Only an 8th grade Education: Back to the "Enlightened Basics"

Final Reflections on A Flickering Mind

Wow. Alan, I am not sure this is what I would classify as a happy ending!

But for once I might actually try to be brief. I actually left my book twenty five miles away at my parent's cabin and a street festival replete with a bad polka band and firetruck is raging outside the cafe where I am writing this. All I can say is thank god for technology, especially wireless and an i-pod.

As I read these final chapters and afterword I continued thinking that Oppenheimer was being hyperbolic and unfair. His comparisons of Milwaukee Starms to Urban Waldorf seemed slanted to me. It just seemed and maybe this isn't true, that he spent very little time at Starms and oodles of time at various Waldorf schools. I don't so much doubt the veracity of his comments, it's just that I think he was clearly predisposed to making the judgements that he did. But his argument for back to the "enlighted basics" is fair and logical. I started thinking, would I send my son to a Waldorf school? On a side note my colleague, and interestingly a lover of technology, actually offered knitting as an elective this past year and believe or not, all boys signed up. Her class project: making i-pod covers and ski hats. Oppenheimer's discusson of a Waldorf education made me think of the amazing projects I see my students haul home from woodshop. So I do believe in hand-on, tactical, sensory learning and am pleased that my school has not neglected hands-on work. I grew up in a family where my mother and father knew how to do seemingly everything. My dad built all of the houses I have ever lived in and my mother seemed able to make money go very far by gardening, sewing, and being an amazing cook. So maybe these experiences that I take for granted need to be part of a child's school experience? I do struggle with the idea that reading will just come through interaction with the spoken word but I think I would need to know more about the Waldorf reading process to really agree or disagree with it. Are there any Waldorf graduates in our cohort?

While I truly enjoyed and appreciated the ideas presented in A Flickering Mind, I not totally sure so many schools have gotten technology as wrong as he proposes. But as much as I found myself at times naysaying Oppenheimer's arguments,or thinking that doesn't happen at my school, nothing hit home so much as a statement he made in the afterward: Who ever says what kids need is more exposure to media?
How true. That statement more than any other cements his point; technology is only one tool. Kids need good teachers. The only question left is what exactly constitutes a good teacher? I argue there is no hard and fast rule to determine a quality teacher. I think you have to see him or her in action with students to believe say with confidence, "he's a great teacher." What do you all think?

PS: Check out this link when thinking of "the enlightened basics"; this in an 8th grade graduation exam from 1895.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a2e3e636e6d.htm