Discussion of School

http://www.cybercollege.com/plume14.htm wrote: An untrained substitute teacher recently was placed in a poor, failing, fourth grade Philadelphia classroom. He abolished the textbooks—locked them all up in the closet, in fact—abolished the quizzes, and just had the kids hang on to their pencils and paper.

Each day he brought in copies of two local newspapers. He read stories of interest out loud, or had the class read them in unison. He talked about these events and gradually got the kids interested in what was going on in their city, the nation, and the world.

They became so interested, in fact, that the students asked to write letters to people such as sports heroes, (after calculating season and game averages), or to politicians whom they felt were avoiding critical issues.

The teacher went over the letters with before they were mailed. (The students didn't want to embarrass themselves by poor grammar or spelling, especially in front of their heroes.)

Students who needed to go the bathroom just excused themselves and left—just like in the real world.

By the end of the school year these "deprived" children were performing above grade level in reading, writing, and arithmetic (as determined by national norms, not district-slanted standards)