The first key point of this chapter relates to enrollment growth and the size of classrooms. This has been a problem for many years. For example, I was in elementary school in the mid 70's to early 80's. Over a span of about 3-4 years, all 5th and 6th grade classes were held in a wooden building called "temporaries." The temporaries consisted of about 6 classrooms (3 classrooms for each the 5th and 6th grades). Each classroom had an average of 30 kids and was about the size of a 2-3 stall garage. When I went into junior high (separate building) in the early 80's, the school was still in need of space. My class was then shuttled by bus over to an old NSP building for a couple classes, and then shuttled back to the main school for the remainder of the day. Because of the lack of building space for so many children, the school district had to pay for a full-time bus driver to haul all of the kids to and from classes throughout the day, 5 days a week, which also means the school district was spending money for renting out the NSP building. In reviewing the numbers given for school budgets over the course of each decade from the 40's to 90's, I learned that we have been more than doubling our school budget requirements over the course of each decade. My own scenario brings me to wonder how much money school districts are spending in the long run when they are holding off on building larger or newer buildings and either paying for rented space over a period of several years or paying the higher expenses of an older building.
I was bothered by the second key point concerning the professionalism in teaching when I read that more children are being home schooled today than a few decades ago. What comes to question is, how good of an education are children getting from being home schooled when the parents have not had formal training in how to teach the material to their children? Even more bothersome is the idea that parents who home school can choose the "unschooling" method and allow their children to learn through "whatever they naturally do." I feel that home-schooled children should have as structured a curriculum as those of their public-school peers.
I found the section on the direction of education to be interesting in the way education was viewed in each time period. As time went along, the descriptions of what they felt children should learn became more detailed, but included virtually the same topics.
Before reading the "Preparation of Teachers" section in Chapter 3, I was not aware that in colonial times the teachers only had elementary educations themselves, and only had to know something about the subject matter to teach it. I also did not realize that they had other duties that were unrelated to education. For example, I was not aware that teachers were also called upon to be a court messenger and to serve Summonses, to dig graves, to conduct ceremonial services at church, to ring the bell for public worship, etc. It was very interesting to read the progress that has been made to the teaching program over the years. I had never heard the term "normal school" before.
I was impressed with the many studies that have been done to become more familiar with the process in which children learn, and the characteristics needed to be a good teacher. My thought is that children need to stay engaged in the learning process, and in order to keep the kids engaged, we need to retain their attention to the subject matter by making the subject interesting and lively. In my opinion, teachers need to have a lot of energy and do "crazy" things to keep the kids involved.
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