With the beginning of civilization, education was created to educate leaders from the ranks of the ruling classes. The lower classes were trained and manipulated by the system to be compliant, respecting authority and obeying orders. Subservience to the ruling classes and contentment with their lives were the primary goals of education. It was the way to keep control in the hands of a few families and to lessen the likelihood of rebellion. The ruling classes maintained their power by controlled commerce and the major industries, and this was true of every government since, including the first City-States of Samaria in 5000 BC.

An experimental exception to this rule, at least for the first one hundred years or so, was
the newly established United States of America. This government which came about by
revolution, was small, made up of volunteer citizen-statesmen, and owned no industry other than the Army. At that time there were only forty corporations in the USA and each had to justify its existence to the government annually or lose its corporate charter. The corporations were forbidden by law from owning stock in other corporations, could not purchase their competitors and had to have a purpose statement that justified their existence by making life better for the citizens of the nation. In a speech to the Continental Congress, James Madison pointed out that corporations existed first and foremost to serve the public’s interest and secondarily to make money. Most unincorporated businesses of the day were privately owned, usually small family concerns like butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.

In 1974, the National Commission on Excellence in Education shook up the country when they issued a report titled, “A Nation at Risk”. In it a blue-ribbon panel commissioned by the Congress concluded that the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our future as a nation and as a people. Fifteen year later, educational leaders wrote a follow up called, “A Nation still at risk.” In that paper, the nation was informed that academically we fall off the edge somewhere in the middle and upper grades, falling far behind in high school. We appear to be the only nation in the world whose children fall further behind the longer they stay in school.

In the 1970’s, the term “learning-disabled” came into widespread use. Before that a child not learning was the fault of the teachers, the system or the school. Today, as we know, the fault lays on the shoulders of six and seven year olds. The failure of education suddenly became the failure of the child. Clearly, this happens despite the fact that every child has whatever it takes to learn a language and other organizational facts and systems before the age of five.

Unfortunately, the system has no provisions for the learning style of gifted, talented, high I.Q. children who are right-brain dominant with the capacity for heightened intuition and critical thinking. These children tend not to learn by memorizing unless they are very interested in the subject matter. These children learn by critical thinking and questioning, and that’s the challenge that gets their passion up. All through their lives they hunt for truth and improvement. It’s the nature of the beast. Sitting in the same seat, in the same classroom, from kindergarten on, day after day, year after year, raising their hands for permission to ask or to answer a question, memorizing unquestioningly that which is to be learned, doesn’t work for these children. It’s not their style, and this problem, if it is a problem, doesn’t go away, it gets worse.

The gifted have trouble seeing linearly, they see in pictures as in gestalt, and have the need to constantly improve anything they focus on. Eventually that energy turns inward with concerns for integrity leading to spirituality and enlightenment, while never losing touch with the rest of their lives, and still operating at breakneck speed. Needless to say they are healthier and happier this way. Passion and love are the cornerstone of their lives.

Other famous people of this ilk are former President Clinton, Charles Darwin, Churchill, and Einstein, to mention a few and for most of the last 400 years, the very gifted of this ilk were seen as heretics and misfits in conformist’s society. These individuals often stuck out and got in the way of the control required by social orders, whatever that social order. In the present day, these individuals are labeled trouble makers or hyperactive or ADD, and are frequently medicated with drugs like Ritalin to help them comply with the system. Sometimes it works and those rebels and misfits become good students and good children who behave and become good citizens, which means, they become compliant and give up their gifts. A big question is how can we use medication to help the child sit still and behave without impairing the child’s learning abilities? Some children become zombies under medication. Also complicating this is the fact that too many teachers believe that when the child is quiet and well behaved, it has the greatest opportunity to learn, even though the child’s learning ability can be shut down by stimulant medications. If that’s not recognized for what it is, the need for a slower class comes to mind. Often these kids are high IQ, gifted and bored to death in the regular classes, never mind the slower classes. So the problem is not learning disabilities, but the teaching methods used in the public school system, which work fine for the left-brain dominant school-fitting children that represent ninety to ninety-five percent of the student population. The children who are not school-fitting may be intelligent, curious and fully capable of learning. Nevertheless, they tend to fall through the cracks. They don’t fit in; their learning style is not recognized nor encouraged. They are labeled disordered, disabled, incompetent, lazy or just plain stupid, and discarded, ignored or medicated. Then they grow up wounded with scars that often last a lifetime.

This situation presents what I consider to be the best justification for Charter Schools. The present system is failing our best potential artists, leaders, statesman and entrepreneurs. The magnitude of this loss to society can only be imagined.