Parents:

You may have noticed that your child’s educational experiences at District #702 may be far different than what you remember. Dual credit, AP, collaboration, cooperative education, and project based learning are just a few of the different experiences and teaching strategies that dominate today’s research on best instructional practices.

Please join me on Tuesday, February 17 OR Thursday, February 19 at 7:00 in the cafetorium as I present a discussion on the educational needs for students in the 21st Century and Tremont High School’s response to meet those needs. The information is relevant to all District parents and residents - not just HS parents. There are so many misconceptions about the issues facing today’s students that we felt it important to discuss the options and methods employed by educators today.

I hope that you’ll find this topic enlightening and engaging and encourage your attendance on one of the nights. More information can be found on our website and in the District newsletter due out this week. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me at school. Thanks for reading; hope to see you next week!

Jeff Hinman Tremont High School Principal

The basic tenants of teaching and education begin with the three R’s of Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmatic. Education can go further than those basics, but those basics are a must before all else. Reading is first because a person who can read can teach themselves almost anything they are able to read. And this should probably go a step further and require the added benefit of wanting to read. We will settle for the ability to read. Next we have Writing. This should be broadened a bit to cover speaking, typing, etc. Basically the ability to transfer information from the mind or emotion to a person, a group of people or to store that information in a manner which makes it legible and sensible for a significant length of time. Last is Arithmetic because it is the foundation of all the practical sciences. Math is the universal language of how the world works. The unspoken basic necessity that lubricates the three R’s is “the ability to learn”. This is the one mission most educators fail at miserably and Tremont is no exception. The ability to learn means to seek answers where the truth may take you —— not to teach a group of people to learn by rote the same concept. Especially in those instances when the concept being taught is false. I could give examples all day long but I will settle for one —— Christopher Columbus not only did not discover the American continent —— he didn’t even land on our shores. And we know that America had been visited long before Chris was born. We not only continue to teach the lie that he “discovered America”, we even continue to celebrate a holiday proclaiming this lie. Tracey and I have been trying hard to teach our boys to THINK —— not to just blindly follow the idiocy taught in the classroom but to seek and understand the truth by using their brains and “the ability to learn”. The classroom teaches them not to think but rather to obey like their peers and the zero tolerance rules of academia. The classic example of “gang” mentality.

There may be a number of different ways to “teach” but there is only one way to learn. To open one’s mind to the subject at hand and to study the information until it makes a coherent and memorable sense. Memory is important else it is worthless. Each individual is ultimately responsible for his or her own learning and ought to understand that at the earliest age. All that “group think” nonsense Jeff is so happy about just doesn’t work unless the group continues together throughout life. In every group there is the best and the worst. In every group the group gets the credit for the worst and the best. We live as individuals throughout life. I can’t count the number of times my children have stayed up late into the night to get good grades for lazy kids they got stuck with in their group. The sloth got the same grade my boys worked hard to get and often the grade would have been better had the sloth done his or her part or, better yet, not been there at all. This is not education. All of this “group think” insanity comes from the same source —— the wish to motivate and encourage learning. The only motivation that actually works is to provide the proper reward for each INDIVIDUAL. Period. It doesn’t matter how smart the people around me are —— or how stupid —— when it comes time for ME to use my education it will be based upon what I learned —— not what they learned.

Our schools are failing to teach most miserably and all the while handing themselves awards for that failure. Teaching to the test is not education. Passing a test is not evidence of USEFUL knowledge. I think the most disheartening aspect of all this is the mind numbing inability of institutionalized teaching to understand their failure and the continued foisting of failed methods upon us in the guise that they know better. Now they are so steeped in their mediocrity they urge us to attend a “discussion” to brag about their failure.

I will be so glad when Aaron and Ben escape this system of stupidity cloaked in pretense and antiquity.