Now it opens up a lot of questions. As a parent of 2 daughters, almost 5 and 2, I ask myself repeatedly, "What would be the best education I can provide to my daughters to make them more flexible in the future?"
I agree on some points, but on the contrary, I am thinking about how scheduled and robotics this sounds. Let me explain: I agree school is a daycare and people are in a comfort zone. How can we improve it? I agree: Their own pace is excellent. It permits the diversification of people.
On the other hand, some questions, ranging without an answer, emerged.
- we can't measure children's growth based on how much they score in hard skills only. How effectively are we sharing values and resilience in life? It is excellent to gamify against a computer. But what happens when shit arrives in life?
- Boring life vs. "slowing down potential". Relationships that grow from dull moments? Is it a gamification system? What about how to deal with unfair things? Are we trying to remove the randomness of human beings from nature?
- It seems that "passing exams", tests or skills evaluation, is the foundation of both schools. The main difference is the personalized approach to each one at a different speed.
When you learn something, you change your world, believing everyone has the same awareness level as you. I suppose teachers make the same mistake the same bias.
- And what about things that could be interesting later in life that do not motivate them right now?
From Austin's essay:
- "The solution is not to have more meetings". Agree. People make meetings because it's easier and frictionless than trying to understand the problem, listing causes, and going to see on their own. This is a flaw of a hierarchical society. To become more efficient in doing the manager, we do more meetings to move the problem to the lower level. But the problem is the problem that arrived at my position. And we don't focus on avoiding the problem of hiking levels.
On the contrary, meetings are essential to develop relationships and resilience. How can we have the best of both worlds?
Thanks again. Maybe these questions could provoke a new essay I would gladly read.
Matteo , thank you for your comments, there is so much to unpack there and I plan to do all that in future writing indeed.
This article can seem to focus on hard skills as that's what most parents are obsessed with. I goota start somehwere :) . I don't think its right to be this narrowminded, but its rooted in fear for financial / job security. If you are even going to talk about alternative education, the first thing is to convince the parents the children are not going to turn out 'dumber' than in traditional schools and they measure it in hard skills. I understand that you are already at the next level, thinking about other things on top, but for most we need to take things in turns.
Children's growth in wellbeing and as human beings I believe is ultimately linked to their capacity to ask good questions and have high introspection skills, shut down the outside noise and have the agency to follow THEIR dreams. For that they need more unstructured time. The above construct gives them more unstructured time that they are responsible for filling , this freedom is the minimum requirement to create agency and responsible decision making.
Its true that here you have passing exams. However passing exams I dont think is the problem if the child enjoys learning and doesnt feel the pressure to pass exams. If the learning that leads up to exam is changed than passing exam can be a piece of cake.
Clearly next level would be remove exams all together but that is hard to implement in practice and requires parents who want to explore even more 'foreign' terrain. I dont mind that, we just have to be realistic as to where the majority still is. There is the whole unschooling movement, but I dont think its right to stick to any moevement or 'religion'.
Benefits of slowing down - depends on the child. We (adults) might want to take it slow, the kids might not., they are usually more energetic when opened up. Depends on the child and the child should be free to determine on pace - absolutely agree on this.
"things that could be interesting later in life that do not motivate them right now" - absolutely! separate essay this one, absolutely no need to have final goal, need to string it together led by genuine curiosity and desire.
meetings itself is not going anywhere, the type of meeting she means I think is - bureacratic / "just for sake of meeting" meeting is going to dissolve as layers of middle management mostly dissolve and we are left mostly with creators and leaders. The meetings between creators and people who are engaged and care deeply about their work is a different kind of gathering all together. These meetings are invigorating and life affirming as opposed to sould sucking affairs to tick boxes. Austin has meetings in her life all the time with people and writes about them. I also dont think she has issues with relationships and resilience.
i hope to have shed some brief light on some thoughts, but i will unpack in the future. Thanks again!
I will move my following comment to a personal plan:
A block I have is geographical. I live in Italy; my oldest doesn't speak English at the moment, but she is curious enough to start. And I see it with the latest travels we did.
But I see how much she likes kindergarten just for playing with her friends.
On the other side, I see my nephew posting daily posts about how she hates a specific teacher in high school.
I am trying to understand how to move to the next step, which is a challenging choice.
English is another freedom tool like reading. Italy is a beautiful country and one never needs to leave it, but having ability to broader horizon online and access more choice and info is what you need English for. Also I think in mainland Europe most kindergarten / primary schools are perfectly fine for kids and not as crazy like in anglosaxan countries. The main difference and issues appear in secondary education 9y + etc ... Good luck to you.
Anna, thanks for sharing. Great essay.
Now it opens up a lot of questions. As a parent of 2 daughters, almost 5 and 2, I ask myself repeatedly, "What would be the best education I can provide to my daughters to make them more flexible in the future?"
I agree on some points, but on the contrary, I am thinking about how scheduled and robotics this sounds. Let me explain: I agree school is a daycare and people are in a comfort zone. How can we improve it? I agree: Their own pace is excellent. It permits the diversification of people.
On the other hand, some questions, ranging without an answer, emerged.
- we can't measure children's growth based on how much they score in hard skills only. How effectively are we sharing values and resilience in life? It is excellent to gamify against a computer. But what happens when shit arrives in life?
- Boring life vs. "slowing down potential". Relationships that grow from dull moments? Is it a gamification system? What about how to deal with unfair things? Are we trying to remove the randomness of human beings from nature?
- It seems that "passing exams", tests or skills evaluation, is the foundation of both schools. The main difference is the personalized approach to each one at a different speed.
When you learn something, you change your world, believing everyone has the same awareness level as you. I suppose teachers make the same mistake the same bias.
- And what about things that could be interesting later in life that do not motivate them right now?
From Austin's essay:
- "The solution is not to have more meetings". Agree. People make meetings because it's easier and frictionless than trying to understand the problem, listing causes, and going to see on their own. This is a flaw of a hierarchical society. To become more efficient in doing the manager, we do more meetings to move the problem to the lower level. But the problem is the problem that arrived at my position. And we don't focus on avoiding the problem of hiking levels.
On the contrary, meetings are essential to develop relationships and resilience. How can we have the best of both worlds?
Thanks again. Maybe these questions could provoke a new essay I would gladly read.
Matteo , thank you for your comments, there is so much to unpack there and I plan to do all that in future writing indeed.
This article can seem to focus on hard skills as that's what most parents are obsessed with. I goota start somehwere :) . I don't think its right to be this narrowminded, but its rooted in fear for financial / job security. If you are even going to talk about alternative education, the first thing is to convince the parents the children are not going to turn out 'dumber' than in traditional schools and they measure it in hard skills. I understand that you are already at the next level, thinking about other things on top, but for most we need to take things in turns.
Children's growth in wellbeing and as human beings I believe is ultimately linked to their capacity to ask good questions and have high introspection skills, shut down the outside noise and have the agency to follow THEIR dreams. For that they need more unstructured time. The above construct gives them more unstructured time that they are responsible for filling , this freedom is the minimum requirement to create agency and responsible decision making.
Its true that here you have passing exams. However passing exams I dont think is the problem if the child enjoys learning and doesnt feel the pressure to pass exams. If the learning that leads up to exam is changed than passing exam can be a piece of cake.
Clearly next level would be remove exams all together but that is hard to implement in practice and requires parents who want to explore even more 'foreign' terrain. I dont mind that, we just have to be realistic as to where the majority still is. There is the whole unschooling movement, but I dont think its right to stick to any moevement or 'religion'.
Benefits of slowing down - depends on the child. We (adults) might want to take it slow, the kids might not., they are usually more energetic when opened up. Depends on the child and the child should be free to determine on pace - absolutely agree on this.
"things that could be interesting later in life that do not motivate them right now" - absolutely! separate essay this one, absolutely no need to have final goal, need to string it together led by genuine curiosity and desire.
meetings itself is not going anywhere, the type of meeting she means I think is - bureacratic / "just for sake of meeting" meeting is going to dissolve as layers of middle management mostly dissolve and we are left mostly with creators and leaders. The meetings between creators and people who are engaged and care deeply about their work is a different kind of gathering all together. These meetings are invigorating and life affirming as opposed to sould sucking affairs to tick boxes. Austin has meetings in her life all the time with people and writes about them. I also dont think she has issues with relationships and resilience.
i hope to have shed some brief light on some thoughts, but i will unpack in the future. Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I will move my following comment to a personal plan:
A block I have is geographical. I live in Italy; my oldest doesn't speak English at the moment, but she is curious enough to start. And I see it with the latest travels we did.
But I see how much she likes kindergarten just for playing with her friends.
On the other side, I see my nephew posting daily posts about how she hates a specific teacher in high school.
I am trying to understand how to move to the next step, which is a challenging choice.
English is another freedom tool like reading. Italy is a beautiful country and one never needs to leave it, but having ability to broader horizon online and access more choice and info is what you need English for. Also I think in mainland Europe most kindergarten / primary schools are perfectly fine for kids and not as crazy like in anglosaxan countries. The main difference and issues appear in secondary education 9y + etc ... Good luck to you.