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The Corroboree

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Hey Bog, I feel that there should be more focus on reading emotions or interpreting feelings. Emotions seem to be entirely ignored when it comes to education. I'm not sure how you'd go about teaching it, but I believe that if a child is made to be aware of their emotions and the causes and effects that change their emotions, then they are able to trust themselves more and have less fear of the unknown, which is sometimes a major obstacle to learning.

Also, I've had a long standing argument that kids should be taught to talk to strangers. Have a think about that one for a while... I've been thinking about it for over 20 years now, and I feel the world would be an absolutely spectacular place if the 'don't talk to strangers' rule was abolished.... seedy people would be found out so much quicker and the social/communal skills that this change would make would be amazing.

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After watching that Charles Eisenstein link, I had this horrible thought...

We're all talking about how we would teach kids to become good human beings, right? But how many of these ideas, if followed through, would create functional members of our society? I mean, it would be great if all the current kids grew up into respectful mindful adults, and society was thus revolutionised, but we can pretty much guarantee that that won't happen. So given that our society probably won't change all that much, might we actually be placing kids at a social disadvantage by teaching them to think for themselves & do interesting things? And is that a bad thing? I know that I'd rather live in a world with more people like the people I've found here, but I wonder if it's fair on them? I know that what I've been advocating isn't actually the creation of misfits, but rather giving people enough education to make decisions for themselves... but even so, just realising that there is even a decision to be made will often set them apart...

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^

A very good point indeed, one which has not escaped my awareness, although I suppose its a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' kinda situation. I had similar thoughts in mind when I was looking at Steiner education.

Schooling which creates an environment unto itself - where different patterns apply and the community generates its own ways of doing and seeing - will enevitably produce atleast some young people who do not and cannot feel at home in mainstream society, and who will be baffled by the status quo, having seen alternatives in action which do work. Yet it seems to me atleast that the majority of these people would feel very much the same having moved through mainstream education, although by spending atleast the formative years of their life in environments in which they are accepted and valued for who they are, their creativity and imagination fostered, and their emotional and moral spheres given due consideration, may generate a kind of internal stability which leads to resilience in facing our genuinely insane cultural paradigm.

I've had some interesting conversations recently with ex-Steiner pupils, who by large seem to be profoundly imaginative, creative and insightful, walking to the beat of their own drum.. And also ex-pupils of alternative schools where learning is much more self-governed and self-directed.. It's hard to describe exactly what is different about these people, they seem to carry the a depth of knowledge of the ways in which our world runs backwards, but still they walk forward in their own way. Of course that's just the slim snippet I have seen anyway. Otherwise yeah, I agree completely, it's a head-warper alright.

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Having had the chance to observe quite a few experiments in alternative schooling, I think the most successful I've seen were:

*home-schooled by sociable parents, plenty of self-direction & personal responsibility

*alternative school system where students sometimes interact with conventionally-schooled kids

The ones which didn't go so well were kids who were home-schooled in isolation, who tended to be brilliant but confused when confronted with the rest of society; and exclusively-alternative schools, who tended to produce depressed stoners. Of course I'm skimming over all kinds of incredible exceptions, but these were the general patterns - socialising seems to be key, as wide as possible.

Another random thought that I've sometimes had circles around our lack of initiation rituals. Now please don't think that I'm romanticising the traditional versions, I do understand that many of them were traumatic & unnecessary, and that their modern counterparts can encourage bullying and outright torture. But I do think there's a place for encouraging self-reliance. There's a section from Into The Wild where he says something like "everyone should, at least once, have the experience of testing themselves against the world with only their mind & body"...frankly I think it's sad that more kids don't do this. Testing yourself, and passing (whatever that might mean) can be an amazing experience that helps people to trust in their own abilities. It seems to produce a kind of calm confidence where the person goes "well, I have no idea what's going to happen next, but I do know how to swim that channel, catch a fish, build a fire, and knot a hammock, so whatever goes down, I'll probably be ok". I guess it all comes back to that first post I made, fostering self-sufficiency so that people feel able to deal with whatever life throws at them.

In practical terms I would extend the gardening classes as the kids grew older, to overnight hikes/camping/field-trips.

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