IALA » Choices

Gardner, Advocate for Educational Pluralism

Wayne Jennings — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:52:00 +0000

Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard and well known for his books including Multiple Intelligences and Five Minds for the Future, writes of the importance of a variety of educational programs to fit different students. In a recent article, he writes that after studying various approaches such as Reggio Emilia (a program he particularly likes), Montessori, Waldorf, traditional and other types of schools he is more convinced than ever of the importance of “educational pluralism.”

Obvious as it is, schools have insufficiently acted upon the fact that all children do not learn the same. Hence, the need for a variety of educational programs to meet the diverse needs of students. He states, ” The lessons I have learned over the decades are: (1) to be ever open to new and powerful ways of educating and (2) to shun those who block the roads of individualized pedagogy as well as those who seek to impose a uniform way of presenting material.”

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Range of Alternatives

Wayne Jennings — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:01:28 +0000

We recently created the outline below showing the kinds of choices available to students in some parts of Minnesota. This may be similar to other states. By no means are all of these alternatives available to all students in all places but it represents a major shift in what parents had to choose from in 1970 which was almost nothing in the public sector. In that sense it represents major progress in the IALA mission of leading, promoting and supporting learning alternatives in education to better match needs of every child. Of course, much remains to be done to reach the policy that every state and the federal government provide a choice of different programs for each child.

Minnesota Options for Students

1. State approved alternative programs (SAAP)

Area learning centers (ALC)
Contract schools
Alternative programs

2. Charter schools

3. Online/distant learning schools

4. Traditional schools

5. Magnet schools

6. Post secondary enrollment options (early college enrollment)

7. Open enrollment

8. Nonpublic schools

9. Programmatic schools

Open education
Core knowledge
Subject: performing arts, science
Experiential and community based
Project based
Waldorf
Montessori

10. Recovery schools

11. Democratic schools

IALA is a Great Resource for You!

Wayne Jennings — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:30:35 +0000

If you think our website has changed, your perceptions are correct. We’ve changed our platform to WordPress for an update and better control. Please have patience as we work out some bugs.

We emphasize that the same huge body of resource material is still available on this website. You will notice that the left panel (at the website www.learningalternatives.net) contains topics to search for and the top beige band here leads to a variety of sections such as interesting articles, items about alternatives, how to order materials, laws, and more.

You can subscribe (left side of website). That’s free and confidential. We do not share names with anyone, ever. Just enter your email address in the yellow band and hit Go. About once a month we send out this email with news on educational alternatives. This helps keep you up-to-date on this topic.

Be sure to use the search engine. It works just like Google only is restricted to our resource goldmine. You are free to use any of the materials on the site!! We work as volunteers with the goal to inform others about educational choices. We receive funding from state alternative education associations to pay overhead costs.