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Baking Cakes. Silberman's ideal of what schools should be doing is hard to fault: he is convinced that they can help "create and maintain a humane society" by making their first priority the production of "sensitive, autonomous, thinking, humane individuals." In a glowing chapter, he reports that his ideal is already close to reality in about half the primary schools in England, where orthodoxy is giving way to highly informal "open" classrooms. At first glance, they look like chaotic kindergartens: children move around talking; rows of desks are replaced by "workshop areas" arranged throughout the room...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Education: Joyless, Mindless Schools | 11/2/1970 | See Source »

...children get any work accomplished if they do nothing but play all day?" one U.S. principal asked. Silberman points out that well beyond first grade "play is a child's work"-an insight that draws, as does the entire informal approach, on the experience of Italian Educator Maria Montessori and the research of Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget. Though academic structure is outwardly minimal in such informal schooling, says Silberman, it becomes apparent to children as they explore the books and materials that knowing adults select for them. Moreover, teachers freed from lockstep group discipline can observe individual children more...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Education: Joyless, Mindless Schools | 11/2/1970 | See Source »

...date, Britain's informally educated children have scored as well on most standard tests as those in traditional classrooms. Best of all, says Silberman, eager kids begin to show up for school early-and instead of running wild, they avoid many of the discipline problems that can drain up to 75% of a teacher's time. One of Silberman's most interesting discoveries is that techniques similar to the British approach have been spreading quietly in U.S. public schools. In the past three years, varieties of it have worked well in at least 28 school districts...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Education: Joyless, Mindless Schools | 11/2/1970 | See Source »

...anyone over 40, informal education strongly resembles John Dewey's ideas-the "progressive" education that excited Americans in the 1920s and angered them in the 1950s. The trouble with progressivism, Silberman admits, was that too often it degenerated into shoddiness, partly because few teachers were properly trained to carry it out. For that reason, Silberman joins a host of previous school critics in urging a drastic upgrading in the training of U.S. teachers...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Education: Joyless, Mindless Schools | 11/2/1970 | See Source »

Beyond all that, Silberman's admirable ideas for reform collide with current national frustration at the increasing cost of schools and the decreasing discipline in classrooms. According to a recent Gallup poll, most U.S. adults think that their community's schools are not strict enough-and that curriculums need no substantial change. Nonetheless, Silberman's vivid examples of educational failings and his catalogue of existing alternatives will help produce pockets of progress and serve as a powerful agenda for those who still believe that the rest of the nation's schools can and must improve...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Education: Joyless, Mindless Schools | 11/2/1970 | See Source »

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