Return To The Little Red School House

One thing has been made abundantly clear in recent times, the state of public education in the U.S. has become untenable for any serious student interested in academics and scholarship. 

So, where did it go wrong and can it be fixed?

Let’s get back to basics.

When we focus our schooling on the basic skills of academic and artistic thought and expression an amazing thing happens. Learning.

There was a time when public education in the U.S. was personified in the “little red school house.” This imagery evokes notions of everything from Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang to Laura Engles Wilder in the Little House on the Prairie. The most fundamental differences between schooling then and now include the fact that back then the focus was on learning fundamental academic skills and scholarly critical thinking skills, while ethics, morality and belief systems were developed by the family and their community based on their shared values. 

Because each community set up its own school and hired teachers from the local community they also had a very congruent system of values and ethics to begin with. This system allowed each local community to direct the education of their own children secure in the knowledge that their children were being educated in fundamental academic and arts education by friends and neighbors which shared values. As a result the class time could be laser focused on the core curriculum of arts and academics. 

When society grew to the point of beginning to industrialize our public education system the efficiency did give us a great boost in literacy for those first generations. And our trust in those educators over the generations had already dulled our oversight of the subject matter being taught. It seems that we are awakening and beginning to realize that modern curricula in main stream academia has replaced academic scholarship with someone else’s agenda driven indoctrination system. 

Today it is more difficult than ever to find quality education that focuses us on developing our best objective critical thinking skills than ever. Even “advanced” education has become devoid of debate and scientific exploration. Which is why the only answer is to reclaim control of our own learning and return to the “little red school house,” evolved to take advantage of or modern technology and communication. 

Already parents and students of all ages and skill levels are active online in various groups and forums looking for answers. Many are turning to online classes and courses which can be a huge help. A study by the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning found that online tutoring improved student's academic performance and their ability to think critically. The study also found that online tutoring increased student engagement and motivation. Another study by the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning found that online tutoring improved students' problem-solving skills and their ability to work independently. 

The final step is finding a tutor or mentor who knows not only the subject matter but how to help students explore, experiment and empirically experience that subject though an objective lens allowing the student to apply the knowledge to their own set of values and beliefs instead of the other way around. In this way we will be taking a step closer to achieving the ideal of “the little red school house.”