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Alternative education, also known as non-traditional
education or educational alternative, includes a number of
approaches to teaching and learning other than mainstream or
traditional education. Educational alternatives are often
rooted in various philosophies that are fundamentally
different from those of mainstream or traditional education.
While some have strong political, scholarly, or
philosophical orientations, others are more informal
associations of teachers and students dissatisfied with some
aspect of mainstream or traditional education. Educational
alternatives, which include charter schools, alternative
schools, independent schools, and home-based learning vary
widely, but often emphasize the value of small class size,
close relationships between students and teachers, and a
sense of community.
While pedagogical controversy is very old, "alternative
education" presupposes some kind of orthodoxy to which the
alternative is opposed. In general, this limits the term to
the last two or perhaps three centuries, with the rise of
standardized and, later, compulsory education at the primary
and secondary levels. Many critics in this period have
suggested that the education of young people should be
undertaken in radically different ways than ones in
practice. In the 19th century, the Swiss humanitarian Johann
Heinrich Pestalozzi; the American transcendentalists Amos
Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David
Thoreau; the founders of progressive education, John Dewey
and Francis Parker; and educational pioneers, such as Maria
Montessori and Rudolf Steiner (founder of the Waldorf
schools); among others, all insisted that education should
be understood as the art of cultivating the moral,
emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of
the developing child. Anarchists such as Leo Tolstoy and
Francisco Ferrer y Guardia emphasized education as a force
for political liberation, secularism, and elimination of
class distinctions.
More recently, social critics such as John Caldwell Holt,
Paul Goodman, Frederick Mayer, George Dennison and Ivan
Illich have examined education from more individualist,
anarchist, and libertarian perspectives, that is, critiques
of the ways that they feel conventional education subverts
democracy by molding young people's understandings. Other
writers, from the revolutionary Paulo Freire to American
educators like Herbert Kohl and Jonathan Kozol, have
criticized mainstream Western education from the viewpoint
of their varied left-liberal and radical politics.
A wide variety of educational alternatives exist at the
elementary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education.
These generally fall into four major categories: school
choice, alternative school, independent school, and
home-based education. These general categories can be
further broken down into more specific practices and
methodologies.
The public school options include entirely separate schools
in their own settings as well as classes, programs, and even
semi-autonomous "schools within schools." Public school
choice options are open to all students in their
communities, though some have waiting lists. Among these are
charter schools, combining private initiatives and state
funding; and magnet schools, which attract students to
particular themes, such as performing arts.
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