Democratic Schooling: What if everything you think about education is wrong?

Voices from the New American Schoolhouse (trailer)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Democractic Schooling, Democracy, Education, Free School, Freedom in Education, Mass Schooling, USA, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Democratic Schooling: What if everything you think about education is wrong?”

  1. Steve Rosenbaum Says:
    November 12, 2007 at 3:08 pm | Reply

    This is a very interesting video. It’s got some ideas that go down the right path. Most education today is designed the convenience of the teacher and not the student.

    Here’s where this type of education can go off track. First, when you start to learn if it doesn’t happen quickly or easily most people give up and do something else. Somethings just take a lot of practice and hardwork to learn. A musical instrument is a good example.

    Second, it’s hard to improve things because of the added level of variations. It’s hard to learn and share best practices. This is a problem of regular schools. If you take history, you can get 40,000 variations depending upon school and teacher.

    Third, just like regular school you tend to learn topic by topic and as a result don’t learn how things work together and combine.

    Finally, I’d look at the incentives for staff. If they can be voted out, then working on popularity is more important than working on learning.

  2. Nishad Says:
    January 16, 2008 at 12:17 pm | Reply

    I saw it four times its a beauty
    The kids seem to be diffrent
    You can make out that they r more mature and free
    The idea the school i thought if i am asked to go to school again i will definitely be there

    Thanks
    Nishad

    Pune, India

  3. Dave Says:
    January 16, 2008 at 12:31 pm | Reply

    Hey Nishad, if you can get a copy buy “Summerhill” by A.S. Neill, its all about free democratic schooling and I thought it was excellent.

    I’d rather go to a school like this too. :)

  4. Nishad Says:
    January 18, 2008 at 2:26 am | Reply

    Thanks Dave, Can I get a copy of this video,
    I can show it around here
    Nishad

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