My parents never forced us (me, my brother). So lucky -- when I saw so called topper in our class is feeling stress for keeping rank in useless school exams!

Time to think and act seriously before making our children victim of 'Marksheet' race. Ah, Kavin!!

Thanks for highlighting highly needed topic in this age.

Now playing: "We don't need no education"

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same here. even i was never pressurized to score high marks and get ranked. As long as i did an honest task of learning and retaining the knowledge (which was checked by both parents) and was disciplined, they were pretty happy to allow me to enjoy my childhood.

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Now playing: "We don't need no education"

Wrong !! What you don't need is a set of conditions that force your child to learn by rote and not by intellect.

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Ah. We will create environment that he will learn by intellect and not by rote!

And, yes, giving him full freedom and not forcing for joining useless summer camps or drawing classes or skating classes or anything he doesn't like!

He will do what he love, not we loved when we were children!

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There are more things here than what meets the eye. For starters, the system of employment and others are oriented to encourage a "rat race". Since the education system is somewhat biased towards individual excellence, as opposed being in favor of collective brilliance, the emphasis on getting more marks than your peer / neighbour's kid becomes over-riding. An immediate fall-out of this is the fact that the entire concept of learning together and sharing of knowledge is thrown out of the window. Add to this the aspect that the curricula encourages rote learning - thus, reading to know is replaced by reading to obtain marks. It is not too difficult to have schools which follow existing curricula but teach differently. I know of a number of parents who end up doing that (and these fine folks are not trained "alternative educators").

What I find sad is that there are not many of such schools which follow the Waldorf method. And that the existing schools can add only a class a year. It does point to some telling lack of purpose in our education system.

The system of education is not supposed to be one of stress which forces the child to mug up half baked facts eg I have seen children knowing all about convergence and magnification and yet failing to use a glass in sunlight to light up a piece of paper. Sad isn't it ?

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I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. -- Mark Twain

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"Fortunately creative minds forget dogmatic philosophical beliefs whenever adherence to them would impede constructive achievement". A pedagogy or a process is as good as the innovation it creates and lets flourish.

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Hi pradeepto;

Yes, there *are* some excellent alternatives to standardized education. So many years ago, schools in the US opted for the 'industrial' model of education, forgoing community and serious independent thought. In recent years, it has gone from bad to worse.

For the past 12 years my wife & I have enrolled our two sons @ the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School (http://www.hawthornevalleyschool.org) and have been quite happy there (my oldest just graduated last year). Not that it's perfect (every system will have it's problems), but the Waldorf pedgogy is incredibly deep and thourough, and there is a conscious striving for community that results in a profound learning experience for the children (and adults).

One irritation for me is that the anti-media bias of Waldorf schools (which I heartily support) carries over to an anti-computer bias - and as I am the school's network admin, this sometimes causes problems. A few years back, I attended a conference on integrating computers into Waldorf education, and I was astounded that *very* few educators in the conference had even *heard* of open-source software. After much cajoling, I was allowed to make an impromptu presentation at the end of the conference, and when I finished I was swamped with people requesting more information.

The intersection of free software with conscious education is a rich area that needs much more exploration.

Stuart Quimby

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/worldbusiness/02japan.html?hp=&pagewanted=all and http://echosofmind.blogspot.com/2008/01/fathers-chronicle-school-orientation.html are interesting in this respect

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