Education

don't necessarily agree with the guy. I am seeing a lot of buzz words like "project based learning" and "core competencies" and blah blah blah.

The best school system in the world is in Finland. Finland did something very basic. They looked at the neurological development of children and they designed their curriculum based on what children best learn at what ages.

Our system works at cross purposes to normal neurological development, forcing children to do things long before their brains are ready for them. Then we punish the kids because they can't do those things. This causes frustration and inability in the early grades that is never really made up in the later grades.

In Finland school is for play and exploration until about age 7. There is no testing until about grade 7. There is no torture of 5 year olds by making them sit at a desk for 6 hours a day, so the children learn self-regulation naturally and the incidence of ADHD is much lower. There is no billion dollar industry that tries to put every square peg into a round hole.

So start there. Do what the brain is ready for when the brain is ready for it. And certainly get rid of common core. Those who are smarter or those who are slower are punished by common core.

I could go on, but that is where we should begin.

And for those who are going to say "But Finland is very homogenous and doesn't have our problems," I will say that Norway, which is almost as homogenous, has a curriculum more like ours. The Finns blow the Norwegians out of the water academically.