Alternative Pedagogies and Democratic Education
aure
A few weeks ago, I was wondering about how does/should EUDEC relate to
other forms of alternative educations, so I ask people from the
council what they think about it. Now we have these Google Groups set
up, Michael suggested we put it here to get feedback from more people.
So I pasted below the start of our discussion (which should then be
read "bottom-up" until here!).
Aurelien
On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 11:33, Aurelien Giraud <agi...@eudec.org>
wrote:
Hi Michael,
I appreciate your answer.
I just thought that we might have a question like the one from
ANEN often when we get in touch with "established" groups, and
wondered how to explain it to them in a simple way. But as you write:
Human beings who are intrinsically motivated to gain knowledge
or skill in a certain area do not need special methods. They only need
an opportunity to get at the knowledge or skills that they want. And
an attentive instructor who does their best to help clarify things can
help as well.
This might be the right thing.
Thanks.
Aurelien
Michael Sappir wrote:
> I won't get into this at length, but I'll just say I really don't think we should be talking too much about pedagogical methods. It has little to do with democratic education as such. In a truly voluntary democratic school, where the existence and form of all activities are determined freely by the community, you don't need to adhere to any specific pedagogical philosophy. Classes, if such an activity is created by the will of the community, will end up taking whatever shape is optimal. By optimal, I mean that based on: (1) what resources are available (including the people - students or staff - with the knowledge to teach, and any relevant materials), (2) what the students of the class want, (3) how actively the participants are willing to tweak the way the class works, and (4) what personally works best for the participants - based on all of these, you will end up with a class that does what the participants want it to with the resources that are available to them.
>
> Sure, it is possible to "inject" insights from other educational traditions. But this is not something I think EUDEC needs to be emphasizing. Individuals in the school will draw inspiration from whatever sources they have, which depends mostly on their background and experience. For the sake of democratic education itself, they could just as well draw on traditional authoritarian schools, even the early, primitive forms of the 19th century. It all doesn't matter because if the class is a truly voluntary activity, the students in it will be motivated to make the best of it and pedagogy becomes irrelevant.
>
> It's important to keep in mind what pedagogy was invented for. It was invented for making sure that children learn the "right" thing. and sometimes also that they learn it quickly. This is still the only motivation for having some kind of special method to teaching (which is otherwise the same as when you explain something to a friend who asked about it). Human beings who are intrinsically motivated to gain knowledge or skill in a certain area do not need special methods. They only need an opportunity to get at the knowledge or skills that they want. And an attentive instructor who does their best to help clarify things can help as well.
>
> m
>
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:16, Aurelien Giraud <agi...@eudec.org> wrote:
>
> And thanks for the explanation!
> :)
>
>
> Aurelien Giraud wrote:
>> Hi Christel,
>>
>> Thanks for the link, it sounds very interesting. And yes, Waldorf schools give no free choice. And yes, it sounds weird to us when they talk about freedom.
>>
>> The point I wanted to make is what Leslie mentions in her email following yours. I am just not very good at expressing myself briefly and clearly...
>>
>> Aurelien
>>
>> Christel Hartkamp wrote:
>>>
>>> I do see that you are quite attached to the, what we call in the Netherlands "traditional educational renewal models". These models have some underlying similarities with Democratic education as being:
>>>
>>> · trust in child's own capabilities
>>>
>>> · That not every child is ready to learn at a same age (age differentation in learning approach)
>>>
>>> · and maybe some more
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The difference with Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner schools) and Montessori, Jenaplan, Parkhurst etc. is that Steiner his model is based on a life phylosofie. So choices that are made are based on Steiners "antroposophy". But all models have a common aspect, and that is that the educational model prepares the classroom or school environment based on a "Adult" view on development. There is no free choice, the choices that childern can make are prepared, no free learning. In principal, Steiner schools are very compulsory; although the classes may have much more 'artistic' or 'creative' elements in them (it looks free in the eyes of an adult, because they do so much nice things). Still childern have no choice at all. They have to follow this prepared, alternative curriculum.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There is a fantastic article about the main differences in school models. The 'traditional educational renewal models' all gather in the area of the "velvet hand school" - The "expended play school" and the "conditional trust schools" - read it on GoogleBooks: Trust, Controll and Education - by Marc Werner-Gavrin out the book "Reflections on the Sudbury Model". Democratic school usually can be placed in the area between "Conditional trust schools" and "Complete trust schools". The article also points out the danger of conditional trust, where soft manipulation moves a child in a direction that is preferred by the adults. This looks as if a school is giving freedom, but because of the soft manipulation, childern are still steered by outside forces (extrinsic motivation) instead of becoming self steering personalities based on intrinsic motivation and choices. This soft manipulation creates adults that may be vulnerable for manipulation all their lives.
>>>
>>> In fact, democratic schools differ basically from the 'traditional educational models' because of most arguments given above, or at least, they should.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Christel Hartkamp-Bakker
>>> Administratiecoordinator De Kampanje
>>> p/a Oranjelaan 10
>>> 3818 GR Amersfoort
>>>
>>> telefoon: 033 462 18 42
>>> www.dekampanje.org
>>> Sudbury Nederland Twitter: http://twitter.com/Sudbury_nl
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2010/3/17 Aurelien Giraud <agi...@eudec.org>
>>>
>>>
>>> The message from the ANEN schools made me think again of an aspect of democratic education I am particularly interested in.
>>>
>>> Having worked in a Waldorf school I have witnessed many very good things there. Most of them would not be in contradiction with democratic education. I believe it would be true for most pedagogical system/framework.
>>>
>>> In other words, any of these well-known pedagogies (Montessori, Waldorf, Freinet, ...) have developed very fine tuned and valuable expertise in understanding some aspects of child development. (And this is probably what made for their success.) My feeling is that EUDEC works on a different plane though. One simple thing validates it, as an example: Montessori material can be found in many democratic schools. For me democratic education intends to impose 2 main aspects of a school life: respectful inter-personal relationships regardless of age AND self-directed learning. In a way EUDEC is giving a starting point, and in simple words, from there any sort of pedagogy could be attached, which does not violate the starting points. (Do you agree here?)
>>>
>>> The best schools should be democratic AND let the teachers gain inspiration from Montessori/Waldorf/Freinet/... expertise in dealing with content.
>>>
>>> So the big question is: How could we make it a strength for us (EUDEC), rather than a possible weakness, that we actually work on a slightly different plane? Or maybe the first question should be: Should we overtly mention this difference between democratic education and well-established pedagogies? Our main problem will probably be that people within these pedagogies are so fond of the good things they "achieve" that they might be afraid of democratic education in case it could lower the achievements of the students (not that it would). But a positive point might be that once the public realises these things are not working in opposite directions, they might happily want to combine them or require the schools in which they put their children to try and combine them.
>>>
>>> Sorry for the long explanation... I am curious of your thoughts on this topic. Should it go to the forum or general EUDEC google discussion group?
>>>
>>>
>>> Aurelien