Fear Of A Public School Education That Liberates All

 Hard to believe America's Education Policies failed to ever understand that curriculum is not static, children not blank slates, and teachers, not robots. For over a hundred years, school prevented children and teachers from seeing the possibilities of a curriculum that lifts, inspires, and motivates all in our public schools. In 1902 John Dewey offered policymakers a brave new world.

His Progressive Education vision offered new possibilities of what curriculum in public school could be.

1. The curriculum must start where the learner is.

2. Experience in school must be relevant to the learner.

3. Children learn by doing.

4. School is not preparation for life; it is life.

5. In school, as in life, experiences should be integrated around problem-solving and inquiry.

6. The classroom must be democratic so that children will learn to participate in a democracy and to work with others in social groupings.

7. The curriculum of a school must satisfy the personal needs of all learners while it serves the needs of society.

If you ask me where that brave new world went? I would say it was stolen by small-minded policymakers, CEOs, and legislators who were afraid that children living in Dewey's brave new world would exceed every expectation ever imagined by him. Let me make it clear American public policymakers live in fear of a world where public education would liberate all children. They are fine with some, their own, but all scares the heck out of them.

Fight the power,

Rise up teachers,

Dr. Jesse P. Turner

Moral Monday CT Education Ambassador

Uniting to Save Our Schools National Committee

Professor of Literacy, Elementary, and Early Childhood Education
If you want to listen to the song that I listen to on my morning walk today, its Risa Up by Andra Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwgr_IMeEgA