On one hand, I am very interested in the things I'm learning about special education and pedagogical methods. On the other hand, much as I appreciate sharing the classroom entirely with mature adult women in a variety of ages who are serious about this, every now and then I am still (in a disturbing flashback to secondary school) plagued by other people's slowness or incompetence.
For example, this week out of 5 short presentations on alternative pedagogical methods by my classmates, two talked for twice as long as I had done in mine while failing to present both the central tenets of the philosophy and what the method actually does, which are kind of the essential parts. It seems fairly basic and hard to mess up, but the girl who talked about Steiner schools babbled for a good five minutes about organic food, but at the end of her three-page powerpoint outline, we had learned nothing about what goes on in a Steiner classroom and the lecturer had to take over and give a mini-talk about it. The woman who covered Vygotskij gave an excellent summation of how his methods are applied, but failed to include the key concepts related to his theories.
One thing that's striking about the various alternative methodologies and theories (Montessori, Steiner, Vygotskij, Freinet, Reggio Emilia, John Dewey) is that they have a lot in common, and all focus on working with children's inherent curiosity and desire to learn, allowing them to direct their studies or set their own pace, and letting the teacher guide them instead of just reading textbooks out loud for them to then regurgitate in the form of a string of worksheets, unimaginative questions requiring in answer nothing but rephrased sentences directly from the book, and fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice tests (you can tell I'm still bitter: a better word might be traumatized). Practical applications, the real world, concretization... all of these are common ground probably because they're so close to the natural way children learn when given the chance, and as such are fairly obvious.
So why the persistent clinging to the "traditional" methods which are practically the worst possible way to teach anyone, not just children with alternative learning styles, learning difficulties, and above- or below-average intelligence? Why, when they've been empirically shown to suck for decades? I don't mean to imply that methods in school aren't changing, because I know that they had become more flexible already when I was in primary school compared to my mother's experiences 26 years prior (not enough to make school anything but exquisitely boring torture, but it was better than nothing), and in secondary school - in the classes aimed specifically and exclusively at "gifted" and advanced students - I was lucky to have more alternative learning methods than most, but usually on a small scale, nothing to the extent of student-directed independent studies or broad interdisciplinary theme-oriented units (with a few exceptions).
As a child I was often told by my mom that my paltry few hours a week of special "enrichment" classes, the sole interesting and exciting parts of my education (once exiled from Montessori paradise at age 6), were needed far more by my classmates who were excluded from them. It was her opinion that a determined and intelligent person can always learn if they try (projecting a bit there, Mom) and that the vast majority of "average" students are in need of help, and would be a more appropriate target for the better teaching methods and more personal attention. (I was never so self-effacing as to be able to wish to trade the saving grace of my school week away, however.) I always felt conflicted about this issue as a result, because my mom seemed to feel that I should feel guilty for benefiting above my classmates simply due to IQ testing - an arbitrary measure that doesn't actually measure intelligence blah blah Gardner being good at different things (already drummed into my head at a very early age) - and nothing to do with merit. My mom is nothing if not anti-elitist.
As an adult, though, I have seen through the conflict. Obviously there is still one considering the inadequate resources in most school systems which result in them having to undertake a kind of triage, so that it's not unbelievable that the question is either/or for "enrichment" or so-called "special education" (for learning disabilities, I mean, since provision for the physically/severely handicapped is to an extent mandated by law, and is less easily carved away - not that schools don't try. However, in my system, the physically handicapped or severely handicapped had no choice but to attend the one special needs school which was fully accessible, while children suffering from less visible disabilities like grave learning difficulties were frequently stuffed back into classes with everyone else to receive wholly inadequate help and attention and usually to fail and eventually drop out).
Morally, though, all students deserve to be taught with methods that actually are effective. Leaving aside the matter of extra resources, all children, the average, the high- and low-IQed, the learning disabled and the physically disabled, equally deserve to be taught in a way that makes learning interesting and fun, stimulates their own curiosity and motivation, and trains them to investigate and think critically - by which I mean with alternative pedagogical methods. I can't believe that there would be anything but improvement if all primary schools were Montessori, Steiner, or Freinet.
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