Student Voices, a project of Education Evolving, provides video clips of secondary students in innovative schools describing their educational program with separate commentary by their teachers. These revealing segments show that education can be substantially better if substantially different. Project-based learning means that students select topics of personal and societal interest for research and ultimately presenting their findings to an audience. These “non-course” schools achieve the same outcomes expected by the state but in a more comprehensive way and on a different timeline. Student motivation and therefore student learning increases significantly in these programs.
A second source of student opinions about their ideal school is the 2003 book, The School I’d Like by Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor. “No one reading this collection will be left with any doubt that children and young people are capable and entitled to help shape their present and future learning” Becky Gardiner. A 12 year-old said, “My ideal school is no school.”
This amplifies the situation described by Ted Sizer: “Schools are places where students come to watch teachers work.” See research findings below.
Here’s some research on the positive effects of giving students a voice:
Children