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The Gaffer's Philosophy:
Part 73: Summarizing Education 2:
October 20, 2003:
Four, Real World Experience:
This point is about something I have not made very clear in previous
essays. It ties in with the idea that learning is just part of
the life process. That is, children while learning have to experience
the real world. They must see feel touch and actually build things.
This is Dewey's major idea. We learn by doing. Rows of chairs
with students facing forward and a teacher in front shouting facts
at them does not do this. The kids cannot just get information.
They must understand through seeing and making things happen.
The school is not just a bunch of classrooms and it is not just a laboratory. It must be a real extension of the real world. When they follow their interests, the youngsters must be guided into the intricate details of what they are interested in. They must learn how things really work, not in descriptions and words, but in real models and experiments and in real world experience outside the school. In a very real sense, the school can have no walls. It must extend into the surrounding world. Here are some examples.
If the students are interested in journalism, they should be guided into publishing their own paper or book. To be sure, journalism is about ideas and communication, but these things must be presented to have an effect. Hence, the student should learn how to communicate their ideas. They should learn all of the intricate details of the publishing industry. They should learn about paper and ink and they should see printing presses and manufacturing facilities in operation. They should be encouraged to build their own Gutenberg or Franklin style press to understand the history of publishing. They must learn to use computers and software. They should learn how to create a document and how to lay out a publication. They should learn about color space.
If their journalistic bend is toward radio or television work, there is a similar set of details to be understood. Cameras are part of this. Sound studios are something to be studied. Lighting and makeup are extremely important to TV work as is color control. There are microphones, audio circuits, and transmitters involved. And guess what? They will discover that math is involved in all electronics. All of these things are the details which make communication possible. At bottom, journalism is communication.
If the kids are interested in robots, that is the chance to guide them into electronics. They should learn about circuits and transistors. They should learn about vacuum tubes, transformers, and electricity. They should learn about amplifiers, servo motors, and feedback. They should build their own circuits and test them. They should see actual automated manufacturing facilities. Finally, when they begin to understand the issues and tradeoffs involved, they should build a robot and make it work. They should make it do something useful.
For another example let's take an imaginary kid through an imaginary education process. This kid admires The Carpenters and wants to make music like they did. He want's to become a composer. The first thing he will do is gather all the material he can find about The Carpenters and about music with particular attention to their music. The guide can help him in this, but not do it for him.
He may need help in learning to read because he will want to read a great deal of stuff. While he is doing that, he will also discover other kinds of music. That may also influence him. Eventually, he will begin looking at actual musical scores. What he will find is bars, measures, times, and notes. He will find full notes, half notes, quarter notes etcetera. He will find carries, pauses, chords, harmonies, and syncopations. He will discover that music has a mathematical base.
To play music and especially to compose music he will have to understand that base. Now he will attack math vigorously to get what he needs from it so he can get on with his music. While he is doing that, he will discover the true beauty of math and how it relates to everything in the world. That is how it should come about. That beats heck out of beating a kid over the head with multiplication tables until he is numb and hates math. The composer needs to understand math to compose. On the other hand, Van Gogh did not have to understand math at all to make his magnificent paintings.
Of course, this amplifies the idea that education must be interest driven rather than curricula driven. I mean the child's interest, not the teacher's or the society's interest. This needs no further elaboration. If I have not made this clear in my previous essays, I have failed.
Five, Progress Projects:
Now we cannot forget that the kids need to have a way to measure
their progress. As arrogant adults, we feel we must measure the
kids progress too. That is probably adult bologna, but it will
fall out. Out traditional way of measuring progress is through
the artificial device of exams. Those are not only difficult,
for the students and the teachers, they are not at all accurate.
They are not accurate indicators of learning. At best they only
indicate the skill of the teacher in teaching kids how to pass
exams.
In a real school there will be no exams. There will be projects wherein the child does something and reports on it. This is how the kid can find out how well they really understand what they are studying. We must think of the entire learning situation as a laboratory where people learn by seeing and doing. They also learn by explaining to each other what they have seen and done. So the progress project is really a show and tell. It's a showoff time in the best sense of it. This is a situation where the students may want to invite the public in to see what they are doing.
In interest driven education, testing should be as person specific as is the knowledge acquired. It should be specific to the individual and it should be a creative endeavor not a test. It should be designed by the student with the support of a guide to showcase what they have achieved in their learning process. It should be the ultimate show and tell. It should involve the kids communication skills in writing or speaking or both.
To do their projects, the students must have adequate time. Unlike an exam, a project may take weeks or even months to complete. The idea is to create something which will demonstrate convincingly the depth of understanding the person has of his subject matter. With proper encouragement, the student will approach this project and demonstrate it with great pride of achievement.
As to scheduling, the students should do a project whenever they feel they have something to show. We will have no semesters, so a project may come at any time. The point is, the student will make the decision with the help of a guide. The guide may even suggest doing a project. In any case, the student will finally decide what to do, when to do it, and how to show it. There need be no grades. The student will gain a clear sense of what he has learned and what he still needs to learn from doing the project. It really does not matter whether we understand the kid's progress or not. This is for the students to evaluate themselves.
Six, Computers and Internet:
This is about resources. It is one of my most important criteria
for the education of children. The kids must have access to all
of the intellectual resources of the world. This means there must
be computers and there must be internet access. When I say internet
access, I mean a dedicated internet for education only. This must
be a separate closed internet where advertising and business activities
of any kind are shut out.
The network is really just an extension of the school library with connections to all of the library resources of the world. It is necessary to supplement the local educational systems. Not all systems will be able to have experts in all areas of human endeavor. The library resources must be available to every student right from the start. It will supplement and reenforce what the local guides have to offer.
This is not difficult to do. This dedicated system can use the same backbone that the rest of the world is using. All that must be done is to set up a special Internet Service Provider (ISP) for the special network. Each student will then become an ISP subscriber, by virtue of being a student. The computer and the dedicated internet will become a key tool in education. All students should have a computer to use anytime they want it with access to their ISP. When they log in they should see only a list of informational sites. they should never see advertising or any other intrusive material.
I will continue this summary in the next essay.
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