Want to know why Knight School should not be cut from Menlo’s curriculum? Click to read more. Photo courtesy of Pete Zivkov.
By John Reinstra, Guest Writer
One morning in the fall of 2013, Knight School Coordinator Peter Brown stepped up during an Upper School assembly and announced that on-campus Knight School courses would be required to have 30 minutes of homework each night. Almost immediately, a chorus of boos erupted from the student body. That moment was the only time in my four years at Menlo that students booed a teacher during an assembly.
After the event, it quickly became clear to me that there are differences between how the student body and the administration views Knight School, which is the weeklong break from normal school where students have the opportunity to learn unconventional things in unconventional ways. As a senior preparing to leave Menlo, I fear that many of these crucial disagreements have not been addressed appropriately and hope to start an open discussion about what Knight School should be.
In my view, Knight School is a time where students take time off from their normal classes in order to learn about something that is not typically taught in school, from rock climbing to basic financial planning. The weeklong courses strive to inspire a natural curiosity about a subject and instill a joy of learning that is often hard to create in a highly-competitive prep school environment. To that end, the classes are graded on a pass-fail basis and there is often little or no written work required. In the ideal Knight School course, students learn naturally through engaging experiences and practice rather than through compulsory schoolwork. It is infinitely less educational to read or blog about rock climbing than it is to actually do it.
In this way, I believe that the natural urge to make Knight School courses more “academic” is misguided. I think the urge comes from an impression that many Knight School courses do not seem to be educational. For instance, my trip to Zion National Park did not have a lesson plan or any homework, let alone quizzes or tests. Yet I learned a lot while I was there, from the geology of the canyons to the ecosystem and climate in the Utah desert. Being able to experience the local area while hearing about it from our tour guide was vastly more engaging than being told to memorize a handout for a quiz. The same is true for on campus courses. In sophomore year I took a course on Python programming and learned to create a self-solving Scrabble game. There weren’t any reading assignments or quizzes, but I learned a ton about a topic I was interested in.
While I believe that Knight School should largely remain unchanged from its current state, there are some improvements that could be made. For instance, Knight School courses vary widely in popularity, with some courses only able to take seniors and other courses brimming with uninterested students who hoped to get something else. In order to help mitigate this, Menlo should adapt to the interests of students by allowing more sections of certain courses and canceling especially unpopular courses. Rather than having a committee approve and reject ideas, surveys should be sent to the entire student body to assess which courses should be included in the Knight School catalog. Teachers who are uncommitted to a specific course could then help teach more popular courses. While I understand that teachers should be able to teach courses they care about, I think that Knight School can be much more successful if every student is excited about the course they are placed in.
I also think that Menlo should make it easier for students to suggest course ideas and get them approved. I tried two times to co-teach a Knight School course but ran into frustrating roadblocks both times. The first time, I was not informed that I needed a teacher sponsor until after my proposal was rejected. The second time, I realized that every teacher at Menlo was already teaching a course and was not allowed to work with a non-teacher member of the Menlo faculty. Based on surveys I conducted and interest I saw through the Knight School marketplace, I think that both of my proposed courses could have been very successful but I was prevented from teaching them in the first place. If Menlo makes more of an effort to promote student-initiated Knight School courses, Knight School could have more engaging courses and become more successful.
It saddens me to hear rumors that Menlo will be discontinuing or majorly changing Knight School due to “J Term.” To me and many of my peers, Knight School is an immensely fun, transformative, and educational experience that has profoundly shaped my high school career. It is one of the reasons that I love Menlo and is one of the programs that makes Menlo unique. With some minor adjustments, we can make Knight School even better than before while staying true to its original spirit and Menlo’s overall goals as an institution. I ask that the Menlo School administration reconsider any plans to gut the Knight School program and instead focus on improving it.
