MADELINE HUNTER

I trained at University Elementary School in the ‘50s, just before embarking on my 30-year educational career. I watched education follow the edicts of such top educators as Corinne Seeds, Jerome Bruner, B. F. Skinner, Benjamin Bloom and others. If one observes the classroom today, it is obvious we have failed miserably in trying to find a model to serve all children. Education isn’t a recipe; it isn’t a series of steps, and it certainly isn’t a formula. Education is a process, a lifetime endeavor, encouraged by teachers who “go their own way” and who are sensitive to the diverse needs of individual learners. Children enter school as perceptive human beings. Their ability to think critically is deadened forever as soon as they are forced to learn through a model, a pat approach to methodology. Is it any wonder that most young people disdain school, learning better on the outside through friends, personal experiences and the media?

We must abandon rigidity and throw out all forms of methodology that indoctrinate. To do less is to shortchange every young person in the United States.

MAXINE ASHER

Van Nuys