Stop limiting our kids!

In the spring of many high school seniors final year, they are still required to ask for permission to go to the bathroom. Yet, only several months after they graduate, we expect them to go out on their own, live with others, and take on a whole host of responsibilities. What changed between the spring of their senior year and college just three months later? I guess three months would be the answer.

For far too long we have placed our kids into little boxes and told them that they need to work within the confines or parameters of a system. Our school system is still set up on the factory-mill model: bells signal changes in shifts, classrooms are often linearly organized in rows, etc. The Horace Mann system of public education made a lot of sense in the early 1900s. We needed workers that had basic numeracy and literacy skills. The elites could go onto college and become the managers and entrepreneurs. Today, however, our economy is increasingly demanding more creativity, problem solving, and hypothetical/abstract thought skills than ever before.

To teach these skills we need to give our kids responsibilities. They need more autonomy over their education. In one of my education psychology classes, we watched a video of a Japanese pre-school. The teacher was inside the classroom, the kids outside were playing. One of the boys began to act out and was misbehaving. A young Japanese girl ran into the classroom and told the teacher. The teacher's response: "Go fix the problem, don't just tell me about it." It was absolutely amazing to witness this. After watching the video I concluded that Japanese pre-school students have more responsibility than the average American high school senior. If true, that is a sad reality.

Kids are going to make mistakes, but this shouldn't stop us from giving them responsibility. In fact, we should reward them with more and more autonomy, instead of simply punishing them for breaking rules, for breaking with conformity.

I know that as a high school student I felt trapped a lot. One quick and easy example will make this clear to the reader. When I was a senior I wanted to take Latin, but I didn't have room in my schedule to do it. I spoke with the Latin teacher who told me I could do all the assignments and take the tests; he would help me. I just had to get it approved by school administrators. You want to know what I was told? They said, "If we let you do this, then other kids will want to do it too."

To summarize:

1) Empower students by rewarding good behavior with increased responsibility.

2) Give students more autonomy over their education. We know from basic motivational psychology that autonomy is a key factor in motivating individuals.