Started an online course on Coursera on Education

I have started an online course on the future of education with Coursera. It is part of my desire to look at learning using the web, I am also doing a brilliant course on Shakespeare with Futurelearn.

It has been the first week for the education course, and the video lectures have been brilliant, along with the discussions and questions. As an assignment at the end we had to reflect on what has affected our own learning, and how we see the future. I wrote about my inspirations, including Stephen Jay Gould's book Ever Since Darwin, and the last BBC Bronowski lecture by Nicholas Humphrey.

As a teacher at A.S.Neill's Summerhill School I have been researching the community created in 1914 called New Ideals in Education and how they affected the law, delivery, practice of education in our primary schools, they failed with the secondary schools, apart from private ones, and very innovative state school heads. I am doing projects with state schools using this history as a framework to promote the idea of a culture and history of struggle for rights in schools.

I am doing this course to frame my work using this research, and to see how others respond to the ideas of New Ideals as the creators of our idea of an excellent modern school. So far I have been very surprised by the acceptance of the progressive education ideas, methods and values expressed in the lectures!

As part of the course we are asked to blog a refective diary.

Summerhill Presentations in Italy

I gave several presentations on Summerhill and other examples of children's rights in action to Italian audiences in Forli, Bologna, Cesana and Ravenna. You can see one of these events on programme on Ravenna Web TV. The events were organised by Associazione La Lucertola

I started with the image of the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz looking for his heart, and the Scarecrow looking for a brain. A.S.Neill created Summerhill as a school that would develop the children's hearts (emotions) and heads together. And the Scarecrow gets a brain from the Professor of Oz by being given a diploma, he suddenly becomes intelligent! An image of education that far too often defines what schools do and how they are inspected, exam results are everything!

Frankenstein, rights and the Co-op

Have been to a seminar at the Institute of Education on Co-operative Schools. I had two questions. Why apparently respond to the 'privatisation of schools' agenda when promoting co-operative schools. I was on a panel for Social Enterprise London some three years ago, on School as Social Enterprises, I argued for co-operative schools under local authority control and state ownership. Indeed one of the Directors agreed with me on the platform, that good schools needed to include children as part of their 'stakeholders'.

The other question, was the need to have children as active community members in their schools, how were they putting their voice into the decision-making structures, not as consumers, or customers, but as active citizens?

My paper on why all children and teachers should learn about Summerhill and similar examples has been promoted on the UNESCO web community IBE Community of Practioners, second item down.

Happy 90th Birthday to Summerhill

Thursday I ran a morning at Tower Hamlets town hall with four local primary schools. Their school councillors and support teachers came to learn about restorative justice and children's courts through the life and work of the Polish Jewish hero Janus Korczak and his democratic orphanage, and Summerhill School and its democratic meetings. They saw a video clip of the CBBC drama, showing a meeting case about a boy accused of stealing £20 and then they held a role play meeting about a child using someones bike without permission. The morning ended with everyone singing happy birthday to Summerhill, in celebration of its 90th birthday, and the children sharing Fairtrade chocolate.

http://www.eastendtalking.org.uk/