Building a Perfect School Today - Well, Not Me. My Students. I Have My Perfect School In My Heart

In Philosophy of Education in Action, David W. Nicholson' concludes with the request of early thinkers to design the perfect school given the potential purposes for what schools should be about:

• To learn objective, universal knowledge, or 
• To learn subjective, changing knowledge, 

From there we talked about ideals, essentials, natural development, feelings, imagination, community, action, and individual freedom.

I can't help but reflect on my teaching at the J. Graham Brown School in Louisville, Kentucky as I read the possibilities for education as philosophers have explored them throughout history. I will be curious to what my students design today for the perfect school. It's harder for me, because I taught at the perfect school, but it was also at a time when when the state had close-to-perfect writing expectations, and I had an almost perfect (okay, I'll give him perfect) principal. It was heaven to have a decade in those circumstances.

Then retirements happened. Bad hires occurred. The state began to come after the curriculum. I realized I would die if I stayed. Why? I saw what was coming at kids and teachers and it was heartbreaking. I wouldn't be able to work in a location that didn't have the best interest of kids and teachers in mind.

My perfect school would be inquiry-based, high expectations, super-diverse, and arts-based. Most of what I experienced at the Brown would be part of the school's mission. Some things I might change is to have students more central in maintenance of the school, but also given more voice in curriculum matters. I'd love to have flexibility in curricular design, without the top-down mandate of how it should be taught from district "experts."

I'm holding out on the specifics of my perfect school, because I want to see what the students will bring forward.

But, again. I go back to what I had at the Brown when the Brown was supported to be the Brown. Those were ideal times and I hold them dear to my heart.