Hello everybody!
Noel, I think that most productive work on education will be the work we do on
re-inventing all the system (of course, as people remain in the mainstream now, improving and opening the system may also be something worth doing). Those are some of my ideas about it:
1. Parents (or "family"
adults) should
live as
simply (avoiding materialistic goals- houses, cars, expensive holidays,...) and
honestly (guessing and doing the work they can do best and harms least) as they can, so as they can take
co-responsibility of their children's education2. Parents (or "family"
adults) should take actively part in the
organization of local -at best, in a walking/byking distance-
educating groups apart from the official schools (unless they are part of the tiny exception of schools in which their full participation is welcome)
3. In this education model
children would develop their abilities at their own pace and, as they grow, they would
decide the fields in which they want to learn more4.
Small children would just be provided a
nurturing environment. Physically it would be in a
wide green area. Emotionally, their
needs would be
answered as well as possible (by their own parents at the start and detaching from them little by little as they feel sure and loved around other people)
5. The concepts of
curriculum, ages for achieving different stages of knowledge, exams,... would change radically.
Children themselves tend to ask for the teaching of what they "need" to know, so it is much easier than all the hyper-specialised stuff that supposedely guides most of our schools
6. As they grow,
children would start contributing in real world jobs to do,
learning and doing all the time. Society would be eager to receive teenagers for some hours everyday to educate them and learn from their freshness.
There are many interesting writings and experiences on this field all over the world. I know little about it. Near BIlbao a small group of parents started something with some 7 small children last year, I'll research about it soon.
Which are the most interesting experiences you know, have experienced or read/heard about?
best wishes from Bilbao,
At preparing the workshop mentioned I dropped on this video -and failed once and again to embed it :-)- that suggests interesting ways of living with children...
ElederBM31_ BILBAO: Mind Mapping-Open Space Technology-CreativityTWITTER: Eleder_BM
