Schools Cater to Average Intelligence

Our society bases so much on “the average”– especially education. But, what if the needs of the average student are not synonymous with the needs of your child? Equality is important socially, but treating everyone the same is not effective from an educational standpoint.

If the institution is not set up correctly to accommodate your child, it is doing your child a huge disservice.

The institution of public schools bases their education techniques on age, not ability. If a child does not fit the “average intelligence” for their age group, they are held back to be subject to the same teaching styles that did not work for them the first time.

An article taken from an excerpt of  What Do We Lose By Measuring ‘Average’ In Education? by Todd Rose explained the concept of “equal access” and why is it not right for education.

“But equal access suffers from one major shortcoming: it aims to maximize individual opportunity on average by ensuring that everyone has access to the same standardized system, whether or not that system actually fits.”

He continues by explaining that despite personalized learning getting a lot of hype recently, nothing is being done to transform the traditional school system.

Public Schools are based entirely on the notion of “grade level” which is deeply rooted in the concept of average.

“We continue to enforce a curriculum that defines not only what students learn, but also how, when, at what pace, and in what order they learn it,” Rose said.

Lexercise recognizes this and intentionally strays from public school’s teaching strategies in order to personalize each student’s experience. We are competency-based. Each therapist develops a personal relationship with the student so that they can tailor their style and pace. Our system is not linear, each of our structured literacy experts uses a “multi pathway” curriculum to be most effective.