VOA常速英语:硅谷实验性学校废除年级制

Twelve-year-old Mishal Junaid stays at school longer than many full-time adults stay at work.So her thought on school may be surprising.

“When I wake up in the morning I want to wake up, unlike my last school where I want to sleep in and not go to school.”

This also surprises her parents.

“To the point that we worry why kids come home so happy — are they really learning things?”

Junaid and her classmates ages 5 to 15 attend the experimental Khan Lab School.The schools open from 8:30 in the morning to 6 at night.It has no grade levels and no homework.

“Then you get to choose what you learn, and it’s not just a teacher hands you a worksheet and tells you to do it.You get to set your own goals; you have a schedule; you go to different classes.”

The school is the idea of Salman Khan.He is the founder of Khan Academy — famous for its free online educational videos that have millions of users worldwide.Khan says he started Khan Lab School because he considers the current education system as flawed,and wanted to create a better learning model.

“Where I see the future going is somewhat revisiting the past.There’s a lot of really good things about the one room schoolhouse that you might have had in the rural areas that you still have today in a lot of places where you have mixed age classrooms.The advantage there is that older students can take responsibility and mentor younger ones.Younger students get more people.They get the teacher, but also other students being invested in their work.”

Khan said students also learn material at their own pace through videos and more attention from teachers through one-on-one dialogue instead of lectures.They also learn by doing projects.

Educators at the school say this way of learning better prepares students for the future.

“We are heading toward the fourth industrial revolution where a lot of labor force is going to be replaced by robots and we are,at the moment where I see education is actually they are stuck in their classroom.They are stuck in their artifacts.Right, and speak of What we’re trying here is really to challenge that, say, he wants these to be changed.” Right.

Khan is also experimenting to see what elements of this private school can work at public schools.

“Some of the principles of the school around full year and full day,those were, those are core principles not just like for, you know, upper income families.This is I think an imperative for all studentsthat it levels the playing field much more if all of your work is done while you’re at school in that 8:30 to 6 p.m.

Khan Lab School will be expanding.

It plans on starting classes for students who will be old enough to begin high school in the fall of 2017.