This editorial appeared in USA Today on February 18 in response to some states possibly raising the compulsory school attendance age to 18 . It was written by Jerry Mintz, founder and director of AERO-Alternative Education Resource Organization. He states the case against it simply and brilliantly.

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States considering raising the compulsory school age are making a mistake. The way to fight dropping out is to make better schools, not force students to stay in bad ones!

Conventional schooling assumes that children are naturally lazy and need to be forced to learn through incentives such as grades and competition with other students. They need to be kept busy with homework and forced to run an endless gauntlet of standardized tests.

In contrast, many of us involved with educational alternatives such as democratic schools and homeschooling believe that children are natural learners, and that the best education is learner centered. The main job of the educator is to listen to the student, maintain a good environment for learning, and help them find the resources to pursue their interests.

Historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott, and more recently, such celebrities as Elijah Woods and Venus and Serena Williams have learned this way.

Children are natural learners. If they say they hate school SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THEIR SCHOOL!
Until the mid 1800s schooling was not compulsory. Yet research shows that there was a high degree of literacy. People became educated because they wanted and needed to do so.

Something IS wrong with our public school system. Everyone knows it. Bureaucrats in the system have no idea how to fix it except by more of the same failing practices: More homework, longer days, longer school years, more years, more testing, more teaching to the test. And they only know how to test the most mundane and least important things, facts that can be memorized (and then easily forgotten after the test because they are learned out of context).

It is far more important for students to learn how to learn, how to find the answers and resources that they seek. If public schools provided this kind of education, as we do in numerous alternatives, young people would find learning meaningful and have far less reason to drop out. Students in schools with a learner-centered approach are truly excited about learning and rarely drop out.

Jerome Alan Mintz, Director
Alternative Education Resource Organization
www.educationrevolution.org

This story is from the recent issue of our local paper the Mountain View Voice.

Headline: Mr. White boy was in the Nortenos: Stabbing suspect’s fate a shock to local mom who knew him as a boy

"Except for a few bumps in the road, Jacob DeWitt, 19, had a normal upbringing. When he was a boy, his dad coached the local Little League team and his mom baked cookies for parties at the elementary school."

The article goes on to mention some of the bumps along the road…divorced parents who were struggling, but worked hard. In middle school his mother suffered a stroke, leaving her temporarily paralyzed. The neighbor mother who knew him as a boy puts much of the blame on the middle school itself where "too many kids, missing something at home, have been introduced to gangs."

She continued, "Parents have to be overly protective these days. You give them an inch and they take a mile. Especially a boy who is determined to do what he wants to do."

What can we observe and learn here?

1-Normal upbringing does not mean an emotionally healthy upbringing. Especially when defined as coaching Little League and baking cookies and hard working parents. These are wonderful things in a child’s life, but only when there is an emotionally healthy foundation in the family, where there is an honest, trusting emotional connection between parents and son. Obviously his parents were doing the best they could, and yet coaching softball and baking cookies cannot replace a strong emotional connection.

2-This young man’s bumps in the road were struggling, divorcing parents and his mother suffering temporary paralysis from a stroke. When parents are struggling emotionally, a child struggles emotionally. This is why it is so important for parents to nurture their own emotional wholeness and  their son’s.  Children need as solid an emotional foundation and connection with their parents as possible. This is what allows them to feel safe and loved.

A child who seeks connection and companionship in a gang is not getting this at home. He also doesn’t have an experience of authentic, unconditional love. He is lost and struggling emotionally.

"a boy who is determined to do what he wants to do"–This is not in and of itself a bad thing. It can be a strength and asset to be determined to do what you want to do. This is what makes for great people and great leaders. The problem with this are the adults in his life. It is our role to respond to this strong drive in a child in a way that empowers him to express his desire positively, rather than in destructive ways.

Any person who stabs another person multiple times is deeply hurting emotionally. It is so easy to say the problem lies with the child, to say he was a bad kid. I suggest the problem lies with the adults in his life, his lack of a safe, loving connection with them and limiting response to his desire to be capable and strong and to have what he wanted in life.

This story reminds us all to look beyond the surface in our own life and in the lives of our children. Looking on the surface is not enough. Children need emotional wholeness to flourish and thrive.

When we