This Could Change Everything About School - For Kids, Teachers and Everybody Else

By Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post | Op-Ed

For years, veteran educator Marion Brady has argued on this blog that no matter the level of a learner's ability, much higher levels of academic performance are possible. The means to that end, he says, is learners' understanding and deliberate use of their "master mental organizer"—the information organizer we all begin developing at birth and routinely use (except in schoolwork) to make sense and communicate.

Acknowledging and accommodating institutional resistance to the idea, he and his brother have written, for middle or high school students, three illustrative, ready-to-use, year-long courses. The first helps learners understand the sense-making process; the other two use world history and American history as vehicles for exercising and elaborating the sense-making process. To encourage examination, criticism, use, and collaboration in their improvement, the three courses are and will remain free for the downloading. Links are at the end of the post.