Tag Archives: Education

Education, Science

A Tirade Against Exams

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I don't like exams

Summer break has just begun. I managed to get away without any exams this semester, for the first time. In the past weeks, like every end of semester, I find myself thinking what an awful, ridiculous system these exams really are, especially in university. I’d like to try and articulate why.

I can imagine a university where exams are hardly even relevant because people only study things they find interesting, and only so long as they are interested. Such places exist (take Tokyo Shure for example).

However, most officially-recognized undegrad programs are still based on instructors providing students with pre-packaged chunks of information, and then judging whether each student has properly digested the information. This post will be about exams in that context; my point of reference will the linguistics BA program at the University of Leipzig. As far as I know, it’s as good an example as any of a normal undergrad program in science.

Exams are bad experiments

So why are exams a bad idea when you want to check whether a bunch of science undergrads understood what you taught them? Well, one part of the problem should be obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of science: exams are not very good experiments. Continue reading A Tirade Against Exams →

Education

An Ode to Open Schedule

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I’ve been wanting to post but been a bit busy. I’m at a meeting/workshop of Sudbury schools in Berlin (at the TING School) and something has come up here that is probably worth writing and thinking about a little: meetings, conferences, and workshops need a schedule — but not necessarily too much of a schedule.

At this workshop as well as some others I’ve been to, the organizers decided not to make any kind of schedule in advance. Within democratic education this isn’t necessarily a problem — we’re used to making decisions in a group and discussing things to death, and democratic education is strongly connected with the notion of being free to decide, for yourself or within your group, what you do. But it’s not necessarily productive to spend the first two or three hours of an all-too-short weekend on planning how to use the rest of the time. After all, the weekend doesn’t have to have the perfect schedule. It doesn’t have to have sessions on every single topic on the participants’ minds. It just has to have a good schedule that covers a few key subjects; after the first session, people will know one another and be talking and talking and talking.

Which brings me to the bit about not having too much of a schedule. I’ve noticed in conference and workshop after conference and workshop that after a few sessions (workshops, lectures, or whatever), great discussions develop that are actually hindered by the restrictions of the schedule. Of course, nobody was really forced to attend sessions in any of the conferences I’ve been to, but the existence of sessions on other interesting topics means people end up going to sessions about something else instead of continuing their conversation.

Scheduling democratically at the beginning of the meeting doesn’t solve this problem. It just means the sessions that are encroaching on spontaneous discussion have been planned collectively, rather than centrally. The only solution I’m aware of is Open Schedule. I first experienced Open Schedule at IDEC 2005 (also in Berlin), which was an amazing event. During the organization of EUDEC 2008, we decided to replicate the system, and it worked well. It’s a very simple idea. You start with an empty schedule spread across a large wall, divided only into time-slots, and optionally for the available rooms. Then participants can just come up to the schedule and pin up sessions they would like to have. They pin up the sessions in time-slots when they have no other plans, meaning nobody has to worry about coordinating the schedule to avoid conflicts — it just happens on its own. Open Schedule also means when a discussion begins during one session and some of its participants want to continue it, they are free to set up an extra session for it.

Of course, Open Schedule is not necessarily the best model for all events. But for conferences with a range of topics, it’s an excellent way to balance between individual mobility, variety of topics, and limitations of time. It’s a system that lets the participants self-organize in a really good way. Not a perfect way — good is better than perfect.

Education, Links

[Video] Democratic Schools: Where are they Heading?

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I participated in a panel at IDEC 2010 titled “Democratic Schools: Where are they Heading?”, moderated by Yaacov Hecht. AERO filmed the discussion and posted it (and other workshops) on the AERO blog.

Below (after the jump) is the part with my thoughts about the future of democratic education. I talked about EUDEC, the power of networks, collective outreach, and suggested we should be emphasizing that democratic education is a human rights issue. Let me know what you think. Continue reading [Video] Democratic Schools: Where are they Heading? →

Education

No Curriculum, Ever

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(-> German translation/Deutsche Übersetzung)

I’d like to share some thoughts about why democratic schools should not have even a little bit of curriculum or mandatory guidance. Imposing even a single mandatory class, even just a mentorship or a morning meeting, is disrespectful towards students, and signals that the school does not take self-directed learning seriously. Sometimes, motivated by fear, parents attack this notion, demanding more guidance and railroading to make sure their children get where they want them to go. Every school responds in a different way. Only a clear “no” — the typical Sudbury response — makes sense, especially considering what democratic schools are for.

People, especially parents, always ask why the school can’t guide its students a little more actively. It is not that the guidance itself is a bad idea — in fact, I would say it’s vital that guidance be available in the school to those who feel they need it. But forcing guidance on students, even “just a little”, even just implicitly, by making some form of educational activity mandatory, is a signal of distrust. It’s saying, “we trust you to decide what to do with your time, so long as we have some influence on it”, or in other words, “we trust you entirely, except that we actually don’t”. It’s not only a mixed signal, it’s implicitly disrespectful, patronizing and demeaning — even if the guidance itself is presented by people who are respectful towards the students, and even if it’s done in a respectful way. Continue reading No Curriculum, Ever →

Education, Government, Israel

Contra Hecht: A Likelier Success Story for Israeli Democratic Education

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I spent most of the day at the IDEC conference in Tel Aviv, and will be going back tomorrow. The first day has already brought up a whole lot of really interesting issues, but I want to address just a small one right now. I want to respond to a claim made by Yaacov Hecht of the Israeli Institute for Democratic Education: that the big secret to Israel’s success in democratic education is the mandatory military service. Continue reading Contra Hecht: A Likelier Success Story for Israeli Democratic Education →

Education, Language, Science

Conversation and happiness

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Language Log recently had an interesting post about a study that found that happy people tend to have more substantive conversations. I was reminded of the kind of conversations we had in Sudbury Jerusalem. I’ve written about it before (for example, in The Secret Weapon) and I thought I’d bring up the connection here. As the Language Log post explains, the study doesn’t say whether it’s substantive conversation that increases happiness, or being a happy person that increases substantive conversation.

But it’s interesting to think about how this relates to democratic schools. My experience is that a democratic school is a good place for substantive conversation. In Sudbury Jerusalem, I was a student who rarely had any classes and spent much of my time socializing, talking. It was a place where the general atmosphere is happy rather than depressed. I noticed that in school, we talked a lot, and had a lot of really good conversation, and I never considered whether it’s just because people are often in a good mood (I, by the way, often was not in a good mood, despite a lot of conversation — maybe that’s why). I also never considered that this might be why people are often in a good mood.

I don’t know, but I had other things in mind. The school democracy itself, it seems to me, encourages a culture of talking things through. It’s what we would try to do in School Meeting and in committees, and it’s often what we would do to solve conflicts before resorting to a Judicial Committee complaint form. And the other side of things, the personal freedom, simply gives people more time to talk. There’s always conversation going on all over the place, and it makes sense that when you get to talk with people a lot, you eventually get to deeper, “substantive” conversations.

But maybe the large amount of conversation in democratic schools is caused by something else. Maybe it’s the nature of the school as a community in which people operate freely in the same spaces, together; the school is a very social environment. This is also something that probably contributes to the general happiness of the population. Actually, considering that more social environment are probably causes for both happiness and for conversation, maybe this is the causal link behind the study’s findings. People with more social contact are happier and have more substantive conversation (as compared to people with less social contact.) It definitely makes sense to me.

Education

Privileged? Yeah.

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Democratic schools are often accused of being elitist, available only to a privileged few. It’s something I’ve heard again and again, in Israel as well as in Europe. This argument is mostly flat out wrong. Sometimes it’s good old circular logic: the Israeli Ministry of Education used the elitism charge for years as a reason not to give my school funding (which it is entitled to by law), because the school charges tuition. The main reason to charge tuition was, of course, that the school had to fund its operations without government assistance. But there is some truth in saying that democratic schools’ students are privileged. Continue reading Privileged? Yeah. →

Education

Lisa Lyons: What I've Learned at Sudbury Schools (a staff retirement letter)

I’d like to share this excellent retirement letter by Lisa Lyons, who worked at Evergreen Sudbury School in Maine and Fairhaven School in Maryland.

Below is the full text of the letter, forwarded to me by my mother in PDF form (link to PDF):

Continue reading Lisa Lyons: What I've Learned at Sudbury Schools (a staff retirement letter) →

Education, Games

On addictive games (Kids Don't "Need Structure", Part 4)

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The two most common activities in a Sudbury schools are talk and free play. Conversation and free play are great things for children to engage in. These are universal human activities that people everywhere engage in readily whenever they can. It comes as no surprise that children choose to pursue them in an environment like Sudbury schools where no academic structure is imposed on their time.

I refer the interested reader to other sources regarding conversation and free play; you may find these at the bottom of this post, under Further reading.

To close this series of posts about children and academic structures, I will now turn to one other type of activity: video games. On occasion, I have heard the peculiar claim that, “okay, people seek novelty, but video games are addictive! Like heroin! They ruin everything and take away children’s freedom!”

In my experience, as much as video games may seem to engage people, a game can only retain its charm for so long, just like any other activity. People get sick of bad games because they get annoying after a while; people get sick of good games when they have mastered them to the point that the challenge is gone.

In all my years of gaming and involvement in the gaming community, I have not met many “game addicts”. However, those few I have met have always had real-life issues to run away from. It may be trouble at home, or it may be depression, but it seems the root of this obsessive behavior is the need to escape from something more serious. This becomes almost painfully obvious when you get over any prejudice you may have regading the nature of video games. Some people point at games in blame in these cases, but clearly the games are symptom, not cause. Even if a vicious circle is involved, I have not known people to truly spend too much time on games unless they need to escape from something else.

Still, one type of game is increasingly implicated in those cases where someone gets “addicted” to gaming, and I would like to say some words in defense of these games: multi-player games. Multi-player games have risen to prominence in the past decade thanks to rapidly improving Internet infrastructures that now allow people around the world to play together in real time. Games usually fall out of favor after a year or two, but in 2009 there are a few conspicuous games from the late 90’s that are still being played. The two most notable are Starcraft and Counter-Strike, and the primary reason they are still played is their excellent multi-player experience. Multi-player games can offer something off-line games cannot – a built-in social aspect.

The most successful and long-lasting multi-player games are either games that have effectively become competitive sports, or they are “MMOGs” – Massively Multi-player Online Games. The former are games like Starcraft, which has become a virtual sport which aspiring players train for regularly, hoping to succeed at tournaments with real cash prizes. Counter-Strike, a team-based game, is played by teams of friends (“clans”) who play together regularly and are more or less equivalent to soccer or basketball teams. MMOGs, such as mega-hit World of Warcraft, on the other hand, engage players with intricately-designed virtual worlds that offer not only challenges but masses of other players, as well as means – and excuses – to interact with them regularly.

In both cases, these games are so exceptionally successful because of the social aspect – rather than isolating players, they bring them together. If a player abandons the game, they abandon their friends, and this makes it much harder to leave these games behind. Much of the gaming and communicating takes place in the privacy of one’s home, but it is common for Counter-Strike clans and their World of Warcraft equivalents, guilds, to meet up, face-to-face, to play together on a local network or simply to hang out. These games forge connections between people, united by a common interest, giving rise to friendships and in some cases relationships – even marriages. Such a game may hold a person’s attention for a surprisingly long time on their own, but sooner or later the virtual experience tends to escalate. More often, they are interwoven from the very start, helped by the online communities where players meet to discuss the games they play. In fact, the players who spend the most time on their games are the ones most likely to make friends with other gamers, perhaps because they spend more time with the games, or because they need new social connections the most. Games can enable these players to find other like-minded people, and in the long run may do more good than harm, eventually giving players a reason to go out after all.

If you believe that children do indeed need structure, I would like to hear from you in the comments: What kind of structure do children need? Do all children need it? If not, which kinds of children do, and why? In particular, do you see video games as an especially disturbing activity? And finally, I would really like to hear from you what you are afraid may happen to a child who attends a school like mine – what could go wrong without adult structure and guidance?

Further reading

  • Peter Gray at Psychology Today has posted extensively on the subject of free play, for instance in this series: link.
  • “We were a small group of people bouncing ideas off each other” – the experience of  a Sudbury Valley School graduate who played a lot and never took a class. (From Kingdom of Childhood)

  • I wrote a piece published in unerzogen magazine in 2008 (link [English, PDF]), where I argued that free and open communication enables school democracy and free learning, and that these also reinforce the freedom of communication in return.

  • If you are concerned about video games, I have a book recommendation for you: Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes and Make-Believe Violence, by Gerard Jones. I found it exceptionally informative and interesting.

Education, Games

Kids don't "need structure", part 3

I am back, and I would like to continue this series by addressing one more aspect (or interpretation) of the argument which I have called “some children need structure”. This version reads something like this: “some children, if not provided with extrinsic academic structure, will make bad use of their time and never succeed.” In conventional schooling, it is implied that this applies not only to some children, but to most. In the context of discussing democratic education, this argument, in only referring to “some”, implies something like, “many children can handle the freedom given in a democratic school with grace and make good use of their time, but some of them fail to make good that freedom and will never amount to anything without adults helping them along the right path”. Sadly, I have mostly heard this kind of argument coming from parents, talking about their own children. Unlike the version of this argument which I discussed in Part 2 of this series, this version suggests not that these “some children” will be unhappy in the short-term future (because of inability to cope with creating their own structures), but that the unhappiness will come later on in life, even if the child is perfectly happy right now.

This is where the distastefulness of this argument lies: who is to say that an individual should not be allowed to pursue a course of action that gives them present enjoyment and fulfillment? Is it justified by the promise of future success (or, one would hope, happiness)? After all, there’s nothing wrong with suffering for the promise of something that you want. But then, this is not about a child electing to have less fun in the present to secure the future they want – it is about adults saying the child should be enjoying life less than they do, to enjoy a future the adult judges best. And even when the choice is made by one for oneself, I fear that the long-term consequence of this attitude (so pervasive in Western culture), is that we forget how to enjoy life; if all we can do is busy ourselves with improving the future, when does the point come where we truly enjoy the present 1? And is any point in our lifespan too soon for this? Should we not be enjoying the present as much as possible?

However, in this case it is not an individual’s personal choice we are discussing. It is an adult individual’s choice for a younger individual mostly powerless to resist coercion. In the short-term, this amounts to adults making children miserable. Although the theories of how these structures will help them are fine, the reality is that increased structure does not promise happiness, nor even material success. Many students do their best in traditional schools and still end up unhappy and/or unsuccessful (by their own standards or those of others.) And many students in traditional schools do their best to avoid the academic structures’ influence, get horrible grades (or flunk, or drop out) and end up having a fabulous adult life they are perfectly happy with 2. And even if we were to assume that the right structure increases the likelihood of success, the end result is still making a kid have less fun because of the mere likelihood of enjoying their life more later on. If it were discovered that surgically removing all of your teeth statistically contributes to a longer life, would these same people elect to lose their teeth and switch directly to dentures? After all, the statistical probability does nothing to promise a particular individual will enjoy the benefits – it merely means such an individual has a better chance at them. The price is paid whether or not the results manifest.

But I doubt it is so effective to provide a child with academic structure or any sort of guided path to making the most of their time. Putting aside the argument I have already made in Part 2, that children need to learn to deal with free choice, I would like to take a look at the actual use children make of their time and free choice. When parents say “my child needs structure” about a perfectly happy child in a Sudbury school, likely as not, that child spends most of their time either talking or playing. If it is a younger kid, they are probably playing with friends most of the time 3. If it is an older kid, they are probably talking with friends, or playing video games, which some (very rarely) do alone 4. In the next part (or possibly parts) of this series, I will take a brief look at each of these activities and their value for young children.


1Alan Watts wrote wonderfully on this topic, among many others.

2Many end up rich and/or famous, so I challenge the reader to think of five famous examples from the past 100 years.

3But there are exceptions: my little brother, when he was 7-8 years old, spent most of his time simply walking around with a friend and talking.

4This is not to say that the majority of older students play video games – only that this is very often the cause for parents to start saying their child needs more structure.