Six years ago, I was like most mothers today. We planned on sending our oldest daughter to a traditional school, as we had attended before, and our parents before us. In anticipation of her entering school, we had worked with her to establish a solid educational foundation. On her first day of class, we were somewhat surprised to witness the classroom remained unchanged from the memories of our own kindergarten classroom. Despite the immense advances in technology, and the unprecedented amount of resources provided to these schools, no technology was integrated. While we understand that kindergarten students want and need time to play, create, and explore, and they should be allowed this time, some acknowledgement of technology is surely necessary in this day. Determined to give traditional school a fair assessment, we continued. It was not until after she had been in attendance for several months that the deficiencies of this type of education became obvious. Though she excelled in this traditional educational format, the system was geared to restrict her ability to learn, not allowing for students to learn at a faster pace than their peers. As a reward, or perhaps a punishment, of our eldest daughter being eager to learn, she was asked to mentor other children in the class, at the age of 5. Instead of fostering a challenging learning environment, this traditional education approach seems to provide a one-size-fits-all, group learning structure. This may be an adequate learning practice for many children, but children on either end of the spectrum, be it above or below normal, are not allowed to reach their full potential. I would argue that even children who learn well under a traditional educational approach are not challenged to reach their full potential, either.
After several months in this learning environment, we evaluated her progress. Despite the fact that we were informed by her teacher that she was one of the more advanced students in the class, we were surprised to learn that she had regressed in many areas and not advanced past the foundation we had provided. We found this to be very disturbing. Determined to provide a better education for our children, we removed her from the traditional school system and embarked on an educational experiment.
