Submission Date

7-18-2024

Document Type

Paper- Restricted to Campus Access

Department

Education

Faculty Mentor

Stephanie Mackler

Comments

Presented during the 26th Annual Summer Fellows Symposium, July 19, 2024 at Ursinus College.

Project Description

It’s no secret that most kids in the US say they don’t like school. Therefore, they think they don’t like learning. However, what’s done in traditional public schools really isn’t learning in its meaningful sense. Instead of allowing kids to follow their natural curiosities, which would enable them to practice meaningful, active learning, schools reward students with grades for memorizing facts and for sitting still in their seats all day. Sure they “learn” that George Washington was the first president, but they also learn that they are defined by a test score. Ultimately, traditional schooling has an awesome way of killing kids’ natural love of learning and overall spark because of the disengaging way it’s designed and, ultimately, the values it promotes. It simply teaches us to care about the wrong things. This disengagement and mixed up values has never been more evident than with the recent outburst of students using AI to do their work for them. Why try to put the work in if it’s not meaningful and you can get a passing grade either way? Why not just cheat and take shortcuts if you’re not engaged. This is obviously a massive problem that must be combatted. This project starts off with theoretical and philosophical critiques about the US public school system, focusing mostly on the structural components that make up what we think of as “education”, to understand how we have gone wrong. The paper then goes onto to look at different, unconventional forms of education to see if any other form approaches learning in a different way. In this part of the project, I focus on Montessori education and compare it to traditional schooling in the structure and conception of learning. Specifically, I contend that with the emphasis on autonomy, creativity, and intrinsic motivation, Montessori engages the curious spirit of the child in a way traditional school hasn’t been able to, making it a valuable weapon against the disengagement that plagues our schools today.

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