Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 254 posts

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

#151

Post by jostylr »

rumcajz wrote: post #136
jostylr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Arts&Ideas Sudbury School in Baltimore, 8 years old at this point. I have been with them for two years. There is no veto. There is simply discussing the issue and revisiting it if necessary. While it is always possible that a disastrous decision will be made, anecdotally, it seems to be exceedingly rare. Students want the school to succeed. They want to be safe and respected. When you start from those place…

One thing I was always interested in w.r.t. Sudbury Schools (but never met anyone with personal experience to ask about it) is how do the students, being trained in democratic way of doing stuff, deal with real life once they finish the school. They start working for a corporation with strict command & control hierarchy, they have to deal with political system where your vote has basically zero value etc. One's naive…

I work with a young school so the experiences are not quite there yet for me personally. Sudbury Valley School did do a study of its graduates at one point and found that they led very satisfactory lives embracing challenges everywhere: http://www.sudval.org/05_alumni.html#03

There is a lot of entrepreneurship involved in their pathways.

Our first graduate wanted to become a pastry chef and upon graduating our school, apprenticed to become one and is now a pastry chef at a well-respected restaurant. Our only other graduate just graduated from the college of his choice so it is a bit early for that one. From SVS, of recent fame is Laura Poitras, of Citizenfour.

My impression is that they embrace life with eyes wide open. If they happen to work for a bad outfit, they will understand why they are there (need the money, perhaps) and be open to moving on. They keep their power, always carrying around a memory of this accepting community in their hearts, motivated to take on challenges in their lives.

I am sure there are good stories and bad stories amongst the alumni, as with any group. But I would be willing to bet that the spark of living in the moment is almost universally present in all of the ones that attended a Sudbury school for most of their 5-18 years.

As for politics, a person can have a lot of power by taking actions, organizing, doing the hard work of establishing a movement. They learn at our school, presumably, that while voting is important, it is not nearly as important as being actively involved in the community, in talking with people, in making the connections that lead to results. Even bad bosses can be politicked for is not a bad boss just someone who is suffering and could use a helping hand?

I susepct your real question, and it is quite telling about our society, is "If you were going to end up a slave, would you rather have some freedom first or not?"

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

#152

Post by jostylr »

brenschluss wrote: post #112
jostylr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Arts&Ideas Sudbury School in Baltimore, 8 years old at this point. I have been with them for two years. There is no veto. There is simply discussing the issue and revisiting it if necessary. While it is always possible that a disastrous decision will be made, anecdotally, it seems to be exceedingly rare. Students want the school to succeed. They want to be safe and respected. When you start from those place…

> I have learned that democracy is not about voting. True democracy is listening and being heard. It is a bit like in Buddhism and how simply witnessing and acknowledging emotions will often lead the way to a good outcome. I agree with this so strongly - do you have any ways in which you've seen these thoughts or ideas shared or written in some form?

No, but I haven't looked. I have been reading about Buddhism lately and working at a Sudbury School so the two naturally are feeding into one another in my mind.

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

#153

Post by i_love_jc »

stared wrote: post #85

An obligatory reference: A. S. Neill "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing" (1960), especially chapter 1 (about the Summerhill school itself). The schools started in 1920s, and sadly, we made no progress in that direction in the last century. Link: https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf

You're very right that our school system as a whole hasn't made any progress in that direction, but I do find it a somewhat hopeful sign that there are now quite a number of democratic schools based on Summerhill and the similar Sudbury model. 40 or so Sudbury schools (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools), probably a hundred or more under the loose umbrella of "democratic" and associated with AERO.

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

#154

Post by Retra »

justinator wrote: post #86
xanderstrike wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, pr…

That also sounds like your typical, "genius" who excels at one thing, but finds frustration in other subjects that aren't as easy to pick up. Still. You would think that there would be a correlation between music proficiency and maths. "Because I absolutely had to", is a pretty good motivator. I've lost a lot in life, and had little support: "Why did you start a business at 20?" "Because I absolutely had to."

Why on Earth would there be a correlation between music proficiency and maths? Math involves no musical skill, and music only involves mathematics because mathematics is abstract enough to apply to literally every human discipline. Music is probably one of the places where math is used the least.

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

#155

Post by i_love_jc »

nottoday88 wrote: post #3

Is this a new idea or a rebranded old one? Summerhill school?

Or to really dig back into history, Bronson Alcott's school, Leo Tolstoy's school, and the schools founded by anarchists in the 1920s. The latter and Summerhill are really more radical than the one described here.

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

#156

Post by i_love_jc »

2suave wrote: post #89

The title should read "No grades, no timetable, and no degree". As much as I like the idea behind it it's simply not a feasible concept in today's society and it's competitive environment. In fact, I'd even wager that the pupils of that school will be ridiculed by their fellow peers for attending such a school. Not to mention that admission boards of prestigious universities would never give them the time of the day.…

I don't know how things work in Germany, but in the US all prestigious universities will consider, and have admitted, homeschoolers or others with nontraditional transcripts. This school would be no problem at all for a US university as long as you're able to demonstrate that you can compare well to others in what you've accomplished or learned.

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

#157

Post by Retra »

mac01021 wrote: post #138
lllorddino wrote: post #90

> such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam. Okay I suck at math but am decent at programming and the last time I checked there is a bunch of math in game development. I agree that some subjects in school are useless but if you give a kid the option of doing whatever he wants versus learning math (which most would) then I'd say your school system sucks.

Because everybody must learn math to be successful in life? What level of math should be required?

Basic statistics.

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

#158

Post by jostylr »

sandworm101 wrote: post #111
jostylr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sudbury Schools, there are plenty of rules. If a student broke the rules, their would be a jury of their peers and a sentence to follow out. If she wanted to stay at the school, she would accept it all and acclimate. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, sometimes a few months. Someone who ignores our system of justice would be expelled. It happens. It all depends on whether she wants to be in this environment or not. M…

>> Someone who ignores our system of justice would be expelled. It happens. I hope they don't read Lord of the Flies. I'm not sure that I would want a group of teens, especially peers, to judge me on anything. Didn't Trek TOS also cover this in the episode on the planet without adults?

I have seen far more compassion and wisdom from the students on JC than I have when serving jury duty with adults. Reality in this instance speaks better about ourselves than our fiction does.

Keep in mind that your experience is with people who are living in a competitive world. If you belong to a cooperative world, no one benefits by putting someone else down. When treated fairly, they treat others fairly.

For those coming from traditional schools, it sometimes requires a few conversations or JC writeups before they start to have empathy, but most get there fairly quickly.

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

#159

Post by enraged_camel »

ef4 wrote: post #144
colejohnson66 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder why learning can't be more like that? Money. There isn't enough of it. America would rather spend it on other "more important" things.

That's simply not true. Per student spending in the US is among the highest in the world. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp We just blow it on administration-heavy bureaucracies and demonstrably failed methods.

>>We just blow it on administration-heavy bureaucracies and demonstrably failed methods.

Not to mention sports. The absurd amounts of money, attention and time poured into college athletics especially never ceases to amaze me. Even at the high school level, many students focus way too much on being "discovered" by talent scouts so that they can get scholarships to colleges they want - grades be damned.

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

#160

Post by GunboatDiplomat »

savanaly wrote: post #26
k-mcgrady wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading that when you compare the development of a child that went to a regular school vs. Montessori the results are the same.

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

Why should it be surprising? We're evolved to develop at about the same rate.
Post reply on HN