week 8

yay

I started my journey to democratic education by reading a book that I unfortunately can not remember the name of, I didn’t realise its impact at the time. I was told by an observing lecturer that I didn’t understand the role of the teacher. I just think of it differently. I do not want power over children, any more than I would over an adult. I see children as fully formed other humans. I always come back to ‘We’ made this up!!

I wrote a ‘case study’ at teachers college using a request by a child (for more time for an assignment) who was at a school with Co-Principals and had the Summerhill philosophies as another piece of ‘evidence’…. so interesting, even for others.

I recommend reading about the Sudbury schools, as a model of possibility. Tamariki School in Christchurch is based on a playcentre style model.

This is more like it. Tutuing around the edges of schools is a waste of time. Trust children. Let them be free to learn. (I suggest also reading Peter Grey). I went to a workshop/course? on dyslexia and was devastated to find it was an advocate of structured literacy aimed at 5 year olds. It was a deficit model, nowhere did they advocate the benefits of thinking differently, find ways to promote these differences… it was all about being successful in the current model.

I work at a holiday programme called Everyone Out. That it is a holiday programme releases me from having to engage in what others relate to as teaching. I have seen more learning happen there than I have in any classroom.. The programme is run OUTSIDE and is free play. Children react differently to this freedom. It also lets you love “teaching” – watching free children is uplifting. The main problems are, the cost of coming, and the inability for most in being able to engage in multi day projects.

I have looked at other models of education like Stiener and Montessori, but they are as dogmatic as regular schools. Why do we not take ideas from all?

What makes some people more aware of power, dominant culture, and class? At 10, my class was doing graphing using weight. I was very small and my teacher, a man, wasn’t. I refused to be weighed, which he didn’t understand. I did not elaborate. I knew I was an outlier, I knew there was, is, a dominant idea of skinny being good, I knew he was allowing others to refuse and so as to not play that game I too refused. Biology?