Geoff is an authoritarian. He believes there are bad people in the world and the police are there to protect us from them. He believes the royal family is an essential bulwark of authority and stability in the world. He believes nationalism is an atavistic tribal urge that will never be replaced by internationalism.
You want to know why we are asking for 15000 to set up this pilot summer camp. Here is an explanation of our rough financial calculations.
The first of a series of posts on the Qualities of Teachers in Democratic Schools. This post deals with qualities of understanding.
Very rarely do you find people disagreeing on ends: that we want schools to inculcate independent learning, critical thinking individuals, not drone-like rote-learners with a penchant for multiple-choice questions. Yet when it comes to means, the most obvious tool in the box – allowing children some freedom of choice, a hand in the proceedings – is repeatedly shunned by policy-makers.
Are you stuck in your projects? What are the stages of reality in project work? An imbalance of meditation over action is just as unsatisfactory as a bull-like determination to do, do, do with no reflection. This post looks at how your dreaming can work itself into reality.
In our last post about our research project in primary schools, Dan and I talked about the way education is largely justified to kids in terms of its economic value, and the dangers – as well as philosophical inconsistencies – of that paradigm. This time, we’re going to talk about the dangers of one-dimensional…
Kids are being taught that education is of instrumental – and economic – value only Our last blog post talked about how Dan and I decided to begin a research project in primary schools, based around asking kids what they think of school. As you get into the swing of interview-based research, you…
“This is a much needed project. There is a wide gap between what people WANT our kind of schools to be and the reality. It is so important that people with on-the-ground experience keep the knowledge of real Summerhill ideals alive. Jason and Leonard have that experience.”
-Zoe Readhead,
Principal of Summerhill
