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Posts Tagged ‘learning’

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Square Kids, Round Desks

In Children and Family, Education, Health, Opinion on February 22, 2026 at 6:11 am

Deer In Headlines

By Gery Deer

For decades, we have told ourselves a comforting story about education. If we standardize it, measure it, test it, rank it, and repeat it often enough, we will somehow produce better students and, by extension, better adults. It sounds reasonable. It feels orderly. It also happens to be deeply flawed.

If the system worked as advertised, we would be surrounded by confident graduates who understand their strengths, know how they learn, and are excited to apply their talents to the world. Instead, many students leave school disengaged, uncertain, and convinced they are “bad at learning,” when the real problem is that learning was never designed with them in mind.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching the A, B, C’s and started teaching to a test. Those tests promise clarity and accountability, but their ability to predict a student’s future success is questionable at best. Believing a standardized exam can forecast a child’s career potential is like believing the tea leaves at the bottom of your cup can tell you who will win the next Super Bowl. The charts look official. The conclusions feel authoritative. The accuracy is another matter entirely.

What these measurements consistently ignore is the single most important factor in learning: individuality. Every student arrives with a unique mix of curiosity, aptitude, temperament, and interest. Some think spatially. Some think musically. Some learn best by doing, failing, and doing again. Others need time, reflection, and quiet focus. These differences are not inconveniences. They are early indicators of where a student might thrive.

This is why education models that emphasize science, technology, engineering, arts, and math point in the right direction. When done well, they recognize that creativity and logic coexist, that problem-solving is rarely linear, and that imagination is not the enemy of rigor. Hands-on experimentation, design challenges, and interdisciplinary projects allow students to see relevance in what they are learning, not just requirements.

Still, even these programs can fall into the same trap if they are forced into rigid pacing guides and uniform assessments. When curiosity is scheduled and creativity is graded into submission, engagement disappears. Students become compliant rather than curious, efficient rather than inventive.

Traditional public school systems were not designed around individual learning styles. They were built for efficiency and uniform outcomes. That made sense in an industrial era that valued standardization. It makes far less sense in a world that rewards adaptability, specialization, and original thinking. We continue asking students to sit still, move together, and absorb information the same way, then wonder why so many tune out.

There are alternatives, and they are no longer fringe ideas. Some learning environments emphasize individualized study plans that allow students to move at their own pace, diving deeper into subjects that capture their interest. Others use project-based education, where students learn math, science, communication, and critical thinking by solving real problems and building tangible outcomes. In these settings, a student’s natural curiosity is not a distraction; it is the engine.

Non-traditional environments often replace rows of desks with collaborative spaces, mentorship with lectures, and progress portfolios with letter grades. Students learn how to manage time, pursue questions, and reflect on their work. They fail safely, revise often, and understand why their learning matters. These experiences mirror the real world far more closely than memorization ever could.

The goal is not to eliminate traditional schools or abandon standards. The goal is to expand the definition of what school can be. Public education should adapt by offering flexible pathways alongside conventional ones, giving families and students real options instead of one-size-fits-all solutions.

When we stop forcing square kids into round desks and start honoring natural gifts, education becomes preparation instead of endurance. That shift does not weaken schools. It strengthens students. And that is the outcome worth measuring.

Adapting these options requires courage, policy support, and a willingness to trust educators and students alike. It means valuing progress over uniformity and recognizing that success can look different without being lesser. When schools evolve to meet students where they are, learning stops being something done to them and becomes something they actively claim as their own. That shift benefits communities, employers, families, and democracy itself long term.

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Literacy’s Silver Bullet

In Books, Children and Family, Economy, Education, National News, Opinion, Print Media, Technology, Uncategorized on October 19, 2024 at 10:35 am

Deer In Headlines II

By Gery Deer

I was a staff writer and later an editor for my college newspaper. During that time, I learned the single, most important lesson from all my years of education. Our administration-appointed supervisor once told me, “Whatever else you learn as you go through your college career,” she said, “learn to write and speak well. If you have that, you’ll be able to do anything.” She was right.

My mother also shared those views, though she had a head start by teaching me to read early. On the other hand, I would depend on my communication skills to pave my way to a multi-faceted career. She was determined to give me every possible advantage, mostly because she didn’t get them.

Literacy is one of the most critical indicators of a strong society. It reduces poverty, bigotry, ignorance, and social and professional inequality. It shouldn’t be limited to the academically gifted. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn effective communication.

Just because you don’t have an interest or aptitude for high academia, that doesn’t mean literacy is less important. I feel fortunate that I had the best of both worlds. I’ve always been an avid reader and writer and a lifelong student of all the sciences. But I also learned to rebuild a car engine, install a new water heater in my house, or change a faulty electrical outlet.

Every one of those tasks requires the ability to learn, understand, follow instructions, and cope with the unexpected. All of my “book learning” occurred while surrounded by some of the best tradespeople in the world. Even better, they were all teachers. One thing that has changed over the years is how literacy is emphasized in our public and private schools.

Do you remember when kids used to get in trouble for reading comic books at school? I will say “we” instead of “they” because I did this too. We put comic books inside large textbooks so we could read during class. From the teacher’s perspective, we seemed engrossed in our educational process. Instead, we were engaged in the exploits of Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man.

Some argued that even reading comic books was good for us because at least we were reading. But it was more than that. Comic books are a good literacy metaphor because they aren’t just about words, grammar, and sentence structure.

For our society to consider itself truly literate, we must understand language, not just the written word but communication. We also need to understand art, storytelling, and critical thinking. In an ironic twist, one way to do all that is by reading comic books. Many of the Batman stories from the 1930s and 40s are loaded with material you only find in today’s best crime novels by authors like Michael Connolly, James Patterson, and David Baldacci.

Unfortunately, some use the comic book analogy to justify spending hours on social media. That’s not the same thing. Reading is calming, focuses our minds, and relaxes our bodies. If anything, social media has dumbed us down and created an entire society nearly paralyzed by anxiety and inferiority. Scrolling doesn’t count as reading.

Still, literacy doesn’t require you to wade through “War and Peace,” “Catcher in the Rye,” or any other long-winded literary work. I supplemented my education by reading everything I could get my hands on. Whatever I had an interest in, I had books about it, encyclopedias, or topic-specific material – there was no internet back then. Now, resources are nearly endless, provided you learn the difference between credible and non-credible sources. 

Advanced education isn’t required either. Truth be told, much of what I do for a living was self-taught – thanks to my early introduction to books. Self-education is mainly frowned upon in today’s society. I find it ironic that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others who wrote some of the most important documents in history would be unemployable by today’s arbitrary and unfounded standards.

My point is that American culture currently reads at a U.S. 5th-grade level. That’s unfortunate, ridiculous, and easily corrected. We must eliminate the stigmas of functional illiteracy, focus more on reading and writing in our schools, and spend more time with books than cell phones.