No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down • Hacker News Board

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#41

Post by doc_holliday » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #27

Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that this is what school was like, every single day. I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own, but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for people who know what they want.

"eight-hour Scrum meeting"

Why are you having an eight hour Scrum meeting?

Isn't that the complete opposite of what a Scrum meeting is supposed to be? 15 minute max, standup meeting is a Scrum.

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#42

Post by xanderstrike » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

nibs wrote: post #37

savanaly wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite surprising, given how different the methods are. What about a control group that received no schooling?

Unschooler here. I am the only unschooler from my 12 person cohort of hippie parents who did not go to University. And I am doing okay. So I think school basically has no effect. Mostly just daycare. It is good at that, though.

Sounds like your cohort was great. There was an "unschooled" girl in my college friend group who was failing remedial math and science classes in her third year. She never wanted to learn basic mathematics (we're talking long division here), so she never did, and she did not understand how to motivate herself to learn about something she wasn't already interested in. She didn't end up graduating despite the small, private school bending over backwards to try to accommodate her with personal tutoring and endlessly lengthening deadlines. She was first chair violin and had an almost full ride scholarship because of it, so she didn't lack motivation in general she just could not bring herself to care about math or science even when her degree was on the line.

That's the value school has. It teaches you how to learn about things you might not be interested in, but will be useful later in life.

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#43

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

iSnow wrote: post #14

wapapaloobop wrote: post #7

We school-educated people associate learning with authority and it's hard for us to truly grasp that education takes place most efficiently under conditions of freedom. Repealing Hitler's 1938 law against home education would be an important step for Germany.

IDK. The toughest calls for home-schooling in Germany come from religious extremists, be it Islamists, Jewish orthodox or Twelve Tribes christian fundamentalists. None of those are anti-authority to begin with. Also: Godwin.

[deleted]

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#44

Post by rdiddly » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

iSnow wrote: post #14

wapapaloobop wrote: post #7

We school-educated people associate learning with authority and it's hard for us to truly grasp that education takes place most efficiently under conditions of freedom. Repealing Hitler's 1938 law against home education would be an important step for Germany.

IDK. The toughest calls for home-schooling in Germany come from religious extremists, be it Islamists, Jewish orthodox or Twelve Tribes christian fundamentalists. None of those are anti-authority to begin with. Also: Godwin.

Also: Diddly.

(Diddly's Law: As the years roll by on the internet, the probability of someone mentioning Godwin once Hitler has been mentioned, is approaching 1.)

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#45

Post by JorgeGT » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:51 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #35

nickpsecurity wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the real world, children are enticed by non-new and broken things just fine... until their parents, competitive peers, TV, or lovers insist they be more materialistic and wealthy signalling." Tamana is describing a behavior known to anyone who have ever watched children play or explore the world. They start out interested in all kinds of stuff regardless if it's shiny or in perfect condition. Later, after much cu…

Do you have kids? My toddler won't even eat a cookie that has a corner broken off.

When my little sister was a toddler she would eat dirt, dead wasps and generally everything unable to outrun her.

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#46

Post by nibs » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

clentaminator wrote: post #39

nibs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unschooler here. I am the only unschooler from my 12 person cohort of hippie parents who did not go to University. And I am doing okay. So I think school basically has no effect. Mostly just daycare. It is good at that, though.

How would you know what you don't know, though? Or what you never experienced or could have experienced? Genuine question, just curious how anyone firmly on the "schooler" or "unschooler" side of the fence can know without some kind of external reference, particularly one which they themselves didn't choose in case of bias.

The assumption is that if there is something you need to know and you encounter a situation that requires it, you can learn it. And if it turns out you do not need it, you saved the time. Further, formal instruction only works for some types of people, albeit probably most. Synthesis from learning when you are interested tends to be more useful than memorization. The experienced part is the scary one, although in terms of spending time with peers, doing sports, art, etc. we did not really miss out on that.

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#47

Post by dylukes » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

wapapaloobop wrote: post #7

We school-educated people associate learning with authority and it's hard for us to truly grasp that education takes place most efficiently under conditions of freedom. Repealing Hitler's 1938 law against home education would be an important step for Germany.

I disagree. We associate schooling with authority. Learning may or may not co-occur with schooling depending on circumstances.

There is only a focus on "learning" until maybe 5th grade. What you do in school after that isn't making sure you learn so much as making sure you know a base set of things.

Thereafter there tend to be two types of successful students: the ones that chase A-grades ("good students"), and the ones who settle for somewhere around or just above B-grades but explore the material more freely. The key distinctions between those groups have been, in my experience, respect for authority and self discipline.

Later in life they seem to correlate with two common tropes: the person who is not superficially brilliant but can apply themselves to something for long periods of time and "just get it done", and something akin to the hacker trope: clearly intelligent, capriciously disorganize, but utterly omnivorous for any and all interesting skills and knowledge.

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#48

Post by dexterdog » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

doc_holliday wrote: post #41

gurkendoktor wrote: post #27

Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that this is what school was like, every single day. I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own, but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for people who know what they want.

"eight-hour Scrum meeting" Why are you having an eight hour Scrum meeting? Isn't that the complete opposite of what a Scrum meeting is supposed to be? 15 minute max, standup meeting is a Scrum.

I've been involved in Scrum that became that or during crunch time somebody gets a stupid idea that there should be one at the beginning and another at the end of the day.

15 minutes really should be an absolute max as in after 15 minutes everybody just leaves regardless of how late you started. In fact you should have no more than 50 minutes per 5-day week for scrums so that anything going over 10 minutes starts counting against the rest of the week. I call them roll-under minutes.

Too often the team gets too big or unnecessary meeting jockeys start attending and it all goes to hell.

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#49

Post by ada1981 » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

Sudbury Valley Schools are the gold standard as far as I can tell from my research. (I spent a number of years as an education/students rights activist; built and ran the country's most famous education blog back in 2009; and have otherwise been doing advocacy work for a couple decades)

They are fully democratic and focus on producing empowered self directed citizens who understand how to share limited resources and cooperate.

The kids have as much power as any adult or teacher, which I really love -- they say you can't make someone partially equal -- either you share power with them or you don't. No grades or grade levels, students decided what to focus on. Great mini documentary on the website to watch as well.

http://www.sudval.org/

Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

#50

Post by balls187 » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

centizen wrote: post #33

chrisper wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a Montessori Kindergarten as a child. I think it was good, but I do not remember much anymore. I remember all the toys and other things that taught me reading, counting, fine motor skills etc.

If you think it was good, it probably was - all I remember about traditional kindergarten was hating it.

Those injection molded plastic beds for the kids to sleep in.