Bringing students into learning

Nat Hentoff, WND - At Pittsfield Middle High School in southeastern New Hampshire, the students are individually and actively involved in their own learning. This enlivening approach to education, which I’ve been advocating for years, is beginning in an evolving number of schools around the country.

Here, Emily Richmond of the Hechinger Report, an education news site, writes, “student-led discussions, small-group work and individual projects dominate” As Noah Manteau, a senior at Pittsfield, tells Richmond: “There used to be a lot more of teachers talking at you – it didn’t matter if you were ready to move on. When the teacher was done with the topic that was it. This is so much better.”

Richmond adds: “Educators, researchers and policymakers at the state and national level are keeping close tabs on Pittsfield, which has become an incubator for a critical experiment in school reform. The goal: a stronger connection between academic learning and the kind of real-world experience that advocates say can translate into postsecondary success.”...

For years, educational reformers have too often just glibly emphasized “critical thinking” as a key goal of education. But students who are mainly talked at by teachers and then graded by collective standardized tests don’t get to do much critical thinking in school...

“Pittsfield’s superintendent, John Freeman, is among the first to acknowledge that adopting student-centered learning was a bold move. Student performance on statewide assessments has long been uneven, and teachers and administrators know there is still significant work to be done.

“But test scores are just one indicator, and based on multiple other measures, including higher graduation and college-going rates, Freeman feels confident that student-centered learning is moving Pittsfield in the right direction.”...

Superintendent Freeman tells Richmond: “People in our community wanted schools to be places where students’ passions and interests were recognized, and their deficits and weaknesses addressed.”