I have often thought that children who grew up in a one-room schoolhouse had a richer education and grew to be adults more ready, willing and able to set goals and take on new challenges at any stage in life, but I have no data to back that up. I have often wondered if we could recreate that in a school setting where all classrooms are one room schoolhouses. At first blush I might balk at 20 different lesson plans, but then again the students themselves would have more responsibility for their own learning, and would be motivated to do so. I doubt seriously that the model of having all students in a classroom the same age has to do with socialization; it just seems to be a factory model of convenience that we limp along with. Ironically, I have never been able to have a classroom that matched the experience I saw that inspired me to be a teacher in the first place. It may seem strange to hear from a teacher, but the classroom as commonly configured, cannot, by its nature, play a very large role in the education of a child. Yet we place on it the burden of the majority, if not entirety, of a child's learning.
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