Summer holidays are time for thinking. Teachers need to learn. But how long to think before producing something? (eg. blog posts, emails). I’ve been thinking about democratic schools and have actually found something similar in Brighton, the South Downs Learning Centre. The Self Managed Learning (SML) technique it seems was also trialled in some East Sussex schools in 2005/6 but of course they couldn’t let go of the curriculum so it didn’t get anywhere.
I’ve discovered that youtube on a large TV is an amazing resource as I have watched testimonies of students from democratic schools discuss their experiences as is Google books (See Daniel Greenberg’s “Free at last” especially the chapter on fishing.
Given the bombardment of rhetoric from the establishment its good to realise that its critics have been around for a long time. I’ve been looking at books from Myles Horton & Paulo Freire (thanks Kata), Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society) and John Dewey.
This is a part of learning, the beginning of a cycle… just taking time following intuition. This post is nothing more than a collection of links to stuff that I might (I do hope) to get back to.
Posted by richard 
