Weekly Reflection 3

Week 4- PSII school visit

Visiting PSII school was a very interesting experience for me. I want to love the idea of this style of schooling but there are some aspects that I really struggle with. After hearing the principal and one of the students I can see how beneficial this type of education is for some students. The student that talked to us was working on developing and researching artificial hearts. This is a very interesting project that students in a regular high school would not have the opportunity to try. As interesting as that is, I’m wondering what topic is missed when doing this project. Students in this project get to go in depth on specific topics but that means that something has to be sacrificed in return. I also wonder how this affects them when they go to university. Will they be missing some knowledge to take pre requisites needed for their program? I also wonder what else they could be missing that isn’t content related. I do think that it is a skill to be able to learn something that you don’t want to. Learning how to learn is important and I think that this is taught well in a regular school system. I also understand that you learn different skills like time management and organization with a program like this.

Personally I think that this type of schooling can be done very well but I would like to see it with a bit more support. I think a combination between a typical school and the new self-directed school would lead to a good balance between following your interests and learning specific topics.