A Better Method of Education

Basic Principles:

1. Every student is unique
2. Every student has an optimal learning style for each subject
3. Students learn at different rates

Because of these principles, school grades should be eliminated. ('Grades' here refers to grouping and educating students by age, not the scoring of work and tests.)

Grouping students into grades:

1. Creates artificial boundaries on learning
2. Forces a uniform learning style and rate on all students, which is likely to be non-optimal for many (or even most.)
3. Forces students to learn along side "peers" of greatly differing ability.
4. Can create group dynamics where superior students are harmed in various ways by the lessor majority.

In addition to scholastic achievement testing, additional testing to determine each student's optimal learning style in each subject should administered.

The students' school day should then be split into periods for subjects and students should be grouped not by age, but by their level of achievement and learning style in each subject. The development plan for each subject should be sufficiently fine-grained to allow students to be regrouped on a per-subject basis at least twice per school year.

The advantages here are:

1. Each student is given a far more customized education, optimized for their learning style and ability
2. Students who are under performing in one subject may be held back in that subject while continuing to progress in others.
3. Competitive issues are reduced because in every subject students are grouped with peers of similar ability.