A Class of Their Own: When Children Teach Children

Seven million more children will enter our classrooms in the next decade while the number of adolescents will increase by 20%. We will require three million new teachers to instruct this expanding student population. Briggs proposes a program for training children to tutor younger students, thereby freeing up teachers to devote time to students who need more individualized attention and to teach analytic and human relations skills and imaginative uses of technology.

Children are capable and need opportunities to participate in teaching as well as learning. Peer teachers improve their grasp of the subject and younger children learn from those who truly speak their language. The result is a mutually beneficial system for both teachers and children.

DENNIE BRIGGS has taught at San Francisco State University, Govenors State University in Illinois, the North London Polytechnic, and University of California Extension. He is the author of more than 100 articles in professional journals and the media.