Pedagogic Principles
You must go exploring in order to create new conceptions, and then again make new explorations in order to make better conceptions.
For altogether too many years, people wanting to learn more than what they know have been obliged to take a seat. People in general start to learn about anything, by sitting down and that is usually how they remain. Perfectly boring most of the time and quite divorced from the experience of ordinary mortals, who know that it is where things are happening in real life that we are able to learn.
At our schools we start out in the world at large. We use the school building(s) as a place in which to accumulate and exchange experiences, to read and argue, and a place for where the teachers tell and the participants report.
We use what we have learned on further explorations. We apprehend that we must practice learning what we do not know. We go exploring to acquire new ideas then we explore further to form better ideas.
You must get close to the things you want to learn about. The closer you get, the more you’ll learn.
Imagine yourself high up in an aircraft flying over Africa, Central America, or Asia. 30,000 feet below you are the countries and the people. You are sitting above it all, reading about Africa, Central America, Asia, the countries and the people. It is all wrong.
Things aren’t quite that bad in school. We believe, however, that teaching should go on outside the classroom, in the natural setting of the subject to be learned. Bringing in the people who are there. They know where the shoe pinches. The students must be there, too and they must have plenty of opportunities to ask questions based on personal, on-the-spot observations.
Then the school building(s) turns into an asset as the place where school, being a segment of society, connects students with society.
Together with your comrades you must be the driving force in the training process. It is not the little tricks of the teacher that can get you moving, life is far too important for that.
In most countries there are courses in motivation for teachers, for foremen, and for any kind of employers, for the purpose of teaching them how to make other people do something they don’t quite feel like doing. The idea being that they should be motivated to perform against their own wishes. Big and little tricks invented by sales psychologists.
The issues taken up by a school need to be of vital concern to their participants, and that is precisely why learning about world conditions and trying to understand the destiny of our globe is to people today. It is their destiny as well.
It is absolutely decisive that modern man learns to stand shoulder to shoulder with people, committed to goals that are relevant to our common futures.
What is vitally important are the solutions to these problems. More and more people are beginning to realize that this is so today and that is why they look for education. They along with their fellow students can be the driving force in the effort to learn about these matters and come up with solutions. Students don’t want to be put on their toes by the teachers’ little tricks, their lives are too important for that.
You just need to know that the more you get going, the more you will be doing. The more in-depth you get the more you will want to know. There is a lot of work involved - but you avoid being superficial and half asleep.
“Young people don’t want to work. Hands stuck in pockets, ears jammed with stereo-music and an impudent lip when addressed.” How many times have we heard comments like this? When the strength and the capacities of a generation are plainly needed, hands emerge from pockets ready to go to work.
Once this starts one thing leads to another. and from learning to doing there isn’t far to go. Mastering a trade and practicing it in a productive context, travelling with others, and writing and talking about experiences and thoughts.
Exploring one’s own society and taking a stand. Participating in the discussions of decision-making assemblies on vital questions.
Being able to make music and sing and dance and sketch and paint. There is no end to these delights. But you’ll have to make the effort.
Given proper structures and decent conditions, this generation is more than ready to do so, it is ready to follow through.
You are not going to learn everything at school. Like the tip of the iceberg, maybe just one tenth of what you actually wanted to learn. All the rest will come afterwards.
School is sometimes out of touch with its surroundings. Not just because teachers and students go there in the morning and stay inside until they disperse in the afternoon, but also because what you are made to learn can have no relevance for many students. and likewise for some teachers.
In some situations you can forget what it is like to learn something of value. The stagnant state is the state you get used to. In this situation your expectations mushroom, probably more than warranted.
It may be difficult to remember that school attendance comprises a short span of time compared to what will have to be continued for the rest of your life, especially if your previous learning derives from the various competitive or repressive situations inherent in our society. In other words: If your house needs heating, don’t expect that you can heat it from one hour to the next, but once the house is warm, very little fuel is needed to maintain the warmth.
Only Adam was alone in the world. All the rest of us are here together.
Fellowship, or collectivism if you wish, isn’t a modern smart way of life, or a status promoting gimmick in the wake of the student movement. Nor is it bound up closely with trendiness, hippie culture, or any other phenomenon possessing a common characteristic in that they will not survive the era that gave rise to them.
At our schools we do not make fellowship the pivot of teaching and living because “we might as well”. We make it so because we cannot have a school without it. Profound knowledge of fellowship can be learned only in fellowship, solidarity only by standing shoulder to shoulder. Only many together can solve problems that can be solved only by the joint efforts of many together.
Development is brought about only through the influence of great numbers of people. Generations have learned that the world changes only when many people take a hand in changing it.
This is a pedagogic prerequisite that doesn’t exclude the individual; quite to the contrary it makes him the decisive link in the chain connecting the present with the past and the future.
What you are learning must be usable. Preferably right away - so others can learn from you. Possibly later, when the opportunity arises. What you have learnt you will learn double by teaching it to others.
The entire question of what is, after all, the use of the things you learn in school is a sensitive one. Replies such as, “you are going to need it when you grow up”, “just you wait and see, you may need it some day, I am sure”, and “you’ll need it for your exams” are quite common.
Other replies may be closer to the truth. Such as “The things you learn are to make you suited to go to work some place and do as you are told. Make you deserve your pay”. Or “What you learn is meant to enable you to participate in the parliamentary democracy”. Another reply is given infrequently: “The things you learn you must use to advance reasonable demands for change in the world, to make it more like what you think it should be.
In our schools the answer is this “You must teach others. The things you have learned should benefit others as well. You must learn in order to be able to take a stand and to make things happen. You and the others jointly must decide what would be useful to learn and how to go about it.”
You must be mobile in order to encounter many things. If not, the whole thing will come to a halt - even though you have your eyes popping out of your head.
If you stay inside the school at all times you don’t see far. A school needs vehicles, students must be able to move around in the city, the country, and the world.
At our schools we have busses for classrooms – and ships. Stables and workshops for common rooms. And the world is where we serve our apprenticeship. This takes money – and in our budgets we have allocations for these things. In the budget of a school you can read of the activities preferred by the teachers. You can discern their pedagogy.
If you can see that the amounts set aside for transport are but small – then you may be quite sure this hasn’t been a matter of much interest to the people drawing up the budget.
To us it is important. We want to be mobile – and encounter many things. Otherwise everything comes to a stop.
All this concerns the teachers as well.
Dear teacher, dear colleague, dear parents. You must go exploring to be able to acquire new ideas – and you must explore further to form better ideas. You have much to learn still. That is why you must try to get close to the things you want to learn about. The closer you get the more you get out of it.
Your ingrown habits won’t put you on the track of the new things you must learn. You – in the company of your associates and your children must be the driving force in the work to learn much. It isn’t the old tricks that should put you on your toes. Life is too important for that.
Once you get into your stride one thing leads to another. There is no way of stopping. Your experiences are wonderful basic qualifications. You work in jobs all over the country. You know the roots of the children.
You, more that anyone else, are familiar with the fact that Man is not alone in the world. You have seen loneliness, and perhaps you know fellow human beings in distress. Support your children in their work to build fellowships and to stand shoulder to shoulder.
“Learn from your children – that’s going to make them receptive to learning from you.”
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