During the past week, I had the opportunity to view the film Most Likely to Succeed directed by Greg Whiteley.  Within this film, it highlighted what a school of practical learning and innovative learning through experience looks like in comparison to that of a traditional, conventional school.

The school was based out of San Diego, California, and was a charter school called High Tech High.  Essentially, the school was designed not to focus on the traditional style classes where you participate in math, history, English, etc. But rather to allow students to learn through experience and by being engaged in hands on activity, acting out historical events in plays or conversing in open classroom conversation.  This can be considered an open education setting.

Although students did enjoy learning this way, some were concerned about being ill-prepared for standardized testing for college and university such as SAT’s and ACT’s.  They do bring forth valid points, from the film itself, there was very little focus on any core subjects to help encourage taking standardized test of any kind, so going into that it may be difficult for these students.  While the concern was brought forth, students statistically did score better from participating in the charter school going about class in this new innovative, practical sense then if they were doing traditional school work within the classroom.

As I look at what the film brought forth, I feel as though there needs to be a hybrid of the two in order to bring forth the utmost success.  Students should have the chance to branch away from traditional learning by doing so in a new, innovative way but they also do need opportunity to help build test taking skills and traditional classroom work in order to succeed when it comes to standardized testing.  By finding the balance of the two, this is when the education of our youth will start to thrive.