Blogs are the Devil

yesterday i went to jesse remington high school to take a look at their Humanities program. my principal would like to see us move in that sort of direction - more of the classical model. however, the Humanities program was not what i was really impressed by. their school provides something called "project based learning," which is basically just a fancy way of saying that the first half of their day are normal classes and the second half consists of projects only. this quarter they have three projects running: pottery, computer programming, and timber framing.

the timber framing project lasts all year. they start at the beginning of the year planning it all out using some sort of CAD (Computer Aided Design) program and they work on it for a while until everything is ready to go. then the students in that project take a few days off school and go and put it up on whatever site it was designed for. by the time these kids get out of the school, they could build a barn by themselves. one of the kids was currently timber framing himself a bed.

here are a few of the barns they've built:





in my mind the two best educational models are either the classical model, which is built on the 7 liberal arts, or the practical model, which is more like an apprenticeship. in the classical model, learning is pursued for its own sake without a particular skill in view. the practical model seeks to provide students with a particular vocational skill(s). it seems to me that the current american model is somewhere in the middle of those two without the real benefit of either. our students cannot really demonstrate proficiency in the liberal arts nor do they have any practical skills in which to beautify the world.

don't you ever wish that you could go back and re-do your education?