I love analogies and metaphors and pretty much any way you can describe something as being like something else. Similes too. I love a good simile.
It was pointed out to me that my definition of curriculum was too narrow. I had already arrived at that conclusion but lacked the language to describe what a sudbury curriculum is. Here is a link that discusses the idea of curricula and learning experiences in a much more thorough, eloquent and better researched way than you will ever see on this site: The Moral Path of Curriculum: Fulfillment or Judgment
What I was really searching for was a way to crystallize the differences between a sudbury experience and one in a traditional school, especially the role of staff/teacher.
the first thought I had was "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." the Sudbury experience focuses on the leading part. They provide the conditions for all sorts of amazing things to happen and it's up to the students to participate or not. Traditional schools focus on the drinking. They don't have to lead the horses anywhere because of our compulsory education laws so they are free to get a big funnel and pour all sorts of stuff down their horse's throat.
I thought of the water as being the great big world and all the interesting stuff that is out there to see. Then I thought about rivers and how knowledge and experience are not static, they aren't this big puddle to drink from, one thing flows to another, so I was thinking how Sudbury schools are like this big whitewater rafting trip. The staff is on the boat and they know more about sailing the boat than the kids do but they can't control the direction or speed or forsee every rock any more than the kids can so they're sort of all in it together. The SS Sudbury. Ha!
I think it takes a special sort of person willing to cede that much control.
The staff is also really busy. They just have a ton of stuff to do so even if you had someone who had an agenda it would be hard to implement it because there isn't a lot of time.
I should not be up at 1 am blogging. This is ridiculous.
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I am especially partial to educational metaphors that involve navigating boats.
I started off my manifesto for ChangeThis.org with one of my favorite metaphors:
Comparing today's school system to European shipping after the development of the compass in about 1300 and the development of a seaworthy chronometer about 400 years later. During that time sea captains had reliable methods of determining their latitude but were too often gambling with their lives because they could only guess about their longitude. Schools have the compass of academic instruction which gives them the latitude of learning (where it is implemented competently), but they do not have a seaworthy chronometer of attitude leadership which would give them the longitude of learning.
Another metaphor I like to use is cognitive cartography for what it is that effective learning accomplishes. We all have mental maps of reality and proper learning is when we are able to actively engage in navigating the world in a way that updates our maps of the world at the same time. We don't just read and follow the map of our expectations about the world, we actively engage in the world and figure out if our map is accurate or not. You can read more about it on my definition of education page.
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Enjoy,
Don Berg
Site: http://www.teach-kids-attitude-1st.com
Blog: blog.Attitutor.com
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