CHARTER SCHOOLS: ARE THEY REALLY THE SOLUTION?
DARIA BREZINSKI, PH.D.
The Legislature in Virginia, like other states, is again revisiting the issue of Charter schools. The likely hood of this succeeding is minimal. Nothing is going to change in America until the laws are changed- standards of excellence, testing for success, and mandatory attendance, to name a few. Nothing is going to change as long as we continue to educate teachers and administrators with the same frame of reference. Charter schools will become like all innovative ideas that have come to our shores in the last decade, like Waldorf and Montessori schools, leveled to the playing field of public schools.
In order to create a new paradigm (a paradigm is a new way at looking at something) in education, many things must change in America. Children need to be seen from a new perspective. Children are born whole, perfect and holy. Everyone is a born a genius in some respect or another. It is our perception that keeps children held back from achieving their true nature and their purpose in life. Adults today are spending a great deal of money and time trying to recapture lost childhood and genius, which is reflected in the volume of self-help books. We owe it to our children to begin life with the knowledge of who they really are and what they are capable of achieving- everything and anything!
Children are born perfect, and their perfection is relative. All of the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and cultural/environmental challenges in life are purposeful in the natural design for the full development of the human being encapsulated in the body. Everyone is born with a perfect blueprint. It is up to each to find out how the blueprint is designed to achieve maximum human potential.
And NO ONE can know anyone else’s blueprint. Yet, our schools are designed thinking that everyone must follow the blueprint designated by educators, curriculum companies and legislators. Here is a fable that best exemplifies a child’s blueprint:
‘Once upon a time, the animals decided they must do something to meet the problems of the New World. They adopted a curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying and, to make it easier to administer, all of the animals took all the subjects.
The duck was an excellent student in swimming, better in fact, than the instructor, and made passing grades in flying, but he did poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming to practice running.
This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school, so nobody worried about that except duck.
The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but had a nervous breakdown because of so much makeup work in swimming.
The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up, instead of from the treetop down. He also developed Charlie horses from overexertion and then got “C” in climbing and “D” in running.
The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In climbing class, he beat all others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there.
At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian. (Author unknown)
Understanding the development of the brain- right and left hemispheres as well as the triume brain in the forebrain (a recent development in evolution) will assist in understanding the true potential of a child at birth. Thoughts and intelligence of past, present and future are housed in these three parts. It is true that we have not learned to access our total intelligence because prior to this time, we have not understood its nature. Unconsciously, every individual has accessed part of this knowledge on a daily basis. For example, when you are driving along a highway, you can notice the street signs and billboards, have a conversation with riders, listen to the radio, note your body heat, and digest food all at the same time. This is part of understanding the wholeness factor.
Education has been a bits and pieces mentality. In science class, after dissecting a frog, it is impossible to put it back into its original functioning state. The same holds true with human intelligence. If you have learned about the world from a place of parts, it is difficult to conceive of the whole. Children are born thinking whole: they are full of life and close to God. It is the challenge of education to enable children to continue to see the world in this way.
. When we can learn to see children differently, from a whole new perspective, then the antiquated Prussian Model from the era of Catherine the Great can be replaced by a more humane, whole approach to educating children. Children are curious, intelligent and inquisitive by nature. We need to have faith in their process and genius. It is time for the miracle to begin. Children will not have to wait until they are thirty or forty to find out who they are or who they can be. The environment for whole child development can begin at and before birth. We owe it to our children to prepare them for a future that goes beyond the scope of present day awareness.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Buckminster Fuller, in Synergistics, states that one plus one equals five. This would look like the minute pieces of a wristwatch laid out on the table. The sum of the pieces put together is more than the individual objects. It creates something entirely new- telling time. Telling time does not appear to be any resemblance to the objects and items that make up the watch. When teaching children in wholeness, a child achieves more than its individual parts of body, mind, spirit, emotion and culture. Consciousness and transcendence or the leap in the space-time continuum is the next step in intelligence.
Many well-meaning individuals and groups have tried to establish new modes of educating the young. There are the democratic schools, the free schools, home schooling and more. The problem with these innovations is that the adults who are guiding the children are still in a mindset of “parts vs. whole”. Most of the innovators resort to alternative forms out of the anger and frustration with the existing order. While innovation is commendable, this reactionary type of approach operates on negativity. In order to eliminate that dilemma and before incorporating a new paradigm, a program to retrain educators is needed and is being developed at Westbrook University in Aztec, New Mexico with a masters/Ph.D. program, “Alternatives To Education”. Those enrolled in the program will be trained to assist the children of the future from a new point of reference- wholeness.
This is the challenge for the 21st Century. Our children are entitled to their heritage- reaching to the highest form of evolution. They deserve to be revered, honored and loved throughout that exploration. Our model today does not encourage this exploration. While the Pony Express was basking in its profits and finding ways to increase business by investing more money in expansion, cable lines were being laid across the desert for the wireless. In two years, the Pony Express went bankrupt and gave way to the telephone. Today, while politicians and bureaucrats are investing money and time into a dinosaur, some of us are traveling the country spreading the cable lines that take the children of tomorrow past the obsolescence of today!
DARIA BREZINSKI, Ph.D.