As someone who played a lot of sports growing up and also has 4 kids, I’m not sure that the implications of the sports model have been thought through all the way. I love the idea of everyone getting to go at their own speed, but sports have their own issues with skill development. A quick Google search indicates about half of kids don’t do sports at all so looking to sports for an analogy sort of disregards that we’re not even *trying* to bring half of the kids along, and I think sports as an experience would change pretty drastically if half the kids didn’t want to be there (ignoring that there are plenty of attitude problems among that half that *do* want to play).
My next issue with the analogy is that the highest achievers get tons of one on one time with coaches and specialized equipment, often at great expense to their parents. While I think it would be great to transfer that to education, most people who complain about education complain about cost, and I am quite certain that treating school like sports in this regard would not make it cheaper.
My last issue is that in a lot of ways, sports and education have diametrically opposed goals - the ostensible end goal of sports is to identify the best metaphorical handful of athletes and pay them a lot to do incredible things, whereas the goal of education has to include raising virtually *everyone* up to a certain standard. It’s important for education to produce superstars as well, but I’d argue that that’s far less important than raising baseline literacy and facility with math. There’s no shortage of brilliant kids who are well qualified to get into Ivy League schools, but there’s also no shortage of kids who are struggling to read and do math at grade level, and I’d say that policies designed to benefit the former group may not help much with the latter.
Obviously it’s a very tough problem to solve and one that a lot of people are working on! I thought this was a very interesting interview and I appreciate you doing it!
I agree with Tim above. I took over my daughter's education in 6th and 7th grade. I am sure that the principal's hated seeing me ' We are doing it my way and I don't really care about school or state requirements - my requirements are higher.' After the first 3 weeks wasting time at the start of 6th grade (Middle school) I told the principal to bump her to advanced 7th grade math class. "That is too demanding. She can do it, I will tutor her if necessary." She did fine. Her other classes were also too easy, even in the honors variant - they don't push middle schoolers all that hard. So in 7th grade I had her split her classes, she took her math class at the high school, did some morning classes at the middle school, and did online classes in the afternoon. She covered 3 years of material in the online classes. She skipped 8th grade and went to high school - but I had her do geometry by correspondence over the summer so that she could skip it. I was planning on her doing running start, and she needed to do calculus in 10th grade - she was headed into the sciences. Her high school classes were honors/IB classes. I had her do pre-calculus by correspondence between 9th and 10th grade and she did calculus for college credit in 10th grade and all IB classes in 10th grade. She dropped out after 10th grade to enter the early admission honors program at the University of Washington. She had her MS in Structural Engineering by the time she was 21. It can be done - but it did impact me. When she was doing that geometry class she would ask me questions, and I had not studies geometry for 50 years. 'Give me the book. Let me look at what is going on.' The other math assistance was easy, but she didn't need much.
As someone who played a lot of sports growing up and also has 4 kids, I’m not sure that the implications of the sports model have been thought through all the way. I love the idea of everyone getting to go at their own speed, but sports have their own issues with skill development. A quick Google search indicates about half of kids don’t do sports at all so looking to sports for an analogy sort of disregards that we’re not even *trying* to bring half of the kids along, and I think sports as an experience would change pretty drastically if half the kids didn’t want to be there (ignoring that there are plenty of attitude problems among that half that *do* want to play).
My next issue with the analogy is that the highest achievers get tons of one on one time with coaches and specialized equipment, often at great expense to their parents. While I think it would be great to transfer that to education, most people who complain about education complain about cost, and I am quite certain that treating school like sports in this regard would not make it cheaper.
My last issue is that in a lot of ways, sports and education have diametrically opposed goals - the ostensible end goal of sports is to identify the best metaphorical handful of athletes and pay them a lot to do incredible things, whereas the goal of education has to include raising virtually *everyone* up to a certain standard. It’s important for education to produce superstars as well, but I’d argue that that’s far less important than raising baseline literacy and facility with math. There’s no shortage of brilliant kids who are well qualified to get into Ivy League schools, but there’s also no shortage of kids who are struggling to read and do math at grade level, and I’d say that policies designed to benefit the former group may not help much with the latter.
Obviously it’s a very tough problem to solve and one that a lot of people are working on! I thought this was a very interesting interview and I appreciate you doing it!
I agree with Tim above. I took over my daughter's education in 6th and 7th grade. I am sure that the principal's hated seeing me ' We are doing it my way and I don't really care about school or state requirements - my requirements are higher.' After the first 3 weeks wasting time at the start of 6th grade (Middle school) I told the principal to bump her to advanced 7th grade math class. "That is too demanding. She can do it, I will tutor her if necessary." She did fine. Her other classes were also too easy, even in the honors variant - they don't push middle schoolers all that hard. So in 7th grade I had her split her classes, she took her math class at the high school, did some morning classes at the middle school, and did online classes in the afternoon. She covered 3 years of material in the online classes. She skipped 8th grade and went to high school - but I had her do geometry by correspondence over the summer so that she could skip it. I was planning on her doing running start, and she needed to do calculus in 10th grade - she was headed into the sciences. Her high school classes were honors/IB classes. I had her do pre-calculus by correspondence between 9th and 10th grade and she did calculus for college credit in 10th grade and all IB classes in 10th grade. She dropped out after 10th grade to enter the early admission honors program at the University of Washington. She had her MS in Structural Engineering by the time she was 21. It can be done - but it did impact me. When she was doing that geometry class she would ask me questions, and I had not studies geometry for 50 years. 'Give me the book. Let me look at what is going on.' The other math assistance was easy, but she didn't need much.
My one sentence statement of principles for our public education system:
Every child should be able to learn at their best pace, to their full potential, in the settings that work best for them.