Look around.
Almost everything about the way we live has changed.
The way we work has changed. We can build businesses from our kitchen tables, work remotely with people across the country, take college classes from our bedrooms, use AI to solve problems, learn new skills online, order groceries from our phones, talk face-to-face with someone across the world, and access more information in seconds than previous generations could have found in an entire library.
Technology adapted.
Work adapted.
Communication adapted.
Families adapted.
The world our children are growing up in barely resembles the one their grandparents grew up in.
So why does school still look so familiar?
A group of children, separated mostly by age, placed in the same classroom, following the same schedule, working toward many of the same benchmarks, often expected to learn the same material within roughly the same window of time.
And when a child doesn't fit that system neatly, we have a bad habit of asking:
What's wrong with the child?
Maybe that's the wrong question.
Maybe we should be asking:
What could we change about the learning environment?
Twenty Different Minds Are Still Twenty Different Minds
Put 20 children in a classroom and you don't suddenly have one type of learner.
You have 20 different brains.
Twenty personalities.
Twenty sets of strengths, interests, experiences, challenges, attention spans, motivations, and learning needs.
Federal data illustrate just how much individual variation a teacher may be responsible for at once. In the most recent nationally reported class-size data, average public-school classes were roughly 19 to 22 students in many common K–12 classroom settings.
Now imagine trying to genuinely personalize instruction for every one of those children while also meeting curriculum requirements, managing behavior, completing assessments, documenting progress, communicating with families, handling accommodations, preparing lessons, and keeping everyone moving forward.
That's an enormous expectation.
And this isn't me attacking teachers.
Actually, I think teachers are often placed in an impossible position too.
Going into the 2024–25 school year, 74% of public schools reported difficulty filling at least one vacant teaching position with a fully certified teacher. Special education positions were among the hardest to fill.
So we're putting enormous responsibility on teachers while simultaneously dealing with staffing shortages, limited resources, large groups of students, and increasingly complicated student needs.
Then we act surprised when someone gets left behind.
Children Were Never Supposed to Learn Exactly the Same Way
This is one of the biggest problems I have with one-size-fits-all education.
Because children don't learn one way.
And educational research doesn't pretend they do.
Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is an educational framework specifically built around learner variability. It encourages flexible ways for students to engage with material, access information, communicate, create, and demonstrate what they understand. CAST's current UDL Guidelines even emphasize choice, autonomy, meaningful goals, creativity, multiple communication methods, accessible technology, and different ways for learners to show what they know.
Think about how different that sounds from:
Sit down.
Be quiet.
Finish the worksheet.
Don't get ahead.
Don't fall behind.
Wait until everyone else is finished.
Raise your hand before speaking.
There's obviously a place for structure. Kids need boundaries, responsibility, persistence, and the ability to do things they don't always feel like doing.
But structure and compliance aren't the same thing as education.
A child asking why shouldn't automatically be viewed as difficult.
A child obsessed with dinosaurs shouldn't have to abandon that curiosity because dinosaurs aren't on today's schedule.
A child who understands math better with manipulatives shouldn't feel less capable because another student can do it on paper.
A child who needs movement shouldn't spend years believing they're a problem because sitting still is hard.
A child who learns quickly shouldn't spend half the day waiting.
And a child who needs more time shouldn't feel stupid because the rest of the class has moved on.
Different doesn't mean incapable.
Sometimes it simply means the environment wasn't designed for that learner.
We Need More Than Kids Who Know How to Follow Directions
This is the part I think we don't talk about enough.
What kind of adults are we trying to raise?
Because the world our children are entering isn't going to reward them simply for memorizing information.
Information is everywhere now.
AI can explain a concept.
YouTube can teach a skill.
A search engine can pull up facts in seconds.
What becomes incredibly valuable in that kind of world?
Knowing how to think.
Knowing how to ask better questions.
Knowing when information doesn't make sense.
Knowing how to research something instead of blindly accepting it.
Creativity.
Adaptability.
Communication.
Problem-solving.
Curiosity.
Knowing how to teach yourself something nobody has taught you yet.
Knowing how to recognize your own strengths.
Knowing how to fail, adjust, and try again.
Those aren't little extras that should happen after the "real work" is finished.
That is the real work.
CAST's UDL framework describes the goal of education in terms of developing learner agency, including learners who are purposeful, reflective, resourceful, authentic, strategic, and action-oriented.
That sounds a lot closer to the future our kids are actually walking into.
And When Children Struggle, Blame Doesn't Fix Anything
This might be the part that frustrates me most.
A child struggles.
The parent gets blamed.
The teacher gets blamed.
The child gets labeled lazy, distracted, difficult, behind, unmotivated, or incapable.
Everybody starts pointing fingers.
Meanwhile, the actual question gets buried:
What does this child need in order to learn?
Sometimes that's additional instruction.
Sometimes it's assistive technology.
Sometimes it's movement.
Sometimes it's smaller lessons.
Sometimes it's visual instruction.
Sometimes it's hands-on learning.
Sometimes they need to move faster.
Sometimes they need to slow down.
Sometimes they need quiet.
Sometimes they need somebody to connect what they're learning to something they actually care about.
Sometimes they simply need permission to approach the problem differently.
That's not lowering expectations.
It's changing the path while keeping the destination meaningful.
UDL specifically encourages educators to reduce unnecessary learning barriers and provide flexible pathways while maintaining high expectations for students.
We already know better approaches exist.
The bigger challenge is making enough room to use them.
This Isn't About Saying Every Public School Is Bad
I don't believe every public school is failing children.
I don't believe every teacher is part of the problem.
There are incredible teachers doing everything they can for their students, sometimes spending their own money, staying late, answering messages at night, modifying lessons, fighting for accommodations, and trying desperately to give children what they need inside a system they didn't create.
There are also children who absolutely thrive in traditional schools.
That's important to say.
But recognizing those things doesn't mean we're forbidden from questioning the structure itself.
We should question it.
We should question everything we're trusting with our children.
If a learning environment works beautifully for a child, great.
If it doesn't, families shouldn't be made to feel like something is wrong with their child because they're searching for something different.
Education Should Fit the Child, Not Force the Child Into a Mold
This is one of the biggest reasons HomeSchoolFTS exists.
Not because I think every family needs to homeschool exactly the same way.
Actually, I think that's the opposite of the point.
I want families to realize that education can look different.
It can happen around a kitchen table.
At a museum.
In the backyard.
Through a science experiment that completely fails the first time.
Through a book your child can't stop talking about.
Through cooking.
Building.
Coding.
Gardening.
Traveling.
Drawing.
Running a pretend store.
Researching some random question your child asked at 9:30 at night that somehow turns into an hour-long conversation.
Learning doesn't belong exclusively inside a classroom.
And childhood shouldn't be reduced to checking boxes until graduation.
Our Kids Deserve Us to Keep Asking Questions
The world isn't slowing down.
The children we're raising today will inherit problems, careers, technologies, and responsibilities we can't completely predict yet.
So I'm going to keep questioning whether the way we've always done something is still the way we should be doing it.
I'm going to keep looking for better tools.
I'm going to keep learning.
I'm going to keep talking about what isn't working.
And I'm going to keep reminding parents that they are allowed to ask questions about their child's education.
Maybe changing education doesn't begin with some giant national transformation.
Maybe it starts smaller.
One parent noticing their child learns differently.
One teacher trying another approach.
One family deciding curiosity matters more than checking another box.
One child realizing:
I'm not bad at learning. I just needed a different way to learn.
If HomeSchoolFTS helps even one family figure that out, then this work matters.
Because our children aren't products moving down an assembly line.
They're individual human beings.
And they deserve an education that actually recognizes it.