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Reference: Course on Subject Clearing

These methods are described at

5 Alternative Teaching Methods

The common features of these methods are:

1. All of these methods are against indoctrination. 
2. They support “self-learning.” 
3. They believe that a child is capable of learning by oneself.
4. Best learning is hands on and experienced with all senses.
5. One should feel free to make mistakes and learn from them.
6. Learning should be free of evaluation by others.

These methods are summarized as follows.

1. MONTESSORI

1. Children are born with absorbent minds and are fully capable of self-directed learning. They are not born as “blank slates.”
2. Educational environment should empower children with the freedom to choose how they spend their time in school. In such environment children would seek out opportunities to learn on their own.
3. Structured lessons and teacher-driven curriculum inhibit a child’s natural development. Children enjoy and need periods of long concentration.
4. Most learning takes place through tactile sensation.
5. Education should be non-competitive without grades, tests and other forms of formal assessments.
6. Evidence shows that Montessori education leads to children with better social and academic skills.

2. STEINER/WALDORF

1. Humans have the inherent wisdom to uncover the mysteries of the world.
2. Education should focus on the development of the “whole child,” with an emphasis on creative expression and social and spiritual values.
3. First 7 years of a child’s life (up to 2nd grade) should be marked by imitative and sensory-based learning and devoted to developing a child’s non-cognitive abilities. Kindergartners are encouraged to play and interact with their environment. Children are encouraged to write before they learn to read.
4. From age 7-14, creativity and imagination are emphasized, including learning of foreign languages and expressive dance and performing arts. Demands for standardized testing are restricted.
5. By age 14, students are ready for a more structured environment that stresses social responsibility.

3. HARKNESS

1. The educational method involves all students in the learning process. It is an approach designed to get at the individual boy.
2. Students sit with their classmates and teacher around a large oval table and discuss any and all subjects, from calculus to history, often in great detail. Individual opinions are formed, raised, rejected, and revised.
3. The teacher’s main responsibilities are to ensure that no one student dominates the discussion and to keep the students on point. No conversation is ever the same.
4. The group is small enough so that the shy or slow individual is not submerged.
5. The intimate setting of the Harkness table forces students to take responsibility for their own learning and encourages them to share their opinions.
6. In addition to learning about topics being discussed, students also learn valuable public speaking skills and to be respectful of their fellow students’ ideas.
7. Studies have supported the method’s effectiveness in increasing students’ retention and recall of material.

4. REGGIO EMILIA

1. Children are competent, curious and confident individuals who can thrive in a self-guided learning environment where mutual respect between teacher and student is paramount.
2. This educational approach is about exploring the world together and supporting children’s thinking rather than just giving them ready-made answers.
3. This approach is most important for teaching children aged 3 to 6.
4. It emphasizes the importance of parents taking an active role in their child’s early education.
5. Classrooms are designed to look and feel like home and the curriculum is flexible, as there are no set lesson plans.  Emphasis is placed on art and on a variety of creative projects.
6. Extensive documentation of a child’s development, including folders of artwork and notes about the stories behind each piece of art, is kept.

5. SUDBURY

1. The basic postulate is that students are inherently motivated to learn. Students are capable of assuming a certain level of responsibility and of making sound decisions. In the event that they make poor decisions, learning comes in the form of dealing with the consequences.
2. Sudbury schools operate under the basic tenets of individuality and democracy and take both principles to extremes. Students have complete control over what and how they learn, as well as how they are evaluated, if at all.
3. At the weekly School Meeting, students vote on everything from school rules and how to spend the budget to whether staff members should be rehired. Every student and staff member has a vote and all votes count equally.
4. Students regularly engage in collaborative learning, with the older students often mentoring the younger students.
5. Annual tuition for the Sudbury Valley School, which welcomes students as young as 4 years old, is $6,450 for the first child in a family to attend the school.

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Reference: Subject: Education

You may read the transcript here.

Here are the main points from this talk (February 2013):

(1) The current schooling system was designed to meet the administrative requirements of the far flung British Empire of 1700s, which were as follows,

• The graduates must be identical to each other.
• They must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten.
• They must be able to read. They must be able to do multiplication, division, addition and subtraction in their head.

(2) This schooling system does not have DISCERNMENT as its requirement. But that is the requirement we need to meet today. We need education that produces people who are able to discern what they study, because they are going to be faced with increasingly dynamic job market.

(3) Computer somehow seems to excite the children’s desire to learn.  Experiments show that children learn to browse and play the games on computer by themselves.  They even learn enough English themselves for this purpose.  They easily learn about computer parts and their function.

(4) In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer in any language will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.

(5) A speech-to-text engine in the computer was able to improve English pronunciation of the children. Children could even learn “biotechnology of DNA replication in English” to some degree when they were told that it was an important topic to know. Their scores improved even further when their efforts to self-learn were encouraged and admired.

(6) Today learning is more interesting and effective through cell phones than through books and schools. We now have almost instant access to information that we need to know. Does that make knowing obsolete? Encouragement seems to be the key to self-learning.

(7) Any threat tends to shuts the brain down. In the age of Empires, it was important to teach how to learn and survive under threat. Today we need to teach to bring out creativity.

(8) We notice from these experiments that learning is the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It’s not about making learning happen. It’s about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens.

(9) Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) are collaboration and encouragement put together. Ask big enticing questions. Then give the child a hint and relevant materials. He will figure it out.

(10) We can design a future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their wonder and their ability to work together. It will be a school where children go on these intellectual adventures driven by the big questions which their mediators put in. It’s a facility which is practically unmanned. There’s only one granny who manages health and safety. The rest of it is from the cloud.

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