Crescat Blogus, Vita Excolatur
Armed with a computer now, I think that I have fixed the primary problem with the comment system. Email me or try to post if there are any problems with commenting or viewing entries. There are still a few aesthetic deficiencies to be resolved, but at least the site is functioning--I think.
Accordingly, more posts on my exploits here in Chicago will soon follow. For now, I am exhausted from reading John Dewey and fixing this stupid site, and I must sleep. People accuse me of being needlessly verbose and garbled, but Dewey really takes those words to a new level. Thankfully he's brilliant too, but it's a real pain to realize it.
Speaking of Dewey, I just learned that the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (the university's primary and secondary preparatory school) was founded by Mr. Dewey. In accordance with his educational philosophy, they essentially teach absolutely nothing until about 5th grade, just letting the students do whatever projects they want, throw blocks at each other, etc. Yet, by the beginning of the secondary years, the students are 1-2 years ahead of comparable students in other schools. It's fascinating that not teaching can actually be as good of a way instruction as being rigorous at an early level. Indeed, Dewey's system is the antithesis of the current trends in public education. Politicians, taxpayers, and parents demand this ridiculous level of "accountability" (like standardized testing starting at in the range of grades 1-3), thinking that forcing more stuff more quickly down students throats will somehow make them more successful in life. Despite the advent of highly structured curricula in the first years of elementary school, and its proponents' claim that it improves student learning, I would counter that it is all a big load of crap. Firstly, the statistical evidence that highly structured curricula in grades K-3 seriously improve education has not been tested well over large periods of time. Furthermore, it is likely that with such curricula teachers are less likely to do a poor job of teaching, since they have less freedom in teaching. Freedom is freedom to do good as well as to screw up. Lastly, we measure educational "effectiveness" by how well students do standardized tests. Less structured, more Dewey-esque curricula tend to give students fewer skills specifically needed for the tests. Thus our entire conception of what is "good" or "bad" education is predicated on the assumption that all important facets of education are measurable by 75-100 multiple-choice questions. I hope that you're laughing. It's tragic that politics always have to obscure the maximization of social welfare in so many ways.
My question about the Lab Schools is this: are the kids attending them a good test subject? I mean, are they local kids from the ghetto, or a bunch of professor's kids who'd be brilliant anyways? Although I do admit that freedom in early education is probably a good thing, this may or may not be an example to prove that.
I'm not trying to prove that Dewey was correct. I'm marveling at how his system can work, and trying to prove we trying to become needlessly rigid in our current system of elementary education. I think Dewey was right about some things and wrong about others.
To answer your question, about half of the students at the Lab Schools have a parent who is employed by the university in some capacity, and the remainder come from all over Chicago. Some come from the surrounding ghettos. About 30% of students there are minorities. That's about all I know, although I'm toying with teaching debate there...