Tranformation position Educational practice

Tranformation position

Educational practice

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Historically the tranformation position has been represented by two different currents of thought. One is the  romantic or humanistic element, which can be traced to rousseau and is also found in the work of froebel, tolstoy, A.S. neil, and john holt. The other is the social change position : george counts, theodore brameld. Jonathan kozol, and michael apple are some of the major spokes people for this orientation.

Jean jacques rousseau

The romantic element of the transformation position can be traced in particular to rousseau’s emile (1911/1955), where he states, “the education of the earliest years should be merely negative. It consists not in teaching virtue or truth, but in preserving the heart from vice and from the spirit of error” (p. 57). Rousseau felt that children in their natural state are good, and that they become corrupted through their contact with society. Education, then, should not attempt to manipulate the child, but simply let the child’s inner nature unfold. Education as unfoldment has been a pervasive theme in the romantic element whithin the transformation position.

Friedrich Froebel

Froebel (1887) was influenced by both rousseau and pestallozzi. However, his mysticism clearly places him within the transformation position. The following statement reflects his interdependence of all things :

In all things there lives and reigns an eternallaw. To him whose mind, through disposition and faith, is filled, penetrated, and quickened with the necessity that this can not possibly be otherwise, as well as to him whose clear, calm mental vision beholds the inner in the outer and through the outer, and sees the outer proceeding with logical necessity from the essence of the inner, this law has been and is enounced with equal clearness and distinctness in nature (the external), in the spirit (the internal), and in life which unites the two this all-controlling law is necessarily based on an all-pervading, energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence eternal unity. This fact, as well as the unity itself, is again vividly recognized, either through faith or through insight, with equal clearness and comprehensiveness; therefore, a quietly observant human mind, a thoughtful, clear human intellect, has never failed, and will never fail, to recognize this unity. (pp. 1-2)

By education, then, the devine essence of man should be unfolded, brought out, lifted into consciousness, and man himself raised into free, conscious obedience to the devine principle that lives in him, and to a free representation of this principle in his life.

            Education, in instruction, should lead man to see and know the devine, spiritual, and eternal principle which animates surrounding nature, constitutes the essence of nature, and is permanently manifested in nature. (pp 4-5)

Proebel is best known for his development of the kindergarten. Froebel’s work influenced horace mann’s sister-in-law, elizabeth peabody, to start the kindergarten movement in the united state. She lectured widely in the U.S. on the kindergarten and was instrumental in starting the first training school for kindergarten teachers in boston.

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy was another mystic who was interested in education. He established a school for the children of peasants who worked on his estate at yasnaya polyana in russia. Influenced by rousseau, tolstoy was a firm believer in negative education, which was one of the principles on which his school was based. Students did not attend school unless they wanted to; if they did come, they could pretty much do as they pleased. Troyat (1980) describes the school:

At eight in the morning a child rang the bell. Half an hour later,”through fog, rain, or the slanting rays of the autumn sun,” the black silhouettes of little muzhiks appeared by twos and threes, swinging their empty arms. As in the previous years, they brought no books or notebooks with them-nothing at all, save the desire to learn. The classrooms were painted pink and blue. In one, mineral samples, butterflies, dried plants and physics apparatus lined the shelves. But no books. Why books ? the pupils came to the classroom as though it were home; they sat where they liked, on the floor, on the windowledge, on a chair or the corner of a table, they listened or did not listen to what the teacher was saying. Drew near when he said something that interested them, left the room when work or play called them olsewhere-but were silenced by their fellow pupils at the slightest sound. Self- imposed discipline. The lessons-if these casual chats between an adult and some children could be called that-went on from eight-thirty to noon and from three to six in the afternoon, and covered every conceivable subject from grammar to carpentry, by way of religious history, singing, geography, gymnastics, drawing and composition. Those who lived too far away to go home at night slept in the school. In the summer they sat around their teacher outdoors in the grass. Once a week they all went to study plants in the forest. (p. 227)