An alternative school, in the United States and some other parts of the world, is an institution which provides alternative education. It is an educational establishment with a curriculum and methods that are nontraditional. These schools have a special curriculum offering a more flexible program of study than a traditional school.
A wide range of philosophies and teaching methods are offered by alternative schools; some have strong political, scholarly, or philosophical orientations, while others are more ad-hoc assemblies of teachers and students dissatisfied with some aspect of mainstream or traditional education.
In the United Kingdom, School refers to a private school that provides a learner centered informal education as an alternative to the regimen of traditional education in the United Kingdom. There's a long tradition of such schools which includes Summerhill, the founder of which, A. S. Neill, greatly influenced the spread of such schools, Dartington, and Kilquhanity School and a range of schools based on the ideas of Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner.
In 1970, there were only a few alternative schools in operation in the United States. They originated to serve a growing population of students who were not experiencing success in the traditional schools. Today there are thousands, and the number continues to grow. The term "alternative" is now used to describe nearly every type of school imaginable, but many share certain distinguishing characteristics:
This type of school is not only intended to accommodate students who are considered at risk of failing academically, but also students of all academic levels and abilities who are better served by a non-traditional program. Many programs are specifically intended for students with special educational needs, but others address primarily social problems that affect students, such as teenage parenthood or homelessness.
Students are typically referred to as at-risk students, and may have one or more of any several reasons such as challenging behavior, a need for special remedial programs, emotional disabilities, or problems that destabilize the student's personal life, such as homelessness or, in the case of migrant farmworkers, moving very frequently.
Alternative schools in Canada share many of the same characteristics as American alternative schools. School boards, which are separate by municipality but funded by the province, choose whether or not they wish to have alternative schools and how they are operated.
Germany has a long tradition with Montessori and Waldorf Schools which are organized in their own national associations (with 994 Waldorf schools in the world there are 213 in Germany compared to 130 in the USA). These are based the concept of "Reformpädagogik" which is roughly equivalent to the anthroposophy concepts in progressive education. Other alternative schools are organized in the Bundesverband der Freien Alternativschulen (federal association of free alternative schools). These private schools only get limited funding which differs for each Bundesland in Germany.
Full public funding is given to "Laborschule" institutions which are schools attached to a research facility. They are supposed to explore alternative school concepts to be introduced to the general public school later on. The Laborschule Bielefeld had a great influence on alternative schools that do not adhere to the traditional concepts (Montessori, Waldorf, etc.). One result was the renewal of the democratic school concept.
In South Korea, alternative schools serve three big groups of youth in South Korea. The first group is students who could not succeed in formative Korean education. Many of these schools serve students who dropped out during their earlier school years, either voluntarily or by disciplinary action. The second group is young immigrants. As population of immigrants from Southeast Asia and North Korea is increasing, several educators started to see the necessity of the adaptive education, specially designed for these young immigrants. Because South Korea has been a monoethnic society throughout its history, there is not enough system and awareness to protect these students from bullying, social isolation, or academic failure.
For instance, the drop-out rate for North Korean immigrant students is ten times higher than that students from South Korean students because their major challenge is initially to adapt Korean society, not to get a higher test score. The other group is students who choose an alternative education because of its philosophy. Korean education, as in many other Asian countries, is based on testing and memorizing. Some students and parents believe this kind of education cannot nurture a student thoroughly and choose to go to an alternative school, that suggests a different way to learn for students. These schools usually stress the importance of interaction between other people and nature over written test results.
The major struggle in alternative schools in South Korea are recognition, lack of financial support, and quality gap between alternative schools. Although South Korean public's recognition to alternative education has deliberately changed, the progressive education still is not widely accepted. To enter a college, regular education is often preferred because of the nation's rigid educational taste on test result and record. For the same reason, South Korean government is not actively supporting alternative schools financially.
Hence, many alternative schools are at risk of bankruptcy, especially the schools that do not or cannot collect tuition from their students. Most Southeast Asian and North Korean immigrant families are financially in need, so they need assist from government's welfare system for their everyday life. It is clear that affording private education is a mere fantasy for these families. That phenomenon, at last, causes a gap among alternative schools themselves. Some schools are richly supported by upper-class parents and provide variety of in-school and after-school programs, and others rarely have resource to build few academic and extracurricular programs as such.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HOT DESIGNS ▪ Premium designs ▪ Designs by country ▪ Designs by U.S. state ▪ Most popular designs ▪ Newest, last added designs ▪ Unique designs ▪ Cheap, budget designs ▪ Design super sale DESIGNS BY THEME ▪ Accounting, audit designs ▪ Adult, sex designs ▪ African designs ▪ American, U.S. designs ▪ Animals, birds, pets designs ▪ Agricultural, farming designs ▪ Architecture, building designs ▪ Army, navy, military designs ▪ Audio & video designs ▪ Automobiles, car designs ▪ Books, e-book designs ▪ Beauty salon, SPA designs ▪ Black, dark designs ▪ Business, corporate designs ▪ Charity, donation designs ▪ Cinema, movie, film designs ▪ Computer, hardware designs ▪ Celebrity, star fan designs ▪ Children, family designs ▪ Christmas, New Year's designs ▪ Green, St. Patrick designs ▪ Dating, matchmaking designs ▪ Design studio, creative designs ▪ Educational, student designs ▪ Electronics designs ▪ Entertainment, fun designs ▪ Fashion, wear designs ▪ Finance, financial designs ▪ Fishing & hunting designs ▪ Flowers, floral shop designs ▪ Food, nutrition designs ▪ Football, soccer designs ▪ Gambling, casino designs ▪ Games, gaming designs ▪ Gifts, gift designs ▪ Halloween, carnival designs ▪ Hotel, resort designs ▪ Industry, industrial designs ▪ Insurance, insurer designs ▪ Interior, furniture designs ▪ International designs ▪ Internet technology designs ▪ Jewelry, jewellery designs ▪ Job & employment designs ▪ Landscaping, garden designs ▪ Law, juridical, legal designs ▪ Love, romantic designs ▪ Marketing designs ▪ Media, radio, TV designs ▪ Medicine, health care designs ▪ Mortgage, loan designs ▪ Music, musical designs ▪ Night club, dancing designs ▪ Photography, photo designs ▪ Personal, individual designs ▪ Politics, political designs ▪ Real estate, realty designs ▪ Religious, church designs ▪ Restaurant, cafe designs ▪ Retirement, pension designs ▪ Science, scientific designs ▪ Sea, ocean, river designs ▪ Security, protection designs ▪ Social, cultural designs ▪ Spirit, meditational designs ▪ Software designs ▪ Sports, sporting designs ▪ Telecommunication designs ▪ Travel, vacation designs ▪ Transport, logistic designs ▪ Web hosting designs ▪ Wedding, marriage designs ▪ White, light designs E-COMMERCE DESIGNS ▪ Magento store designs ▪ OpenCart store designs ▪ PrestaShop store designs ▪ CRE Loaded store designs ▪ Jigoshop store designs ▪ VirtueMart store designs ▪ osCommerce store designs ▪ Zen Cart store designs CMS DESIGNS ▪ Flash CMS designs ▪ Joomla CMS designs ▪ Mambo CMS designs ▪ Drupal CMS designs ▪ WordPress blog designs ▪ Forum designs ▪ phpBB forum designs ▪ PHP-Nuke portal designs ANIMATED WEBSITE DESIGNS ▪ Flash CMS designs ▪ Silverlight animated designs ▪ Silverlight intro designs ▪ Flash animated designs ▪ Flash intro designs ▪ XML Flash designs ▪ Flash 8 animated designs ▪ Dynamic Flash designs ▪ Flash animated photo albums ▪ Dynamic Swish designs ▪ Swish animated designs ▪ jQuery animated designs WEBSITE DESIGNS ▪ WebMatrix Razor designs ▪ HTML 5 designs ▪ Web 2.0 designs ▪ 3-color variation designs ▪ 3D, three-dimensional designs ▪ Artwork, illustrated designs ▪ Clean, simple designs ▪ CSS based website designs ▪ Full design packages ▪ Full ready websites ▪ Portal designs ▪ Stretched, full screen designs ▪ Universal, neutral designs CORPORATE ID DESIGNS ▪ Corporate identity sets ▪ Logo layouts, logo designs ▪ Logotype sets, logo packs ▪ PowerPoint, PTT designs ▪ Facebook themes VIDEO, SOUND & MUSIC ▪ Video e-cards ▪ After Effects video intros ▪ Special video effects ▪ Music tracks, music loops ▪ Stock music bank GRAPHICS & CLIPART ▪ Pro clipart & illustrations, $19/year ▪ 5,000+ icons by subscription ▪ Icons, pictograms |
| Super Offers |
| Super Offers |
| Custom Logo Design $149 ▪ Web Programming ▪ ID Card Printing ▪ Best Web Hosting ▪ eCommerce Software ▪ Add Your Link |
| © 1996-2013 MAGIA Internet Studio ▪ About ▪ Portfolio ▪ Photo on Demand ▪ Hosting ▪ Advertise ▪ Sitemap ▪ Privacy ▪ Maria Online |