Free to Learn

Kids like to play. They get angry, they yell, they throw stuff, they notics their surroundings and respond to them, and they sometimes say crazy things. In the first couple minutes of this film, a girl throws a tantrum. Around minute seven, there's another argument, and that's completely natural for children to do.
What I found most interesting about this film was the way that these arguments are resolved. A council meeting is called around half an hour into the film, and it appears to me like these council meetings really work. If the children cannot resolve an issue privately, then it is brought in front of everyone. It was rather astonishing to me how much insight the council members had. The boy initially felt pressure to apologize to the girl even though he denied having hit her, but he then retracted his apology because the whole council knew that he wasn't sorry for something that he said he did not do. Instead, they explored more deeply into the reasons why there was a confrontation at all and found that each thought that the other had behaved meanly toward one another. In this way, the problem was resolved, each felt fairly treated and heard, and there were no ill feelings left over.

This school does seem amazing. I've seen a similar school in India (the one Simone was talking about in class) that sounded awesome in theory, but when we visited it, the children were just out of control. Where this school still had order (as evidenced by the children raising their hands and respecting their turns to speak in the council meetings), the India school was utter chaos. Even as visitors we have this general expectation that children are going to respect us simply because we're older. That was not the case in the India school that I visited. I got the same treatment as the other students there-my hair pulled and rocks and dirt thrown at me.

I think this just goes to show that there are many variations of how children can be taught. No matter what kind of system there is, children will learn (good and/or bad things). It just happens. What kinds of things are learned/taught (farming, writing, carpentry, cooking, math, behavior) and what methods are used to teach them are where the differences are incredibly numerous (well I guess that's pretty obvious). Around 45-46 minutes into the film, former students express how they became ashamed that they didn't know stuff that friends who went to public schools knew and some older interviewees were appalled that the children could choose if they went to class or not. I personally think that it's awesome, but I also still have reservations about a school like this. I question what I would have done as a child in a school like this. I was scared of any adult that wasn't my parent, I was super shy, I wore a dress every day (but still loved to climb trees and fetch chicken eggs.) I was a very quiet observer...How do these children make the transition into a society that runs so unlike this school? Do they all find spaces in life where they can do what they want and do it when they want to do it? Also, how is there relatioship with their parents and how are there parents seen by society for having them attend this school?