I read this article ,
A School With No Teachers, Where Student Teach Themselves
It is really heartening to read initiatives such as the 42. Indeed, this is what we need for our children. I know there are many, many more alternative, inward looking initiatives.
For far too long, children have been spoon fed. It is time, they do what we are all naturally brought up to do,
learn to learn!
The approach of the
42 can be daunting or even scary. This can be said for many other alternative approaches. It fundamentally redefines the entire concept of school, some thing may of us have been familiar with for a long time. Such approaches totally reinvents the role of teachers It is as if the ground we have been walking on has been removed. It is difficult to comprehend what to do and it is common that respond with fear and quickly seek for comfort, familiar ground. Some go to the extent of trying eliminate such alternate thinking adopting them as threats.
Some will embrace the change. Takes them by the horn, as it were. In doing so, activate a change in consciousness. They see change as necessary, for the betterment of their lives and the lives of future generations. Some found courage motivated by the fact that their children have been bullied or abuse, or have special learning needs that the mainstream schools cannot provide. They have found that schools have to be examination orientated, lost its true meaning and lost its bearing on developing the whole child. Many parents sees the necessity of such actions born out of a dire need that see their
children get good education where the mainstream schooling environment have failed them.
There are those who see a slightly bigger picture that the schooling system as a political-corporation process of domination and control. Indeed schools have become a place where young impressionable minds are being dumb-down and "brainwashed". Forced to think in a particular way or to accept that a certain thinking is right. Minds becomes more closed than open. One only need to see how history is being taught (or not being taught) at all. Or how subjects like moral, civic-consciousness embedded with nationalistic ideals are being drummed into minds of kids. Corporations, on the other hand would mold children's minds to consume and buy, buy and buy! The underlining message is that happiness arises when we have things, positions, status etc. The political-corporation control of schools is a deadly combination.
What if we are out of mainstreams schooling and make a mistake? My answer:
"Correct it! Education Is a process . It is a process that you can be in control. If you choose to."
Education is about changing our minds and altering our consciousness. To do this, we need to overcome our own barriers of fear, complacency rough about by our own conditioning. Real learning comes from breaking our of our minds, to find ourselves, our real potentials.
What do all these? Ultimately, it is about happiness and wanting happiness for our children. We tend to forget it as we try to pin happiness to be able to "survive" in society and complicate ourselves with schools, curriculum, examinations, jobs. career, etc. Happiness is about finding oneself and being at peace. The more opportunity we allow our children (and ourselves), the better the opportunity for them to be happy.
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| CLiCers: Trying not to get schooling in the way of education |
(Check out our initiative, CLiC from Learning Beyond Schooling, our own learning process with our children and the community)
