L’école buissonnière

Célestin Freinet was a schoolteacher in France in between the first and second world war. He was a school reformer who had a notion of education that many of us today take for granted. Before the second world war the ideas did spread rapidly among educators, but were not accepted by many authorities. Especially he recognized the need of children to express themselves at school. He was an avant garde, this means he had novel ideas that would get picked up later by a large portion of the population, but were not yet considered 'normal'. Indeed today his ideas have found their way into normal education. Many schools have a school paper. Free expression is considered a basic need for children in many societies.

What if there are inspiring new ideas now that will change education in the future? Can I recognize them?

A little bit of brainstorming:

Conceptual teaching, technical education that starts at kindergarten, different educational trajectories, internet education, world education, psychological education, moral leadership education, auditive lessons, visual internet lessons, kinesthetic Wii school, musical learning, sand and clay learning, multitasking or monotasking working style practicum, …

What methods will we share with each other? What discoveries will change the way we work with children and how can we make the world better? What should we stop doing and why or for whom? Changing schools changes society.

One conclusion I've reached in past years is that education can change aggressive children in happy children, but unfortunately it can also work the other way round. We need education that fits children. How can we educate children better?

L'école buissonnière means the bush school and refers to the habit of Freinet of going out to the fields with the children and teaching them on the way of discovery.