“Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself”

Should teachers make more or less money based on the performance of their students? If so, how would we objectively measure something as subjective as performance? Some would say that standardized test scores are the key metric to base teachers’ pay off of. But honestly, how can we live with the thought that academic achievement boils down to a pile of answers on a sheet of paper? Isn’t the entire goal of academics to open minds and spark creativity? Then why is the school system so overly obsessed with teaching for the test and frankly, for testing at all? What this accomplishes is nothing more than the closing of young minds and the construction of aptly-named learning disorders for a myraid of reasons.

As one of the brightest minds in history once said, “”What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.” In my opinion, George Bernard Shaw was correct in the observation that knowledge cannot be forced upon us, but rather we must seek it at our own pace, in our own way. How then can one come to enjoy the passionate pursuit of knowledge? This at first seems like a tough question to answer, but we need only return to our earliest years.

Have you ever seen the curiosity of a young child who endlessly questions those around him or her? Surely you’re familiar with the endless nagging of children who can ask an infinite loop of “why” questions such as “why is the sky blue? why is it raining? why can’t I eat ice cream for dinner?” and on and on. This sense of curiosity is somehow lost somewhere between elementary and middle school. Children are told that they cannot and should not be so inquisitive. They are labeled as foolish for asking “stupid questions” and they socialize among each other along the lines of what is cool (with asking questions being low on the list of coolness).

What I am getting at here is that if we ever want to fix our broken indoctrination “education” system, we need to simply let children be children and embrace their curiosity. The pedagogy of individuals such as John Holt and John Taylor Gatto are the ideal places to start in exploring how best to magnify and direct curiosity and the acquisition of knowledge. Homeschooling, or more specifically, unschooling is an ideal method for accomplishing this. I was unschooled from 4th grade onward and I’m very proud of that.

Will it work for everyone in every situation? No, of course not. I was blessed with two great parents who focused on giving me the resources I needed to learn from the world around me. This brings us to the other part of the equation: education begins at home. That is where we should be focusing our energy first and foremost, because I guarantee you that even in the worst of the worst school districts, the children with a sound and secure family backing are going to outperform on average those children in which this is nonexistent.

Having digressed slightly from the original topic, let me conclude by saying that performance-based compensation for teachers will work if implemented correctly. By that I mean that it should emphasize such factors as what parents think about their child’s teacher, how active their child is in after-school activities, how well the student can articulate what he or she likes about the particular class, their take-home portfolio, the ability of the teacher (as rated by a professional educator in-class) and finally test scores. Yes, test scores are on the list, but they should be least important due to their subjective nature.

The worst thing we can do to students is quantify them and attach the stigma of a letter or a number grade to them. That type of behavior is at the exact opposite end of the spectrum of learning and that would only lead to more drones vying for unthinking jobs in an ever changing world.

As someone who was homeschooled (or unschooled) from the fourth grade and up, I can personally relate to Bach’s message; that if learning is the goal, our best teacher is our own curiosity and the classroom is the world all around us.