Education
Ideas and guidelines worth considering
Teachers should see themselves primarily as advocates for the child so that he or she may become well educated and lead a good (for the child) life.
Teachers are not there to serve the murky and complicated world of politics and economics or other lobby groups.
Teachers are not producers of “human capital”.
(see Gerold Scholz (HG.): Bildungsarbeit mit Kindern: Lernen Ja – Verschulung Nein”. Muelheim 2006, S.7)
The central question of pedagogics is: What do we adults want from children and why do we want that? (Scholz, a.a.O.S 13)
Education vs Competence
Education means something else apart from “learning” or “competence” (although today almost all teaching plans are called “educational plans”).
Education is not the usefulness of learning for society and also not the usefulness of knowledge in competition with others in society.
Education is something one can only acquire oneself. The environment, for example, kindergartens, schools or universities can only offer opportunities for educating oneself. No more, no less.
The education acquired serves the person themselves. The sociologe Ulrich Oevermann stated that there would soon be competent and self-learning robots – but no well-educated robots.
(Scholz, S.14f.)
What do we need?
It’s never been as impossible as now to predict what challenges today’s children will meet when they become adults. The only chance we have to cope with this is to make learning part of teaching.
Making learning the main task means understanding learning as a personal process, tied to the person learning. German pedagogic has a meaningful term for this: “Bildung”. In English the closest translation is “education”, best understood by what it is not: vocational training or transfer of knowledge. A well-educated person cannot only read, for example, but wants to read, is curious and seeks to understand.
Functionalising children
Unfortunately, children today are often seen only for what they know and not as people.
Because adults in Germany don’t know how to solve their problems they are trying to train up children to save society. (The current propaganda relating to discipline and leadership is no coincidence). The main direction of political discussion around education is not about education at all but about conserving Germany’s economic status through knowledge transfer. Children, as well as adults, are supposed to see themselves in the role of functionaries in the economically determined development of society. (see Scholz, S. 44)
Our opinion is: This creates idiots!
It’s starting: Education, Culture, Happiness
“Of course it’s possible to be happy without being well educated. But there are experiences relating to happiness which are closely related to facets of education: the pleasure of a better understanding of the world; the freedom of shaking off long held superstitions; the happiness of reading a book which opens doors to history; the fascination of a film which shows what human lives are like somewhere else; the joy of learning a new language for one's own benefit; the surprising discovery that one's inner world expands with the accumulation of social fantasy.”
(Peter Bieri [Pascal Mercier]: Wie waere es gebildet zu sein, in: Zeitmagazin, 32/07)
(Collected and written by Wilfried Stascheit, Oct. 2008)