E.M. "Mac" Swengel, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Education
School of Education
United States International University
San Diego, California |
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“Under One Roof”
THE BENIGN SCHOOL
by Edwin M. Swengel, Ph.D
3
This treatise
necessarily has three main sections. Section One describes the major
faults of current and traditional schooling. These are not what are
commonly assumed: poorly trained teachers, inept administration,
lack of discipline, watered down curriculum, social promotion,
adversarial parent-school relations, inadequate funding,
dysfunctional home environments—not even poverty, racism, ethnic
diversity, nor the “just plain orneriness” of our fallible human
nature.
The main fault lies in the whole structure and operation of the
current school system. It is totally unnatural in how it involves
everyone: students, teachers, parents, administrators, community
members, and employers and post-high school educational
institutions, both of whom complain of graduates’ poor preparation
to succeed in the workplace or additional schooling.
The second section describes in sufficient detail how The Benign
School can solve or greatly ameliorate all the problems of
traditional schooling. It explains why it is necessary to get the
whole public school age span—infancy through high school graduation
(one through 18 years)—literally “under one roof,” so the school can
operate as a real-life mini-society, the “village it takes to raise
a child.”
All the elements of this type of schooling have been proved
successful but have never been combined, to my knowledge, in the
integrated, comprehensive, synergistic way proposed herein. Nothing
I describe is pure theory, nor is it armchair fantasy. In fact, a
wide variety of related disciplines support the validity and
practicality of all its components, and, by implication, their
unique incorporation into the Benign School concept.
The third section tackles the public relations problems facing the
essential grassroots campaign. This can and must be done with calm
reason, indisputable fact, and common sense—and without rancor. Do
not personally attack those in power who resist and resent efforts
for basic, fundamental reform, even though that level is commonly
called for by most critics of the current system. The selling job
requires advocates to understand and be able to explain clearly why
the traditional system is functionally beyond repair.
Grassroots campaigners must also be firmly and clearly convinced
about how the proposed Benign School system could solve these
problems, or at least reduce their negative effects sufficiently so
they do not interfere with productive learning. The basic public
relation strategies that have proved successful for grassroots
campaigners are described. Campaign strategy will be updated and
supplemented by further information available on this the website
established to promote this concept.
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