All my life, one thing was about as certain as death and taxes: that is my kids would go to a school designed about the same as the one I attended and that my parents had attended. Further, I find my grandchildren today attending a very similar system. However, there are signs that that might be changing in the near future.
Obvious signs of the coming change are the current controversial tweaking of the public education system, through the creation of magnet schools, charter schools and voucher systems. But, according to a discussion between myself, Brandi Elliott, Marketing and Admissions Director for Northwest Academy in ID and Kimball DeLaMare, LCSW, Senior VP for Interchange, a network of three schools headquartered in UT, many other changes are happening that might profoundly change the way we conduct education.
Changing attitudes of parents will have a profound impact as parents, who still are more influential on their children’s success than almost anything else, take more responsibility for making education choices for their children. This will increase as more approaches and choices become available.
Online education expands tremendously the range and depth of subject matter available to the student in even the most rural areas. Although all the research indicates that an adult in the role of teacher (or mentor, facilitator, or proxy) is vital, online education can give students many additional educational options they could select from with the collaboration of their parents.
Another important trend that will impact education is the rapid increase of psychological knowledge of child development, and especially that being learned from brain research. From this increased knowledge, the ability to more effectively intervene with emotional/behavioral problems and learning differences on an individual basis will become possible. No longer feasible will be the “one size fits all” approach which of necessity has been the focus of mass public education for the past century.
What future schooling will look like is impossible to say with certainty, but what is fairly certain is finally, after a century of the factory model that has dominated education, the way we educate our young will be radically changed by these developing patterns in our society. Hopefully, children will no longer be plugged into a narrow category that only vaguely reflects the education they need, but parents and educators can meet the needs of all children and not just focus on the happy medium.