Bottoms Up Education

The more time I spend in education, the more it seems clear to me that we are probably looking for solutions to our education problems in the wrong places .  Why is it that as a nation, we seem willing to put billions of dollars behind top-down “solutions” when so many of the people involved in developing them have either little classroom experience or, if they do, it’s years out of date?  Yet, at the same time, those people actually in the classrooms, those best suited to speak to what does and doesn’t work, are increasingly marginalized in the national dialogue on education.

The truth is that, by its very nature, a one-size-fits-all national education plan is ill equipped to help students develop their individual strengths or unique capabilities. Children are not equal in their needs or their capacities.  Yet, we have been promoting systems that test how much we can make each student alike, not how much we can nurture their differences.

Image found via Deven Black’s Google Plus page.

I believe that the future of our nation will depend on how well we develop the unique qualities that make each student different.

When it comes to understanding education solutions and what it takes to identify the different styles, talents and viewpoints that students bring to the classroom, no one is better positioned than the teacher.

Teachers are the ones who are face-to-face with real students in real classrooms every day. They are responsible for keeping kids interested, engaged, and successful in learning.

It would be great to work towards is an educational system that makes room for success to happen in the classroom, and supports it when it does by directing funds and helping to create awareness for other educators.  The real solutions are being created by the teachers in the classrooms but those solutions rarely see the kind of media attention that a national program gets.  Let’s focus less on top-down education mandates and focus more on supporting bottom-up education solutions.