My Ideal School—Structure

I'm just going to make an outline here, a list as much as anything.

K-4 & 5: Classical learning, with a Montessori-style emphasis on practical life skills. Half-day seems sufficient to me, though I know that the working schedules of parents may not make it as appealing as full-day.

1st through 3rd/5th: Grammar Stage, though the material is presented according to level of ability.

Dialectic: Middle School

Rhetoric: High School

Ideally?

Lunch is a sit-down affair in which children do learn to use a napkin (preferably a cloth one) AND good table manners. As an example, I offer you this interesting link to the web site of a woman who, not so long ago, moved to France and is sharing her experience by comparing the typical French school menu to the typical American school menu: brightonyourhealth

Of course, it is impossible to bring this about in a school with many hundreds of children, so . . .

Ideally?

Schools should be small and run K-4 through 12th. In my experience, in smaller schools where the grades run the gamut, there is better social adjustment among all the students. The younger ones look to the older ones for good examples of how to behave, while the older ones benefit from the knowledge that the younger ones do look up to them. It's a circle-of-life kind of thing. The way our public system currently works in the U.S. is that it breaks that circle, leaving a lot of loose ends, and don't even get me started on the "Lord of the Flies" known as middle school.

Middle schoolers, perhaps more than anyone else, need the example, the attention, and positive interaction with those a little bit older than themselves. I would go so far as to say that they actually crave it. They want the chance to express themselves and to be validated when appropriate, and perhaps "smacked down" (resepectfully, of course) when they need it.

I believe that part of the reason that our children are remaining children so long (well into their twenties, according to "experts") is that the "socialization" that is occurring in the public school system is not helpful, but is, in fact, damaging to many as they develop from children to young adults. Babies, after all, graduate from milk to solid foods at the right age, losing their milk teeth and gaining adult teeth to better handle the solids. Can you imagine a ten year-old who has never had anything but milk to drink his entire life? Wouldn't you expect there to be some deleterious physical consequence as a result?

Ideally?

Now, this is a real kicker. It is very hard to make happen, whether public or private school is in question.

The school should be near to the home of the child. Impossible I know. But it would be ideal, in my opinion. Otherwise, everyone loses valuable time to the commute, and isn't time one of our greatest luxuries? I remember having time to just be bored as a child, and like nap time, I wish I could have bottled that time and saved it for later. sigh.

Being able to walk (safely) to school would provide time for children and parents to talk (or comfortably say nothing), to breathe deeply, to enjoy the weather (or appreciate the indoors!), and to notice the natural world, which is so easy to overlook and take for granted when, as a Ugandan Orthodox priest once said, we "move from our little box that we call home, to our little box on wheels, to another little box that we call school or work." He was right. Still is.

'Nuff for now.