The curriculum designers will die before relinquishing their power to cripple students’ minds.
One striking example of this shameless obstinacy was displayed when Glenn Seaborg, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, two other Nobel laureates, and thirty other scientists offered to design—free of charge—a K–12 science curriculum for the state of California. The state turned them down; instead, it awarded a $178,000 contract for curriculum development to “professional educators” who, of course, were trained not in science but in “education.”
The educational establishment is a monolith that cannot easily be defeated. But it can be circumvented.
There are numerous signs of this possibility in American education, trends that Americans can build on to vastly upgrade the quality of education in this country.
One is the resurgence of interest in Montessori training. Progressive schools eclipsed Montessori schools in America between the world wars. But in the 1950s, as the deleterious effects of Progressive education became glaringly apparent, Montessori schooling regained support, albeit limited. Today, approximately four thousand certified Montessori schools dot the nation.
Creative minds such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and numerous others credit a part of their success to early and effective Montessori schooling.
So, one thing we can do is advocate Montessori training and support Montessori schools.
Further, homeschooling is once again legal in every state.
In 2003, approximately 1,096,000 American students were being homeschooled; by 2012, the number had swelled to 1,773,000, approximately 3.4 percent of the country’s students age five to seventeen.
As the nation’s public schools continue to decline, the number of homeschoolers will no doubt increase. Another thing we can do is advocate and support homeschooling initiatives.
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