Vicki Cobb is an accomplished writer of nonfiction books for children. Here she describes her own education, the high points and the low points.
Her high point was her elementary school, a small private progressive school in New York City called The Little Red Schoolhouse. Actually, there used to be many public schools that worked like “Little Red,” as the school known, but the standardization movement has made such schools obsolete. If the federal government demands that all schools take the test, then all schools take the test. The question Cobb implicitly asks is why federal and state policy are killing the love of learning in search of higher test scores.
Here is Vicky Cobb’s description of the schooling she loved and that made her a lifelong learner:
I went to a school where there were no report cards. My parents received written and oral evaluations of my progress from my teachers twice a year. The emphasis was on experiential learning. When we studied colonial America, we made soap and candles in the classroom, we hunted for real Indian arrowheads in a city park, we read books, we sang songs from that time. I went to my first Mexican restaurant when we studied Mexico. I wrote stories and poems. One student, in sixth grade, started a class newspaper and I wrote and illustrated for it. We made puppets and put on shows. When we studied Native Americans we ground corn between rocks and built a teepee in the classroom (where every day two lucky kids got to stay during nap time out of sight from the teacher). My school, The Little Red School House, was a private progressive school in Greenwich Village, NYC still very much alive today. Their stated mission is to produce life-long learners.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“I went to a school where there were no report cards.”
She must have been “coddled”, then.
No report cards, no grades what a novel idea!
My high school years included nine months of formal education—six months in my Freshman year and three in my sophomore year—and from that jumping-off point a variety of experiential learning experiences. I spent two of the typical four years of high school living in Mexico, learning from auditing college classes, from correspondence courses my parents bought from the University of Nebraska, from study groups, from reading and thinking. I think my high school experience was wonderful, and after I took the GED I immediately began my college work. My lack of formal high school was in no way a hinderance to my life-long learning efforts. Now, at age 56, I have an MA in Curriculum and Instruction and many years of classroom teaching under my belt, but I am not done. I have so much to learn.
thats fantastic, Lisa!
Schools like this exist throughout the country but they are usually not available for “other people’s children.” As long as these schools, their administrators and boards, their associations (i.e. American Montessori Society), and teachers stay silent about what is happening to the rest of our nation’s children, our country will continue to be further divided into the haves and have not. It is not right to be content that the school that you work at or send your children to is not subject to these “reforms” while the inequity grows for everybody else. We all have an obligation to speak up, especially when we have the freedom to do so.
Marianne. ,
Regarding Little Red School House, is your post based on assumption or direct experience? Just asking.
My experience is with Montessori schools, as a teacher and parent, which also emphasizes a love of learning and learning by doing. I am not suggesting that schools turn into Montessori schools, Waldorf, Little Red School Houses, etc. but rather, that all children have access to a rich curriculum, a strong arts program, and have the freedom to enjoy learning. Teachers should have the freedom to teach. I am able speak up against these reforms because it doesn’t put my job in jeopardy.
Would you suggest that all students have access to a Montessori school, Waldorf, progressive, or any other educational approach that best fit their individual needs?
🙂
Love your post Marianne……so right on target!
TE – I wish that all students who wanted to go to a Montessori school had access to one. However, public Montessori schools face a lot of challenges because of the requirements (testing, district requirements, CC) that take precedent over the Montessori philosophy, practices, and curriculum. I cannot comment about other methods because I have no training or experience in them.
The Montessori method includes theory, philosophy, procedures, and curriculum that are dependent upon each other. Many of the charter schools that I have read about seem very vague and trendy: “21st century learning skills in a global community.”
The charter school movement puzzles me. These are questions that I just wrote to our local paper questioning the fairness or reasoning of charters. “The article about a possible second campus of KTECH at the former McKinley Middle School leaves many obvious questions unanswered. Wasn’t McKinley closed, despite the objections of students and families, solely because of budget concerns? On January 28, 2012, the Kenosha News reported: “Built in 1921, a year after Washington, McKinley is the district’s second oldest middle school and would require roughly $12 million in major refurbishments to continue operating in the long term, Vaillancourt said. “Twelve million dollars is a lot of money, especially considering it’s 90 years old and we have some other newer middle schools that can handle the students,” Vaillancourt said, noting that the McKinley property is also landlocked in a residential neighborhood, making future expansions difficult.” Has KUSD’s financial situation drastically improved in the year since McKinley was closed, which resulted in disruption for the 656 students, their families, and staff? Charter schools are often presented as a means to give choice to families but it also creates a system within a school district of “the chosen” and the “not chosen” since entry into the schools are based on lotteries. According to the Wisconsin Charter School Association, charters allow “teachers to have more say in decision making which helps increase teacher engagement and, in turn, student engagement.” Shouldn’t every KUSD student have the same access to a rich curriculum, the arts, and individualized instruction? Shouldn’t every school and their staff have the freedom to be innovative and responsive to their students’ needs because they have the ability to make their own decisions? Why are charter schools only given this opportunity when they are part the same public school system and what effect does it have on the non-charter schools?”
Am I misunderstanding something about charters?
I think the main problem a public Montessori school faces is that traditional public schools have an all and only admission policy based on the geographic location of the child’s home. There will be enough parents in any neighborhood opposed to a Montessori approach that it will be a nonstarter.
My daughter attends a private, progressive school and I have tried, with little success, to get the other parents and faculty to get involved with what’s happening to public education. We know what we want for our kids, but most parents seem to think that because they can afford to get it, those left behind don’t matter. I frequently hear the refrain, “We’re a private school, why are we worried about what happens in public schools?” It makes me rather sick and puts me in a moral quandary. I don’t want to deprive my daughter of the experience she’s getting, but I never wanted it to be some sort of island oasis. The school talks a good game about social justice, so I’ll keep pushing for them to put their money where their mouth is.
I am not sure that other parents would want a progressive education for their children. They might prefer another educational approach.
Unfortunately what is happening in public education is political and private schools already have a precarious position with local politicians and the public. Schools always need small favors (like closing a street for a fair or using a nearby park) and so private schools are usually loathe to create waves. Plus they are busy with their own stuff…not because they don’t care about others…but because self-managing a school is hard work.
I agree private schools could do more but even when they do their efforts are sometimes seen as marketing the benefits of their own school or educational approach. http://www.allianceforchildhood.org is one organization that brings together private school administrators and academics to promote play and experiential learning. Their facebook page shows that they have had some media impact.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alliance-for-Childhood/164661028655
My daughter went to the other progressive school near Little Red, City and Country. She lasted one year. She didn’t fit the mold of the holistic embrace of learning differences. This is what happens in the privatized world of education. Read the fine print. They embrace the whole child as long as they get with the program. Don’t get me wrong, Little Red and City and Country are wonderful schools, they just had very little tolerance and no skills for kids slightly outside the box. I remember so many parent teacher conferences where the principal, teacher and ed specialist looked at me and said, “you have a problem.” I always responded, “don’t we have a problem?” The answer was always,”we don’t have those kinds of resources.” My daughter has audio processing issues and weak working memory. My public school in Brooklyn has far more skill, makes far fewer judgements, and teachers who have been trained for special Ed needs. Unfortunately the class sizes don’t permit those skills to be effectively realized. And as I say this, it seems so sad. The catastrophe that was called my daughters education occurred in spite of every effort I made on her behalf, the immense amount of money, time and effort I expended. I’ve educated myself in working with learning differences, but I was too late. Learning differences get compounded by the judgements private schools make and the intense competition it fosters. Little Red is wonderful, City and Country is wonderful (as long as you are ((whisper)) quick quick quick). My daughter didn’t finish 10th grade. If I suggest she audit an art class at SVU she panics. At 22 she hasn’t found the joy of learning that she never experienced.
When parents can choose a school, schools can choose to be different from the neighboring school. When parents can’t choose, there is an inevitable pressure for uniformity in schooling so that the lack of choice is not seen to be important.
There is an article in the Washington Post on Obama and how he might stay in DC after his term ends so Sasha can complete her Sidwell Friends education. The comments are being flooded by non educators who are ultra conservatives taking stabs at the president from all angles but none address EDUCATION. This might be a good chance to comment on what Obama could do to rectify the education mess he helped create should he stay in Washington! Should he stay ironically for the education of his daughter at an elite private school, I would have the audacity to hope that he would reflect on what his support of RTTT has done for the nations’ public school students!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-may-be-a-rare-ex-president-who-stays-in-washington/2013/11/29/81ba049c-5912-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html
Reblogged this on Unpacking Reform.
My view: There is no one perfect system. However, for me, the love of learning is the most important thing that a child can learn. That is instilled by a great teacher. Some years ago the Nobel prize winners were asked how or why, whatever, they became that Nobel prize winner. If memory is correct every one said that they were inspired by a great teacher. For me a HUGE gap exists between academic achievement and education, i. e., they are not synonymous terms as some seem to believe. I have people with doctorates who I found educationally deficient. Our own Tony Bennett was one. We also had a superintendent with a doctorate – the same. Please do not take offense but my view was that the only thing he had learned was “yassuh boss, how high does you want me to jump”. Forgive the text but that was his philosophy. CYA, a term never known to me was made known to me through him. However, because of his philosophy our school board thought him wonderful. He did their bidding no matter what so ended up as the 2nd highest paid superintendent in our area. I wonder, do we need more scientists and mathematicians for more integrity. Focusing on test taking rather than learning and making test scores the ultimate are we encouraging learning or cheating?
My basic concern: who is to run the schools: scholars and educators or politicians, politicians both inside and outside the school system?
I went to Little Red — for about 6 months – in first grade. I’ll never forget it. I loved it. The music, was so beautiful it was like magic. I still remember the songs we sang and the name of our music teacher, Charity Bailey. We didn’t learn to read. We drew two lines down the room and that was the East River, and we built a city on its shores every day for hours. At rest time the teachers read to us a from a long novel about a whale and its mother, and their journeys around the seven seas.
In February I had to leave and join my mother who was living in Italy. The children in my new school already knew how to read, so I had reading lessons at the teacher’s desk while the other children did other things. At first it was hard, but I didn’t let on. I was very motivated and if I acted up the teacher would joke that if I didn’t behave we wouldn’t have a reading lesson. I caught up pretty easily, so easily that I have no recollection of how long it took, because from then on it wasn’t an issue. I couldn’t believe how uptight other parents were about it when I had children of my own. I also let our daughter skip first grade and spend another year in kindergarten and she learned fast enough in second that she outstripped all the other children.
Hi Harold:
I remember Charity as well. She wore hand-made patchwork jackets and we sang all the time. (“Don’t we look pretty when we’re dancing?”) I’ve been wearing patchwork jackets as an adult. It took me a long time to figure out where my affinity for them came from.
http://www.danaxtell.com/CharityBailey/
Learning to read is like learning to drive a car. It doesn’t make such a whole lot of difference what age you are when you learn – so long as it’s before age 8 or so. What does make a real difference is having a strong foundation of oral and conceptual language. Conversation. Poetry. And Song. No machine can teach this.
Come on. Do we have to re-invent the wheel? This has been common knowledge since the time of the ancient Greeks and probably earlier.
I have had teachers complain about links I post to this blog and others. I spoke up last year when teachers in our school decided to have a fundraiser- for a charter school! Some see me as this radical, but I prefer to think of myself as a realist.
One of the teachers in Arne Duncan’s luxury prep school The University of Chicago Lab School (founded by distinguished educational philosopher Thomas Dewey) has been very outspoken in his opposition to the disastrously misguided corporate “reform” agenda. It was reported right here on Diane’s blog:
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/07/18/president-obama-and-the-new-elitism/
But I agree, he is the exception. The private schools could speak out more. I guess they have their hands out for donations from big business and can’t afford “idealism” (otherwise known as ethics).
Parents ought to be able to choose a good local comprehensive school, run on enlightened principles, with age appropriate instruction (no high stakes tests, these are not appropriate), and plenty of physical exercise.
Harold,
I like the concept of choice, but what do you mean by “enlightened principles”?