warning;
LONG POST
ok, this is specifically for those who care
This is an excerpt from another, similar, discussion I have elsewhere.
here, unlike this discussion, is not about "is it a good idea" and i have to fight for this notion, but "what is the best" and everyone agrees with me.
The below are NOT MY OPINION but another being's that i will withhold the name of.
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well, what some of these thinker say may sound very funny to me, ( what they say about incapabilities of children to understand or whatever) because how otherwise they would explain a present situation in schools where we observe total implementation of moral, behaivorial ideas in pupils's minds .
It doesn't mean we invent special lessons to teach children moral issues, what is done in schools is much more effective , it's ideas put in practice, children are taught obedience and conformity and other "profitable" for society ideas not in theoretical way just by listening concepts about it during one lesson a week, but the whole system is based on it, children learn this "ethic" each and every day during their whole school life... isn't it so?
and we even don't need any proof of how good children are in "learning" that stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nPlSm7MsRI
but concerning a fact if children are capable of learning morals and so on on a theoretical basis , there is one documentary , it proves they can
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=armP8TfS9Is
only we have to think in what form to present it for them if we are talking about very young children, surely not the way as we would do it for older people filled with numerous definitions and complicated , 100-pages long explications... ( it's even not good for older people
)
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as for me, I think children are disposed to moral ( ethical) issues from the very beginning of school education ( if it hasn't been like that, what point , what sense school education would have had for authorities ?coz they have very clear agenda).
and as for for example literature classes, when children study ( read)one play or novel aren't they supposed to discuss protagonists, how they interact with each other, what characters they have and so on. It means they are supposed to make judgments, about "bad guys and good guys".
Even earlier, when they are preschoolers, in kindergartens isn't it like that? if there is sort of a"class" in a kindergarten, then an educator usually follows a plan of showing what is good and what is bad, what children should do and should not.
now about suggestions:
in a documentary about japanese school "children full of life" I found a teacher actually works on morality issue very much, his idea of sharing everyday life experiences of each children with the rest of a class members is not bad and it makes children aware of how we react on common human's issues such as joy , sorrow,fears, etc. Here it doesn't matter how good you are in math or history or whatever, this human qualities ( emotions) unite everybody.
may be I'd say children could share their everyday experiences with each other, so that the rest of a class could participate , so that they could freely share what they really think on a subject, if it is a life problem they could make some suggestions on how to resolve it and so on and during this process they will learn other stuff too.The important thing is that what they share should be a real life situation and may be better if it was a present situation what happen to them now, not years ago or months, because emotions from a present-day situations, questions are more strong then from the past. I agree that it is possible to learn a little bit on examples from books, other people's but nothing can replace reality and lessons we learn from real life are much more powerful for us, the "lesson" we learn from one particular situation has in times more intensive impact on us than anything else.
as Einstein said :"we get knowledge through experience, everything else is only information."
may be if it was possible in this class could participate children from different grades, so to say mixed-aged class as it could give opportunities to share different points of views...
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you know it came to my mind as I was watching a video about Sudbury Valley school, children were talking about classes in this school, how they are organized, who attend them. and what struck me, in this school there is no age limit as to attending whatever class you want.And when they were talking about philosophy class they said that even little children were on this class ( you see, they attend these classes just because they like it!!!)
and I thought may be it's a good idea to inquire at this school what do they do on their philosophy classes, what they talk about, how they present material....since these classes are so popular in the school.but we have to think that the school has many branches, so , may be at one branch these classes are popular and in others are not as the school is based on democratic principles and children decide what they want to study ...
another suggestion is to make animations of what will be presented on a philosophy class like what was made for popularization of myths and other stuff.it's more passive activity I think but it could be interesting to watch animation , cartoon, etc
or like in medieval times there were disputes( discussions) about one particular philosophical subject, so it also could have worked in classes,like game but should be considered carefully since it could turn out to be boring if children are not interested enough in what they discuss. But who knows, I'd ask children if they were interested in such sort of activity , well, actually it can be made without asking, just by mentioning an idea of it, one sees if they are enthusiastic about it or not.
well, if something more comes to my mind I'll let you know;)
