Durham Pathfinder Free-School: Self-Directed Learning

https://indyweek.com/news/longform/durham-pathfinder-community-school-free-school-self-directed-learning/

by jadell • 7 years ago

43 19 7 years ago

piokoch• 7 years ago

I am really interested in the new schooling trends although I don't find "traditional school" as something intrinsically bad (typically, everything depends on people who work at school and parents being ready to cooperate with teachers and with each other). So I made an effort to go through that long elaboration and here is my 2 cents.

The claim that current school system "is based on a system that was developed over a hundred years ago to prepare people to be Prussian soldiers" sounds strange. Maybe that was the case in Prussia, but there is quite a lot of countries that didn't have particular reason to follow the Prussian way of education.

Another important thing. This school is not a school. "Pathfinder isn’t actually a school. It’s not accredited and doesn’t have a state license". Legally kids that attend this school are homeschooled so all the responsibility for passing legally required tests lays on their parents. It is hard to say how much work parents has to put into actual pupils preparation and what are results as compared to traditional schools.

This schools is also a private, paid school. The price and ability to pre-selects (recruit) kids automatically filers out many "problematic" kids. Public school system does not have such luxury, they need a system that will provide some way of dealing also with kids having various background (including aggressive, non-cooperating kids with parents with the same attitude).

It is easy to have "open" education and "free" collaboration without any "Prussian discipline" when all kids are smart and well behaving and you have parents that take active part in the education process.

"Consider that every county in America has standing armies of professionals paid to teach children how to read. Then consider that Sudbury Valley has no reading instruction whatsoever, yet its graduates all leave campus perfectly literate." The question is what would happen if they got kids with dyslexia, serious problems with concentration, luck of support at home, etc. Wouldn't they need someone from that "army of professionals" to actually figure out how to deal with such kid?

Next it seems this kind of schools fail often "Wilder says. Sudbury schools have a high failure rate. So, too, did the previous generation of free schools that arose in the sixties and seventies, characterized by their “brief life spans and the often loosely defined nature of their educational practices,” as one study put it.".

Apparently something is not working that well, although their approach sounds very cool and people behind that particular schools seems to be passionate about what they are doing.

EL_Loco• 7 years ago

Public school system does not have such luxury

This is a very important point. Private schools can simple expell troublesome students. At the public school one of my kids goes to, there's a 10 year old who sometimes gets very agressive and lunges at teachers, punching and kicking. The teachers are female, and not much bigger than him. The school is the only one in this district (small town), they can't send him to another town unless transportation is provided for. If it was a private school, he would have been expelled on the first or second episode.

em-bee2• 7 years ago

right, the problem with most experimental schools is that they are not trying to provide education for everyone. until a school model attempts to scale and reach the general population without being selective we won't know if that model is really going to work.

germinalphrase• 7 years ago

Thank you for this comment. It seems obvious, but we often forget, that the successes/challenges of a school often mirror exactly the challenges/successes of the community from which that school’s students are drawn.

em-bee2• 7 years ago

there is quite a lot of countries that didn't have particular reason to follow the Prussian way of education.

sure, but most didn't go and develop their own system either. i have seen (and experienced) schools in a few countries, and when i look at any of these, i can't see much of a difference.

the current school system in germany is as far away from that prussian system as any other in most places. if anything german schools are more progressive than some others, with smaller classrooms and more attention to each child than for example france or china.

so while the claim "it all started in prussia" is probably not true, it can't be to far from the truth either. didn't ford build schools for factory workers to train them to work at the assembly line? isn't that really just a similar motivation with the same outcome?

763489303• 7 years ago

Does anyone have any insights what it is like to work as a software developer in RTP? What are the public school systems like in that area?

CuriouslyC• 7 years ago

Decent area, incomes are good by non bay-area standards, and the cost of living is extremely low. There are a lot of software jobs but most of them are unexciting. Traffic isn't too bad as long as you work and live in the same general part of RTP. The food is decent if you are into barbecue and southern hipster, but the ethnic options besides Indian are a bit weak. There's a lot happening but if you're into fringe stuff it's a bit slow.

Don't have kids but people who do have told me Raleigh and Chapel Hill have decent school districts but Durham should be avoided. Ironically I think Durham is the most interesting part of the RTP area.

patwolf2• 7 years ago

+1 that Durham is the most interesting part of the RTP. Having lived in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, Morrisville, and Chapel Hill over the years, I liked Durham the best. But like a lot of cities, gentrification is causing a lot of social and cultural upheaval in Durham and the surrounding suburbs.

t3rabytes• 7 years ago

COL is low, ignoring our housing prices. :/

patwolf2• 7 years ago

RTP is central to three counties--Wake (Raleigh, Cary), Durham, and Orange (Chapel Hill). There are a lot of good public schools, but it depends a lot on which county and city you live in. And of course school district has a big impact on housing costs. There are also a number of charter schools, where enrollment is usually based on a lottery.

As a place to work, there are plenty of good software jobs in the area. I would group in not just RTP but also downtown Raleigh and Durham. As an employer, it's difficult to find enough developers to fill roles. There are technology hubs all up and down the east coast (Atlanta, DC, Richmond, etc.) which RTP competes with for talent.

noahl2• 7 years ago

I work as a software developer in RTP, and I really like it. (I'm in the Microsoft office, which by the way is hiring.)

School districts can vary. I live in Chapel Hill, which has truly excellent schools. Durham can be hit or miss, and I don't know much about the Eastern triangle like Morrisville, Cary or Raleigh.

Other nice things about the area are that the food is generally really good, and it's easy to take a weekend trip to either the mountains or the coast, if you like that.

One downside is that there are lots of software engineering jobs, but the big internet companies for the most part aren't here, except for a small Google office in Chapel Hill and the Microsoft office, which is also fairly small. It was worth it for me to leave Google to live here, but YMMV.

I'd be happy to answer more questions if you have any.

763489303• 7 years ago

Thank you for your response. This is one of the reasons I come to HN, you were very helpful. Just curious, what sort of work/tech stack is Microsoft doing/using in RTP? What levels are they looking to hire?

staticautomatic• 7 years ago

I grew up in Raleigh. Started at a run of the mill public school, then went into the gifted and talented program in the public schools, then went to private school in Cary. I've heard pretty good things about Chapel Hill. By reputation, Raleigh probably has the public schools unless you count the school of science & math in Durham. Cary is on the up and up but as a city it's just about the most boring picture of suburbia you can possibly imagine.

One thing I'll say about the gifted and talented public school programs in Raleigh-- although hopefully this is becoming less severe over time but probably not--is that it's basically a weird fucking race and class war. The public schools in the wealthy neighborhoods are not actually very good. The G&T programs are embedded inside predominately black public schools in what's more or less still the hood (was very much so when I was a kid). The bus picks you up in your expensive neighborhood, stops several times in progressively poorer neighborhoods, and then lets out at school in the hood where you have these white islands of G&T classrooms inside black schools. The tension (and occasionally violence) is REAL. But the schooling is good if you're lucky enough to make it into those programs.

emilecantin• 7 years ago

My kids are homeschooled, and there is a very big self-directed learning movement in the homeschooling community.

What people outside the community often forget is that kids are inherently curious, and can actually do TONS of learning on their own. Learning a language is a huge undertaking, yet every kid below the age of 3 manages to do it without any special teaching.

Self-directed learning is just the extension of that, but for some reason it scares people. It's nice to see that it's gaining a little traction in "schools", even if it's still technically homeschooling.

andrei_says_• 7 years ago

Curious, do you have an opinion on unschooling (leaving kids’ learning to their curiosity and then letting them prepare for college when they choose to)

jl2718• 7 years ago

Anybody want to do this in Silicon Valley?

I was fairly obsessed with this concept in high school and college and then it got me in so much trouble that I dropped it. My idea is to have parents each spend a day or two a month at the school ‘teaching’ which would mean just showing what they do, or what interests them, or reading to them, or just talking to the kids about anything. This is really what I think kids need, perspective from a lot of ‘real’ adults. I think it’s possible for about $1500/mo, no profit no salary, and only because I have a volunteer with the right certifications, but I think it’s worth it.

jasaloo• 7 years ago

Can someone help me out here... this is not a charter school, correct?

"Indeed, half of Pathfinder’s inaugural class was previously homeschooled, Wilder says.

Legally, they still are. Despite its name, Pathfinder isn’t actually a school. It’s not accredited and doesn’t have a state license, which means it doesn’t have to abide by state laws on mandatory attendance and testing. It doesn’t award grades, nor will it give out diplomas should it take on high-school-age students. (It will help them create portfolios as part of their college-application process.) Instead, it’s a “homeschooling resource center,” a place that offers homeschoolers opportunities to socialize and learn in a small-scale, customizable environment. "

Durham Pathfinder Free-School: Self-Directed Learning

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