Unsurprisingly, the headline's "new" teaching method isn't particularly new (as the timeline sidebar in the article itself makes somewhat apparent). For example, the Sudbury Valley School [1] has been around since 1968 and is even more "radical". No grades, no curriculum, no classes, no separation by age. The governance of the school is democratic, with all decisions -- including those regarding budget and staff -- decided by a body called the School Meeting which is composed of the staff and the students together, with one vote per person.
The Sudbury School of Atlanta has an interesting blog post [2] describing how the students can naturally pick up basic skills through participating in the management of the school, in this case by choosing and acquiring a school pet.
This Wired article is more about the undirected aspect, but the compelling thing to me about adding the democratic element (the oldest running example is the Summerhill School [3], established in 1921) is that the decisions being made affect the student, so the student has a motive to participate and learns as a by-product. Thus there's a hope that children in general could benefit, not only those children who are particularly "self-directed learners".
Additionally, the things they're learning (reading, writing and arithmetic, but also teamwork, negotiation and leadership) are directly beneficial in society -- because the school itself is a microcosm of society.
It may not be a model that produces "geniuses", but it does seem like a good model for producing adults/citizens. (I have no personal experience with alternative schooling.)
You're right that there is nothing new about almost all of these ideas. John Dewey covered a lot of this in his 1902 book "The Child and the Curriculum".
So what if it's not absolutely new? It's new to the people in their specific context and _appears_ to be producing results, again, in that specific context. Very little of what we do is new, but still has merit when applied in a novel way or a novel context.
Comments
Unsurprisingly, the headline's "new" teaching method isn't particularly new (as the timeline sidebar in the article itself makes somewhat apparent). For example, the Sudbury Valley School [1] has been around since 1968 and is even more "radical". No grades, no curriculum, no classes, no separation by age. The governance of the school is democratic, with all decisions -- including those regarding budget and staff -- decided by a body called the School Meeting which is composed of the staff and the students together, with one vote per person.
The Sudbury School of Atlanta has an interesting blog post [2] describing how the students can naturally pick up basic skills through participating in the management of the school, in this case by choosing and acquiring a school pet.
This Wired article is more about the undirected aspect, but the compelling thing to me about adding the democratic element (the oldest running example is the Summerhill School [3], established in 1921) is that the decisions being made affect the student, so the student has a motive to participate and learns as a by-product. Thus there's a hope that children in general could benefit, not only those children who are particularly "self-directed learners".
Additionally, the things they're learning (reading, writing and arithmetic, but also teamwork, negotiation and leadership) are directly beneficial in society -- because the school itself is a microcosm of society.
It may not be a model that produces "geniuses", but it does seem like a good model for producing adults/citizens. (I have no personal experience with alternative schooling.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School
[2] http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/sudbury-a...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School
You're right that there is nothing new about almost all of these ideas. John Dewey covered a lot of this in his 1902 book "The Child and the Curriculum".
So what if it's not absolutely new? It's new to the people in their specific context and _appears_ to be producing results, again, in that specific context. Very little of what we do is new, but still has merit when applied in a novel way or a novel context.
"So what" is that the article says it is new when it is not new.