“Education and Liberty”, however oxymoronic, is probably the most important issue
of the day The world we inhabit, and the one that will be inhabited by the next
generation, is made up of what future citizens learn during their most formative stage.
years. The school/teach/educate system exemplifies and brainwashes young people
people, for being authoritarian, hierarchical and undemocratic. inherent values
of the educational system are self-interest, competition and materialism. freedom to
learning is repressed. If we want a different social system, one that includes freedom,
then we must expose the young to freedom from their birth.
Teacher. Roland Meighan from England has emphasized the fact that the word “education”
denotes “being conditioned, believing, realizing, and acting in a given way.” Hey
suggests that “learning” is a radically different activity. Charles Hayes, proponent
for autodidacticism, suggests that education is a given, while learning is
something you take Ivan Illich in “The Deschooling Society” illuminates the difference
and he came to the conclusion that society would not improve as long as he was brainwashed by schooling.
students with the status quo. Paulo Friere in “Education for the Oppressed” urged
the end of traditional schooling and the development of open minds. John Holt,
after a long life of trying to fix schools, he recognized that this was the wrong way to go.
and he proposed to us “Teach what is ours”. India’s Manish Jain promotes “unlearning”,
that is overriding the brainwashing of schools and critical thinking. Even those who
are more involved with the educational system recognize that education today does not
fit today’s needs, but few go beyond the “fix the schools” syndrome. The problem of
the day is to think outside the box and go to the roots of why we learn, how
we learn, when we learn and, secondly, what we learn. we have to think about
terms of “learn” and not of “educate”.
This suggests that the mantra for every individual and every organization should be:
EVERY PERSON HAS THE FREEDOM, THE RIGHT, THE RESOURCES AND THE
OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN WHAT THEY WANT. WHEN THEY WANT AND HOW
WANT.
This mantra calls for a radical transformation not only of how we learn but also of how
we live and how we govern. It outlines a basic human right and responsibility.
It does not give that right and responsibility to the government, to parents, to
churches, or any other social entity. It is the right of each individual. Is
responsibility of any social organization. Libraries, museums, parks, health
hubs, farms, factories, churches, town halls, legislatures and everyone else
corporation and civic organization has a responsibility to provide learning
opportunities for citizens.
This is an expression of individual freedom. Everyone is free to learn and
Learn what freedom is by being free. Transforms the teaching institution for learning.
centers or learning communities. Turn teachers and parents into mentors.
used at the will of the students. Create a world of critical thinkers more capable of
participate in world affairs. It transfers the money wasted in prisons like schools, to
tax breaks for organizations that provide apprenticeship opportunities selected by the
learners Puts the hierarchy of the individual, the family, the community, society and the world in
a more humane chain of command. Replaces self-interest, competition
and materialism with lifelong learning as the purpose of life.
It gives the people on this forum a goal to develop (or not).
I had intended to add a few words of support to my opening statement. target i found
that Evely Lawrence in her 1952 summary of what Frederick Froebel said in the
1979 is so much better than I could say, that I am adding your article below.
BE;
Freedom
the great froebelian revolution
by Evelyn Lawrence 1952
Indeed, what is essential, if we are to be capable of the freedom that in any
adequate social theory that we need, is a philosophy of education for the freedom of
begin. That is the great Froebelian revolution. The capacity for freedom is something
which, step by step, must be built in us. It must represent a progressive movement and
cumulative achievements carried forward by one’s own growth. Education in freedom and
for freedom they are essential to it, but they are merely means. The goal is that education
from within, by the multifaceted experience of the child and the continuously integrated activity
in a harmonious development, which will take him to adulthood as a full master of
himself and an autonomous and responsible member of a free society.
Such an educational philosophy is then simply carrying out the
freely chosen common philosophy of freedom which is our most urgent social need.
It no longer depends on any particular set of ultimate metaphysical beliefs (either
Froebel’s or any other), but provides the fundamental platform on which most
various ultimate beliefs, as long as they are compatible with one’s tolerance
another, you can meet. And once we assume the shared value of freedom, we can
limit our concern, if we wish, to the pragmatic minimum of the contrast between
those conditions that effectively safeguard it and those that, whatever
nominal homage that we pay him, we leave him precarious and insecure. At best, freedom.
of coercion and interference in adult life comes, as we have said, too late; after
living most of our formative period from childhood to adolescence under
conditions of coercion and interference, very few of us emerge inwardly capable of
Be free.
What is even more fatal perhaps than positive educational impositions from outside?
is the usual disregard, in our conventional parenting traditions, of the
demands for integration and forward growth; lack of access to a wide range of
human experience; the lack of exercise in the methods of judgment and decision; tea
lack of equipment provision for freedom and choice. those who have stayed
through his plastic period to the fortuitous interplay of coercion and abandonment,
contempt, deprivation and frustration, and all kinds of unregulated force within and without
outside, it will very likely emerge at the mercy of any other strong current
you can find each other. This is demonstrated in fact by the ease with which even the
the external freedom that is the “birthright” of an adult is given or lost under the game
in one form or another of propaganda or mass movement or mafia appeal. That is
the soil in which the ideologies or creeds of power flourish, even though in the end they may
destroy even!
most of those who embrace them.
However, the positive conditions of freedom amount to something much bigger
than any mere sum of avoidances of failures or errors. And the inspiration for a
The philosophy of education for freedom is for most of us deeper than the need for the mother.
to secure our freedom in afterlife, vital as that is. Both this need
and those deeper demands are perhaps most satisfactorily met by Froebel himself.
fundamental principle: full respect for the integrity and individuality of each child.
The most scrutinizing of moralists, Immanuel Kant, saw the supreme ethical law in
principle: treat every human being as an end in himself. But most, if not all, ethics is
revolved around the so-called “moral subject”, either taken for granted or formally
declared to be the responsible adult. I think we can consider it the eldest of Froebel.
revolution that broadened, deepened and transformed this principle to the
insisting that we must treat not only all adults but all children as an end in itself
the same!
. And every younger child, every infant pretty much from the start. In this way, and
only in this way, respect for the integrity and individuality of each human person
can be integrated into all adult relationships with him and into all planning and
education process from the beginning; and the range of opportunity required, the
the equipment and the capacity and the power for freedom will then be seen as part of the
birthright of every child.
source: pages 225 – 228 of Friedrich Froebel and English Education edited by Evelyn
Lawrence 1952
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