Scholé news March 2018

Dear friends of Scholé, thank you for the many positive responses to the proposal to launch a civil-society INITIATIVE for EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM!

Inspired by the Pioneers of Change online congress (it had more than 10,000 participants!), Melanie Hetterich has used the Pioneers of Change platform to announce a group meeting on educational freedom, to which we warmly invite everyone who is interested:

It takes place at Vienna’s MARKHOF – a “village in the city” – where you can already experience how colourful and joyful living and learning can be when they are allowed to develop through self-determined togetherness, free of institutional shackles and role models.

First date: Friday 6 April at 6 pm, Markhofgasse 19, 1030 Vienna

(Registration welcome but not necessary.) Please pass the invitation on! If enough participants come, we might do another hidden constellation.

At the Markhof, too, we already did a hidden constellation on the subject in mid-March (Sibylle kindly took notes). This constellation gave us interesting insights into what is particularly important for the success of our initiative: the representative of HUMAN RIGHTS (who at that point did not even know whom or what she was representing), crouching on the floor hidden behind a chair, said literally: “I’m already itching to go! I’m just waiting to be called at last!” Doesn’t that sound encouraging?

The COURT, in turn (whose representative described herself as a “self-righteous pain in the neck”), suddenly changed its attitude when it met the MAINSTREAM SCHOOLS. So it looks very much as if committed teachers WITHIN the mainstream system are crucial for convincing judges (who, like teachers, are civil servants) of the need to redefine the human right to education! The COURT took progressive schools and free schools, which did not entirely agree with each other either, much less seriously :-)) But it clearly stated what it respects: those who are courageous and free!

EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM itself was in a pitiful state. It felt completely pushed to the wall and seriously threatened. Only the MONTESSORI SCHOOLS stood at its side (the only progressive school concept to have found its way into the mainstream system!), but they could do nothing for it. Only when our INITIATIVE FOR EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM entered the field did EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM say it had finally found “an anchor”!

FREE PLAY took the central position in the middle of the field. EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM was glad to see it, while all the others (schools, teachers, progressive schools, free schools, colearning space, court, exams and so on) were so busy with themselves or with each other that they did not even notice it. PLAY found this very regrettable, but it did no harm to its self-confidence and liveliness.

The TEACHERS were interested only in the EXAMS, which stood firmly in the middle of the field. But when the COURT and HUMAN RIGHTS made contact with each other, the EXAMS sank to their knees (!) and then even wanted to sit down. This gave the TEACHERS a clear view of PLAY for the first time.

From beginning to end, the UNSCHOOLERS stood at the very edge of the field next to the door, watching what was happening sometimes with amusement, sometimes rather anxiously, and keeping their escape route open just in case. But right at the end, HUMAN RIGHTS, finally coming back to life, turned their particular attention to the UNSCHOOLERS, of all people, whom hardly anyone had noticed until then.

The constellation thus anticipated a state of affairs that will hopefully soon manifest itself in everyday reality too! Many judges in Austria still feel obliged to punish unschooling families if the children do not sit the prescribed annual exams or fail them. I have tried to sum up why I find this completely unjustified in a general REBUTTAL:

The charge implies that we parents of self-directed learners

1. harm our sons and daughters DELIBERATELY, which would be criminal, or
2. harm them UNCONSCIOUSLY, which would mean that we are not of sound mind!

Since it has been proven that neither 1) nor 2) applies (see the statements of the youth welfare office, the enclosed expert reports, witness statements and so on), the ASSUMPTIONS on which the charge is based cannot correspond to the facts:

• The first assumption, that schooling is indispensable for a child’s well-being.
• The second assumption, that compulsory exams on the school curriculum are the only way to guarantee every child’s HUMAN RIGHT to education.
• The third assumption, that good school-leaving certificates can guarantee a successful and fulfilling working life.

One of many counter-proofs to the first assumption: In the English-speaking countries, the right to exam-free unschooling would surely not have been expressly protected if assumption 1) were correct. Recent and very recent findings from brain physiology, behavioural research, education and psychology also show that school lessons and exams as they are customary worldwide today often fail to do justice to the talents and needs of pupils (especially highly sensitive ones). That is precisely why committed parents are looking for new paths!

The easiest way to show that the second assumption is not based on facts is with statistics: After eight years of regular lessons and regularly sitting exams, about 25 % of pupils in compulsory schooling are not even able to read with understanding or do simple sums. So at 14 or 15 they still fail at tasks that are required of unschooled children at the age of 7 or 8 in external exams! Far more tragic, in our view, is the thought of the precious abilities and skills that children who failed and were humiliated at school would have developed in other fields if they had been allowed to unfold freely according to their inner curriculum…

Plenty of evidence against the third assumption, that completing school guarantees young people a good professional future, is also supplied by the central statistical offices. The few existing studies of unschooled children, on the other hand, show that in later life they integrate into society more easily and better, both socially and professionally, than comparable school leavers.

That is why we are calling for self-directed learning no longer to be automatically equated with truancy in law, and for it finally to be researched scientifically in Austria too, instead of continuing to punish it on the basis of long-refuted assumptions!

From the Tuesday after Easter, a dear friend is helping me set up a website of its own for the Initiative for Educational Freedom. I will be in touch again soon.

Alexandra, Sibylle and Melanie

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. Let the reading sample inspire you, or order your own copy on the GAIA marketplace, with a 10 % discount for members. The book is in German.

Reading sample (German) BUY THE BOOK