Is boredom the real epidemic in our schools?

Me and my mother

I was at a large conference in the fall when the presenter asked the audience of more than 1000 educators to say the first word that comes to mind when thinking of high school. As if rehearsed for church choir, the audience responded.

Their answer? 

BORED!

I was thinking, wow! We all know this truth yet seem to accept it as just the way things are. When I tell this to other educators, some push back sharing all sorts of positive memories they had of high school. Still that doesn't negate the fact that a room full of pedagogical strangers came up with one answer to describe their high school experience. This hit home for me. 

When I was just three years old, my mother was called into my pre-school because they were concerned that there was something seriously wrong with me. In fact among other things they thought I might be "retarded." The conclusion was made based on warning signs they observed such as my not paying attention in class.  Fortunately, my mother got a second opinion and found the cause behind my lack of focus wasn't a mental condition, but in short, it was simply that I was bored. 

You can hear the story from my mother here:

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The Plight of the Parent Education Advocate

Guest post by David Bernstein

I’m relatively new to the battle for wholesale educational change, but have fast learned that fighting for a different school model while parenting kids who go to fairly traditional schools requires a tortuous mental balancing act. On the one hand, I’m agitating for change to a badly broken education system, and on the other, I’ve  got to make sure that my own alternative-learning-style kids come out of the school system in one piece.

I love the movie The Matrix, not because it’s such a fabulous piece of art, but because of its powerful message of fighting back against a dehumanizing system that few fully understand.  The film depicts a future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a computer simulation meant to subdue the human population, while their bodies are used as an energy source (a little like factory schools producing kids to fuel an industrial economy that no longer exists). Once the main character, Neo, becomes aware of this manufactured reality, he joins a rebellion against the computers. Neo is constantly forced to move in and out of The Matrix in order to challenge it.

Scene from The Matrix

 

Such is the plight of the parent education advocate, fighting the education matrix from without one moment and engaging it from within the next; making sure our children get their work done one moment, and fighting to make sure the schools bend to their and other children’s needs the next.

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