20 ms·

No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

471 points by passenger 10y ago

ThomPete 10y ago
It really comes down to the children. If they have a lot of selfdisciplin it's great if not they are better off at more strict schools. At the end of the day though, parents and their indirect involvement is the key to a proper education no matter what educational philosophy one follows.
- fao_ 10y ago
  Everyone has self-discipline in some form or another. After observing the difference between children who have been unschooled and children who have been schooled, I would say that children are naturally disciplined (to follow their interests), and then become disinterested when the power to learn is taken out of their hands.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Not everyone have self-discipline in the way that it's needed to be able to want to learn at your own free will. There are plenty of examples of that from failed "hippie" schools of the 70ties I know a few of them.
HillaryBriss 10y ago
> The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for each lesson and when they want to take an exam. So the student learns what they want to learn when they want to learn it. The student focuses on a subject when the brain is ready and interested. Sounds efficient. OTOH, one of the really valuable things about a curriculum is that it serves as a guide to a complex and bewildering subject. A curriculum, at its best, is like a highly knowledgeable person telling a novice: "Study these nineteen subtopics and you'll grasp this field pretty quickly. If you study these other nineteen subtopics, you'll just waste a year of your time and never really get a clue." Which also sounds efficient. How to reconcile?
- deleted 10y ago
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- platz 10y ago
  > Set subjects are limited to maths, German, English and social studies, supplemented by more abstract courses such as “responsibility” and “challenge” I'm not sure this would work for college freshmen (i.e. "fields"), but they seem to have limited the scope enough here.
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  What I'd like to see is a completely opt-in curriculum with introductory classes and transparent requirements. Simultaneous dense "civil education" class focusing on the specific applications of fields to everyday life. Teachers would only have interested students by definition, so they could offer more in-depth classes. I wish somebody would try it. Nobody needs to know sines and cosines, and somebody who doesn't care about math is not going to appreciate being forced to learn. Conversely, everybody should understand percentages, calculating interest, etc. So the idea is, you'd run a "civil education" class around 8-9am, which would focus on a wide spread of practically applicable and necessary skills. Then there'd be regular "introductory classes" for each course, which would present the premise of a course, the requirements, and an overview of the topics covered, and further specializations and occupations the skill was necessary for. Then the rest of the school day would be opt-in classes. The premise here is that people don't retain knowledge from classes they don't care about anyways. I don't know if that generalizes; that would be the main point of critique for this approach. I think traditional schooling is based on the premise that you can force kids to learn. I've never seen any evidence or long-term studies to support this claim.
  - tamana 10y ago
    The problem with completely opt-in is that kids dont know what they'll like until they try it, and if they can opt out of anything difficult, many will learn almost nothing.
    - FeepingCreature 10y ago
nottoday88 10y ago
Is this a new idea or a rebranded old one? Summerhill school?
- frozenport 10y ago
  Or Montessori, [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education
- i_love_jc 10y ago
  Or to really dig back into history, Bronson Alcott's school, Leo Tolstoy's school, and the schools founded by anarchists in the 1920s. The latter and Summerhill are really more radical than the one described here.
wapapaloobop 10y ago
We school-educated people associate learning with authority and it's hard for us to truly grasp that education takes place most efficiently under conditions of freedom. Repealing Hitler's 1938 law against home education would be an important step for Germany.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  Mandatory schooling is much much older in Germany, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland) (in German). It was part of the Weimarer Verfassung of 1919: http://www.verfassungen.de/de/de19-33/verf19.htm http://www.verfassungen.de/de/de19-33/verf19.htm (Art.145). In some parts, mandatory schooling laws were first passed in 1592; Prussia in 1717/1763, Bavaria 1802, Saxony 1835, etc. There's really no need to bring up Hitler in every article that mentions Germany.
  - wapapaloobop 10y ago
    That's interesting. Why was the 1938 law introduced?
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      Pretty sure Hitler didn't want anyone to get any ideas about resistance or opposition
- iSnow 10y ago
  IDK. The toughest calls for home-schooling in Germany come from religious extremists, be it Islamists, Jewish orthodox or Twelve Tribes christian fundamentalists. None of those are anti-authority to begin with. Also: Godwin.
  - fao_ 10y ago
    > Also: Godwin. Godwin's law only comes in when something has been compared to Hitler, this person stated a fact: That the law in question was brought in by Hitler.
deleted 10y ago
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frozenport 10y ago
I went to one of these as a child and learned nothing. It became a real struggle to learn in a time efficient manner. I would strongly discourage parents from choosing this kind of education for early learners as it doesn't include various social skills like how to sit in a classroom, address a prompt, etc.
- tamana 10y ago
  How early is "early"? Grade 1-5? Kids younger than that don't need to sit in a classroom. What does "appears a prompt" mean?
  - ams6110 10y ago
    > What does "appears a prompt" mean? Guessing, but I'd say it means "respond to a verbal question" presumably from an instructor/superior.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Surely it depends on the child?
bbayles 10y ago
My partner became involved in Montessori a few years ago, and I've been really impressed with how it works. If you don't know much about Montessori, here is my "in a nutshell" version: It's a method of schooling usually associated with preschool and elementary education. There are mixed age groups (e.g. 3 to 6) in classrooms. There is at least one adult who gives one-on-one lessons on how to work with "materials." The materials do the teaching, not the adult. There are hundreds of different types of materials. They're designed to teach or exercise a particular skill, but they look like games and are all designed to be "beautiful" as to entice children to them (Montessori is really serious about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn). They follow a particular progression. Children may work with any material for which they've had a lesson. They can work with it as many times as they like. My favorite example of how Montessori works is how it develops reading skills. First a child is introduced to materials that involve very short crayons - when they use them they strengthen the muscles in their hands. Then they're introduced to letter-tracing materials. Then they're introduced to letter/sound matching materials. Children who follow these lessons wind up writing first, and then reading follows very naturally. The emphasis on developing physical capabilities first really demonstrates the attention to detail that's typical of Montessori. The math education progression is impressive also. There are materials that have children doing proto-multiplication, exponentiation, algebraic manipulation, and more. My partner developed a material that teaches counting, addition, and subtraction in base 8. (Her 4 and 5-year-olds understood it much more quickly than her colleagues!) There are parts of the method I don't like (e.g. dogmatic resistance to rewarding performance, for example), but overall it feels like a huge improvement over typical early childhood education.
- tamana 10y ago
  > Montessori is really serious about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn This is a traditional pseudoscientific gimmick to drive sales revenue. In the real world, children are enticed by non-new and broken things just fine... until their parents, competitive peers, TV, or lovers insist they be more materialistic and wealthy signalling.
  - bbayles 10y ago
mvdwoord 10y ago
I went to a Montessori school for a while. Much like what is described here. For me it was fantastic and I sometimes lightly regret not continuing in high school due to (minor) practical obstacles. That said, I believe these types of systems are definitely not for everyone. Lots of kids are probably better off with a bit of structure and imposed discipline.
- JonoBB 10y ago
  Yes, there are definitely some children that this method of teaching is not suited to. Some children lack the drive to find things of interest, and according to the Montessori method, they should not be "pushed" (I use this term very broadly). At the point when they leave Montessori school, these children can be very ill-equipped in relation to their peers and "behind the curve". With some more discipline and structure, this could be avoided. But, if you fit the right profile, its leaps and bounds ahead of mainstream education during the early years. My wife is a Montessori teacher.
anotherhacker 10y ago
A great primer to this type of philosophy (no grades for kids) is Deming--from about 40 years ago. "A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo
gurkendoktor 10y ago
Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that this is what school was like, every single day. I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own, but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for people who know what they want.
- doc_holliday 10y ago
  "eight-hour Scrum meeting" Why are you having an eight hour Scrum meeting? Isn't that the complete opposite of what a Scrum meeting is supposed to be? 15 minute max, standup meeting is a Scrum.
  - dexterdog 10y ago
    I've been involved in Scrum that became that or during crunch time somebody gets a stupid idea that there should be one at the beginning and another at the end of the day. 15 minutes really should be an absolute max as in after 15 minutes everybody just leaves regardless of how late you started. In fact you should have no more than 50 minutes per 5-day week for scrums so that anything going over 10 minutes starts counting against the rest of the week. I call them roll-under minutes. Too often the team gets too big or unnecessary meeting jockeys start attending and it all goes to hell.
  - s_q_b 10y ago
    These days anyone with a few free hours and a month can become a "certified Scrum master." Scrum and Agile are mostly cargo cult imitations of the real methods these days.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    It could be the sprint planning meeting. Eight hours is even the figure given here, for a one-month sprint: http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
vinceguidry 10y ago
Education is extremely political. It's not that we can't come up with better ways of occupying school-age children. Montessori has been around since the early 1900s! The problem is convincing everyone they need to adopt a new method. Which is absolutely completely politically impossible compared to making small tweaks to the system already present. Nobody is going to turn education upside down. Ever.
- amatic 10y ago
  That is very true. I wish there were more possibilities for experimental school programs in my country (either private or public). The problem is that many people have an idea about how ALL schools should work, and they try to push a change for ALL schools. Evolution of schooling would be easier if there was more variation of schooling methods and some type of 'natural' societal selection.
- rwallace 10y ago
  Then again, ever is a long time and what is impossible on one timescale becomes possible on another. If modern society does not succeed in drastically reforming the education system with which it has ended up, it will die off and be replaced by a different kind of society, so either way, education will indeed be turned upside down; the open questions are just the when and how.
- berlin2016 10y ago
  Why does everyone need to adopt a new method? There can be multiple approaches run side-by-side, the results are publicly available, parents can make an informed decision. At least, that's the situation in Germany: There are Montessori schools, Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) schools and various others. The thing is, most of these schools have a foundation in bullshit theories or religion. I think the fact that children have to start each day with prayer at the school in question needs to be highlighted more. The comparably good results could equally-well be explained with the fact that the pupils at these schools are predominantly from well-to-do or at least education-oriented families. Neither the teachers nor the pupils face the same socio-economic pressures as they would in the public school system.
- 10y ago
sandworm101 10y ago
> Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, ... So there are still grades, or at least someone is still testing the kids. This isn't utopia yet. >> each school day starts with worship. Sorry. Game over imho. I am not so put off by the specifics of the religion, but by its presence muddying the academic waters. A school religion means a distinct value system, and associated enforcement mechanisms, over and above what is available at standard public schools. That means the academic achievements of this school may not be applicable as the school's faith may be playing a large role in student motivation. I once read a paper on whether Hogwarts was a faith school. The theory went that faith schools are characterized by the fact that teachers double as faith leaders, as teachers of morality and dogma, something that does occur at Hogwarts. This motivates students in a manner not available where there isn't religious commonality between students and teachers. The problem is that the scheme breaks down once the kids realize their teachers are but human, flawed and sinful as anyone else. Let's call that the Krabappel effect. Then the religion becomes a reason to distrust teachers, to break ranks even work against them ... like at hogwarts. xxxxxxxxx As I am not allowed to reply (thanks for that btw) I'll edit in my reply here. My comment above is not to whether religion is a good/bad thing, but to the fact that the presence of religion at this school makes it less likely that its results can be replicated at other schools with either different or no religion present.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  I am not at all religious and never will be, but I wouldn't particularly care if my child went to a school that had worship every day. The point of Montessori schools is hands on learning and teaching and providing diversity of learning. Exposure to a benign faith and the beliefs that others hold, even if you don't hold them yourself, isn't harmful. Look at the effects of Catholic schools - the vast majority of people who I knew that graduated from one were very non-religious.
  - empath75 10y ago
    I went to catholic school for eight years and came out as a hardcore atheist. I don't think that's uncommon. A good education will undermine whatever superstitious nonsense that goes along for the ride eventually.
ada1981 10y ago
Sudbury Valley Schools are the gold standard as far as I can tell from my research. (I spent a number of years as an education/students rights activist; built and ran the country's most famous education blog back in 2009; and have otherwise been doing advocacy work for a couple decades) They are fully democratic and focus on producing empowered self directed citizens who understand how to share limited resources and cooperate. The kids have as much power as any adult or teacher, which I really love -- they say you can't make someone partially equal -- either you share power with them or you don't. No grades or grade levels, students decided what to focus on. Great mini documentary on the website to watch as well. http://www.sudval.org/ http://www.sudval.org/
- ionforce 10y ago
  What if students (or whoever in a power sharing dynamic) are making decisions that are bad for them? How do you veto a bad decision?
  - GuiA 10y ago
    I've also worked a fair amount with "alternative" educational structures, albeit in a different country (France). In those kind of pedagogies (mostly Freinet for me), the adults ultimately do have a veto power. However, when you give kids responsibility, something funny happens - you find that they tend to become very reasonable, and you very rarely have to use veto power. More often than not, it's more renegotiation ("We can't do that today because of X, but what about tomorrow?") than true veto. And provided that you explain things clearly and don't disregard their intelligence, the kids typically agree readily. Teenagers can be a little more argumentative, but the group is actually very good at taking care of the teenager or two who like to say dumb things just to create a reaction (one of the many reasons why a lot of Freinet implementations like to start and end each day with a group "forum").
    - agmcleod 10y ago
      On a podcast, a father with a younger daughter kinda dislikes the amount of homework she has to do. Wants to let her have time to be a dumb kid. He tried not bossing her about her homework, told her it was up to her to try. He said she was really on top of it. Managed it quite well.
deleted 10y ago
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pinaceae 10y ago
so, this method is great for the outliers, kids like hawking or tony hawk - kids that are driven by themselves, don't need no guidance, help, discipline. there is a reason asian kids outperform others, and it's not montessori. and yes, school is about performance as kids will grow up and will need to be able to earn for a living. work, compete. school is optimized for the average kid with average parents. all the HN outliers don't apply. i would opt for full day schools in shitty areas, get the kids away from their parents as much as possible. off the street. teach them.
- skewart 10y ago
  I'm guessing the reason this is getting down-voted is because the article makes it pretty clear that the Berlin school's aim is to _teach_ kids to be motivated and disciplined. It provides a lot of structure along with opportunity cities for more self-directed learning. That aside, highly structured, rote memorization-only education may well help kids achieve the highest test scores, and it may well be the best way to prepare kids for middle management and clerical jobs - the kinds of jobs for which there has been great demand throughout the 20th century. It's not really clear that it does a great job of preparing kids for creative, academic, entrepreneurial or executive leadership roles. And it's certainly not clear that it is the best way to prepare kids for jobs - or ways to earn a living - that will be in demand throughout most of the 21st century.
  - pinaceae 10y ago
    9bn people - and all of them will be entrepreneurs. there is a world outside of HN and there a lot of folks can barely finish high school.
    - socialist_coder 10y ago
      You are operating under the assumption that only exceptional children can learn motivation, self direction, and a genuine interest in learning. That is not true. As our society outsources more and more jobs to robots, those displaced workers need to be able to do more than just blindly follow directions. They don't have to start companies, but they do need to be able to think critically and have skills that are not replaceable by a robot.
ayylmao907 10y ago
I have to say I'm of the opinion that modern education is terribly inefficient, and to back my claim I offer that most people who are any good get there not by following a curriculum but by having an interest which they explore on their own. But that's just on the supposed goals of education. I feel the important achievement of modern school systems is the obedience of the populace, which from a historical perspective is quite a feat really, if far from their professed aim.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  I think history might refute your claims. A) Teaching methods haven't changed that much in centuries, millennia, arguably, and they are quite similar across civilizations and cultures, and they do effectively well. B) People are more 'free' today than they have ever been in history in terms of ideas, ideals, choices, opportunities. 80 years ago you would have been expected to serve in the Army, 50 years ago - at least the draft. Most teens nowadays wouldn't even contemplate doing something remotely 'selfless' unless it was padding their resume. So I can't help but to balk at your claim that people are 'obedient' now. Have a look at a 'soup kitchen' line up from 1929: even the unemployed and homeless all wore suits, proper overcoats and hats. They dressed with more established decorum than Mark Zuckerberg Billionaire. I'm not saying it's right/wrong, better/worse - but I don't think it's possible to say that people today are more conformist.
stared 10y ago
An obligatory reference: A. S. Neill "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing" (1960), especially chapter 1 (about the Summerhill school itself). The schools started in 1920s, and sadly, we made no progress in that direction in the last century. Link: https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf
- i_love_jc 10y ago
  You're very right that our school system as a whole hasn't made any progress in that direction, but I do find it a somewhat hopeful sign that there are now quite a number of democratic schools based on Summerhill and the similar Sudbury model. 40 or so Sudbury schools (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools), probably a hundred or more under the loose umbrella of "democratic" and associated with AERO.
2suave 10y ago
The title should read "No grades, no timetable, and no degree". As much as I like the idea behind it it's simply not a feasible concept in today's society and it's competitive environment. In fact, I'd even wager that the pupils of that school will be ridiculed by their fellow peers for attending such a school. Not to mention that admission boards of prestigious universities would never give them the time of the day. With such an "education" it's literally impossible to compete in today's society.
- socialist_coder 10y ago
  Eh? Today, you can learn almost anything on your own from books, youtube videos, online tutorials, etc. The only thing stopping you is perseverance and a curious and exploratory mind. This school teaches you just those things. Programming fits this to a T. Entrepreneurship as well. Writing, cooking, any type of creative design too. Sure, you want to be a Doctor or a Lawyer you need a degree, but I don't see how students that go to this type of high school would not be able to get into University. If you are a business owner who wants replaceable cogs for his factory, sure, this type of school is terrible. But if you want people who can adapt, solve problems, stay motivated and think critically, it seems great. What kind of society are you living in?
- ef4 10y ago
  I'm sure Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, and Jimmy Wales would be interested in hearing how their Montessori educations prevented them from competing in today's society.
- i_love_jc 10y ago
  I don't know how things work in Germany, but in the US all prestigious universities will consider, and have admitted, homeschoolers or others with nontraditional transcripts. This school would be no problem at all for a US university as long as you're able to demonstrate that you can compare well to others in what you've accomplished or learned.
lllorddino 10y ago
> such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam. Okay I suck at math but am decent at programming and the last time I checked there is a bunch of math in game development. I agree that some subjects in school are useless but if you give a kid the option of doing whatever he wants versus learning math (which most would) then I'd say your school system sucks.
- mac01021 10y ago
  Because everybody must learn math to be successful in life? What level of math should be required?
  - Retra 10y ago
    Basic statistics.
alejoriveralara 10y ago
Incredible! Sounds very similar to what schools like Acton Academy and Talent Unbound are doing in the US. I have no doubt that the future of education will come from private schools made by entrepreneurs re-imagining schools from the bottom-up. I opened the second campus for Talent Unbound in Houston about a year ago, and am now working on building software to help power more of these schools. It's very exciting to be a part of what seems like a world-wide learning revolution!
_petronius 10y ago
Minor nitpick: "evangelical" is a bad translation of the German "evangelisch" (at least in the sense that many Americans think of "evangelical"). In the German context, this is better glossed as simply "Protestant". (And the German protestant church, at least here in Berlin, is a vastly more liberal and progressive organization than one would imagine if you grew up in the American south like I did.)
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  Translating back, German for evangelical would be evangelikal, not evangelisch.
themartorana 10y ago
This is a child being disrespectful on a monumental level, not outsmarting anyone. It also sounds like her parents are paying a great deal of attention. She may also be a classic psychopath. http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-psychopath-difference http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-psyc...
- sandworm101 10y ago
  I wouldn't go that far. Little girls can be very manipulative and yet perfectly normal. Psycopathy requires things beyond playing games with adults. This particular girl just doesn't respond well to artificially-imposed authority figures. Her form of lashing out is simply more aggressive than standard coping mechanisms which, with girls, often internalizes things (shyness, self-destruction etc). Frankly, I give her points for demonstrating the absurdity of the assignment while at the same time operating within the rule. I fault the teachers for not anticipating this. (In my day, the popular option for such assignments was "starship captain".)
- amatic 10y ago
  That comment seems excessive. She may be very normal, creative and competitive girl. Even if she really wanted to be a porn star. In such free schools, gaining respect from students without the use of punishments is something the teacher needs to learn himself.
- wlievens 10y ago
  That's an odd conclusion, especially with so littke information. Her reply re the soldier signals she's capable of sensuble social criticism, and the rest of the story, if somewhat alarming, points to her being extremely resourceful.
- dang 10y ago
  Any internet comment that ends in "psychopath" is probably a bad one—this pattern is a Godwin mini-me—and to get there from one colorful anecdote of adolescent cleverness is a particular stretch. Please don't practice unsolicited psychiatry on HN. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032277 and marked it off-topic.
gwern 10y ago
" Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, which combine all three school forms of Germany’s tertiary system. Last year’s school leavers achieved an average grade of 2.0, the equivalent of a straight B – even though 40% of the year had been advised not to continue to abitur, the German equivalent of A-levels, before they joined the school. Having opened in 2007 with just 16 students, the school now operates at full capacity, with 500 pupils and long waiting lists for new applicants. Given its word-of-mouth success, it is little wonder that there have been calls for Rasfeld’s approach to go nationwide. Yet some educational experts question whether the school’s methods can easily be exported: in Berlin, they say, the school can draw the most promising applicants from well-off and progressive families. Rasfeld rejects such criticisms, insisting that the school aims for a heterogenous mix of students from different backgrounds. While a cross adorns the assembly hall and each school day starts with worship, only one-third of current pupils are baptised. Thirty per cent of students have a migrant background and 7% are from households where no German is spoken." OK, Rasfeld. If you believe you are working this magic with normal students, switch to lottery admissions, and provide pre-admission grades, IQ scores, parental incomes or language or country of origin, and we'll see how much of that outperformance remains after controlling for baseline characteristics and comparing the lottery winners with losers...
ommunist 10y ago
It depends on perspective. Getting education or acquiring skills or better network is ol'good combination of carrot and stick anyway. Those instruments just happily passed from teachers to students themselves. Time will tell who is using these precious things more wise. Full disclosure - I am big fun of didactics in delivering knowledge, since only implying of proper level of didactical pressure makes the right chemical background for application of nootropics.
rweba 10y ago
The bottom line is: how well do these "progressive ideas" work in practice? I couldn't find much evidence online that they're more effective in general than the "traditional" approach. I have been a college professor for 7 years, here's what I have been able to PERSONALLY observe in that time: (1) Frequent, regular feedback (quizzes, tests, homeworks, projects) helps a lot for most students. If you just have a final at the end the majority of students will finish the course having learned a lot less. (2) Obviously students learn more when they're personally engaged and interested in a topic rather from just doing it to get a grade. But getting them excited is not obvious and engagement varies in predictable ways based on previous background knowledge and aptitude for the subject. A lot of the extra effort a teacher does is ultimately to try to get students more excited about a subject. (3) One on one time with a teacher students can be very helpful. It will almost certainly produce a noticeable improvement in subject understanding, particularly for those students who are motivated but struggling a little bit. Unfortunately this requires a lot of time from the professor, so it's not really practical except with small classes and a small teaching load.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  It's likely that older collage-aged people will learn differently than primary school children. In fact it may be too late to try self-directed learning, which has been trained out of them?
dschiptsov 10y ago
The essence of teaching, it seems, to assist students with theoretical knowledge while they are learning by doing the right things. We are evolved to learn by doing (beautiful studies about how children of remote rural areas in Himalaya and Mongolia are learning their native language without being taught, by mere exposure is a nice evidence). The second factor is to be taught of right things - the first principles, fundamental ideas with no nonsense examples. This is why classic MIT or Berkeley Scheme courses based on SIP were wastly supervisor than modern "pragmatic" Python or Java crap. Brian Harvey's CS61A is a gold standard. Schedules and grades are of second importance. The proof is all these self-educated people who picked up knowledge without attending any high school. Moreover, in many cases a municipal primary school, being much like an overcrowded prison-like facility for kids from impoverished families, did more damage than good by imposing wrong habits and impressions of what education is about. Learning is a continuous and natural process for us and other higher animals. Removal of obstacles, distractions and idiots and exposure to right principles and ideas will do much more than all the micro optimizations combined. "Good schools", like MIT or Yale proved it many times. There is also Pirsig's book.
nippples 10y ago
I don't think you need to be a helicopter parent to be somewhat wary of the description of this. There's plenty of value in standardized education and a scoring system. It doesn't need to be so rigid as traditional schools, but some metric, even if very abstract and vague, that helps us identify that there are possibly important gaps in the kids' knowledge is pretty damn useful.
id122015 10y ago
if I was still in school I wish they included being able to choose what matters I wanted to be graded. But I wish no grades for humanities like history, literature, geography.
up_and_up 10y ago
AMA: We are secular homeschoolers and primarily use self-directed learning as our teaching method. Unschooling/self-directed gives our children extreme freedom to pursue their interests, encourages deep play-based learning, and instills a deep level of self-confidence in them. Most of our homeschooling friends also use this method of "teaching". We have really become more like facilitators for the next big project they feel like doing.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
I don't understand the 'no timetable' part. In my experience kids will do nothing if no deadline is presented. How do schools avoid some kids diddling away the semester? Or is it just OK for some kids to fail?
- tremon 10y ago
  "No timetable" probably means "no set hours to work on subject X". For me (Montessori-educated), that meant the week assignments for each group were written on the blackboard (like "do 3 reading exercises, two writing assignments, two math assignments and one geography"). We could choose to do these assignments alone or with others, at any time we wanted. The only "timetable" we had was the set hours for doing swimming, music and sports with the whole class (and of course the school opening, closing and break times).
- mattc15 10y ago
  It said they had to come in on Saturday if they didn't get shit done during the week
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    SO, a weekly timetable. I suspected as much.
programminggeek 10y ago
Sounds a lot like many homeschooling approaches done well in a non-home environment. Interesting.

471 points by passenger 10y ago

It really comes down to the children. If they have a lot of selfdisciplin it's great if not they are better off at more strict schools. At the end of the day though, parents and their indirect involvement is the key to a proper education no matter what educational philosophy one follows.

fao_ 10y ago
Everyone has self-discipline in some form or another. After observing the difference between children who have been unschooled and children who have been schooled, I would say that children are naturally disciplined (to follow their interests), and then become disinterested when the power to learn is taken out of their hands.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Not everyone have self-discipline in the way that it's needed to be able to want to learn at your own free will. There are plenty of examples of that from failed "hippie" schools of the 70ties I know a few of them.

HillaryBriss 10y ago

> The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for each lesson and when they want to take an exam. So the student learns what they want to learn when they want to learn it. The student focuses on a subject when the brain is ready and interested. Sounds efficient. OTOH, one of the really valuable things about a curriculum is that it serves as a guide to a complex and bewildering subject. A curriculum, at its best, is like a highly knowledgeable person telling a novice: "Study these nineteen subtopics and you'll grasp this field pretty quickly. If you study these other nineteen subtopics, you'll just waste a year of your time and never really get a clue." Which also sounds efficient. How to reconcile?

deleted 10y ago
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platz 10y ago
> Set subjects are limited to maths, German, English and social studies, supplemented by more abstract courses such as “responsibility” and “challenge” I'm not sure this would work for college freshmen (i.e. "fields"), but they seem to have limited the scope enough here.
FeepingCreature 10y ago
What I'd like to see is a completely opt-in curriculum with introductory classes and transparent requirements. Simultaneous dense "civil education" class focusing on the specific applications of fields to everyday life. Teachers would only have interested students by definition, so they could offer more in-depth classes. I wish somebody would try it. Nobody needs to know sines and cosines, and somebody who doesn't care about math is not going to appreciate being forced to learn. Conversely, everybody should understand percentages, calculating interest, etc. So the idea is, you'd run a "civil education" class around 8-9am, which would focus on a wide spread of practically applicable and necessary skills. Then there'd be regular "introductory classes" for each course, which would present the premise of a course, the requirements, and an overview of the topics covered, and further specializations and occupations the skill was necessary for. Then the rest of the school day would be opt-in classes. The premise here is that people don't retain knowledge from classes they don't care about anyways. I don't know if that generalizes; that would be the main point of critique for this approach. I think traditional schooling is based on the premise that you can force kids to learn. I've never seen any evidence or long-term studies to support this claim.
- tamana 10y ago
  The problem with completely opt-in is that kids dont know what they'll like until they try it, and if they can opt out of anything difficult, many will learn almost nothing.
  - FeepingCreature 10y ago

nottoday88 10y ago

Is this a new idea or a rebranded old one? Summerhill school?

frozenport 10y ago
Or Montessori, [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education
i_love_jc 10y ago
Or to really dig back into history, Bronson Alcott's school, Leo Tolstoy's school, and the schools founded by anarchists in the 1920s. The latter and Summerhill are really more radical than the one described here.

wapapaloobop 10y ago

We school-educated people associate learning with authority and it's hard for us to truly grasp that education takes place most efficiently under conditions of freedom. Repealing Hitler's 1938 law against home education would be an important step for Germany.

lorenzhs 10y ago
Mandatory schooling is much much older in Germany, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht_(Deutschland) (in German). It was part of the Weimarer Verfassung of 1919: http://www.verfassungen.de/de/de19-33/verf19.htm http://www.verfassungen.de/de/de19-33/verf19.htm (Art.145). In some parts, mandatory schooling laws were first passed in 1592; Prussia in 1717/1763, Bavaria 1802, Saxony 1835, etc. There's really no need to bring up Hitler in every article that mentions Germany.
- wapapaloobop 10y ago
  That's interesting. Why was the 1938 law introduced?
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    Pretty sure Hitler didn't want anyone to get any ideas about resistance or opposition
iSnow 10y ago
IDK. The toughest calls for home-schooling in Germany come from religious extremists, be it Islamists, Jewish orthodox or Twelve Tribes christian fundamentalists. None of those are anti-authority to begin with. Also: Godwin.
- fao_ 10y ago
  > Also: Godwin. Godwin's law only comes in when something has been compared to Hitler, this person stated a fact: That the law in question was brought in by Hitler.

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frozenport 10y ago

I went to one of these as a child and learned nothing. It became a real struggle to learn in a time efficient manner. I would strongly discourage parents from choosing this kind of education for early learners as it doesn't include various social skills like how to sit in a classroom, address a prompt, etc.

tamana 10y ago
How early is "early"? Grade 1-5? Kids younger than that don't need to sit in a classroom. What does "appears a prompt" mean?
- ams6110 10y ago
  > What does "appears a prompt" mean? Guessing, but I'd say it means "respond to a verbal question" presumably from an instructor/superior.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
Surely it depends on the child?

bbayles 10y ago

My partner became involved in Montessori a few years ago, and I've been really impressed with how it works. If you don't know much about Montessori, here is my "in a nutshell" version: It's a method of schooling usually associated with preschool and elementary education. There are mixed age groups (e.g. 3 to 6) in classrooms. There is at least one adult who gives one-on-one lessons on how to work with "materials." The materials do the teaching, not the adult. There are hundreds of different types of materials. They're designed to teach or exercise a particular skill, but they look like games and are all designed to be "beautiful" as to entice children to them (Montessori is really serious about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn). They follow a particular progression. Children may work with any material for which they've had a lesson. They can work with it as many times as they like. My favorite example of how Montessori works is how it develops reading skills. First a child is introduced to materials that involve very short crayons - when they use them they strengthen the muscles in their hands. Then they're introduced to letter-tracing materials. Then they're introduced to letter/sound matching materials. Children who follow these lessons wind up writing first, and then reading follows very naturally. The emphasis on developing physical capabilities first really demonstrates the attention to detail that's typical of Montessori. The math education progression is impressive also. There are materials that have children doing proto-multiplication, exponentiation, algebraic manipulation, and more. My partner developed a material that teaches counting, addition, and subtraction in base 8. (Her 4 and 5-year-olds understood it much more quickly than her colleagues!) There are parts of the method I don't like (e.g. dogmatic resistance to rewarding performance, for example), but overall it feels like a huge improvement over typical early childhood education.

tamana 10y ago
> Montessori is really serious about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn This is a traditional pseudoscientific gimmick to drive sales revenue. In the real world, children are enticed by non-new and broken things just fine... until their parents, competitive peers, TV, or lovers insist they be more materialistic and wealthy signalling.
- bbayles 10y ago

mvdwoord 10y ago

I went to a Montessori school for a while. Much like what is described here. For me it was fantastic and I sometimes lightly regret not continuing in high school due to (minor) practical obstacles. That said, I believe these types of systems are definitely not for everyone. Lots of kids are probably better off with a bit of structure and imposed discipline.

JonoBB 10y ago
Yes, there are definitely some children that this method of teaching is not suited to. Some children lack the drive to find things of interest, and according to the Montessori method, they should not be "pushed" (I use this term very broadly). At the point when they leave Montessori school, these children can be very ill-equipped in relation to their peers and "behind the curve". With some more discipline and structure, this could be avoided. But, if you fit the right profile, its leaps and bounds ahead of mainstream education during the early years. My wife is a Montessori teacher.

anotherhacker 10y ago

A great primer to this type of philosophy (no grades for kids) is Deming--from about 40 years ago. "A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo

gurkendoktor 10y ago

Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that this is what school was like, every single day. I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own, but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for people who know what they want.

doc_holliday 10y ago
"eight-hour Scrum meeting" Why are you having an eight hour Scrum meeting? Isn't that the complete opposite of what a Scrum meeting is supposed to be? 15 minute max, standup meeting is a Scrum.
- dexterdog 10y ago
  I've been involved in Scrum that became that or during crunch time somebody gets a stupid idea that there should be one at the beginning and another at the end of the day. 15 minutes really should be an absolute max as in after 15 minutes everybody just leaves regardless of how late you started. In fact you should have no more than 50 minutes per 5-day week for scrums so that anything going over 10 minutes starts counting against the rest of the week. I call them roll-under minutes. Too often the team gets too big or unnecessary meeting jockeys start attending and it all goes to hell.
- s_q_b 10y ago
  These days anyone with a few free hours and a month can become a "certified Scrum master." Scrum and Agile are mostly cargo cult imitations of the real methods these days.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  It could be the sprint planning meeting. Eight hours is even the figure given here, for a one-month sprint: http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

vinceguidry 10y ago

Education is extremely political. It's not that we can't come up with better ways of occupying school-age children. Montessori has been around since the early 1900s! The problem is convincing everyone they need to adopt a new method. Which is absolutely completely politically impossible compared to making small tweaks to the system already present. Nobody is going to turn education upside down. Ever.

amatic 10y ago
That is very true. I wish there were more possibilities for experimental school programs in my country (either private or public). The problem is that many people have an idea about how ALL schools should work, and they try to push a change for ALL schools. Evolution of schooling would be easier if there was more variation of schooling methods and some type of 'natural' societal selection.
rwallace 10y ago
Then again, ever is a long time and what is impossible on one timescale becomes possible on another. If modern society does not succeed in drastically reforming the education system with which it has ended up, it will die off and be replaced by a different kind of society, so either way, education will indeed be turned upside down; the open questions are just the when and how.
berlin2016 10y ago
Why does everyone need to adopt a new method? There can be multiple approaches run side-by-side, the results are publicly available, parents can make an informed decision. At least, that's the situation in Germany: There are Montessori schools, Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) schools and various others. The thing is, most of these schools have a foundation in bullshit theories or religion. I think the fact that children have to start each day with prayer at the school in question needs to be highlighted more. The comparably good results could equally-well be explained with the fact that the pupils at these schools are predominantly from well-to-do or at least education-oriented families. Neither the teachers nor the pupils face the same socio-economic pressures as they would in the public school system.
10y ago

sandworm101 10y ago

> Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, ... So there are still grades, or at least someone is still testing the kids. This isn't utopia yet. >> each school day starts with worship. Sorry. Game over imho. I am not so put off by the specifics of the religion, but by its presence muddying the academic waters. A school religion means a distinct value system, and associated enforcement mechanisms, over and above what is available at standard public schools. That means the academic achievements of this school may not be applicable as the school's faith may be playing a large role in student motivation. I once read a paper on whether Hogwarts was a faith school. The theory went that faith schools are characterized by the fact that teachers double as faith leaders, as teachers of morality and dogma, something that does occur at Hogwarts. This motivates students in a manner not available where there isn't religious commonality between students and teachers. The problem is that the scheme breaks down once the kids realize their teachers are but human, flawed and sinful as anyone else. Let's call that the Krabappel effect. Then the religion becomes a reason to distrust teachers, to break ranks even work against them ... like at hogwarts. xxxxxxxxx As I am not allowed to reply (thanks for that btw) I'll edit in my reply here. My comment above is not to whether religion is a good/bad thing, but to the fact that the presence of religion at this school makes it less likely that its results can be replicated at other schools with either different or no religion present.

whamlastxmas 10y ago
I am not at all religious and never will be, but I wouldn't particularly care if my child went to a school that had worship every day. The point of Montessori schools is hands on learning and teaching and providing diversity of learning. Exposure to a benign faith and the beliefs that others hold, even if you don't hold them yourself, isn't harmful. Look at the effects of Catholic schools - the vast majority of people who I knew that graduated from one were very non-religious.
- empath75 10y ago
  I went to catholic school for eight years and came out as a hardcore atheist. I don't think that's uncommon. A good education will undermine whatever superstitious nonsense that goes along for the ride eventually.

ada1981 10y ago

Sudbury Valley Schools are the gold standard as far as I can tell from my research. (I spent a number of years as an education/students rights activist; built and ran the country's most famous education blog back in 2009; and have otherwise been doing advocacy work for a couple decades) They are fully democratic and focus on producing empowered self directed citizens who understand how to share limited resources and cooperate. The kids have as much power as any adult or teacher, which I really love -- they say you can't make someone partially equal -- either you share power with them or you don't. No grades or grade levels, students decided what to focus on. Great mini documentary on the website to watch as well. http://www.sudval.org/ http://www.sudval.org/

ionforce 10y ago
What if students (or whoever in a power sharing dynamic) are making decisions that are bad for them? How do you veto a bad decision?
- GuiA 10y ago
  I've also worked a fair amount with "alternative" educational structures, albeit in a different country (France). In those kind of pedagogies (mostly Freinet for me), the adults ultimately do have a veto power. However, when you give kids responsibility, something funny happens - you find that they tend to become very reasonable, and you very rarely have to use veto power. More often than not, it's more renegotiation ("We can't do that today because of X, but what about tomorrow?") than true veto. And provided that you explain things clearly and don't disregard their intelligence, the kids typically agree readily. Teenagers can be a little more argumentative, but the group is actually very good at taking care of the teenager or two who like to say dumb things just to create a reaction (one of the many reasons why a lot of Freinet implementations like to start and end each day with a group "forum").
  - agmcleod 10y ago
    On a podcast, a father with a younger daughter kinda dislikes the amount of homework she has to do. Wants to let her have time to be a dumb kid. He tried not bossing her about her homework, told her it was up to her to try. He said she was really on top of it. Managed it quite well.

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pinaceae 10y ago

so, this method is great for the outliers, kids like hawking or tony hawk - kids that are driven by themselves, don't need no guidance, help, discipline. there is a reason asian kids outperform others, and it's not montessori. and yes, school is about performance as kids will grow up and will need to be able to earn for a living. work, compete. school is optimized for the average kid with average parents. all the HN outliers don't apply. i would opt for full day schools in shitty areas, get the kids away from their parents as much as possible. off the street. teach them.

skewart 10y ago
I'm guessing the reason this is getting down-voted is because the article makes it pretty clear that the Berlin school's aim is to _teach_ kids to be motivated and disciplined. It provides a lot of structure along with opportunity cities for more self-directed learning. That aside, highly structured, rote memorization-only education may well help kids achieve the highest test scores, and it may well be the best way to prepare kids for middle management and clerical jobs - the kinds of jobs for which there has been great demand throughout the 20th century. It's not really clear that it does a great job of preparing kids for creative, academic, entrepreneurial or executive leadership roles. And it's certainly not clear that it is the best way to prepare kids for jobs - or ways to earn a living - that will be in demand throughout most of the 21st century.
- pinaceae 10y ago
  9bn people - and all of them will be entrepreneurs. there is a world outside of HN and there a lot of folks can barely finish high school.
  - socialist_coder 10y ago
    You are operating under the assumption that only exceptional children can learn motivation, self direction, and a genuine interest in learning. That is not true. As our society outsources more and more jobs to robots, those displaced workers need to be able to do more than just blindly follow directions. They don't have to start companies, but they do need to be able to think critically and have skills that are not replaceable by a robot.

ayylmao907 10y ago

I have to say I'm of the opinion that modern education is terribly inefficient, and to back my claim I offer that most people who are any good get there not by following a curriculum but by having an interest which they explore on their own. But that's just on the supposed goals of education. I feel the important achievement of modern school systems is the obedience of the populace, which from a historical perspective is quite a feat really, if far from their professed aim.

jomamaxx 10y ago
I think history might refute your claims. A) Teaching methods haven't changed that much in centuries, millennia, arguably, and they are quite similar across civilizations and cultures, and they do effectively well. B) People are more 'free' today than they have ever been in history in terms of ideas, ideals, choices, opportunities. 80 years ago you would have been expected to serve in the Army, 50 years ago - at least the draft. Most teens nowadays wouldn't even contemplate doing something remotely 'selfless' unless it was padding their resume. So I can't help but to balk at your claim that people are 'obedient' now. Have a look at a 'soup kitchen' line up from 1929: even the unemployed and homeless all wore suits, proper overcoats and hats. They dressed with more established decorum than Mark Zuckerberg Billionaire. I'm not saying it's right/wrong, better/worse - but I don't think it's possible to say that people today are more conformist.

stared 10y ago

An obligatory reference: A. S. Neill "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing" (1960), especially chapter 1 (about the Summerhill school itself). The schools started in 1920s, and sadly, we made no progress in that direction in the last century. Link: https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf

i_love_jc 10y ago
You're very right that our school system as a whole hasn't made any progress in that direction, but I do find it a somewhat hopeful sign that there are now quite a number of democratic schools based on Summerhill and the similar Sudbury model. 40 or so Sudbury schools (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools), probably a hundred or more under the loose umbrella of "democratic" and associated with AERO.

2suave 10y ago

The title should read "No grades, no timetable, and no degree". As much as I like the idea behind it it's simply not a feasible concept in today's society and it's competitive environment. In fact, I'd even wager that the pupils of that school will be ridiculed by their fellow peers for attending such a school. Not to mention that admission boards of prestigious universities would never give them the time of the day. With such an "education" it's literally impossible to compete in today's society.

socialist_coder 10y ago
Eh? Today, you can learn almost anything on your own from books, youtube videos, online tutorials, etc. The only thing stopping you is perseverance and a curious and exploratory mind. This school teaches you just those things. Programming fits this to a T. Entrepreneurship as well. Writing, cooking, any type of creative design too. Sure, you want to be a Doctor or a Lawyer you need a degree, but I don't see how students that go to this type of high school would not be able to get into University. If you are a business owner who wants replaceable cogs for his factory, sure, this type of school is terrible. But if you want people who can adapt, solve problems, stay motivated and think critically, it seems great. What kind of society are you living in?
ef4 10y ago
I'm sure Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, and Jimmy Wales would be interested in hearing how their Montessori educations prevented them from competing in today's society.
i_love_jc 10y ago
I don't know how things work in Germany, but in the US all prestigious universities will consider, and have admitted, homeschoolers or others with nontraditional transcripts. This school would be no problem at all for a US university as long as you're able to demonstrate that you can compare well to others in what you've accomplished or learned.

lllorddino 10y ago

> such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam. Okay I suck at math but am decent at programming and the last time I checked there is a bunch of math in game development. I agree that some subjects in school are useless but if you give a kid the option of doing whatever he wants versus learning math (which most would) then I'd say your school system sucks.

mac01021 10y ago
Because everybody must learn math to be successful in life? What level of math should be required?
- Retra 10y ago
  Basic statistics.

alejoriveralara 10y ago

Incredible! Sounds very similar to what schools like Acton Academy and Talent Unbound are doing in the US. I have no doubt that the future of education will come from private schools made by entrepreneurs re-imagining schools from the bottom-up. I opened the second campus for Talent Unbound in Houston about a year ago, and am now working on building software to help power more of these schools. It's very exciting to be a part of what seems like a world-wide learning revolution!

_petronius 10y ago

Minor nitpick: "evangelical" is a bad translation of the German "evangelisch" (at least in the sense that many Americans think of "evangelical"). In the German context, this is better glossed as simply "Protestant". (And the German protestant church, at least here in Berlin, is a vastly more liberal and progressive organization than one would imagine if you grew up in the American south like I did.)

allendoerfer 10y ago
Translating back, German for evangelical would be evangelikal, not evangelisch.

themartorana 10y ago

This is a child being disrespectful on a monumental level, not outsmarting anyone. It also sounds like her parents are paying a great deal of attention. She may also be a classic psychopath. http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-psychopath-difference http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-psyc...

sandworm101 10y ago
I wouldn't go that far. Little girls can be very manipulative and yet perfectly normal. Psycopathy requires things beyond playing games with adults. This particular girl just doesn't respond well to artificially-imposed authority figures. Her form of lashing out is simply more aggressive than standard coping mechanisms which, with girls, often internalizes things (shyness, self-destruction etc). Frankly, I give her points for demonstrating the absurdity of the assignment while at the same time operating within the rule. I fault the teachers for not anticipating this. (In my day, the popular option for such assignments was "starship captain".)
amatic 10y ago
That comment seems excessive. She may be very normal, creative and competitive girl. Even if she really wanted to be a porn star. In such free schools, gaining respect from students without the use of punishments is something the teacher needs to learn himself.
wlievens 10y ago
That's an odd conclusion, especially with so littke information. Her reply re the soldier signals she's capable of sensuble social criticism, and the rest of the story, if somewhat alarming, points to her being extremely resourceful.
dang 10y ago
Any internet comment that ends in "psychopath" is probably a bad one—this pattern is a Godwin mini-me—and to get there from one colorful anecdote of adolescent cleverness is a particular stretch. Please don't practice unsolicited psychiatry on HN. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032277 and marked it off-topic.

gwern 10y ago

" Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, which combine all three school forms of Germany’s tertiary system. Last year’s school leavers achieved an average grade of 2.0, the equivalent of a straight B – even though 40% of the year had been advised not to continue to abitur, the German equivalent of A-levels, before they joined the school. Having opened in 2007 with just 16 students, the school now operates at full capacity, with 500 pupils and long waiting lists for new applicants. Given its word-of-mouth success, it is little wonder that there have been calls for Rasfeld’s approach to go nationwide. Yet some educational experts question whether the school’s methods can easily be exported: in Berlin, they say, the school can draw the most promising applicants from well-off and progressive families. Rasfeld rejects such criticisms, insisting that the school aims for a heterogenous mix of students from different backgrounds. While a cross adorns the assembly hall and each school day starts with worship, only one-third of current pupils are baptised. Thirty per cent of students have a migrant background and 7% are from households where no German is spoken." OK, Rasfeld. If you believe you are working this magic with normal students, switch to lottery admissions, and provide pre-admission grades, IQ scores, parental incomes or language or country of origin, and we'll see how much of that outperformance remains after controlling for baseline characteristics and comparing the lottery winners with losers...

ommunist 10y ago

It depends on perspective. Getting education or acquiring skills or better network is ol'good combination of carrot and stick anyway. Those instruments just happily passed from teachers to students themselves. Time will tell who is using these precious things more wise. Full disclosure - I am big fun of didactics in delivering knowledge, since only implying of proper level of didactical pressure makes the right chemical background for application of nootropics.

rweba 10y ago

The bottom line is: how well do these "progressive ideas" work in practice? I couldn't find much evidence online that they're more effective in general than the "traditional" approach. I have been a college professor for 7 years, here's what I have been able to PERSONALLY observe in that time: (1) Frequent, regular feedback (quizzes, tests, homeworks, projects) helps a lot for most students. If you just have a final at the end the majority of students will finish the course having learned a lot less. (2) Obviously students learn more when they're personally engaged and interested in a topic rather from just doing it to get a grade. But getting them excited is not obvious and engagement varies in predictable ways based on previous background knowledge and aptitude for the subject. A lot of the extra effort a teacher does is ultimately to try to get students more excited about a subject. (3) One on one time with a teacher students can be very helpful. It will almost certainly produce a noticeable improvement in subject understanding, particularly for those students who are motivated but struggling a little bit. Unfortunately this requires a lot of time from the professor, so it's not really practical except with small classes and a small teaching load.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
It's likely that older collage-aged people will learn differently than primary school children. In fact it may be too late to try self-directed learning, which has been trained out of them?

dschiptsov 10y ago

The essence of teaching, it seems, to assist students with theoretical knowledge while they are learning by doing the right things. We are evolved to learn by doing (beautiful studies about how children of remote rural areas in Himalaya and Mongolia are learning their native language without being taught, by mere exposure is a nice evidence). The second factor is to be taught of right things - the first principles, fundamental ideas with no nonsense examples. This is why classic MIT or Berkeley Scheme courses based on SIP were wastly supervisor than modern "pragmatic" Python or Java crap. Brian Harvey's CS61A is a gold standard. Schedules and grades are of second importance. The proof is all these self-educated people who picked up knowledge without attending any high school. Moreover, in many cases a municipal primary school, being much like an overcrowded prison-like facility for kids from impoverished families, did more damage than good by imposing wrong habits and impressions of what education is about. Learning is a continuous and natural process for us and other higher animals. Removal of obstacles, distractions and idiots and exposure to right principles and ideas will do much more than all the micro optimizations combined. "Good schools", like MIT or Yale proved it many times. There is also Pirsig's book.

nippples 10y ago

I don't think you need to be a helicopter parent to be somewhat wary of the description of this. There's plenty of value in standardized education and a scoring system. It doesn't need to be so rigid as traditional schools, but some metric, even if very abstract and vague, that helps us identify that there are possibly important gaps in the kids' knowledge is pretty damn useful.

id122015 10y ago

if I was still in school I wish they included being able to choose what matters I wanted to be graded. But I wish no grades for humanities like history, literature, geography.

up_and_up 10y ago

AMA: We are secular homeschoolers and primarily use self-directed learning as our teaching method. Unschooling/self-directed gives our children extreme freedom to pursue their interests, encourages deep play-based learning, and instills a deep level of self-confidence in them. Most of our homeschooling friends also use this method of "teaching". We have really become more like facilitators for the next big project they feel like doing.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

I don't understand the 'no timetable' part. In my experience kids will do nothing if no deadline is presented. How do schools avoid some kids diddling away the semester? Or is it just OK for some kids to fail?

tremon 10y ago
"No timetable" probably means "no set hours to work on subject X". For me (Montessori-educated), that meant the week assignments for each group were written on the blackboard (like "do 3 reading exercises, two writing assignments, two math assignments and one geography"). We could choose to do these assignments alone or with others, at any time we wanted. The only "timetable" we had was the set hours for doing swimming, music and sports with the whole class (and of course the school opening, closing and break times).
mattc15 10y ago
It said they had to come in on Saturday if they didn't get shit done during the week
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  SO, a weekly timetable. I suspected as much.

programminggeek 10y ago

Sounds a lot like many homeschooling approaches done well in a non-home environment. Interesting.