Rethinking Education – Part 3: No notes, no time tables and you choose the subjects – such school exists!
A 14 years old boy managed to convince German railway service to provide him and his friends free tickets for camping trip in England.
When he returned, they invited him a motivational speech in front of 200 of their employees.
This teenager is a pupil in an experimental school, The Evangelical School Berlin Centre (ESBC).
There are no grades until students are 15 years old. Also time tables and lectures in a conventional sense are not present in this school’s curriculum.
There are some obligatory subjects like Math, German, English and Social Studies but all other subjects depend exclusively on students. How the exam will look like is also up to students.
One of the characteristics of this school is an abstract course called “Challenge” that should address the sense of responsibility to children.
For example, pupils aged 12 to 14 are given 150 euros. They have to plan a short trip and organize it all by themselves, only including the amount of money given.
This is how the teenager chose to go to south England and asked the railway company to help him out with tickets.
When he came back, he said that he had learned more English on this trip than during schooling.
The most important skill that the school wants to pass down to its students is the ability to motivate themselves.
The mission of this school is to prepare young people for changes in life.
On the other hand, there are some kind of “penalties” for the students if they misbehave.
If a student doesn’t pay attention on classes, they have to come on Saturday morning to catch up.
Yet, this avant-garde school system gave great results among Berlin’s schools’ evaluation.
There is a huge demand for entering to this school but what is so far the biggest challenge for the school are teachers.