Personal Ethics School *** Escuela de Ética Personal *** Persoonlijke Ethiek School *** Persönliche Ethik Schule

 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 26:

1.
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

2.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

3.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Reading the second clause of this article I think what pops up is this question: what went wrong in education since 1948 when this declaration was ratified?

 

One philosophical thought to start with:

Wat ons tot mens en tot individu maakt, en dus ons oermotief vormt, is het geven van betekenis aan onszelf, aan het leven en aan de wereld, en aan het op elkaar afstemmen van die drie betekenissen. Betekenis omvat altijd meer dan een naakt feit; het bevat een indruk, een interpretatie, een verbinding, een gevolg, een positie, een oordeel. Betekenis behoeft dus een persoonlijke ethiek. En geven behoeft gezamenlijkheid.

Een persoonlijke ethiek impliceert een vrije wil.

Vrije wil is niet de antipode van determinisme, maar van denk-/gedragscycli/gewoonten. Vrije wil is dus niet filosofisch van aard, maar psychologisch. Vrije wil is geen ontologische entiteit, maar een ervaren en geconditioneerd psychologisch construct:

Vrije wil is de individuele studie van, de ontwikkeling van, de noodzaak tot erkenning van en de moed tot uitdrukking van de persoonlijke ethiek.

Omdat wij een sociaal dier zijn, zal onze persoonlijke ethiek, indien een voldoende ontwikkelde vrije wil, eveneens sociaal van aard zijn. Vrije wil is dan dus wezenlijk voor ons aller bestaan, voor onze ontwikkeling als collectief.

De vrije wil is dus het leven zelf. Tenminste, dat zou het moeten zijn. In werkelijkheid wordt de vrije wil vaak belemmerd in zijn ontwikkeling.

Het 'mens en individu maken' begint met onze ontwikkeling als kind. Kinderen willen niets liever dan spelen. Dat klopt, omdat in het spel het kind onbelemmerd betekenis aan zichzelf, aan het leven en aan de wereld geeft. In het spel leeft het kind zijn oermotief.

So in practical life, in the case of children, what comes closest to free will is playing.

 

Hence:

This school initiative will be based on the concepts of play, democracy and freedom (like the Sudbury Valley School), so no classes, no lessons and a vote by everyone for everything (check also Peter Gray's book on play: Free to Learn), but with an accent on the developing of the free will, and hence a personal ethics.

 

Do you like to play? Do you like to contribute to a better, more equal world as well? Ask your parents to read along with you!

 

Playing is a voluntary and democratic activity being initiated by children of all ages that lasts as long as it is joyful for its participants.

All children first and for all want to have fun, so all children like to play.

Therefore what will be said here about playing will only apply to children (in our school from age 4 to 18).

 

I want to play, so I need you(r happiness)

Exactly due to the voluntary character of playing, participants will leave the play when their joy is not sufficiently considered by the dominant participants. So when the lack of this considering will continu, the play will eventually end, leaving the dominants, themselves being children that want to play, without their desired activity. Therefore, in the playing, all will intrinsically train themselves in considering otherone's feelings, especially of the ones who cannot stand up for themselves as others can. In practice, and more generally spoken, this means that (due to age or experience) more skillful participants of the playing at hand will develop an inherent focus on considering the more vulnerable participants while these more vulnerable participants will learn from the socially stronger ones how to better stand up for themselves.

This focus implies the necessity of the participating of children of all ages, because it is exactly by the then natural differences in their playing skills and social skills that vulnerability can be taken care of, as well as by natural social learning as by empathic protecting.

 

Playing, talking and listening

To the natural processes described above, all that we have to add, in order to be a school that stands for the development of a personal ethics, is organize meetings on a regular basis to reflect on this development. In fact these are, apart from the fully democratic (so, including the children) meetings about the management and rules of the school, the only meetings we organize. (We CAN organize traditional class settings, but only when children ask for it, and never as a institutional rule.)

One, but very important word more about the nature of our meetings: these will as much as possible be based on the principles of apophatic listening.

 

The traditional school system: 'winners' and 'losers'

By contrast, the actually forced grouping by age of traditional school education, causes all shown skill differences not to be interpreted as natural and hence normal, but in terms of social comparison. There is nothing bad about social comparison, everybody does it, but repeated exposure of peers to skill differences in exactly identical and exactly measurable activities, especially when resulting in differences in valuating by adults - all this being exactly what is happening in tradtional schooling! - will inevitably give rise to fear. And it is exactly this fear that will eventually turn innocent joyful 'wrestling' into merciless competition. Competition which delivers 'winners' with poor empathic skills and 'losers' with poor performances in skills rated highly valuable by the winners.

 

How to learn cognitive skills by playing

But given our societal reality, children do not really have the choice NOT to strive to perform well, do they?
Indeed, but there are different ways leading to good performances WHEN THEY ACTUALLY MATTER.

Another central aspect of play is the use of imagination. But what exactly is this use of imagination for children? As we all know, imagination for children actually very often means imitating adult behaviors, that is adult skills. And no, this doesn't mean a step by step drill of let's say solving differential equations, but it can very well mean 'applying' skills yet to be acquired, let's say building the fastest computer in the world or designing an economical system wherein everybody can be rich. And it will be exactly from this YET unrealistic (but highly ambitious!) goals that SPONTANEOUS interest will grow in learning what is necessary to achieve this! And yes, before the capability of solving of differential equations is acquired, they will already have started another kind of playing, maybe in a totally different area, but any later play in the area of mathematics, in order to be challenging enough (joy needs challenge), WILL continu from the already acquired skills.

Besides, children can be naive sometimes, but they are surely not ignorant: they do know about the adult world, they do know about the recognition and qualifying power academic degrees provide. In fact, perhaps there is nothing that children like more than playing ROLES, ADULT roles. So, yes, they WILL like to study at the university, so they WILL like to prepare themselves for the required exams, examples of which ARE available to challenge you from age 4 if you like. You can question who will be more ready for a more structured, adult way of live: those who have enjoyed a rich time of playing, learning on their own pace, or the few - already wornout - winners of the traditional school system?

So, children, in playing, will be motivated to learn, but how will they do that when there is lack of structure? Simply, it is all about the environment: is it rich in the availability and variety of playing mates, role models, playing materials and, last but not least, knowledge resources? Luckily, we happen to live in the age of internet: teacher or no teacher, every knowledge is available, so children can structure the development of their knowledge and skills themselves.
Will this work? Yes, Sugata Mitra told us.

 

Swiping

Talking about internet, how about TikTok? TikTok and the zillion other phone applications children nowadays spend almost al their time at.
Well:

1. TikTok and the like are not 100 percent bad or one-sided (all about appearance); they have an enormous amount of content, so there simply must be valuable content as well; besides, who are we, parents, to judge what will be valuable in a future that our children will own more than we will?

2. There is a huge difference in passive and active use: passive use is the addictive one, active use the creative. And it happens that when children are physically together, they automatically feel motivated to create content instead of just swiping away their time

3. Talking about swiping: why exactly are children swiping anyway?

a. To what extend you think children are swiping just because of their need of escaping the enormous stress they feel through the ever increasing hours that adults EXPECT things from them? Things that they would never do for more than a few minutes spontaneously? I am talking about sitting still and listening to an adult, without being allowed to talk back, and knowing that when the teacher is finally finished all what is waiting will be the performing of overly structured fill-in tasks in which they may not fail...

b. To what extend you think children are swiping just because they feel lonely, neglected by... swiping parents? Children are very good learners!

c. To what extend you think children are swiping just because 'nothing else happens'?

d. To what extend you think children are swiping just because 'everybody is swiping'?

e. To what extend you think children are swiping just because their environment is actually very poor in terms of lack of inviting playing grounds, lack of inviting materials, lack of inviting opportunities, lack of challenge, and above all: lack of playing mates?

 

Adults, what to do with them?

Yes, a lot of parents, teachers and other professionals organize a lot for children, but that is exactly the problem! Children don't feel motivated to just fill in what a good willing but 'childishly enthousiastic' adult is expecting from them. They want to decide, imagine, create and construct for themselves! Honestly, should they fill in just for the sake of adults' desires (desires for safety or for their own creative drive!)? We don't think that can be justified. Adults can like to play too, and they surely have the right to do that, but doing that with children is a recipe for domination by the adults, with this difference that this time the children cannot leave the play voluntary. So, no age segregation among children, but yes, please segregate between adults and children as far as play is concerned! In our school, adults will be around somewhere of course, but they will, ON THEIR OWN, be tinkering with their own motorcycle, making their own clothes, programming their own apps or whatever. These adults, which can be teachers or available parents, will then notice that before they know children will be joining them spontaneously, watching and asking with curiosity, and in no time will be tinkering with their own 'motorcycle' of old domestic materials and otherwise wasted materials.

 

My phone

So, no, we will not take your device, we simply provide an inviting environment of spaces, materials and... playing mates! We bet you will forget about your phone for hours!

 

Safety

What about safety? Physical safety is mainly achieved when children are learning from a young age how to fall, learn, with the help from older children, how to judge potential dangers, and certainly not from overprotecting, which is obviously inproductive, not just alone for the reason that you can't protect them for their whole live!
Social UNsafety is mainly a result of the above mentioned excessively competitive and restrictive structure of the traditional schooling system, whereas, on the contrary, playing (in the sense given above) is simply incompatable with social unsafety. Every parent that ever has taken the chance in case of argument NOT to interfere and instead has been observing from a distance how a free group of children on a playing ground have been gathering around two opponents coming close to physical fight, will conclude that it actually very rarely does come to that fight, and, more important, that children are very creative finding a kind of rhythm in the regulation of social tension AND in solving their dispute at last, after which playing will resume with now stronger bonds.

Get ready to play!

 

An initiative by Thijs Bollen and Ingrid Vanessa Rodriguez Benitez

 

contact: Thijs Bollen via mail