User talk:Elbbirg

I am a newcomer to Wikipedia, with an expertise in democratic education. I have begun by making a few additions to the list of democratic schools, and have already met with a problem, in that I would like to insert Ecuador in the alphabetical list between Denmark and Finland, and I do not see how to do it.

Secondly, I would like to make extensive alterations to the article on democratic education, practically writing a new article, and feel I should not do so without first checking that this would be acceptable. Should I perhaps post my new version here, and see if it attracts any comments?

Is this the right place to ask questions like this, or should this place be reserved for discussion? Elbbirg (talk) 08:10, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello Elbbirg, and welcome to Wikipedia. Your talk page is for other editors to communicate with you. Unless you reach out to people (as you have now done at the Teahouse), no one is likely to notice your talk page.


 * I am an experienced editor, and would be happy to answer your questions. Feel free to visit my talk page at any time.  Cullen 328  Let's discuss it  10:18, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Major changes to Democratic Education entry
I am suggesting the following as an improvement on the present section on history in the Democratic Education entry. It differs widely from the current version, and I would like to have advice as to whether I should just insert it instead of the old entry and see whether anyone comments.

History
I would like to make a fairly wholesale alteration to the history section. Would it be acceptable to replace the current version with the following? (It is a slightly improved version of the one I posted earlier). Elbbirg (talk) 17:11, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

John Locke
John Locke, the English philosopher, published Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1692. Section 73, paragraph 1 first sets out and then justifies one of the main principles of democratic education: “None of the things they are to learn, should ever be made a burthen to them, or impos'd on them as a task. Whatever is so propos'd, presently becomes irksome; the mind takes an aversion to it, though before it were a thing of delight or indifferency. Let a child but be order'd to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has or has not a mind to it; let this be but requir'd of him as a duty, wherein he must spend so many hours morning and afternoon, and see whether he will not soon be weary of any play at this rate.” Although Locke writes a good deal about punishment, he believes it should be avoided as far as possible, and there are other comments that might well be part of a democratic school prospectus, for instance, “Few years require but few laws,” “It will perhaps be wonder’d, that I mention reasoning with children; and yet I cannot but think that the true way of dealing with them. They understand it as early as they do language; and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures, sooner than is imagin’d”, and “A father will do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book of advice on education, Émile,was first published in 1762. It includes many ideas that are still fundamental to the concept of democratic education. Émile, for instance, was only to learn what he could appreciate as useful He was to enjoy his lessons, and learn to rely on his own judgement and experience. “The tutor must not lay down precepts, he must let them be discovered,” wrote Rousseau, and urged him not make Émile learn science, but let him discover it He also said that we should not substitute books for personal experience because this does not teach us to reason; it teaches us to use other people’s reasoning; it teaches us to believe a great deal but never to know anything ”. Rousseau, however, disqualifies himself as a democratic educator by advising the tutor to “Use force with children, and reason with men,” and insisting that although Émile must do whatever he wants, his tutor must make sure that he only wants to do what the tutor wants him to do

Leo Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana
Locke and Rousseau had worked as tutors. The first major writer with practical experience of a democratic school was Leo Tolstoy who set up a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia in the late 19th century. He said that the school evolved freely from principles introduced by teachers and pupils. In spite of the preponderating influence of the teacher, the pupil had always had the right not to come to school, or, having come, not to listen to the teacher. The teacher had the right not to admit a pupil, and was able to use all the influence he could muster to win over the community, where the children were always in the majority. Tolstoy insisted that only in the absence of force and compulsion could natural relations be maintained between teacher and pupils. The teacher defined the limits of freedom in the classroom by his knowledge and capacity to manage. And the pupils, Tolstoy wrote, should be treated as reasoning and reasonable beings; only then would they find out that order was essential and that self-government was necessary to preserve it. If pupils were really interested in what was being taught, he declared, disorder would rarely occur, and when it did, the interested students would compel the disorderly ones to pay attention. “When Tolstoy purposely left the room in the middle of a lesson to test the behaviour of his students, they did not break into an uproar as he had observed was the case in similar circumstances in classrooms he visited abroad. When he left, the students were enjoying complete freedom, and hence they behaved as though he were still in the room. They corrected or praised each other's work, and some-times they grew entirely quiet. Such results, he explained, were natural in a school where the pupils were not obliged to attend, to remain, or to pay attention.” http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/smmnsej/tolstoy/chap4.htm.

Janusz Korczak
In 1912 Janusz Korczak founded Dom Sierot, the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, which was run on democratic lines until 1940, when he accompanied all his charges to the gas-chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp. In the orphanage he formed a kind of republic for children with its own parliament, court, and newspaper. The school parliament established a list of punishments, going from 100 (the mildest) to 1000 (expulsion from the orphanage). In the first two years there was only one person sentenced to number 1000, and otherwise only two as severely sentenced as number 600, which merely entailed a public admission on the noticeboard. Korczak wrote, “The judges are children themselves, and they know how difficult it is never to do anything wrong, and they also know that everyone can become better, as long as he wants to and seriously tries.”

Summerhill
The oldest democratic school that still exists is Summerhill, currently based in Suffolk, England but founded in Germany in 1921. A boarding school for children up to the age of 16, it became notorious for voluntary class attendance, nude bathing and permitting smoking; its effective self-government by a weekly school meeting of staff and students was largely ignored. A. S. Neill, its Scottish founder, wrote several influential books and he gave the inspiration for many modern democratic schools, for instance Tamariki School, in New Zealand, founded in 1967, and  Kinokuni, a children’s village in Japan, founded in 1992.

Dartington Hall School
Dartington Hall School, another progressive boarding school in the UK, which ran from 1926 – 1987, had a generally voluntary formal academic programme which students could join into as they wished, school meetings which had various degrees of power at different periods of its history, and a relationship between staff and students that served as an inspiration for Sands School, founded immediately the Dartington school closed.

Sudbury Valley School
Sudbury Valley School, a democratic school founded in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1968, has been the model for dozens of Sudbury schools around the world. Sudbury schools have no lessons, because of a belief that young people learn more when they are free to follow up their own interests, but there is a firm structure of rules, with a school meeting for general issues and a justice committee to deal with breaches of the school laws. Daniel Greenberg (educator), one of the founders, has written many books about the school.

The Pesta
The founded in Ecuador by {{Ill|de|Rebeca Wild |Rebeca]] and {{Ill|de|Mauricio Wild|Mauricio Wild in 1977, started as a nursery school based largely on Montessori principles. It grew to a primary school in 1979 and added a secondary department ten years later. Families moved from Europe to Ecuador so their children could attend the school, and it eventually had almost 200 pupils. It was a day school with no fixed lessons, depending on a prepared environment to stimulate children’s learning. Rebeca Wild’s books, have had wide influence. Many Wild schools, as they were called, were founded in Europe, particularly in Austria

The Democratic School of Hadera
The Democratic School of Hadera, founded by Yaacov Hecht in Israel in 1987, has much in common with Sudbury Valley, but differs in two important respects: it is supported by public funds, unlike Sudbury, which charges fees, and it offers a varied timetable of lessons and activities.

AERO
[http:www.educationrevoluton.org/about-aero/ AERO], the Alternative Education Resource Organization, was launched by Jerry Mintz in the USA in 1989. It now has 500 members and lists 12,000 alternatives on its website, not all of them democratic. There are annual AERO conferences and weekly news bulletins.

International groupings
The number of democratic schools around the world has continued to grow, and since 1993 there has been an annual International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC), held in a different country each year. In 2010, the first EUDEC (European Democratic Education Conference) was held in Leipzig, Germany. In 2012 the AAPAE, (Australasian Association for Progressive and Alternative Education) changed its name to ADEC, The Australasian Democratic Education Community.

Summerhill
The oldest democratic school that still exists is Summerhill, currently based in Suffolk, England but founded in Germany in 1921. A boarding school for children up to the age of 16, it became notorious for voluntary class attendance, nude bathing and permitting smoking; its effective self-government by a weekly school meeting of staff and students was largely ignored. A. S. Neill, its Scottish founder, wrote several influential books and he gave the inspiration for many modern democratic schools, for instance Tamariki School, in New Zealand, founded in 1967, and  Kinokuni, a children’s village in Japan, founded in 1992.

Dartington Hall School
Dartington Hall School, another progressive boarding school in the UK, which ran from 1926 – 1987, had a generally voluntary formal academic programme which students could join into as they wished, school meetings which had various degrees of power at different periods of its history, and a relationship between staff and students that served as an inspiration for Sands School, founded immediately the Dartington school closed.

Sudbury Valley School
Sudbury Valley School, a democratic school founded in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1968, continues to be the model imitated by dozens of Sudbury schools around the world. Sudbury schools have no lessons, because of a belief that young people learn more when they are free to follow up their own interests, but there is a firm structure of rules, with a school meeting for general issues and a justice committee to deal with breaches of the school laws. Daniel Greenberg (educator), one of the founders, has written many books about the school

The Pesta
The founded in Ecuador by {{Ill|de|Rebeca Wild |Rebeca]] and {{Ill|de|Mauricio Wild|Mauricio Wild in 1977, started as a nursery school based largely on Montessori principles. It grew to a primary school in 1979 and added a secondary department ten years later. Families moved from Europe to Ecuador so their children could attend the school, and it eventually had almost 200 pupils. It was a day school with no fixed lessons, depending on a prepared environment to stimulate children’s learning. Rebeca Wild’s books, have had wide influence. Many Wild schools, as they were called, were founded in Europe, particularly in Austria

The Democratic School of Hadera
The Democratic School of Hadera, founded by Yaacov Hecht in Israel in 1987, has much in common with Sudbury Valley, but differs in two important respects: it is a state school, unlike Sudbury, which charges fees, and it offers a varied timetable of lessons and activities.

AERO
AERO [http:www.educationrevoluton.org/about-aero/], the Alternative Education Resource Organization, was launched by Jerry Mintz in the USA in 1989. It now has 500 members and lists 12,000 alternatives on its website, not all of them democratic. There are annual AERO conferences and weekly news bulletins. ====International groupings==== The number of democratic schools around the world has continued to grow, and since 1993 there has been an annual International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC), held in a different country each year. In 2010, the first EUDEC (European Democratic Education Conference) was held in Leipzig, Germany. In 2012 the AAPAE, (Australasian Association for Progressive and Alternative Education) changed its name to ADEC, The Australasian Democratic Education Community.