Ah yes. The chickens come back to roost. This would explain the move to Balanced School Days…the natural prerequisite to open concept.

What next? Nixing testing…...that usually follows the hippie-movement, free thinking, do what EVER you feel like schools.

Perhaps though we’re being a tad hypocritical? After all, like them or hate them open concept schools are a part of the variety of choices parents have to choose from.

Where are the no-frills, back to basics choices to counter the open concepts?

Chuck,

The BSD could hardly be called a prerequisite to the open plan school.  These schools have been in use since the early 1960’s when there was no BSD.  The Balanced day has only been around since 2005.

These open plan schools are universally hated by every teacher that had to teach in them, why they would still persist today is beyond me.  As an odd note, perhaps this has been one tiny silver lining in the dark cloud of school closures due to declining enrollment.  Out here in the boonies, many elementary schools are closing to amalgamate together, or with high schools.  In the BWDSB, where the board closed a school to combine two together - every open plan school was closed in favour of shipping the students to a traditional school layout.  They never closed the traditional school to ship kids to an open plan - kind of shows how much they are disliked.

“The BSD could hardly be called a prerequisite to the open plan school.”

I think it is and did call it that, so yes, it can be.

Actually, the BSD has its roots in block scheduling which was very popular in open concept schools…just ask me I went to one. Only they were called Pods and Modules….different labels for the same thing.

Students hated open concept schools too. So did my parents who couldn’t tell from one year to the next what we learned, what we were supposed to learn and what proof there was of learning. My parents moved me out of that open concept to a regular public school in no time flat…..we were lucky to be able to do that because the board didn’t have fixed boundaries.

Here we go again:  text book theory vs practical application.  Unfortunately educrats never bother to look at the results of their hair-brained new ideas, or former silly ideas that are trotted out for another go.
Anyone knows that when learning something new, or when one needs to concentrate that the least little noise can shatter one’s concentration.  This is one reason that this stupid idea will cost many children dearly:  how are they supposed to learn in a noisy place?
In a perfect world these people spending our tax dollars by forcing yet another failed method on our children would be held accountable, but we all know that’s not going to happen.