Tag: rethinking education

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.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/no-grades-no-timetable-berlin-school-turns-teaching-upside-down

Education is not about molding children the way you think they should be modeled.

Education is about organizing the natural longing in a human being to know. Longing to know is the job of schools and teachers.

There is a big pressure in today’s world. Children need to learn how to cope with competition which leads to frustration and stress that they will encounter in future.

Is it really the way we want our society to be – to compete with the one sitting next to us?

In this mode of competition only one can win. Is someone inspired by this kind of things?

One of the biggest triggers for all the pressure is that people tend to put all the others in the same pattern.

If they don’t know what others know, it is all of a sudden a problem.

Each child is unique and schools use standards where every child must fit. Not just school, later on it is job, corporations, big businesses etc.

True human capabilities cannot find their expressions in competition and molding.

In other words, being a good student or a good worker makes you be one step ahead of others, maybe.

But is that what the ultimate potential as human being is all about?

If you are not joyful and at peace, then the human potentials and abilities will not blossom. If you are not joyful and at peace, why is it important to be the best at school, job or business anyway?

You can be the best student of all generations or the best employer, but lack a basic human values or simple joy.

Essentially, education is about enlarging the horizons of human perception.

Once you make one thing bigger than the other, one thing smaller, one thing low, one high, you miss the whole point.

The importance of education is to enhance your perception so that you know that you are able to perceive that “a blade of grass is as important as the coconut tree”.

Our mode of education takes differences as something bad, and then we end up having prejudices about the nations, cultures, religions.

Another big thing that should be pointed out is fun. Many people think learning should be strict. Why can’t it be fun?

Do you agree with this? Which parts make sense for you and which don’t?

Follow up with Part 2.

Source: http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/learning-is-fun/