Scholé news February 2019

Dear friends of Scholé, the struggle for educational freedom goes on. Above all, it is a struggle for a change of consciousness.

First and foremost among parents. The Austrian media are currently celebrating the courageous pioneers who won women the right to vote and to stand for election 100 years ago. But before that finally happened, these women had to break the laws of the day and let themselves be abused, convicted and imprisoned.

Back then, in 1919, the following statement by a renowned politician still reflected the view of the broad majority: “Their natural lack of fighting strength, of depth and judiciousness in judgement, of resolve in their will and of perseverance in action … speaks against their complete equality … in the family as in political life.” Restricting women’s right to self-determination was justified by their supposed natural inferiority and regarded as necessary protection: until 1974, Austrian law required a married woman to obtain her husband’s express permission if she wanted to work outside the home!

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, the struggle is for children’s right to self-determination. The pioneers of self-directed education dare to question laws that were, after all, passed to protect the child’s best interests! The majority of the population thinks this is completely mad: very few parents would actually trust their children to decide for themselves what is good for them. The rest of the population is convinced that, left to themselves, children would eat sweets all day, sit in front of the television, play games on their smartphones or get up to dangerous nonsense. Consequently, for their own good, they have to be forced to learn something “sensible” in institutions created specially for that purpose.

The truth is that children do not do what adults tell them, but always what adults show them by example. In that sense, parents are quite right to worry as long as they themselves prefer to eat fast food, cannot put down their smartphones or laptops and only go to work to earn money. Their children will adopt these habits and go to school to get report cards. Living with children as equals and being a role model for them is a real challenge! A lifelong task that demands a high degree of human maturity. For the children of immature parents, it is therefore a great stroke of luck when they meet good teachers at school who, thanks to their human qualities, sometimes become lifelong role models.

Yesterday I was at “Bildünger”, a large congress in Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier. The organisers – the Ministry of Education and several private foundations – had invited the charismatic Indian education pioneer SUGATA MITRA as their main attraction, but unfortunately only let him speak at the very end of the event. He told the story of his famous experiment in a slum in Kolkata, where in 1999 he built a computer into a wall at a height children could easily reach, to see what they would do with the unfamiliar device.

Within just a few weeks, the children had pooled their efforts and acquired the language and technical skills they needed to use the computer just as skilfully as the children of the rich. And this although nobody had taught them to read, write or speak English, and no adult was nearby to answer their questions! Sugata Mitra repeated this experiment many times. It worked just as well in Indian mountain villages as in London, provided the children formed a manageable group and were free to follow their spirit of discovery. In both places, however, the results of their independent research improved noticeably when an adult observer – a friendly grandmother, for example – took a warm interest and now and then asked the children stimulating questions.

Sugata Mitra calls his revolutionary model of self-education “School in the Cloud”, and it is currently being set up in three places at once – in Goa, Washington and Barcelona. The education reformers gathered in the MuseumsQuartier applauded the keynote speaker loudly, but when the good-humoured Indian asked with a smile who among them could imagine letting their own children learn this way, very few hands went up in the large hall…

Most of us still carry the prejudice, fuelled over many centuries, that children are by nature stupid, lazy and/or wicked, as “Struwwelpeter” or “Max und Moritz” show us so clearly. And although these classics of children’s literature have long since been replaced by “Pippi Longstocking”, “Winnie-the-Pooh” or “Das kleine Ich bin Ich” (The little I am me), they unfortunately live on in the collective unconscious and thus in our pedagogy to this day. The traditional school system, based on this long outdated image of humanity, is increasingly losing its grip, which is the reason for congresses like “Bildünger”. Even so, there is still no state funding for education pioneers who believe in children’s power to educate themselves and try to give them the space to develop their individual potential.

The MARKHOF is one of these forward-looking projects: Anyone interested in learning and working in community can gain experience in its many lovely rooms in Vienna’s 3rd district (Markhofgasse 19) or contribute to a different way of living together. The MARKHOF welcomes interested visitors and is looking for committed helpers who have the time and the desire to try out new ways of living with adults, young people and children and to develop exciting projects alongside or after their day jobs. There are many different things to do there: please get in touch if you are interested!

Our next meeting on EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM will also take place at the MARKHOF on 25 March at 6 pm. Because we received such positive feedback last time, we would like to do another constellation after exchanging news. There is a lot to report!

We look forward to seeing many of you! Alexandra and Melanie

Book tip – “Lernen ist wie Atmen” (Learning is like breathing)

Together with two unschooling mothers, Gudrun Totschnig and Sigrid Haubenberger, we published it ourselves.

We all feel that the time is ripe for this many-voiced account of how unschooling can be lived in practice. Order your own copy on the GAIA marketplace, with a 10 % discount for members. The book is in German.

BUY THE BOOK