Bruce Deitrick Price
Are you concerned about the quality of our public schools?
AlphaAcademy: a free blueprint
FacebookTwitter
By Bruce Deitrick Price
August 6, 2022

(Background: When a local group wanted to start a new school some years back, they asked me to write a proposal. Here is that proposal, which anyone may use for ideas and inspiration.)

A new private school is coming to your neighborhood. You can be involved with the school in several ways—parent of a student, investor, donor, volunteer, and community support. To create something we can all be proud of, that's the goal.

AlphaAcademy serves boys and girls in Grades K-9. The overarching concern is preparing students for success throughout life. The school favors a traditional curriculum and classical methods but energized by an important modern concept: education should be fun.

K-12 education is viewed as a systematic process. Children must master the basics, which in turn become the foundation for wider, deeper study. Finally all students can become fully educated citizens.

The school places great value on safety and serenity. The Greek concept of striving for excellence in all things (Arête) is an inspiration.

The central problem in American K-12 is that experts demoted academic achievement in order to pursue social engineering. Public schools are often handicapped by inferior methods such as Common Core, Constructivism, Sight-words, and a casual acceptance of mediocrity. Behold the “dumbing down of America.”

The proper goal of a school system is to lift every child to each one’s potential. Today, our country is sub-educating millions of children, even though we can easily teach 99% of children to read, do arithmetic, find Antarctica on a globe, and understand all those thousands of elementary things that define our civilization.

School is not only about learning. It's also about character. We encourage honesty, honor, and self-discipline. Parents are expected to be involved with their child’s development and with the life of the school generally.

Please call for more information….

—————————————————————

ADDENDUM: This proposal is simply an amalgam of my top dozen favorite ideas. The main thing is to reflect on what is emphatically NOT in this proposal: no sight words; no common core anything; no cooperative learning; no constructivism; no learning styles; no social emotive learning; no CRT; no hostility to phonics; no contempt for direct instruction; and no opposition to memorization and the acquisition of fundamental knowledge. The Education Establishment plays a destructive game where they concoct bad ideas and pull everybody into discussing the merits of the bad ideas. Warning: there are no merits. The road to improvement is to eliminate entirely all the bad ideas that have been introduced in the last 75 years. Get back to what has always worked. You will find these traditional ideals throughout the best private schools.

© Bruce Deitrick Price

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)

Click to enlarge

Bruce Deitrick Price

Bruce Deitrick Price is the author of six books, an artist, a poet, and an education reformer. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia, earned Honors in English Literature from Princeton, served two years in the Army, and then lived many years in Manhattan.

Price explains educational theories and methods on his ed site Improve-Education.org (founded in 2005; now being rebuilt). He has 400 education articles and videos on the Internet. More forcefully than most, Price argues that the public schools are mediocre because our Education Establishment wants them that way. His relevant book is Saving K-12

Subscribe

Receive future articles by Bruce Deitrick Price: Click here

More by this author

 

Stephen Stone
HAPPY EASTER: A message to all who love our country and want to help save it

Stephen Stone
The most egregious lies Evan McMullin and the media have told about Sen. Mike Lee

Siena Hoefling
Protect the Children: Update with VIDEO

Stephen Stone
FLASHBACK to 2020: Dems' fake claim that Trump and Utah congressional hopeful Burgess Owens want 'renewed nuclear testing' blows up when examined

Victor Sharpe
May God help us all

Jerry Newcombe
That pesky First Amendment

Michael Bresciani
Bring back a trusted, America-loving patriot with a proven record, or drink cackling Kamala’s Kool Aid and die

Curtis Dahlgren
Will there be better times, or what? Signs of hope

Cliff Kincaid
Holocaust survivor warns of world war

Tom DeWeese
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are beginning to crumble – none too soon

Cherie Zaslawsky
Kopy Kat Kamala

Marsha West
Who are the Emergent Church leaders and where are they now?

Tom DeWeese
What city planners are really planning and how to challenge it

Robert Meyer
Abortion on demand: Sacrament of the Democratic Party

Joan Swirsky
Suicidal Jews

Jerry Newcombe
A nation in need of true revival
  More columns

Cartoons


Click for full cartoon
More cartoons

Columnists

Matt C. Abbott
Chris Adamo
Russ J. Alan
Bonnie Alba
Chuck Baldwin
Kevin J. Banet
J. Matt Barber
Fr. Tom Bartolomeo
. . .
[See more]

Sister sites