An interesting series of interviews:
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Designers as change makers
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Froebel - The concept of kindergarten
Froebel was a German pedagogue, a student of Pestalozzi who laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities. He developed the concept of the “kindergarten”, and also coined the word now used in German and English.
Read more about them (pretty interesting):
but unfortunately, the concept of kindergarten was modified by most people (Dewey etc.) and the current form is a distorted version. Read more in this book (Chapter 3):-
or a review of the book here:-
Taming the free spirit
When a child is born, parents wait for the day when he will run around the house and make noise. They encourage playful acts and help the child to walk on his own feet. The child grows up innocent and playful believing that everyone will appreciate the playfulness. But with the first step inside the school, a different world greets the child. He is confronted with a strange concept called discipline. This concept is hard to understand because it prohibits running around in this strange place called "classroom". In spite of the fact that so many other chubby little friends are also in that strange place, one cannot talk to them unless permitted to do so. "Permitted" what does that mean? The buck quickly passes to the parents who are summoned by the school only to be told how indisciplined their child is. The reason - he talks in class and does not sit still. Excuse me! Isn't a child supposed to "play"? How can you expect the child to sit still? But the school doesn't care. This is what has been the norm for god knows how many years (maybe lots of decades). If the warning doesn't bring any changes, the child is promptly labelled as hyper-active child or a child having come kind of attention-deficit disorder.
Poor kids... what dreams they had, what fantasies they cherished, nothing mattered anymore. All that mattered was what the grown-ups thought was best for them. Maybe what's best for them is to just let them be kids and not force discipline upon them. Won't they then grow up to be rowdy, good for nothing, cave-men like people? Maybe they will, maybe they won't; I don't have an answer... but why not try to think of an education system that doesn't try to "convert" every child into a fact remembering, number crunching, good-boy; like everybody else. When the child was born, he was yours special, an unique gift. Why try to mold that unique gift into something common? If only they could speak up, we could have known how much they really hated the "grown-up world" that they were being trained to face.
(PS: Replace he -> she, boy -> girl, etc. at will. )
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
eSingularity
http://mjtrout.blogspot.com/
"Imagine... A world where every kid participates on a level education system, challenging themselves and others, and achieving rewards and prizes for applying themselves, no matter what their social, economic, or geographic disposition. We can... and we will build it. "
Education 2.0, Media 3.0, blah.. blah.. blah.. sounds very nice and dreamy. Now imagine you haven't had food all day and you are hungry Mr. Trout, would you spend on /care about technology to access E 2.0 or M 3.0? And do you think teachers will welcome the idea of letting go their position of authority and becoming mere facilitators in classrooms who cannot exercise power over the students (that is what is the current state of Indian schools)?
The "American" way is not always the "right" way. Every nation has its own culture, its own tradition and a set of values that consciously/unconsciously drive the people. Before prescribing "solutions" these things need to be understood. Then only can the real problem be understood and characterized. Education is not a commodity and should not be treated as one.
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