Letter: Education writer is spot-on

EDITOR,
Thanks to the Press-Banner for the article on teacher Ryan Teves’ book on improving our K-12 school system (“Time to get relevant,” Page 4, Jan. 21). Teves’ claim that “students are expected to serve the schools” is radical thinking, but spot-on in my experience. By forcing nearly everyone into an almost identical curriculum, you are bound to create poor learning environments for many kids, at best, and teach kids to learn to hate learning, at worst. For example, I entered high school as a voracious reader, but years of being forced to read thick Russian novels, Shakespeare and nothing written in the past 75 years ensured that I wouldn’t pick up another book of fiction for nearly 15 years. School taught me to hate to read. How many kids would become much better readers (and writers) if left to select material that interests them?
The real issue is the lack of progress in how we teach. Today, we pretty much use the same methods used in 1911. A bunch of kids sit in front of a teacher and learn to memorize the same material at the same rate. What other aspect of our culture hasn’t moved in the past 100 years? Look at communications, transportation, entertainment, warfare, manufacturing, and health care, for instance, and see where we’ve come since 1911. This is a big issue. If the U.S. doesn’t improve our education system, we could lose our last competitive edge on the world stage, our ability to innovate. Teves for education secretary!
Jim Bahn, Ben Lomond