Free to Learn

I thought I already posted a blog but actually I didn't....Im sorry.
When I saw the movie “Free to Learn”, I first thought that free school was an ideal school because it accomplished the person-centered education, advocated by Carl Rogers, which states that the learner has the essential power and control over the course of his/ her learning. Free school basically allows children to do whatever they want to do—there is no class schedule, timeline, and syllabus etc, which “usual” schools have. Teachers say children “play any to get learn”, so some kids play with blocks, some with paintings, and some even make a movie. Of course they can study the subjects such as math and science, but only if they want to learn. This school respect students’ will for learning. Learning in the person-centered education allow children to free curiosity which is indispensable for the process of learning, and go exploring and questioning the direction dictated by their own interests.
Teachers take an important role in free school—they are not like “teachers”, but like family members who always care about their children and support them when they stuck with problems. Older students often take a similar role: for example, when a boy struggling with shooting a film, one older student helped the boy dealing with the problem. Although teachers support children if necessary, but they never show themselves as authoritative figures. Teachers trust students have the capacity for dealing with problems and developing their own potentialities.
Free school may be an ideal school for all learners; however, it is not applicable for all learners. As I observed class in elementary schools both in Japan and China, the educational systems are much similar to Freire’s “banking system of education” which is a mere deposition of knowledge to students. The education aims for students to get good scores on exams, and thus let them get into good, famous universities. Both Japanese and Chinese government have been trying to change the current education--for example, in China, they shortened the total amount of class time for main subjects such as math and English; instead, they added a class which mainly focused on encouraging students to have first-hand experience in order to enhance their curiosity and joy for learning. However, their challenge totally failed because students and their parents were dissatisfied with decreasing the class for main subjects (because they are tested in exams) so they ended up going to “cram schools” after schools to supplement the class time decreased in schools.