But I'm not talking about the so-called "gifted" or persons with learning disabilities--at least, not exclusively. By "prute", I mean any person that could perform radically better academically if he or she were in some other setting than the traditional classroom. Let's consider an example or two.
Suppose a student has a natural aptitude in a particular subject, but never develops it because there was no class challenging her in that area. Or, worse yet, the classes in that subject area were so dry and irrelevant to the student that she actually became turned off to the subject entirely. That person is a classic prute. This isn't simply a case of the system falling somewhat short of the mark, not doing as well as it possibly could. This is utter and dismal failure. Failure so profound that the student might have been better served had there been no class offered in the area at all.
Or, consider even the less radical example--perhaps a person has no particular "natural ability" in, say, science, but could have, in another environment, developed a deep and abiding interest in it, something that would have stimulated his mind for the rest of his life. Someone like this is almost guaranteed to lose out in the current system--and a whole facet of their personality is gone forever, unless something can be done to reverse the damage.
Either of these people could accurately be described as a prute, and of course, no one really knows how many prutes there are. Any person that could have a radically better intellectual/academic life qualifies, though. Maybe you're a prute. Note that, even if you did come through the system "successfully" and you do have a healthy and satisfying intellectual life, you very well may have succeeded in spite of education rather than because of it. Who knows what you might have accomplished, or what other interests you might have developed, had things been done differently. Consider the implications of your answers to the following questions.
Admittedly, it's questionable how much of this it is possible for any education program to achieve. But the more you look at traditional education, the more utterly wasted time you will see there. And no one knows how much could be filled in.
So much of school is based on classes with
Anyone who has observed a healthy young child knows that we are "born to learn". As a parent I can assure you that it takes more effort to get them to not learn something (What happens if I put a fork in the VCR? Is is fun to jump off the top bunk? What's on the other side of the street? What does toilet water taste like?) than it does to get them to learn things (yeah, I know what the other parents out there are thinking--the whole theory falls apart if you consider potty training--but hey, every theory falls apart when it encounters potty training). Sure, this anecdotal "evidence" is far from scientific research, but it certainly seems that children naturally seek opportunities to learn. Not only that, but they work hard at it, even if it requires what looks like frustratingly repetitious practice (watch how long a 1-year-old will spend trying to put a lid back on a pen, for example)..
Another thing that is less often noted is that somewhere around school age this thirst for knowledge suddenly becomes less pronounced. Now, it is possible that this is just a natural phenomenon of the brain, that it becomes less interested in learning now that the important survival things like walking and talking have been fully acquired. But many informal experiments are finding otherwise. Parents who saw their children go from having active, inquisitive minds to dismally low interest in academics have taken their children out of the system and seen miraculous recoveries.
Again, this isn't a scientific study, but there is abundant reason to believe that traditional schooling models are the problem. If you want evidence, just go down the list of questions above, drawing on your own school experience. Did your experience in school leave you with anything approaching the fascination with the world you had as a three year old?
For most people the answer is no. What is worse, most people never recover that fascination. The natural hunger for learning, for problems to solve, for novelty is filled with the brain's version of junk food--talk shows, sitcoms, gossip, etc. Now, can our society continue to function this way? Yes. Okay, but do people still find happiness in life? Again, yes. But those are pretty low expectations, and the degree to which they are achieved is severely hampered by the fact that billions of people go through life with brains literally crippled by what is at best a lack of interest in learning and more often closer to aversion to anything associated with learning.
Fortunately, it appears that the situation is reversible. Many people are lucky enough to rediscover their curiosity in graduate school or through careers in science or journalism. Making a conscious effort to spend time learning about things that interest you is also a powerful natural therapy. But what is needed is an end to the problem. Repairing the damage later is never going to be as good as never having caused it. We need alternatives to traditional schooling that have the power not only to not cause damage, but to keep up with (and therefore continue to stimulate) the natural desire to learn.
Although in principle it is more or less possible with current technology to fully address this problem, we will have to spend considerable time and effort to really be prepared for a world of people following their natural learning instincts. Most of our learning materials are designed for use in compulsory classroom settings. If we want people to learn things naturally, to want to learn them, we need to think about how we can make the information available in a way that is as naturally enticing as the old way was unnaturally forced and dull. Our whole notion of "educational material" will have to change from "whatever book was approved by the committee" to "whatever is interesting". In effect, we have to move from a centralized, dictatorial economy of ideas to a self-governing (I would say "market-driven", but this carries a lot of baggage due to the fact that the current "market" tends to consist of "people who, not liking to truly think for themselves, make decisions based on fads or advertising"--one would hope that this isn't where learner-centered learning would take us) one of individual choice and actual utility. It won't be easy to do this well. Fortunately we have some things working in our favor.
One advantage is that the production of learner-oriented materials is, at least for some people, as natural a process as learning itself. There are people that crave the opportunity to share knowledge, and who have the knack for coming up with just the right example, analogy, or clarification to crystallize even the fuzziest beginnings of understanding. And they succeed, one, tiny part of one topic at a time, with highly interesting and accurate educational television, fascinating exhibits at hands-on science museums, instantly accessible and well-presented information in books and websites and films aimed at the real market of people rather than the artificial market of schools.
But the pace at which these are being developed is still a trickle--if we really want to quench the thirst of a million different minds, we would need to dramatically raise our level of effort in this direction. If we did, we could accelerate the process exponentially, both by increasing the number of people contributing and by recognizing the value of and increasing the distribution of/ access to what has already been created. And, of course, until we get ours minds and our children out of traditional school models and back into our natural learning mode, the best materials in the world aren't even going to be noticed.