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| The secret
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attitude, and from building close links
with parents and their community. Of all the new technologies at the school, the most
important is a minibus. With it come weekly visits to local senior-citizens'
retirement homes and other community activities.
Every
pupil now takes part in lifeskills programs. From the Red Cross they learn how to handle
babies. They learn the basics of car repair, how to mend their own clothes, to bake, and
the principles of good nutrition.The school caretaker even teaches a class where the
youngsters learn cleaning. And all these activities are hands-on. They learn to bath real
babies, change tires on real cars.
Monrad is also a multicultural school - and so is its curriculum. About 25 percent of its
students are Maori - and its cultural enrichment programs have played a big part in
bringing Maori parents into the school.
Monrad,
in fact, is a classic case study of the links between self-esteem, lifeskills study, and
an overall curriculum that is also deeply inbedded in a wide range of activities at the
school and around the community.
 To complete "the Pacific triangle",
travel north-west to Japan for some equally interesting models.
Japanese
schools have some of the world's highest math and science test scores. More than 90
percent of students graduate from high school. And Japan has almost no illiteracy. Yet
Japan spends proportionately less on public education than most other developed countries:
only 5.3 percent of the gross national product, as compared with 7.8 percent in Canada,
6.2 percent in Britain and 6 percent in the United States.19
Many "back to basics" Westerners
attribute this success to an extremely rigid school system of long hours and rote
learning. This is the major method of teaching at junior and senior high school, but visit
any elementary school and you'll find the opposite.20
In the primary grades there's an almost kindergarten atmosphere. In one
second-grade class-room we found children on the floor playing with big globs of clay,
beautiful artwork on the walls, and children who appear relaxed, physically safe and
emotionally secure.
Visit the children's lunchroom in Mito Municipal Oda Elementary School, and again
comes the sense of social and emotional well-being: the beautiful classical music in the
background, the children wearing hygiene masks as they serve lunch to other children in
the line.
In
fact, from kindergarten through third grade, one of the main |
Contents Page Preface
Introduction
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