December 28: Writing Prompt #362-The New School

You get to redesign school as we know it from the ground up. Will you do away with reading, writing, and arithmetic? What skills and knowledge will your school focus on imparting to young minds?

My school would have all the academic subjects as well as physical education, art, music, cooking (home ec), and so much more.  There would be a requirement for parents to be involved more than I currently see now in most schools. I would like to see a type of parent-teach course take place quarterly where parents are given strategies for working with their children at home and a monthly meeting for dialoging with teachers to help the children succeed in school and at home. One goal of these meetings and courses would be to ensure character traits, manners, and life skills are both taught and practiced at home and at school. This, of course, would require close parent-teacher connections, thus the reason for the courses and monthly meetings with parents and teachers to dialogue about these things. Unfortunately, the things I would like to see in a school would most likely require I start a private or charter school because I know much of this would not work in a traditional or particularly a low income public school where parents cannot always devote the time necessary to their children’s education and where some would feel offended (thinking the school is trying to tell them how to parent), when it is really just about working together to give our children the best start and education they can possibly receive. 

It just seems that parents are less and less educated about how to parent, teachers and caregivers are spending more and more hours with the children due to dual working and single parent families who are just trying to support their families, and children are less respectful, more spoiled, don’t have a strong work ethic, and are less concerned about others and the world around them today than in generations past (so maybe I am speaking like an “old fart” here, but I’m okay with that), and I think it’s something we all need to take some responsibility for and work together to change it.  What do you think?