The purpose of school

When school is framed as a means towards making money, we create a classroom that is less about learning and more about dollars and cents.

The purpose of education is not to creating docile and adequately skilled workers for employers and corporations.

And it's a good thing to.

Keep in mind that the life span of a successful Fortune 500 company is now 40 years which is roughly half that of a person's life expectancy. Small American companies have an even shorter shelf life. To frame the purpose of our children's education as preparation for companies that will likely be extinct before our kids have a chance to attend a high school reunion is at best irresponsible.

Public education should be about meeting children's needs in an attempt to provide the opportunities and guidance that is necessary to help children grow up to become responsible citizens in a vibrant democracy.

Rethinking my school's purpose

I'm starting a new school year here at the Red Deer Regional Hospital.

The program I teach in utilizes an interdisciplinary team to provide comprehensive diagnostic evaluation to children under the age of 18 who present with a wide range of complex psychiatric symptoms. Unit 39 at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre is an 8-bed facility with 2 beds for crisis stabilization and 6 beds for elective admissions. Staff work together closely to provide a structured, therapeutic environment that incorporates developmentally appropriate assessment approaches and activities.

The purpose of the school portion of this program has typically acted as an extension of the children's regular classroom. Students are required to bring a collection of work from their regular teacher and spend the school day completing this work.

Can you imagine the kind of school work a teacher might send for a student that is in the hospital for 3-4 weeks?

I'll be brutally honest, the kind of work the kids show up with tends to be worksheet, busy work. Not all the time, but this is the case a lot of the time. I'll be honest again, if this busy work is actually the kind of learning these kids would experience had they not been admitted to the hospital, then they aren't missing much.

Asking me to replicate each child's regular classroom experiences at the hospital seems to me to be an exercise in futility. Even if it were possible (and it's not) to clone their regular classroom and transplant it at the hospital, in the context of these children's lives, this would still be developmentally inappropriate. I guess what I'm really trying to say is this: You don't go to the hospital to get caught up on your homework.

If staying caught up with academics was the primary problem plaguing these children, they wouldn't need to be admitted to the hospital.

All this has led me to significantly rethink the purpose of the school portion of this program. Here is a description I wrote up as a part of the pre-admission package to introduce parents to the purpose of the school portion of this program:

Patients attend school on the unit with a teacher as a part of their assessment. During school, patients will engage in a balance between continuing their regular academics and activities that will help them to effectively change and improve their thinking, feelings and behavior. While patients may spend time working on traditional academics, a priority will be placed on providing support and resources to help them make positive changes and/or informed choices in their lives.

I am posting this here as a first draft so that I can get feedback from you. What do you think about all this? Based on the context of my teaching assignment, am I right to refocus this school's purpose to see academics play a secondary role to the well-being of the students? Am I missing something?

I'm looking forward to your feedback via comments.

Who is school for?

Over the years the purpose of school has changed. At one time it could be said that the purpose of school was to simply produce employees.

Some like John Dewey have said that:

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

Dewey's words imply that school is more about the whole child and less about the economy or the workforce.

I can remember having a conversation about this topic with a teacher colleague and they told me:

You know, school isn't for everyone.

That statement still gives me the chills. If you believe school is just a glorified employee training program then this statement isn't all that concerning. After all, some people are born ahead of their time and don't fit in our current world because they were meant to
shape our next world.

But what if you subscribe more to Dewey's philosophy? What human being should be denied the opportunity to education? Or in Dewey's words, who should be denied life?

If we undestand what John Dewey was trying to say then we have to stop saying children fail school; because if school is for everyone, and a child fails, then school failed the child.