Flat World Ch 8. "Prisons and Shopping Malls"

I felt that this chapter of "The Flat World and Education" really struck a chord with me when the author mentioned that many schools are built like prisons focused on control rather than instruction and that, rather than having a single, cohesive common core with a few elective modules, many schools have a "shopping mall" approach with an unwieldy number of classes on a catalog to choose from.

From my own work at a local high school, I spent the entire last week sitting down with students trying to help them (and myself to be honest) understand the catalog they received from counseling office with over 200 courses available to take with fluctuating parameters and a byzantine prerequisite system. I was especially shocked and horrified when the author stated that high schools with more than 1,200 students tend to suffer greatly from the pupil load, especially since the school I work at has a bit over 3,000 students enrolled and, despite the high school's origin as a middle school, there are rumors amongst the students every year that the center of the school used to be an old prison because of the panopticon style construction of schools in the 1970's.

Needless to explain further, I whole-heartedly agree that schools ought to be smaller and courses more streamlined to reduce stress on students and allow teachers to better know their students and dive into more intricate matters within their disciplines.