Examinations, tests
and grades
― And
when will the exams
and the tests take
place?
How will the grading of the
students be done?
Examinations,
tests and grades?
You are kidding,
surely.
There are no such
things.
What
constitutes the darkest pages
of
our school years is unknown.
Didn't
you understand that the purpose of
this
school is to cultivate free personalities
and
not slaves of the system?
The parents are in contact with the teacher all the time
and receive
regular analytical reports describing in
detail the child's
progress and any problems he meets.
But there are no
grades.
To characterize a
person
with a number is
considered an
offense against human
dignity.
― And
so, is all the time spent playing games?
Yes.
Just that the
games change, because the interests of the children change.
The game with the
coloured beads will be replaced by difficult, complex
and very demanding
experiments in physics and chemistry.
And the ones who
built with the wooden bricks, have moved on to serious design
studies, where it is
proved that the diagrams, the equations and the very complicated
calculations are very
useful tools that the children will learn to use "on the side"
because they help a lot
in their work, which is the construction of the bridge linking
Treasure Island to the
opposite shore.
Working is shifted
from the floor to the tables and drawing boards, because
there you can spread
your PC, your papers and your books more easily.
More and more
books will appear on the shelves,
as children are now
turning their interest to them.
Either because
they enjoy reading the text that they have "chosen by themselves",
or because they find
the answers there to the questions which occupy them now.
Because if you go
and ask the teacher something, she never gives you a clear
answer to what you are
asking, but she gets you to think by yourself and sends
you to search in the
encyclopaedia or in certain book.
That
is of course if you're lucky,
since
otherwise she might start up an entire
discussion
involving the whole class,
and
you will spend hours discussing it until
you
find the correct answer "by yourself",
and
you will regret it bitterly,
cursing
the moment you asked her.
The time which the
teacher spends with the
children around her,
becomes ever greater.
The discussions
are more heated, and
the teacher
"reveals" more and more.
Either the story
of the photon which fell on a leaf
and finally formed
a glucose molecule
("in passing"
the children will of course
hear all the details of
photosynthesis),
or the story of the
little turtle which emerged fully
formed from an egg,
which initially contained only a yellow liquid
(and of course the
children will learn "in passing" all the details of
the mechanism for
protein synthesis under the instructions of the DNA).
There
is no scientific domain which
the
children can't understand and
follow
if they are interested in it.
This school begins
without fail with the kindergarten
(because what we
call the pre-school age is crucial
to the intellectual
development of the child)
and ends with the high
school, when the child
has already matured so
much that he can
decide on his own
(without quotes now)
whether to take a job
or to study further.
But enough of all
this.
Time to go back to
our "castaways"
and their problems.