So glad you are here, reading and commenting. You bring up several important points. First, really we are using the trivium and quadrivium now without the modern delivery system. There are seven subjects a day based on skills and subjects students are uninterested in learning: math (algebra, geometry, calculus, etc.), science, history, language arts, reading, writing, and art or some other elective. The model has not changed since the renaissance period. And although I believe the renaissance period to be very important, we need to modify this delivery method of instruction.

We do have poly-specialists, especially in high school where many teachers are career changers – they entered teaching after starting in a career somewhere else. However, those poly-specialties are wasted because there is no time to tap into that resource with all of the running around and testing going on.

And I ask the same question you ask, why have bells at all? It is strange that we have evolved in so many areas; however in public education, we are still holding on to archaic practices.

Finally, maybe some of our core subjects should include ways to navigate life’s hard realities. Currently, life training consists of a few sayings on a teacher’s wall like, “Life Isn’t Fair; Get Over It” and “Shoot for the Moon and You’ll Reach a Star”. It’s completely useless. However if we can show kids how to use meditation or visualization or even breathing to navigate some of the tough situations in life, we may get closer to building a better society.

As a long time student, I realized the Hegelian Theory long before I knew Hegel: Planned Change + Create Conflict + Force a Solution = Created real/unplanned problem with no solution. This principle is staple in public education, as well as much of ‘higher’ education.

Another way to annihilate the antiquated ways of ‘bell to bell’ partitioning is by finding teachers whom are poly-specialists, i.e. those who have skilled backgrounds in more than one subject, and are able to teach those backgrounds into one bundle of time. Why have bells at all? So we simply shuffle students from one classroom pasture to another?

Story telling should exist in all disciplines, incorporating them into our personal lives is even better, but coupling that with what we are learning in the moment is the best. Not only does current education sterilize personal understanding of disciplines, but it has sterilized much of the subjects themselves. There is no concern for application of subjects, because frankly, some subjects have no application outside of the classroom, the most clinical of all! Re-networking school with the real world is paramount. To ‘de-academic’ the academic world is a must.