Scholé news July 2018

Dear friends of Scholé, for the seventh time my husband and I have spent our holiday in Vassilikos,

which differs so pleasantly from other tourist resorts on Zakynthos BECAUSE AT EVERY TURN YOU MEET UNSCHOOLERS OF ALL AGES :-)) Instead of letting professional entertainers distract and divert them, they get excited about salsa dancing, learn to play the ukulele, paint icons, cook Greek food, or explore the island’s history, fauna and flora. Without pressure, without coercion, with plenty of free time in between and only for as long as they feel like it. We enjoy the wonderfully relaxed atmosphere that hangs in the air here and also rubs off on the Greek hosts:

Modest, contented guests who keep coming back year after year become personal friends and make them aware of how precious the nature and landscape are that form the unmistakable setting for all this. As a result, destruction like that in the neighbouring villages has so far been successfully prevented.

Although I no longer take part in the courses myself, I like going to the weekly “finissages”, festive gatherings in the open air or under a tent roof, where the course participants show what they have created and learned over the past five days: I admire the dancers aged 6 to 16 and their young trainer, who have worked out a complex choreography together. The choir, which performs old and new songs with infectious enthusiasm. The imaginative word games of people whose jobs involve completely different things. The nature studies of amateur artists who noticed for the first time while painting how many shades an onion has, how quickly the colours of the sea change, or how intricately an inconspicuous oleander flower is built when you look more closely.

And as every year, I ask myself: what is stopping us from learning only in this pleasurable way, when so much is possible with so little effort? Why do we waste our energy on tracking down, analysing and compensating for supposed deficits, instead of finally turning our gaze around, delighting in the abundant abilities people have and giving them the opportunity to live out these abilities to their heart’s content? Why don’t education ministries consult successful practitioners instead of experts on every conceivable educational problem – such as the artists and art therapists here, who achieve such results working one and a half to two hours a day, and get some rest themselves in the process? The Viennese lawyer Wolfgang Löhnert, who founded this leisure-time educational institution together with art enthusiasts more than 20 years ago, could show the finance minister how incredibly cost-effective such a model is, if you compare the ratio of effort to results with that of our school system, which is as costly as it is inefficient…

The objection that socially committed people in particular often put to me with undisguised disapproval is: “Still, that is of course a luxury model that only works in the arts and is only an option for a very small, elite part of our society!” That may sound plausible, but it is wrong, as the following two examples prove:

Many years ago, a German foundation (unfortunately I no longer remember which) funded an experiment in which “school failures” from so-called problem schools were sent to a six-week holiday camp, accompanied by youth workers. There, a maximum of two hours a day could be spent “learning” in the conventional sense; the rest of the time the children were to spend on games, sport, art and drama. All 60 pupils aged between 11 and 14, many of them children of migrants, had been tested before the camp began. After their return, their level of education was tested again. The astonishing result: within just six weeks they had learned as much as children otherwise learn in one and a half school years!!! Quite apart from the improvements in their physical and emotional well-being…

The second example, which finally opened my eyes, comes from the book ÜBERLEBENSSCHULE (School of survival) by David Gribble, which I can warmly recommend to you: in 1989 the Indian social worker Rita Panicker founded the private organisation Butterflies Child Rights in New Delhi. On her way to work she had repeatedly come across street children. Slowly and carefully she tried to make friends with them, because she wanted to find out how these children manage to survive at all amid so much poverty, hardship and violence. And she wanted to hear from them what kind of help they would like.

It was not at all easy to win the children’s trust, because with most adults – whether police officers, social workers or shopkeepers – these children had so far had bad experiences. They were kicked, chased away, cheated of their wages and mistreated, or caught against their will, separated from their families and locked up in educational institutions.

Forget education – if we study, we will all die of hunger. Parents, brothers, sisters, everyone will die. The government cannot bring our parents back to us. If there were enough money at home, we wouldn’t be forced to work, then we would have studied. We would like to learn, but who will do everything else in the meantime?

That is how one of the boys summed it up at an IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) in 2000.

Rita Panicker realised that what mattered was to honour these children’s incredible achievements, to recognise their contribution to the survival of the whole family and to stand up for their rights, instead of forcibly placing them in institutions where conditions are, moreover, usually appalling. Together with other volunteers she built up a network that supports the children in disputes with the police and shopkeepers, helps them find reasonably safe places to sleep, informs them about their rights and familiarises them with democratic rules, so that they can join together in child workers’ unions. At certain times, Butterflies staff go out with metal cases containing pens, games and learning materials. The street children choose for themselves what they want to play or learn:

They give us the freedom to play; we can go to them and just draw. We go to the children’s meetings, and there participation becomes essential. In the meetings we can express our opinion; we can say what we want to learn.

The Butterflies organisation now exists in many extremely poor regions, and everywhere it has turned out that when they are allowed to look after their own affairs and their dignity is respected, even hard-working children learn to read, write and other important things simply on the side. And they do so without having to abandon their families or lose their admirable survival skills – whereas street children who were forced into school often can no longer find their way in life afterwards… The children empowered by Butterflies, on the other hand, learn something else that will be vital for survival in the world of tomorrow, as the same Indian street boy reported in 2000: international solidarity.

Another example of what we did at Butterflies: a very short time ago, a year and a half ago, there was a war with Pakistan in our country. That was in Kargil, where the fighting took place and many people died. But the children were the ones most affected by it in the villages of both countries. We discussed it in the union, and we decided that it was important for us to show solidarity with the children of that region who were affected by the war. So we collected money and sent it to the children of both countries.

Children helping children. The poor helping the poorest. And everyone grows through it. That is the way to world peace.

Wishing you all beautiful, self-determined midsummer days, Alexandra

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

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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