Sligo - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

childcentred?

sligo | education | event notice

Wednesday May 06, 2009 08:57

by robert

school must not manufacture cogs

Public Talk: Sligo, Wednesday, 13th of May, 8 p.m., Harmony Café (former Clifford Electrical Building, Harmony Hill) - David Gribble, founder of Sands School, Devon UK, will be in Sligo to present his views on childcentredness in school contexts.

David Gribble is the founder of Sands School, Devon, UK. He has worked as a teacher and has written numerous books on education matters. In his book ‘Real Education’ he provides evidence that discipline, curriculum and tests are irrelevant to a child’s development and that the central issues are care, respect and freedom.

Below are some quotes of his books:

“Children make the best of school and enjoy themselves as much as they can, but they are always under someone else’s authority, unable to conduct themselves as they would wish, unable to follow up their own interests. School seems to be designed to turn them into cogwheels that will fit smoothly into the machinery of society.”

“The ideal school must have an entirely different atmosphere. It must not even try to manufacture cogs.”

Public talk
13th of May
8 p. m.

Harmony Café
Clifford’s Building
Harmony Hill
Sligo

"School also has unfortunate effects on children’s social education. Joanna Gore, who spent six months as a researcher in a London primary school in the role of a pupil, observed in her book, 'Leave me Alone', that children learned to stand in lines, to ask for permission to go to the lavatory and to sit, for the most part, in silence, but they also learned the skills of what the anthropologist James. C. Scott calls 'peasant rebellion.' The principle elements of peasant rebellion are false compliance, foot-dragging, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander and sabotage.
There is no need for schools to produce these undesired effects. If a school would only start from the children themselves, what they know and what they want to know, it would nourish their curiosity instead of stifling it. The children would learn more, and faster, and they would love doing so.
What children usually learn at school is how to conform, either to the official school standards or to the standards an underlying peasant revolt. It would be much more valuable if they could learn to be true to themselves."

“Schools should offer a model of a better society where, regardless of age, everyone has an equal voice, everyone’s interests are taken into account and, barring accidents or trouble at home, everyone is happy.”

“I have seen evidence of the possibility of this in many places of education all over the world, in wealthy backgrounds and among the poorest of the poor, in the east and in the west, in inner cities and in the country.”