Hyper-Schooling is Killing My Kid! What Can be Done?

A study, released Nov. 30th in the Journal of Medicine and Sport, found that the more time kids in 1st Grade "spent sitting and the less time they spent being physically active, the fewer gains they made in reading in the two following years. In first grade, a lot of sedentary time and no running around also had a negative impact on their ability to do math." (Read about it in Time Magazine) The findings in this study are not a great surprise to anyone who has taken time to read up on the available human development science with affect upon early educational development, and yet, the U.S. school systems and political leadership have invented successive "school reform" initiatives over the past decades promising improved academic attainment and creating an increasingly destructive educational environment for America's youngest students.

Concerned parents, teachers and community leaders who follow education "reform" closely are beginning to ask questions about why local schools, state boards, and the Federal DOE consistently ignore the warnings from studies and experts, and instead demand more and more instructional time, seat work, and testing at younger ages. Brenda Vosik, the director of the Nebraska Family Policy Forum, a grass roots organization which works to promote family centered education policy on the local and state level in Nebraska, is perplexed by administrators and policy makers who ignore the behavioral science and continue to push education agendas that are destructive. She asks, "So if learning isn't the real agenda, what is?"

It's hard for parents and community advocates like Vosik to continue to have faith in the sincerity of educational leadership, to do so requires excusing the damage being done to young minds as the result of well intentioned ignorance rather than willful neglect or utter stupidity. Public school parent Gina Miller, is astonished that there has been no positive change after years of parents "screaming" about their children's suffering. She wonders whether we will have to wait for study results tracking children who are pushed through the "new 'Cradle to Career' education push" before education leadership will be willing to change directions. I don't think Miller is alone in her intolerance for sacrificing generations to these illogical social experiments, she says, "It makes me ill and VERY VERY SAD!"

It is an increasingly prudent skepticism that prompts questions about the true motivations of these education "reform" agendas. I have my theories but they aren't easy to swallow for the general American public so I try to focus on persuading the public that our education system needs serious corrections to protect the cognitive health and emotional development of American children. However, the consequences of failure are so dire and the numerous voices of warning so thoroughly ignored that even the prudence of persuasion is called into question.

A prominent public administration theory of organizational reform written by professor
Albert O. Hirschman, in his book "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States," applies standard economic theory to the reform of state organizations such as school systems. Through his theory we can identify three basic ways that public school parents can exercise their influence to change the structural organization of public schools. One, they can be loyal and serve the organization from within in hopes that their influence can affect the organization, they can use their voice in internal protest and descent, or they can exit the organization.

Mothers like Brenda Vosik and Gina Miller are the kind of loyal reformers who have served their public schools, voiced their concerns, and exerted great effort to organizing other parents in hopes of promoting positive change. What parents like these dedicated moms are learning is that the school systems may be beyond internal reform. I also spent years of extraordinary effort attempting to effect positive change through loyal dissent, but what I saw this first hand when I worked in the public schools was enough to push me beyond loyal voice. In the end I concluded that the best way to change the institution was to exit it. I protested the failures of education with my feet and walked away. 

I now homeschool my children. The time I used to spend filling the holes and fighting the internal battles I now spend giving my children the kind of education I know is best. The rise in homeschool, online schools, and other alternatives has increased 61% in the last decade and if the trend continues across diverse demographics, as it is now, it may make a difference in education admins willingness to listen. Unfortunately, Hirschman theory applied to public school has its limits because there is a hard ceiling on the number of people who can exercise their reform power.

It isn't practical for a great many parents to devote significant time to loyal service or voiced opposition within their school systems, and exiting the public system is impossible for most parents, especially single and middle class working parents. It's one of the things that makes it so easy for the schools to continue to ignore the social and behavioral science, they have a captive student base.

As someone who was once a loyal participant in public schools, and who gave years of sincere effort to internal reform before walking away, I am often asked what changes would prompt my return. What are the structural changes needed to make classrooms healthy environments for proper educational development? Well the answer doesn't require more money, more technology, or more federal initiatives. It's simple. It takes true educational freedom and local control. Parents know what their kids need and what they want out of education. Every school doesn't need to offer the same product or method. If schools were a free market there would be a school for every need, every educational philosophy, for every family, and for every student. What is required is trust. Trust in parents to do what is best for their kids, trust in teachers, trust in innovation.

What kind of school would I want for my young children?

I think the schools having the most success and doing the least damage in elementary ED are ones that limit direct instruction to no more than 45 minute increments and allow for frequent unstructured movement in between instructional periods. The school day should be shorter for young children, the way in which school districts have increased the length of the school day, especially at the elementary level, has been damaging and unproductive.

In addition to reducing instructional time, my school of choice would integrate more artistic and tactile activities into learning and allow kids to learn through discovery and play. To do this the education model mustn't be too focused on testing standards and must find more creative and less invasive ways of assessing progress. Teachers must be trusted to freely use their talents to teach without tight bureaucratic hand cuffs.

At the very least!

Since educational freedom and local control is a tall order these days, one change that should be made immediately throughout the country is to eliminate federal and state initiatives that promote standardization. The expectations upon teachers to teach developmentally inappropriate material in developmentally inappropriate instruction methods under the constant pressures of high-stakes standardized testing is a destructive institutional design that must change if we are to hope for positive change.