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>> We crush the joy of learning out of children.

Ken Robinson, who makes my favorite TED talk IMHO, talks about this and how odd our education system is when looked at objectively from the outside in.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea...

His followup, as well as the RSAnimate (you can find them by clicking "Full Bio>>" on the right), are good followups to his ideas.

One of the most powerful quotes, to me, is from the RSAnimate:

    We still educate children in batches. We put them
    through the system by age group. Why do we do that?
    Why is there this assumption that the most important
    thing kids have in common is how old they are? It's
    like the most important thing about them is the date
    of manufacture.

Not only do we crush learning out of children, but creativity suffers as well.

Yes, it also struck me how this really underlined what Ken Robinson says. School is for fabricating industrial zombies that are good on solving prefabricated problems/tests made by someone else higher up in the hiearchy. Not inventive entrepreneurs that finds and solves real problems autonomously without the need of a professor/architect dictating what and how to solve someting.

I went to an elementary school in the U.S. where you were not grouped by age. It was a pilot program, and I can't find a reference to the program being in place almost 20 years later.

The program at the school had 1 large building, which was divided into 4 classroom with some common space in between. For each class period, you went to the class taught at your level. So you could go to the 1st grade math, or you could go to the kindergarten math.

I lived there for 2 years, and basically took 1st grade as kindergarten aged, and 2nd grade as 1st grade aged.

The worst part was moving, and having to "re-integrate" with the system. I had to take the age appropriate 2nd grade. My parents wanted me to skip directly to 3rd grade, but the school rejected that.

What's funny is that you hardly have to "pilot" this model, because it used to be the norm all across America (the one-room school house). The evidence is compelling that it works great, and it costs less too.

Which of course is why it's a political non-starter. The bureaucratic imperative is bigger budgets and centralization.

We had a small private k-8 school in my home town that employed this same model (White Oaks School Monticello, IL). I considered sending both of my children. Sadly, tuition was a little out of reach for us. The school is closed now (they only lasted about 10 years).

In addition to the one-room style of education, they had older students mentor younger one, an instruction model that enabled students to learn at mixed pace (accelerated for subjects the student was "good" at, slower for those they were't), music education that included learning to play an instrument at the kindergarden level, and foreign language at the 1st grade level (language choices included: french, spanish, russian, cantonese and many others)

Edit: Specifically, the school employed the Reggio Emilia approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggio_Emilia_approach)

This is a little OT, but the position of Ken Robinson is at least debatable. I dislike the fun he has with "Shakespeare's English teacher" (whoever that was!) He thinks it's pretty funny that anyone would be so un-self-aware as to want to teach English to young Shakespeare.

Maybe Shakespeare was born with the ability to write the best plays and poetry. But isn't it more likely that his talent started small and grew big, and that the people who helped it grow should be commended and admired?

Creativity is very important, yes; but it feeds on knowledge (creativity is the product of clashing together seemingly unrelated fields of knowledge). You don't have ideas about things you know nothing about, or if you do, they're usually useless.

It only looks odd if you assume it was designed to educate children.

On the other hand, if you assume it's designed to produce reliable, obedient consumers who won't rock the boat, it all makes perfect sense.

You would probably enjoy The Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm).

As a student, I can see the reasons to forbid phones in school (though I believe the advantages outweigh these), but what reasons are you citing in support of camera prohibition?I highly doubt that cameras could pose much of a distraction from classes, and they can't really be used for anything that might be harmful to other students or the school, except by producing hard evidence of something like these lunches, which should be encouraged.

Well, I guess there's a risk of theft.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7036880.stm)

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4907638.stm)

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/4331528...)

I would rather be able to use a camera in places it might get nicked, than keep it at home just in case it might get stolen.

I am not saying I agree of disagree with the use of the law in this case but the problem that is associated with children having cameras at school could be fear of things like this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29017808/

So ban that, instead of cameras at school.

I've had a lot of experience with schools banning a dependency of something rather than the thing itself, allegedly because they feel that gives them more time to prevent it. If they can take a camera away before students start sexting, then the student never will have started sexting. If they wait until the student starts, then it actually happened.

Of course, that means also banning all the legitimate uses of cameras, implying that the school thinks students' primary use of cameras is sexting, which I find obscenely offensive.

Pardon, why does not having the camera at school help here? If they want to they can take the photos at home. In fact, I doubt many such photos would be taken at school even without a camera ban, why risk someone walking in on you?

> I wanted to know how many CCTV cameras they have.

Have you tried a freedom of information request?

well god forbid that uppity cleaver kids might enjoy school it might impact our plan to game the ofstead inspection so that we get the duffers who are on course for a D up to a C