Gerver changed around the curriculum at the school entirely— and he did it while working within the guidelines created by national testing. The students at Grange are involved in rigorous classroom work, but all of it comes to them in a way that allows them to understand the practical applications. Math means more when put in the context of running a cash register and estimating profits. Literacy and writing skills gain additional meaning when employed in the service of an original film screenplay. Science comes alive when students use technology to make television shows. Music appreciation gains new purpose when children need to determine playlists for the radio station. Civics makes sense when the council has decisions to make. Gerver regularly brings industry professionals in to help the students with technical training. The BBC is actively involved here.
The children in the upper grades hold the positions with the greatest responsibility (and their curriculum is most heavily weighted toward the Grangeton model), but younger students take an active role nearly as soon as they get to the school. “At no stage are we giving them the message that we’re teaching them to pass an exam,” noted Gerver. “They are learning because they can see how it moves their community of Grangeton onwards— exams are a way of assessing their progress to that end. It’s giving the children a completely different perspective of why they are here.”
Attendance at Grange is well above national averages. Meanwhile, the students perform in exemplary fashion on the national tests. In 2004, 91 percent of them exhibited proficiency in English (a 30‐point increase from 2002, the year before the program started), 87 percent exhibited proficiency in math (a 14‐point increase), and 100 percent exhibited proficiency in science (a 20‐point increase). “The project has had a remarkable impact on attitudes,” said Gerver. “Where pupils were de‐motivated and lackluster, particularly the boys and the potential high achievers, there is now real excitement and commitment. That ethos has fed dramatically into the classroom, where teachers have adapted and developed their teaching and learning to become more experiential and contextual. Children are more confident and as a result more independent. Learning at Grange has a real purpose for the children, and they feel part of something very exciting. The effect has also fed into staff and parents, who have begun to contribute so much to the project’s further development.”
A recent report from Ofsted, the British school inspection agency, noted of Grange, “Pupils love coming to school and talk enthusiastically about the many exciting experiences on offer, tackling these with eagerness, excitement, and confidence.”
In the state of Oklahoma there is a groundbreaking program called A+ Schools that builds on a tremendously successful program that began in North Carolina. This program, now in use in more than forty schools across Oklahoma, emphasizes the arts as a way of teaching a wide variety of disciplines within the curriculum. Students might write rap songs to help them understand the salient themes in works of literature. They might use collages of different sizes to allow them to see the practical uses of math. Dramatic presentations might characterize key moments in history, while dance movements make essential points about science. Several of the schools hold monthly “informances” that combine live performance with academic detail.
A+ Schools encourage teachers to use such learning tools such as mapping, thematic webbing (establishing connections between various subject areas), the development of essential questions, the creation and use of interdisciplinary thematic units, and cross‐curricular integration. They build the curriculum around experiential learning. They use enriched assessment tools to help students maintain an ongoing grasp of how they are doing. They encourage collaboration between teachers of different disciplines, between students, and between the school and the community. They build an infrastructure that supports the program and its distinctive way of dealing with state‐mandated curriculum. And they foster a climate where students and teachers can feel excited about the work they are doing.
The schools in the A+ program cut across wide demographic groups. There are urban schools and rural schools, large schools and small, schools in affluent areas and those in economically challenged ones. Consistently, though, the A+ schools show marked improvement on standardized tests and often exceed the test scores of schools with similar demographics that do not use the A+ program. One A+ school, Linwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City, has twice won the Oklahoma Title I Academic Achievement Award. In 2006, the school was one of only five in the country to receive the Excellence in Education Award from the National Center for Urban School Transformation.
Elemental Education
The fundamental theme of this book is that we urgently need to make fuller use of our own natural resources. This is essential for our well‐being and for the health of our communities. Education is supposed to be the process that develops all resources. For all the reasons I have set out, too often it is not. Many of the people I’ve talked about in this book say that they went through the whole of their education without really discovering their true talents. It is no exaggeration to say that many of them did not discover their real abilities until after they left school—until they had recovered from their education. As I said at the outset, I don’t believe that teachers are causing this problem. It’s a systemic problem in the nature of our education systems. In fact, the real challenges for education will only be met by empowering passionate and creative teachers and by firing up the imaginations and motivations of the students.
The core ideas and principles of the Element have implications for each of the main areas of education. The curriculum of education for the twenty‐first century must be transformed radically. I have described intelligence as being diverse, dynamic, and distinct. Here is what it means for education. First, we need to eliminate the existing hierarchy of subjects. Elevating some disciplines over others only reinforces outmoded assumptions of industrialism and offends the principle of diversity. Too many students pass through education and have their natural talents marginalized or ignored. The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages, and math all have equal and central contributions to make to a student’s education.
Second, we need to question the entire idea of “subjects.” For generations, we have promoted the idea that the arts, the sciences, the humanities, and the rest are categorically different from each other. The truth is that they have much in common. There is great skill and objectivity in the arts, just as there is passion and intuition at the heart of science. The idea of separate subjects that have nothing in common offends the principle of dynamism.
School systems should base their curriculum not on the idea of separate subjects, but on the much more fertile idea of disciplines. Math, for example, isn’t just a set of information to be learned but a complex pattern of ideas, practical skills, and concepts. It is a discipline—or rather a set of disciplines. So too are drama, art, technology, and so on. The idea of disciplines makes possible a fluid and dynamic curriculum that is interdisciplinary.
Third, the curriculum should be personalized. Learning happens in the minds and souls of individuals—not in the databases of multiple‐choice tests. I doubt there are many children who leap out of bed in the morning wondering what they can do to raise the reading score for their state. Learning is a personal process, especially if we are interested in moving people toward the Element. The current processes of education do not take account of individual learning styles and talents. In that way, they offend the principle of distinctiveness.