pursue work in a field of their choice. They could accept a 100-percent scholarship for two years of secondary education, following which they would return to the branch of service they had participated in, this time as junior leaders. They could accept a 50-percent scholarship for four years of secondary education, following which they would return to the branch of service they had participated in, this time as senior leaders. They could complete their service period and leave to attend secondary schooling of their choice, toward whatever goal or career interested them.