Suggestion for an Important and Massive Change in Public Education

FOOD. We offered if they wanted it a delivery of a balanced lunch described and set up by a caterer on our staff advisers planning. This was less successful as our students were as every where hamburger and fries advocates.

REWARDS. When a student had on each of his days, looked at his assignment sheet, and had accomplished his TASK there in for the day(it being assigned due to our knowledge of his ABILITIES) he was allowed to do for the rest of the day within the school to participate in MAKING MOVIES in our studio, reading in the reading room, picking and doing any hobby that excited him, swimming in the pool, or other approved things that he proposed to us to our agreement. BUT only after completing successfully his assignment.

We took stock after five years and realized that we had been able to control the greatest problems: drug addiction, smoking, lassitude, non-interest in the day. We think that was due to the control system which respected the student and his ability, and also led him to feel the school was HIS place and not a prison run by ogres.

Finally, exhausted, this writer and his wife retired at the proper age, and the school continued under younger and more vital direction.

That was some years ago, and we are happy to relate that the school is now much larger, still uses the old system, and is still successful.

We have made a small survey of the earlier students who are now successful lawyers, doctors, businessmen, artists, and workers. We find so far a level of competence and success and an affectionate memory of their old school that would seem to say we had good ideas and that they worked.

The students exited our school relaxed and prepared and happy with the immediate past.

In our entire supervision of the school, we expelled only two students, a boy and girl pair, who, deep into drug addiction, were beyond our help. We were successful in leaving that pair with professional and medical aid.

What was the reason that we attained the goal of graduating well-prepared balanced students?

Again, I think it was the KNOWLEDGE of the student by administration and teachers, the novelty of ONE subject a day with rewards-discipline, the love built up among the school community, and the certain abilities of our teachers, and administration. TESTS required and proposed by the state laws showed our graduates to be in the top 15% of success in all subjects.

IF applied to the huge mass of public schools, our one-a day subject teaching would require a revolution in the preparation of teachers, but not an impossibility…remember, among the most successful of our early school systems, were the ONE-ROOM ONE TEACHER schools, where ONE person taught a limited number of students in one room ALL the necessary subjects. That worked as did our school and I am sure that all teachers at the high school level could adapt to the fun and challenge of being knowledgeable in more than one subject!

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