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A thought experiment. How to spend $28-plus million on middle school education? My two cents.

The consensus in educational research points to the five-year stretch between fourth and eighth grades as the make-or-break period for the vast majority of students. Risky and exciting. While some get lost in terms of the curriculum and with the challenges leading into and out of puberty, others use these years as a springboard to high school and beyond.

A strong 21st century curriculum requires mastery of math and symbolic language, written and spatial expression, and critical thinking. To achieve such goals requires more hands-on work, experimentation, projects. It requires active learning, inspiration and wonderment. No school building is worth sacrificing these essential elements of education. A weak curriculum relies on MCQ exams, passive learning and busywork. Curricula that roots out the excitement of these years and replacing it with processing and ploughing through state-recommended textbooks drives a wedge between schooling and education and creates exhausted and cynical drones of our children.

These transitional years also demand a greater emphasis on student health. I would like to see more counseling, not just in terms of intervention. Counselors should collaborate with teaching colleagues to ensure more inclusivity and to develop more pathways in developing confidence and self worth. More effort should be placed on transition and on getting students to tap into their potential.

I would gladly pay higher taxes for curricular reform and more counseling. Education before schools. Kids before buildings.

PETER KRIZ

Sandpoint