In the history of education, the best teaching has been intensely personal. Parents taught their children, apprentices learned from masters, and the wealthy worked with personal tutors. The industrial system of schooling, which assumes that all children of a certain age can be taught the same things simultaneously by a single adult, is a very recent development.
Just in the last century, rural one-room schoolhouses served whatever children lived close enough to walk back and forth from home. Children from six to sixteen were mixed together under the tutelage of a single teacher, and they learned what they needed to know. Inevitably, children had to be teachers as well as learners, with older children helping younger ones acquire academic skills.
Learning by Teaching
Any teacher will say that the best way to master a subject is to teach it. When a nine-year-old helps a seven-year-old learn to sound out difficult words, or when a fourteen-year-old helps an eleven-year-old solve for "x" in a basic equation, they all are learning. The younger child is far more attentive to the "cool" older child offering undivided attention than to a harried adult trying to maintain control of twenty-five or thirty restless kids. Just as important, the older child gains deeper understanding of the material by helping the younger child learn it.
Questions children might hesitate to ask in front of a regular class are easy to ask one-on-one; thinking the question through, their young instructors go beyond rote knowledge to the realms of meaning. The "Oh, I get it" moments expand for both teachers and learners, and everybody benefits. Instruction is individualized, for all the children involved, in ways an ordinary classroom cannot provide.
Programming the Mixed Age Group Learning Environment
To make age group integration work, every child must be both a teacher and a learner. It follows that "classes" will consist of different children on different days – so scheduling is likely to be the most serious impediment. The single most powerful reason that we keep the industrial model of education in place is that is is easy – easy to organize for lazy, unimaginative school administrators appointed through patronage or politics.
Although the New York City "School of One" program is far from perfect, its use of technology for assessment could make child-to-child instruction both efficient and effective. So far, educational computer software has been useful for little more than drill and testing, but even those limited uses can distinguish students who have achieved specific behavioral objectives from those who still need help. The proper algorithms could match those with some proficiency to those those with little or no proficiency. Working together, with the guidance of teachers or students who already have achieved mastery, both the "teacher" and the "learner" improve their skills.
The Role of the Teacher in the Mixed Age Group Learning Environment
Competent teachers can write and refine valid behavioral objectives. Competent teachers can develop, test, and organize the materials needed to achieve those objectives. Competent teachers can model positive teacher-student interactions, including active listening, patience, and the appropriate use of praise and criticism.
Even more than other schools, the mixed age group school needs the best teachers available. There is no room for sarcasm, favoritism, or bullying. On the other hand, teachers willing to work in such a fluid environment are likely to be the most imaginative, the most creative, and the most willing to take on risk. They will not be the teachers who stubbornly adhere to the same, comfortable routine year after year.
Implementing Age Group Integration in our Schools
The ideal place to implement and develop a mixed age group learning environment is in a charter school. Charter schools are supposed to be innovative. They have the freedom to experiment, without district or union restrictions – and while the sad fact is that the vast majority are not especially different from traditional public schools, they offer a chance to try something new.
"Children teaching children" has worked well for many community youth programs, in all parts of the world. Now is the time to try it where it can make a real difference: in the public schools.
Victor A. Gallis - Vic Gallis has written for a variety of literary journals, educational publications, and websites. Thirty years spent in public education, ...
Join the Conversation