Compartmentalization

"The act of dividing into parts"

From my years in our United States Navy, compartment means a space in a ship designed and fabricated for a specific purpose. As you review the images above you will see a compartment for sleeping. It is from the berthing area of a Troop Transport. Another picture shows engineers posing in an engineering compartment designed for the control of the propulsion equipment. The third image clearly shows some off duty sailors in their work area for the Missile Systems. Well so much for "Flower Child's" memory lapse to his Youth.

I recently heard a discussion regarding education of our future citizens. The phrase "compartmentalization" was discussed and the evils of having assigned home work for elementary students using one subject for each night of the school week was mentioned. Monday could be for Math, Tuesday for English and so forth. You get the idea. One side of this discussion was that this could generate scheduling concerns for the teachers involved with a specific grade level. Maybe, but what we are currently doing does not appear to be generating well educated future citizens. While the scheduling concerns may be valid I also believe that in a weeks time that the assigned home work with a specific focus each school night could also produce better subject knowledge for each student. I know for sure that it would allow each student to focus on a specific topic each school night and this could possibly allow our students to achieve academic excellence which currently seems to evade our educational systems.

Maybe is is time to start thinking outside of the box. We certainly have adequate evidence to prove that our current system is not working all that well.

In support of the concept of specific topics/subjects each night of the school week I would encourage the skeptics to check out the Education System employed at Oxford, England, specifically Queens College. I do believe that they focus on one subject at a time. At least that is what my daughter told me some years ago. It worked for her and all of her peers. Of course this concept for the day time class room situation may not be appropriate, but for the evening homework it just may well be worthwhile to at least try. It would be total immersion in the subject for one evening each week. I would think that this approach would have merit and certainly could do no harm.

Additionally, this system must have some merit for I hear that the "assigned subject" concept is used right here in Middle Georgia. I understand that the tudor system along with an assigned subject for a certain period of time is used at "The Mercer University School of Medicine" with great success.

I know that we can do better. I would suggest that this just may work. I would encourage our dynamic educational leaders and professionals to actually "Think Out Side of the Box" and employ this system. In a weeks time each scholar would be exposed to the five subjects that they are studying for that Quarter/Semester.

In fact focusing on one subject each school night may also help eliminate the growing number of scholars who appear to be suffering from "Attention Deficit Disorder!!!!!!!"