(Author’s Note: Christopher Quirk, Director of Easton County Day School, graciously allowed me to work closely with him on a proposal for a sustainable education community. Part of this collaboration centered on a K-12 school. This final exposition was a culmination of that collaboration in January, 2012.)
Democratic Education resets the conventional schooling structure and the relationships of adult to curriculum, child to curriculum and adult to child to where what is learned, when learning happens and how what is chosen to be learned is both child self-directed and adult-child negotiated.
In the conventional structure what is learned, the curriculum, is broken down into compartmentalized disciplines which are further broken down into subjects which themselves are divided into units which again are divided into smaller accumulations of specific facts and concepts available for the learner to take up into ready recall memory. A basic outline of disciplines is as follows:
-English Language Arts
-Mathematics
-Social Studies
-Sciences
-Unified Arts (a sort of catch all for everything not included above)
The sociology of knowledge as discipline division is an inheritance of the specialization and expansion in knowledge from the late Middle Age European Classical grammar school trivium and the university quadrivium. Indeed, the growth in the complexity of the sociology of knowledge under the agency of print dramatically increased information circulation, popular understanding and intellectual discovery requiring ever more differentiation of knowledge into distinct disciplines which were taken by generations of school folks as the basis for general study, preparing the young for a world where such knowledge was supposedly required.
However with the growth and societal saturation of electronic information technologies, three distinct effects must be recognized: 1) that the pace of information production exploded to the point where it is no longer possible, even if it were in times past, to hold the resulting amounts of information in memory; 2) that the need to hold information in human memory has been eliminated as these vast amounts are now stored in immediate access, digital memory; and 3) that the connectivity of digital media has broken down discipline barriers to recombine specialized knowledge at intersecting points.
Thus, it makes far more sense today for school folks to provide learning experiences whereby children can master learning rather than to master content, and what content is offered should take full notice of the recombination of specialized knowledge.
To acquire learning skills in a child-decision-centered environment of a Democratic Education school is to provide a wide range of opportunities for children to engage using their native instincts and individual differences, their intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, slowly gaining the skills as they test hunches/hypotheses, as they explore, discover and unfold, as they bring to consciousness through meta-cognitive development the mindfulness necessary for intentional learning decision making.
It would begin with the readiness to acquire learning skills as the objective of an early childhood program while the acquisition of learning skills would be the focus of the elementary. The mastery of learning would be the province of a secondary education.
To take full notice of the recombination of specialized knowledge is to provide an integrated, interdisciplinary thematic curriculum which at the macro-level can be ordered through Curriculum Strands, such as:
-The Life Cycle in the Natural World
-Communication Between Individuals and Within Groups
-Identity Within Groups and Institutions
-The Nature of Time and Space
-Our Response to the Aesthetic
-Our Relationship to Nature
-Our Role as Producers and Consumers
-Our Efforts to Live with Purpose.
Broken down into theme categories the curriculum strand of The Life Cycle in the Natural World, for instance, might include Ecology. And the category Ecology itself can be broken down into themes such as: Geography-life’s web of place and climate, and their affects on the development of plants, animals and people; Change-evolution and extinction, natural and man-made; Conservation-soil, air, water, energy; Micro and Macro Environments-explorations of the smallest and the largest ecosystems. The curriculum strands and their theme categories and individual themes constitute the structural framework of the intentional learning community’s curriculum which the school constructors and governors are obliged to populate richly with resources and activities in order to provide the knowledge sets open to child self-directed and negotiated learning.
The curriculum strands, as suggested above, would supply the knowledge categories youngsters engage in the abstract and in the experiential. So, as a further example, within the curriculum strand of Our Relationship to Nature might be the theme category of Bugs and Other Creepy Crawly Creatures-explorations into insects and the role they play in ecosystems-whereby those exploring the theme could select a few square feet of property, describe the micro-ecosystem there, observe and note over a certain period all insects in the air column over the property, the creepy crawlers on and around the ground and under the surface to approximately 18 inches. Then they would investigate to uncover the roles within that micro-ecosystem the creepy crawlers and flying insects have. Having noted the findings, a report in a medium of choice would be produced and presented. And on to the next theme, the next inquiry and on the education in this manner goes.
In summary, then, an altered schooling structure that would make it impossible for the problems of conventional schooling to take root is defined:
-by the mission to cultivate in all youngsters a solid psychological foundation for future growth and a cognitive dexterity for life long adaptability to life’s vicissitudes: the healthy, happy growth in self-awareness, self-regulation and self-actualization so in this century and beyond mentally healthy citizens can leverage their good health in which ever way they discern is in their best interest and in the best interest of family, community, country and civilization;
-by the twin pillars of Mindfulness and Empowerment supporting the mental wellness and cognitive flexibility mission emerging within each youngster as a consistent response to the learning environment rather than through compliance demanded of children by the adults in the class rooms;
-by a realigned relationship of adult to child from adult over child to adult and child partnering each respectful of and acting on the wisdom each possess;
- by the emergence and recognition of individual social, emotional and cognitive needs of youngsters as manifested and self-identified by them, not by an interpretation of child behavior by the adults in the class rooms, indeed, where the child is the definer of his and her own need and the decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need, and where through a mentoring relationship based on the mutual respect for wisdoms of each the child will be helped to help him-herself to satisfy the full range of need;
-by an altered relationship of adult to curriculum and child to curriculum where what is learned, when learning happens and how what is chosen to be learned is both child self-directed and adult-child negotiated;
-by knowledge acquisition being child decision driven through an individual’s neurological constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments, learning and communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive and social development individualizing curricula and yielding quality differentiated outcomes;
-by occasioning learning experiences whereby children can master learning rather than to master content, and what content is offered takes full notice of the recombining of specialized knowledge through an integrated, interdisciplinary, thematic curriculum;
-by the school being community self-governed.
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