Just read the PERFECT Description of education FOR children, what it REALLY means in 7 easy to grasp points, which reveal not only the hidden oppression of schooling, but also the psyche of predominant Power relationship expressed through the behaviour of Institutional, Religious, Ideological instruction and punishment in the hard core psychological meaning, yet no fancy words, no theoretical guess work....
in
"The Terrace: An Educational Experiment in a State School"
from a lecture by Dr. Royston Lambert...... given in 1971, @ The University of Exeter.
Lambert had been a Head at Dartington Hall School, Totnes, a school that was libertarian..... Here he describes those key elements....
1. First the child is seen as a distinct individual whose whole development is the concern of education : personal, creative, moral and emotional growth being viewed as important as the development of basic skills.
2. Second, as people differ so their patterns of behaviour differ and thus individuals are allowed to develop at their own pace, supported by structures or stimulated by pressures which apply to that individual alone.The are not judged by collective standards and attributes or fashioned into an ideal model type of person.
3. It follows, thirdly that children as individual moral beings are encouraged to acquire their own values in an open society and not have certain selected values thrust upon them in the process of growth.
4. Equally, as moral agents, children are allowed to decide for themselves on all matters of personal taste and expression, and when the exercises of such freedom clashes with that of others, they are subject to processes of democratic decision: likewise when matters affecting their own short or long term interests are at stake, they have a real share in the making of decisions.
5.As everyone is either personally free or bound by decisions in which they genuinely participate, control is therefore a matter of self-discipline; there is no need for external rewards or sanctions or hierarchies or systems of authority and promotion.
6. As young people are moral agents,they are equal to older ones who are the same: older people have experience which may deserve respect (it all depends of what the experience is and what they have made of it), young people have a *lack* of experience which definitely commands respect!
Therefore relations between young and adult in education should be warm and informed, not based on fear or false ideas of authority.
These are the basic components of HUMAN(e) education designed to nurture the whole child....
My comment : these are also mirrors of what the adult Institutional society does not do, indicative of what it therefore inflicts upon children, what they them selves as a children endured and unfortunately internalised.. leading them to IMPOSE their will in turn "It's normal!"
Only it's normal in a VERY, VERY sick Society!
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
