What if our curriculum was as rich as it has ever been? If children learned to think again? To create and play with ideas and innovate and imagine and stretch their logic and bring their innate gifts to bear.
What if kids learned science and economics and geography again? What if they traced the footprints of Monet? Sang like John Legend. Wondered at the vastness of space. The mystery of the ocean floor.
What if we switched off the conveyor belt and closed the factory school? What if we just abandoned the archaic systems altogether? What if kids had the time they needed to learn the things that you say they need to learn? The standards. The important stuff. What if we quit pushing them forward as if it is some long inexorable march? What if they stayed till they were ready to fly? Then we gave them wings. No more grade levels to box them in… no more rigid tracks that consign them to a direction that is pre-determined and pre-ordained.
No more instant promotions to grade levels for which they are not ready.
What if merely staying upright in one’s desk until June was no longer the crietria for promotion, but rather, a clear and thorough demonstration of mastery? Authentic. Beyond bubbles and the swift utility of a standardized test.
What if we awoke– as if from some long and stubborn nap that is neither refreshing nor productive– awoke in time to remember that children aren’t standardized and neither are their minds? Nor their hands. Nor their dreams. Nor their journeys.
What if we knew it would take a revolution to set our children free of this? Would we fight? Would you?
What if we pushed against the stubborn status quo? I mean… all of us. All at once. Pillar by pillar piled in mounds of Ephesian dust. Just like this.
We’ll go first. We’ll go now. Mañana nunca viene. El Milagro.
"El Milagro Weblog" 