I heard the beginnings of a report on the radio the other day saying that the debate over whether moving around in the classroom actually helps elementary students learn better has been reopened. My mother and I both agreed this was ridiculous, for different reasons. Her first response was that it depends on the material being taught. Mine was that it depends on the child being taught.

I’m not entirely sure what prompted the resurrection of this debate. I am quite sure that the gold standard “on-size-fits-all” solution people are looking for isn’t going to come easily. I’m fairly sure it’s never going to come at all.

What the general system frequently does is take 20 distinct personalities and learning styles, throw them in a room together, and mixes well. Once the average is established, the ones on either end of the bell curve end up sinking and swimming on their own.

I want to be perfectly clear that I mean absolutely no disrespect towards teachers or education — I have a tremendous amount of respect for teachers, especially because it often seems like they are hindered by the very system that is supposed to help them do their jobs. And as a further disclaimer, this is all coming from the perspective of someone who’s spent the past 13 years being processed by that system with more than a few roadbumps along the way — that is to say, I don’t have the most favorable perspective.

The one-size-fits-all model being sought is a common dilemma in the educational system. The U.S. has, in theory, something called a national curriculum — the idea being that students in Maine will, by the time they graduate high school, have learned the same material as students in, say, Oregon. In practice, what is actually taught and learned depends on a variety of factors. Take it from someone who moved across the country halfway through schooling. I’ve learned about tectonic plates twice over and I’m still not entirely sure what defines a cumulus cloud.

You know, exactly what schooling is supposed to be for is something that’s never been fully settled. Especially in this country. The two major arguments seem to me to boil down to intellectual education — raising thoughtful people with critical thinking skills — and social education — raising well-rounded citizens with an understanding of how they should behave in the world.

These ideals can easily come into conflict. Take protesting to raise awareness of climate change, for example. It stems from a place of thinking critically about the world, and trying to understand the effects of one’s place in the universe, but in the short term it isn’t exactly something conducive to the smooth running of society. 

There are so many different sides and layers to this discussion that people who know far more about it than I do have already spent thousands of pages and millions of hours writing, thinking, and talking about it. I’m hardly going to scratch the surface in a short column. 

American society places a strong emphasis on the value of individualism and free thinking. As I’ve advanced through high school, I’ve had many different teachers talk about the importance of learning how to study on your own, or how to understand your learning process, with the recognition that this is different for everybody. So why is it that at the early stages of education — a stage often pointed to as a time critical in the brain’s development — there’s so much interest in finding a “one-size-fits-all” method and instructing every student the exact same way?