From Guardian UK
More pupil power and less hierarchy in schools could better train children for life, an exhibition in south London reveals
While Thatcher took away free milk and Blair gave us academies, the coalition government's legacy is the controversial drive for even more free schools. The intention is to broaden education and increase choice. But tell that to the anarchist thinkers of the early 20th century, whose original free schools had little time for meddling ministers.
An exhibition in south London compares today's neo-liberal understanding of free school with past and present models of self-run education. And the artist behind it believes there's plenty both teachers and politicians could learn from a little anarchy in the UK.
Artist Adelita Husni-Bey's Playing Truant at Gasworks gallery in Vauxhall combines video and sound installations with drawing to explore the gaping discrepancy between the two free school models: one rooted in anarcho-collectivism, run without formal learning or hierarchy, and the other stemming from the increasing privatisation of education since the 1970s, and currently packaged up with the Conservative Party's much-contested notion of the 'big society'.
Anarchist education was first dreamt up by 19th century Spanish freethinker Francesc Ferrer i Guardia and led to the founding of a free school based on his ideas in New York in 1911 and later to the launch of the Ecole Vitruve school in France and Summerhill in the UK.
But while a revolution in the school corridors is unlikely nowadays, a reflection on how this radical model for education could benefit pupil learning, development and achievement could bring about a quiet but important change in how we teach the next generation.
Husni-Bey's video installation which documents a three-week workshop at a modern self-run primary school in Paris shows children have the capacity for decision making at a very young stage in their lives, according to exhibition curator Robert Leckie.
"Whenever there's a dispute or someone is upset, they instantly vote," Leckie explained.
"That's the reaction which is somehow in built. And they discuss things. So it's not that the children just fight or have these disputes and let them settle. There's this constant conflict resolution mentality that they're equipped with."
He added that teachers at these free schools have a much more personal and direct approach to learning, liberated from the constraints of bureaucracy and government dictates.
But what impact have these more radical educational models had on pupils? And what, if any, methods could teachers adopt to educating in their own classrooms?
While Leckie concedes many students found it harder to integrate into a society which is much more individualistic than the situation they have grown up with in their school, the increased capacity for decision making may give children a boost in altruism.
He said: "The pupils have an ability to think about education in broader terms - they have to wash up, clean and look after other children, training for life. They also have these forums for getting through disputes together as a group. Teachers aren't the only ones making decisions. It's about learning to think and make decisions for oneself rather than just being able to do well in a test.
"Now they have recently announced they want to push A-levels back two years and get rid of the AS level, you have an increased amount of examination. But all you're doing is gunning towards that goal rather than really thinking through stuff."
Indeed, education secretary Michael Gove's reforms to both A-levels and GCSEs have riled many a teacher, as a Guardian Teacher Network poll shows. Perhaps, during his next trip back in time for inspiration on how to shake up the education system, he could stop by an anarchist free school for some interesting food for thought?
"It's understanding that working together and real freedom of choice is very different from what is being promoted now," Leckie concluded.
"Things need to be seen through. Each time a government is elected they come up with a new campaign for education, but actually it avoids focussing on the broader picture. Instead politicians focus on the now and newspaper headlines and making sure that the legacy of the government in the short to medium term has a stamp on it, but actually in the broader field of education I don't think it's helpful."
Playing Truant will show at Gasworks gallery in Vauxhall until 3 February.

Comments
a capacity for decision
an enhanced capacity for 'decision-making' is not going to ‘solve our problems'. boosting 'altruism' in children is the sign of societal decadence (nietzsche).
nietzsche would be writhing around in his grave if he caught wind of this article, with its eulogizing of ‘decision-making’ and ‘boosting altruism’ in children.
robert leckie sees children go into a ‘circle process’ and he interprets what they are doing as ‘decision making’. this is a degenerate understanding of the ‘circle process’.
leckie claims; “It's about learning to think and make decisions for oneself rather than just being able to do well in a test. .... [not just] gunning towards that goal ... [but] really thinking through stuff."
let’s go back to basics for a moment.
western society puts a curse on their children from the get-go by teaching them a language that subjectizes themselves and every ‘thing’. this is a curse that they may never recover from. it encourages them to believe that the sun shines out their arse, ... that ‘the farmer produces the crops’.
when western adults go into the ‘circle process’ [any superficially ‘flat’ council], they typically come in ‘full-of-themselves’ [cup full and overflowing], grounded in their own personal perspective and seeking to have their viewpoint emerge the winner, and being prepared to form alliances and ‘compromise’ in order to achieve that goal. this is a ‘reasoning’ based exercise which sorts itself out according to principle of Lafontaine; ‘la raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure’ (‘the reasoning of the most powerful is always the best’).
when indigenous aboriginals [whose language relationalized them and everything within a web-of-life] go into the ‘circle process’, they understand themselves as being included together in a relational web of life whose animating source is immanent in the natural universe in which they all share inclusion. this is ‘natural’ and there is some of this in every child, aboriginal or western. they do not go in as fixed subjects holding on to their personal perspective as if it were ‘God’s truth’, with all of their machiavellian gears turning so as to conjure up the best strategies for having their perspective prevail over the rest. they don’t come in each with ‘the answer’ already ‘in hand’, but instead come in willing to jointly discover, ‘what is the question?’.
In western retributive justice circles aka ‘juries’, people come in with the questions in hand; ‘who is the offender and who the victim?’ and ‘what punishment is appropriate for the offender?’. in aboriginal restorative justice circles, people come in to explore ‘what is the question?’ the quote-unquote victim discusses the harm and its impact on their lives. the quote-unquote offender discusses the injury inflicted on him by the community that fills him with rage, as he looks into the eyes of each member of the community all he sees is denial, denial, denial, ... like the dumb beasts in a herd that has just trampled one of their own to death, laundering out responsibility to the point that no single individual feels they have any responsibility.
in this sort of circle process, the hard lines that define ‘offence’, ‘offender’ and ‘victim’ start to blur and fade and recede back into the relational web of social context that constitutes ‘community’. in rare situations, as everyone in the circle comes to understand the dynamic in a far larger context than ‘what people-as-things-in-themselves do’, the ‘victim’s question of ‘how can i ever fill the hole left by the murder of my son’, ... may be answered by the ‘offending murderer’s’ offer to help fill that hole. this is ‘restorative justice’ that takes things out of the hands of the supreme authority of morality driven punitive/retributive justice. this is ‘resolution by transformation’ of ‘who one is’ in the relational web of community, rather than rationally determined resolution that preserves the identities and perspectives of the people coming into the circle process.
The ‘offender’ who comes cup full and brimming over, full of rage against society; ... the ‘victim’ who comes cup full and brimming over, full of remorse born of a total innocence innate in ‘things in-themselves that have been ‘done to’ without having themselves ‘done anything’ [not responsible for the trampled herd members], and the representative of community central authority with its moral laws, that sees itself as the ‘victim’ by virtue of its moral authority having been violated, raped. the authority seeks retribution for its having been raped, and is not interested in having the victim and offender and community members come into the circle with cups empty, ready to listen and to change where they are coming from in order to bring balance and harmony once more into the relational web of social context that all of them share inclusion in.
children, even of the western language groups that teach them from birth to ‘subjectize themselves and others’, still have some of this ‘cup empty’ capacity in them, to fuel a transformative type of circle process deliverable. the child who comes into the circle as an ‘offender’ and the child who comes into the circle as a ‘victim’ can let their identities transform in the circle process, PROVIDED THAT THE OTHERS IN THE CIRCLE ALLOW/FACILITATE IT, so that the victim DOES NOT LEAVE WITH the hole in the heart that is in no way resolved by the punishment meted out to the offender, and so that the offender DOES NOT LEAVE WITH the rage in his heart against the entire herd and their cow-eyed innocence and denial. of course, this sort of transformative healing is something that ‘short-circuits’ the obsession of moral authority, to pursue to fruition its vengeance-seeking for its high-flying flag-of-moral law having been publicly violated/desecrated.
now, robert leckie can if he wants, reduce the circle process to rational decision-making, and ‘atruism-boosting’ [altruism being a concept that is dependent for its meaning on the linguistically idealized notion of a ‘thing-in-itself’, and its ‘opposite to altruism phase’ wherein it is fully committed to the fulfillment of its own private agendas]. But, in so doing, he imposes his own rationality deifying and altruism exalting value system on his notion of ‘what children are’.
in my view, insofar as he is viewing the children’s circle process as a rational decision-making, altruism boosting exercise, he is full of shit.
in B4 Vacuous Eagle
in B4 Vacuous Eagle
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