Tag: education

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Finland vs Sudbury (Part 3)

Tim Walker related an interesting story in the latter part of his book, about the Sudbury Valley School. He showed his students a short Youtube clip featuring the school and what it was all about. He thought that his students would love to be in that school.

Surprisingly though, his students thought it was “too radical” and they weren’t very comfortable with that. They particularly found something “wrong” about a school that allowed its kids to play video games all day. In the end, they still preferred having a teacher guide them.

What’s my take on this?

Well, first of all, I think it’s safe to say that most students in Finland enjoy school, or at the very least, they don’t hate it as much as in other places where school is more rigid and traditional. They have an easy schedule, frequent breaks, cool teachers who don’t get mad at them easily, or pressure them unreasonably — hey, what’s not to like? Sounds like a lot of fun.

Here is the danger, and take note that I am not saying this to disparage the teachers or administrators as if they were secretly plotting something diabolical. No, the danger comes from the system itself which conditions the students to have someone “guiding” them all the time, so much so that they feel uncomfortable when you take that guidance away.

Greenberg calls teachers in the traditional system as “entertainers.” Good teachers are usually good entertainers — they keep the class interested and motivated to “learn,” and I would think that there would be a lot of great teacher-entertainers in Finland (simply because they support each other and are not that stressed from the more rigid requirements of their traditional counterparts). Because of this, students feel they are “learning a lot” from these teachers and taking that away would somehow diminish their learning.

But that is wrong.

What each person needs to develop is a sense of identity and direction, to know that his or her choice matters, and that others can respect that choice — whether or not it seems good or bad. In a Sudbury school, nobody tells you what to do. You do what you choose to do, and you either reap the benefits of doing so or suffer the full brunt of its consequences. Sudbury staff do not entertain the kids nor do they feel any need to do so. If a child wants to learn something, he may sometimes even need to convince the staff to teach him.

The process is slower at first because you have to wait for each individual’s maturity to kick in. You don’t just gather them all by a certain age group and begin lecturing them about this and that because the “experts” say that’s the right age to begin teaching that material. Each person eventually has to develop that inner drive and say, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to learn, and no one can stop me.

That’s the value I see in a Sudbury school.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

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Learning Democracy (Part 2)

Part 1 | Part 2

What if we began practicing democracy in school?

Not the pretend democracy we give when we let students choose, for example, whether they want the quiz on Friday or on Monday; or the playhouse democracy we give to student councils and school papers, where they can decide whatever project they want or whatever article they want to print, but all it takes is a word from the principal or the school board and that project can be instantly vetoed, that article immediately censored.

But what if students’ decisions actually mattered? What if they voted on having no uniforms or having no haircut rules and that decision was actually respected? What if students could decide how the school spent its money? What if students voted on which teachers (including administrators) to hire and which ones to fire? What if students could actually choose what they wanted to do — whether it’s to read a pocketbook or to chat with their friends or even to play all day?

You may think that is a recipe for disaster for any school and it wouldn’t last a year, or even a week, but that is what Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts has been doing since day one for the past 50 years. Not only has it survived but it has thrived and become a model for similar types of schools in different cities and countries. Its graduates go on to colleges or trade schools of their choice and are in diverse fields and professions.

Hal Sadofsky, one of the school’s earliest graduates, went on to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics at M.I.T. and is currently an Associate Professor in the University of Oregon. He has this to say: “The most fundamental educational lesson we hope our students will learn is that they are responsible for their own education, and in fact for their own lives. Actually internalizing this, and all that goes with it is the best lesson they can have for the rest of their lives. I believe that it is important for people to acquire knowledge and skills, but I don’t believe I can or should force them to do so. Much more important is for our children to learn that if they value something, it is worth working for, and that if they have a goal they care about, they need to take responsibility for realizing it.”

And the way this lesson is imparted is not through dry lectures but through actual experience, where the student feels and knows that his decisions do matter, and no adult is going to come along and say, “Well that’s interesting, but now it’s time to come in and learn your grammar,” or something along those lines.

Sudbury founder, Daniel Greenberg, says that even he has no special authority or tenure in the school. He has one vote like everybody else, and he always has to perform well in the eyes of the community, or risk being voted out.

In an essay entitled The Significance of the Democratic Model, Greenberg writes, “To educate successfully for democracy, the real life surroundings of the children we seek to educate must be democratic in every respect, through and through, to the core and down to the last detail. The world of the children we want to reach must be a democratic reality, so the children wishing to master it will have no choice but to master the whole intricacy of its democratic structure. Education for democracy demands democratic schools. There is no other way to make it effective.”

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles atwww.freethinking.me.

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Learning Democracy (Part 1)

Part 1 | Part 2

We love the idea of democracy, of being free to choose our own path and forge our own destiny. We enshrine the ideals of liberty and celebrate as heroes those who fight and lay down their lives for its survival. Yet, a lot of people do not know how to handle their freedom. They think that freedom is license to do whatever they want, even if what they do already curtails or restricts another person’s freedom. They do not understand that the price of sustaining a free society is for individuals to think and act responsibly, to create a space of mutual respect, only then can people in that society be truly free.

I have recently been watching videos of traffic apprehensions by the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and it is both funny and sad how people caught violating the rules seem to think that they have a special privilege for breaking the rules. They do all sorts of things to escape the consequences — they try to run, they try to reason, they threaten, they appeal to the “unfairness” of the law, and so on. Expand this to different facets of our political and economic lives and you see the same thing — people try to cheat on paying taxes, they try to evade import tariffs, they aim for special exemptions from the rule because they have connections in this or that office.

We love the idea of democracy but don’t know how to live in one.

I believe one of the fundamental reasons why is that we were never taught how to live in a democracy. In fact, our school system, which is supposed to “educate” us and prepare us for life, is one of the most autocratic institutions around — and we spend our formative years there. We spend our teenage years, and even our early adult years there. And then when we’re done and get thrown out into the “real” world, we are expected to know how to handle democracy?

What do children really learn in school? Why do I say it is an autocratic institution? Let’s count them off:

  1. Children learn from early on that their choices don’t matter. Little Johnny wants to play with dolls. “No, Johnny, dolls are for girls,” says the teacher.  “You can’t play with them.” Little Annie wants to spend all day drawing. “You can’t do that, Annie,” says the teacher, “You have to learn your Arithmetic first, and then Reading, and then some Science.”
    “But I want to learn how to make cartoons,” says Annie.
    “No,” says the teacher. “You have to learn the more important things first.”
  2. Children learn that a lot of power resides with the authorities. If you want to control that power, you either have to challenge the authorities, or you have to suck up to them. So kids learn never to express their true opinions about a matter, but to say what the teacher wants to hear. They learn that they can sometimes circumvent rules by sweet-talking a teacher, or by using intimidation tactics like, “You can’t touch me. Do you know my uncle is the head of the school board?”
  3. Children learn that their lives are mostly controlled by other people, whether it’s the teacher, the principal, or their parents pressuring them to get high grades. They learn to shut down their dreams, to not care, to go through the motions of “learning” just enough to pass the tests and move on to the next level.

By the time they’re done, we wonder why so many young graduates are unfocused and don’t know what to do with their lives. Look again at how they were “educated” and you need not wonder any more.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

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The Basics (Part 4)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Many schools have, as part of their mission or vision, a goal to produce leaders. But the way schools are traditionally structured does not encourage students to be good leaders, but rather, good followers.

Part of the reason is that teachers are usually those who do well as students. They follow instructions, they pass their tests, and they get above-average grades. Because they were so good in following the system, they now perpetuate it, and more so later on, if they become administrators.

Many of the entrepreneurs and trailblazers I know were those who got into trouble while they were in school. They didn’t like following the rules. They would deliberately cut class. They would talk back to their teachers and challenge their authority. Two of the biggest brands in technology for the past 3 decades — Apple and Microsoft — were founded by college dropouts.

The world has transformed beyond the concrete factory walls of the industrial age into the boundless reach of the information age where even outer space is no longer an unreachable goal.

Yet, we remain fixated on the idea that adults know what sort of “basics” to teach our children. Adults today who probably never dreamed that we would see the day that we would hold in our hands a device that can help us communicate with people on the other side of the world, where we can fit an entire library of books, and music, audio clips and videos, and even play games or take and store photos.

How can we know what material our children need for their future when we cannot even predict our own? How dare we presume to want to fill their heads with what we think is important and what we think is essential.

No wonder many kids today find school irrelevant — even those who do well. I used to do very well in school but I thought a lot of the stuff I was memorizing was useless. And I was right. I never really used around 90% of what I learned and a lot of the things that I found useful in life I learned elsewhere.

And guess what? A lot of teachers I talk to also feel this way, yet they hardly do anything about it and just go back the classroom doing what they have always done. The inertia of tradition, of doing what has always been done, is almost impossible to overcome. I know because I’ve been there, having been a teacher for a total of around 10 years.

This is not to say that teachers do not work to improve things. That would be unfair because they do (at least the good ones). They look for more effective methods of teaching. They prepare better materials. They improve their own skills by taking public-speaking lessons or learning how to be humorous.

But all these are still done within the system and it doesn’t matter what you do within it, you still end up with followers. You cannot produce self-directed individuals by directing and dictating to them what they should be doing every hour of their lives.

They need time and freedom to figure that out by themselves.

They need a new, and different kind of school.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

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The Basics (Part 3)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Where does the idea of the basics of education come from anyway?

It comes from a parental orientation. Parents are the child’s first teachers — coaxing them to form their first words, holding them when they try to stand and walk, teaching them how to say “please” and “thank you,” and so on. In ancient times, it also meant teaching them how to hunt, cook, build a fire, build shelter, and so on.

In that mindset, the parents or guardians act as the authority — “I know better, you listen to me.”

In those days, there was a certain limit to what you could do. You trained to become a warrior or a hunter, a farmer, a craftsman building weapons or tools, a merchant or an entertainer. If you were a woman, your options were even more limited.

That was more or less how things were until the industrial revolution came along in the 18th century. The birth of more and more factories now demanded a certain class of workers that historically did not exist in large numbers. Now remember that factories in those days were nowhere near the factories of today where you have a lot of robots and machines working on automated processes. Before, you needed hundreds or even thousands of humans working on some part of an assembly line.

In other words, humans were doing robotic tasks before robots came along.

In order to do so, they needed people who could read — because it is much better to circulate written instructions, announcements, warnings and so on than it is to keep verbally repeating them all the time. They needed people who could write — they should at least be able to write their own name, to log data, write reports, and so on rather than having someone else take dictation all the time. And they needed some rudimentary arithmetic to do simple calculations at work — and of course, managers, accountants and bookkeepers needed a bit more than what was rudimentary.

Most of all, they needed people who were good at following instructions, who would do exactly what they were told to do. It’s not exactly a good thing for an assembly line worker to suddenly get creative with his tasks.

So the “experts” came together and figured out a way to produce these kinds of people and thus, the school system was born with the basics, of course, being reading, writing and arithmetic. And these were enforced with the same authoritarian mindset — “We know better. You sit down and listen to us.”

The subliminal effect of this method of instruction produced subservient children who would obey, respond well to praise and good grades, and be afraid of committing mistakes for fear of being reprimanded or getting failing marks. Those who did well in school went on to becoming good factory workers, securing tenure and earning a steady income.

Today, after 200 years since the birth of the school system, not much has changed. Oh sure, we’ve added more hours and days and more subjects that “experts” have deemed as basic. We’ve also relaxed on methods of correction and punishment. But most schools are still run on the same fundamental premise — that there are experts who know better what kids are supposed to know and do not know. What is worse is that schools are still in the business of producing followers, no matter the lip service they give to producing leaders.

And I’ll show you why in Part 4.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.