The pillars of ecological education are as follows: health (intellectual, social, physical development of a student), ecology (development process of a student and an entire community), fairness (development of individual student’s talents regardless of his life situation) and carefulness (creating optimal conditions to development of student guided by experience, concern and practice). We are convinced that revolution in education which is being emphasized by Robinson, has a chance to completely change and improve the system’s effectiveness. Are you in?

 

  1. ‘A bustling school can feed an entire community, becoming a source of hope and creative energy. Weak schools can drain the optimism out from all students and parents which are dependent on it, reducing their chances to develop’.
  2. ‘If you’ll change educational habits of those who you are working with, you can change their world and thanks to that become a part to that broader, more of complex process of changes in education’.
  3. ‘Education should create conditions to connect both inner world of young people with the world around them. Education is both global and deeply personal matter. None of the above purposes (economic, cultural, social and personal – ed.) will be achieved, if we don’t remember about the fact that education is all about enrichment of minds and hearts of  real people. Many problems of contemporary educational systems have their source in the incomprehension of this fundamental issue. Every student is an exceptional individual, with own hopes, talents, worries, fears, passions and aspirations. Involving them as individuals is a foundation of correcting achievements’.
  4. ‘But a tenor of education is a relation between a student and a teacher. Everything else depends on this relation’s quality. If it doesn’t work, the entire system equally. If students don’t learn, education is cancelled. Perhaps something else is being held but it isn’t education’.
  5. In order to improve schools, it is necessary to understand the nature of learning itself so that when students do their best and the fact that they learn in many ways. If schools and  educational policy misunderstand this issue, everything else is just gibberish’.
  6. Children have a huge innate ability to learn. Left alone they will explore possibilities and make choices which we cannot and should not make for them. Fun is completely fundamental for learning: it is a brainchildren of curiosity’.
  7. ‘In order to achieve the balance the best teachers fulfil for basic tasks: they involve, enable, expect and strengthen. (…) Wonderful principals know that above all it is not leading to the best results on examinations but creating the community of students, teachers, parents and staff which make for higher ground’.
  8. ‘Children are naturally curious. Stimulating the learning means sustaining this curiosity. That’s why practical and solutional teaching can cause wonderful results. Outstanding teachers, instead of explaining things which students didn’t ask about, provoke them to ask questions in order to inspire young people for exploring problems. (…) Correcting individual achievements in schools means involving students as individuals and not setting everybody in an obstacle course which they have to finish in the same time and in the same way’.
  9. Do you worry about education? It is one of my most serious worries that although educational systems worldwide are being subjected to reforms, these are in many cases reforms which are being conducted from political and commercial motives, at incorrect understanding in what way people actually learn and how do wonderful schools function. As a result perspectives of the innumerable amounts of young people are being destroyed. In this book I want to show in what way the culture of the standardization harms students and schools, and I want to present other way of thinking about education. I also want to show, that whoever and wherever you are, you have a power to change the system’.
  10. ‘As Gandhi said: ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. If enough people will care about, a movement will be formed. And if the movement will be strong enough, a revolution will happen. And that is what we need in education’.

An agricultural/ecological model of education deeply rooted at the foundations of Bethink’s methodology. We aspire to create such communities which will ensure appropriate conditions for growth and individual potential development as well as achieving individual educational objectives of a learner person. A student is treated as the plant, e.g. tree (in contrast with the industrial model of education where student was just a product with specific features) which independently achieves growth through hard work. A shape of this ‘tree’ is dependent on conditions, exposure, soil, fertilizers, ‘genre’ and space it can occupy. Therefore a teacher like a gardener takes care of resources and space to individual growth of every student. Intervention take place only when students could harm themselves or others. Additionally, the gardener knows that each tree is an independent genre, has got its growing and flowering period, its individual pace and the ultimate shape.

 

Do you already know what you miss in education? Do you already know what you want to change?