On the way to school this morning (for yet another early theater rehearsal) my daughter and I were discussing being tired and getting to bed at a decent time. (To her credit, she is in bed by 10:30 usually, which is early for a high school kid.)

Her observation about being tired? “I bet I wouldn’t be so tired if I wasn’t having to sit quietly and listen all day long.”

Exactly.

Seriously. Even 15-year olds need to do something besides sit quietly and absorb information. They need to move, to create.

Without prompting from me, she brought up the art class she took last year and reflected how that was such a different experience creating things.

How do I, as a parent, reconcile the fact that I send my kid into an atmosphere in which I feel deadens the learning experience? Not every class, not every teacher, of course. But the overall model of kids sitting and taking in content delivered by a “sage on the stage” figure is outdated. Something needs to change, and I fear it won’t change soon enough.