
No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down - passenger
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/no-grades-no-timetable-berlin-school-turns-teaching-upside-down
======
ada1981
Sudbury Valley Schools are the gold standard as far as I can tell from my
research. (I spent a number of years as an education/students rights activist;
built and ran the country's most famous education blog back in 2009; and have
otherwise been doing advocacy work for a couple decades)

They are fully democratic and focus on producing empowered self directed
citizens who understand how to share limited resources and cooperate.

The kids have as much power as any adult or teacher, which I really love --
they say you can't make someone partially equal -- either you share power with
them or you don't. No grades or grade levels, students decided what to focus
on. Great mini documentary on the website to watch as well.

[http://www.sudval.org/](http://www.sudval.org/)

~~~
superobserver
This is really cool. It reminds me of what happened to me when I turned 15 and
my family was first able to afford a computer and an internet connection. I
basically started teaching myself all kinds of stuff (e.g., physics,
mathematics, philosophy, etc.). Self-directed learning can take you really
far, but it isn't right for everyone: mostly individuals who can truly direct
themselves and have the kinds of interests that are condusive to broad
understanding and knowledge.

The problem I had with the educational system in my time (about 20 years ago)
is computer knowledge wasn't taken seriously, so I missed out on having some
guidance to push me towards my ultimate interest - electronics, computers,
programming, things in tech. Of course, I still like knowing about a lot of
other things, but school really doesn't grab your interests. Ideally, it
should be setup so students can _capitalize on areas of interest_.

On second thought, if computer and tech knowledge had been made available to
me early on, I probably wouldn't have had the life course in the educational
system that I did. Depressing to think about.

Best of luck and I hope it is legitimately successful for the students.

~~~
technomancy
> Self-directed learning can take you really far, but it isn't right for
> everyone: mostly individuals who can truly direct themselves and have the
> kinds of interests that are condusive to broad understanding and knowledge.

I agree with the sentiment here, but I wonder if it wouldn't be more accurate
to say it _would be_ for everyone, except that some people have already had
their natural driven curiosity ground out of them by sour experiences at
school or poor home life prior to getting the change to try this.

~~~
superobserver
>some people have already had their natural driven curiosity ground out of
them by sour experiences at school or poor home life prior to getting the
change to try this.

Somehow I find that extraordinarily unlikely, but I suppose it is possible.
From my experience and what I've seen in other people, it's never that the
curiosity in them gets pounded out of them, rather it is that they're not
ideally granted the opportunities to capitalize on their curiosities.

------
bbayles
My partner became involved in Montessori a few years ago, and I've been really
impressed with how it works.

If you don't know much about Montessori, here is my "in a nutshell" version:
It's a method of schooling usually associated with preschool and elementary
education. There are mixed age groups (e.g. 3 to 6) in classrooms. There is at
least one adult who gives one-on-one lessons on how to work with "materials."
The materials do the teaching, not the adult.

There are hundreds of different types of materials. They're designed to teach
or exercise a particular skill, but they look like games and are all designed
to be "beautiful" as to entice children to them (Montessori is really serious
about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn). They
follow a particular progression. Children may work with any material for which
they've had a lesson. They can work with it as many times as they like.

My favorite example of how Montessori works is how it develops reading skills.
First a child is introduced to materials that involve very short crayons -
when they use them they strengthen the muscles in their hands. Then they're
introduced to letter-tracing materials. Then they're introduced to
letter/sound matching materials. Children who follow these lessons wind up
writing first, and then reading follows very naturally. The emphasis on
developing physical capabilities first really demonstrates the attention to
detail that's typical of Montessori.

The math education progression is impressive also. There are materials that
have children doing proto-multiplication, exponentiation, algebraic
manipulation, and more. My partner developed a material that teaches counting,
addition, and subtraction in base 8. (Her 4 and 5-year-olds understood it much
more quickly than her colleagues!)

There are parts of the method I don't like (e.g. dogmatic resistance to
rewarding performance, for example), but overall it feels like a huge
improvement over typical early childhood education.

~~~
GuiA
Alternate pedagogies (Montessori, Waldorf, etc.) seem to work quite well for
early childhood education, but I'm very skeptical of them for middle school,
and especially high school (what Montessori defines as "3rd stage"). The
reason for this is that extremely few people I've met who went to such high
schools came out of them with levels in science/math that could be reasonably
qualified as decent (and often borderline on catastrophic).

One of the main issues is certainly that some of those pedagogies do have
pseudo-science/religion baked in, and they have a hard time ridding themselves
from that past (notably Waldorf). Another problem is that the kind of teachers
who are attracted to these pedagogies rarely have scientific/mathematical
backgrounds, and as a result this aspect of the education suffers. It's a
problem that they don't like to talk about.

The hard thing to wrestle with here is that for many scientific disciplines,
hardcore reading and memorizing is vastly more efficient than inferring
everything from observation and first order principles. Now you don't want to
overcorrect and do ~only~ that, but there's a reason medicine students spend
many years cramming.

See: "Does Waldorf Offer a Viable Form of Science Education?"
[http://www.csus.edu/indiv/j/jelinekd/publications/waldorfsci...](http://www.csus.edu/indiv/j/jelinekd/publications/waldorfscience.pdf)

~~~
misja111
I can confirm. Montessori education is great for kids under 12. For middle or
high school, it was actually Maria Montessori who said, when asked what she
saw as the best education for teenagers, that it was useless to try to force
adolescent to concentrate on intellectual work. Instead she recommended an
Earth school, where children would live close to nature, eat fresh farm
products, and carry on practical work related to the economics of supplying
food, shelter, transportation, and so forth.

The Montessori middle- and high schools that currently exist, at least in
Europe, do not follow Montessori's advice at all. Instead they have a kind of
half hearted mix of regular education with some elements of lower age
Montessori, such as more responsibility to make your own homework planning.
For many teenagers this is not a good combination and they drop out.

------
gwern
" Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among
Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, which combine all three
school forms of Germany’s tertiary system. Last year’s school leavers achieved
an average grade of 2.0, the equivalent of a straight B – even though 40% of
the year had been advised not to continue to abitur, the German equivalent of
A-levels, before they joined the school. Having opened in 2007 with just 16
students, the school now operates at full capacity, with 500 pupils and long
waiting lists for new applicants.

Given its word-of-mouth success, it is little wonder that there have been
calls for Rasfeld’s approach to go nationwide. Yet some educational experts
question whether the school’s methods can easily be exported: in Berlin, they
say, the school can draw the most promising applicants from well-off and
progressive families. Rasfeld rejects such criticisms, insisting that the
school aims for a heterogenous mix of students from different backgrounds.
While a cross adorns the assembly hall and each school day starts with
worship, only one-third of current pupils are baptised. Thirty per cent of
students have a migrant background and 7% are from households where no German
is spoken."

OK, Rasfeld. If you believe you are working this magic with normal students,
switch to lottery admissions, and provide pre-admission grades, IQ scores,
parental incomes or language or country of origin, and we'll see how much of
that outperformance remains after controlling for baseline characteristics and
comparing the lottery winners with losers...

------
_petronius
Minor nitpick: "evangelical" is a bad translation of the German "evangelisch"
(at least in the sense that many Americans think of "evangelical"). In the
German context, this is better glossed as simply "Protestant".

(And the German protestant church, at least here in Berlin, is a vastly more
liberal and progressive organization than one would imagine if you grew up in
the American south like I did.)

~~~
allendoerfer
Translating back, German for evangelical would be evangelikal, not
evangelisch.

------
gurkendoktor
Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel
frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that
this is what school was like, every single day.

I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own,
but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for
people who know what they want.

~~~
doc_holliday
"eight-hour Scrum meeting"

Why are you having an eight hour Scrum meeting?

Isn't that the complete opposite of what a Scrum meeting is supposed to be? 15
minute max, standup meeting is a Scrum.

~~~
gurkendoktor
To be clear, I find all eight-hour meetings exhausting, be it at work, making
plans for Christmas, or sitting through school. Mentioning Scrum was a red
herring in this thread, but a very effective one(?!) :)

I guess our meta-problem is that Scrum was a buzzword-based requirement chosen
by non-programmers, so we naturally have programmers subverting the process
out of spite, lots of politics and distrust, and inexperienced folks managing
the whole thing in a horribly broken JIRA installation (what else?).

As a result, our development team is _really_ far behind on a huge backlog of
very fuzzy stories. If you realise in a meeting that you've misunderstood key
requirements, there's no point going back to building the wrong thing after
the time-box ends. You have to come up with a new plan, and at the same time
you need to make it fit into the desired Scrum schedule, and don't break that
burn-down chart or JIRA, ...

Of course, at that point it is not really a Scrum meeting anymore.

~~~
Symbiote
> horribly broken JIRA installation

That's the first thing I'd scrap. Software to control the process doesn't help
unless the team understands and wants the process, otherwise it's just an
annoyance.

My path towards Scrum started after a pointless and long meeting. I found some
coloured memo squares and some drawing pins, and cleared everything from an
old noticeboard. (This is nicer than using post-it notes on a whiteboard.)

I copied out the tasks, making a rough go at splitting them into reasonably-
sized things, and making my own estimates in days. I made "backlog", "this
week" and "completed" columns.

The resulting mess showed that the project wasn't under control, which itself
was valuable. The PM and the 'customer' were then able to ditch half the
requirements, and the developers could concentrate on the highest priority
tasks.

This wasn't Scrum, but it worked well, and led to buy-in from almost everyone
that we should try Scrum.

(The most important things I missed on the first go: acceptance criteria and
team estimation.)

------
vinceguidry
Education is _extremely_ political. It's not that we can't come up with better
ways of occupying school-age children. Montessori has been around since the
early 1900s!

The problem is convincing everyone they need to adopt a new method. Which is
absolutely completely politically impossible compared to making small tweaks
to the system already present.

Nobody is going to turn education upside down. Ever.

~~~
berlin2016
Why does _everyone_ need to adopt a new method? There can be multiple
approaches run side-by-side, the results are publicly available, parents can
make an informed decision.

At least, that's the situation in Germany: There are Montessori schools,
Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) schools and various others. The thing is, most of
these schools have a foundation in bullshit theories or religion. I think the
fact that children have to start each day with prayer at the school in
question needs to be highlighted more.

The comparably good results could equally-well be explained with the fact that
the pupils at these schools are predominantly from well-to-do or at least
education-oriented families. Neither the teachers nor the pupils face the same
socio-economic pressures as they would in the public school system.

------
rweba
The bottom line is: how well do these "progressive ideas" work in practice? I
couldn't find much evidence online that they're more effective in general than
the "traditional" approach.

I have been a college professor for 7 years, here's what I have been able to
PERSONALLY observe in that time:

(1) Frequent, regular feedback (quizzes, tests, homeworks, projects) helps a
lot for most students. If you just have a final at the end the majority of
students will finish the course having learned a lot less.

(2) Obviously students learn more when they're personally engaged and
interested in a topic rather from just doing it to get a grade. But getting
them excited is not obvious and engagement varies in predictable ways based on
previous background knowledge and aptitude for the subject. A lot of the extra
effort a teacher does is ultimately to try to get students more excited about
a subject.

(3) One on one time with a teacher students can be very helpful. It will
almost certainly produce a noticeable improvement in subject understanding,
particularly for those students who are motivated but struggling a little bit.
Unfortunately this requires a lot of time from the professor, so it's not
really practical except with small classes and a small teaching load.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
It's likely that older collage-aged people will learn differently than primary
school children. In fact it may be too late to try self-directed learning,
which has been trained out of them?

------
HillaryBriss
> The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for each lesson and when
> they want to take an exam.

So the student learns what they want to learn when they want to learn it. The
student focuses on a subject when the brain is ready and interested. Sounds
efficient.

OTOH, one of the really valuable things about a curriculum is that it serves
as a guide to a complex and bewildering subject.

A curriculum, at its best, is like a highly knowledgeable person telling a
novice: "Study these nineteen subtopics and you'll grasp this field pretty
quickly. If you study these other nineteen subtopics, you'll just waste a year
of your time and never really get a clue." Which also sounds efficient.

How to reconcile?

~~~
sharmi
as Platz already pointed out

> Set subjects are limited to maths, German, English and social studies,
> supplemented by more abstract courses such as “responsibility” and
> “challenge”.

Also, there is some accountability in the system. That means there should be
some scale to determine if the student has met the required work for the week.

> Rasfeld’s institution tries to embed student self-determination within a
> relatively strict system of rules. Students who dawdle during lessons have
> to come into school on Saturday morning to catch up, a punishment known as
> “silentium”. “The more freedom you have, the more structure you need,” says
> Rasfeld.

Edit:

Here is a link on their website on learning guidance. It is google translation
of their german link. So it is a bit hard to follow.

[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.co.in&sl=de&u=http://www.ev-
schule-zentrum.de/lern-und-
schulkultur/lernarrangements/&usg=ALkJrhjs6-IfqOuJk2pXtyUgSxmyA_IFCg)

~~~
tamana
This seems quite the opposite of the headline?

------
sandworm101
> Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among
> Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, ...

So there are still grades, or at least someone is still testing the kids. This
isn't utopia yet.

>> each school day starts with worship.

Sorry. Game over imho. I am not so put off by the specifics of the religion,
but by its presence muddying the academic waters. A school religion means a
distinct value system, and associated enforcement mechanisms, over and above
what is available at standard public schools. That means the academic
achievements of this school may not be applicable as the school's faith may be
playing a large role in student motivation.

I once read a paper on whether Hogwarts was a faith school. The theory went
that faith schools are characterized by the fact that teachers double as faith
leaders, as teachers of morality and dogma, something that does occur at
Hogwarts. This motivates students in a manner not available where there isn't
religious commonality between students and teachers. The problem is that the
scheme breaks down once the kids realize their teachers are but human, flawed
and sinful as anyone else. Let's call that the Krabappel effect. Then the
religion becomes a reason to distrust teachers, to break ranks even work
against them ... like at hogwarts.

xxxxxxxxx

As I am not allowed to reply (thanks for that btw) I'll edit in my reply here.

My comment above is not to whether religion is a good/bad thing, but to the
fact that the presence of religion at this school makes it less likely that
its results can be replicated at other schools with either different or no
religion present.

~~~
whamlastxmas
I am not at all religious and never will be, but I wouldn't particularly care
if my child went to a school that had worship every day. The point of
Montessori schools is hands on learning and teaching and providing diversity
of learning. Exposure to a benign faith and the beliefs that others hold, even
if you don't hold them yourself, isn't harmful. Look at the effects of
Catholic schools - the vast majority of people who I knew that graduated from
one were very non-religious.

~~~
empath75
I went to catholic school for eight years and came out as a hardcore atheist.
I don't think that's uncommon. A good education will undermine whatever
superstitious nonsense that goes along for the ride eventually.

------
stared
An obligatory reference:

A. S. Neill "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing" (1960),
especially chapter 1 (about the Summerhill school itself). The schools started
in 1920s, and sadly, we made no progress in that direction in the last
century.

Link: [https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-
english_1.pdf](https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf)

~~~
i_love_jc
You're very right that our school system as a whole hasn't made any progress
in that direction, but I do find it a somewhat hopeful sign that there are now
quite a number of democratic schools based on Summerhill and the similar
Sudbury model. 40 or so Sudbury schools
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools)),
probably a hundred or more under the loose umbrella of "democratic" and
associated with AERO.

------
ThomPete
It really comes down to the children. If they have a lot of selfdisciplin it's
great if not they are better off at more strict schools.

At the end of the day though, parents and their indirect involvement is the
key to a proper education no matter what educational philosophy one follows.

~~~
fao_
Everyone has self-discipline in some form or another. After observing the
difference between children who have been unschooled and children who have
been schooled, I would say that children are naturally disciplined (to follow
their interests), and then become disinterested when the power to learn is
taken out of their hands.

~~~
ThomPete
Not everyone have self-discipline in the way that it's needed to be able to
want to learn at your own free will. There are plenty of examples of that from
failed "hippie" schools of the 70ties I know a few of them.

------
mvdwoord
I went to a Montessori school for a while. Much like what is described here.
For me it was fantastic and I sometimes lightly regret not continuing in high
school due to (minor) practical obstacles. That said, I believe these types of
systems are definitely not for everyone. Lots of kids are probably better off
with a bit of structure and imposed discipline.

~~~
JonoBB
Yes, there are definitely some children that this method of teaching is not
suited to. Some children lack the drive to find things of interest, and
according to the Montessori method, they should not be "pushed" (I use this
term very broadly). At the point when they leave Montessori school, these
children can be very ill-equipped in relation to their peers and "behind the
curve". With some more discipline and structure, this could be avoided.

But, if you fit the right profile, its leaps and bounds ahead of mainstream
education during the early years.

My wife is a Montessori teacher.

------
ayylmao907
I have to say I'm of the opinion that modern education is terribly
inefficient, and to back my claim I offer that most people who are any good
get there not by following a curriculum but by having an interest which they
explore on their own. But that's just on the supposed goals of education. I
feel the important achievement of modern school systems is the obedience of
the populace, which from a historical perspective is quite a feat really, if
far from their professed aim.

~~~
jomamaxx
I think history might refute your claims.

A) Teaching methods haven't changed that much in centuries, millennia,
arguably, and they are quite similar across civilizations and cultures, and
they do effectively well.

B) People are more 'free' today than they have ever been in history in terms
of ideas, ideals, choices, opportunities.

80 years ago you would have been expected to serve in the Army, 50 years ago -
at least the draft. Most teens nowadays wouldn't even contemplate doing
something remotely 'selfless' unless it was padding their resume.

So I can't help but to balk at your claim that people are 'obedient' now.

Have a look at a 'soup kitchen' line up from 1929: even the unemployed and
homeless all wore suits, proper overcoats and hats. They dressed with more
established decorum than Mark Zuckerberg Billionaire. I'm not saying it's
right/wrong, better/worse - but I don't think it's possible to say that people
today are more conformist.

------
wapapaloobop
We school-educated people associate learning with authority and it's hard for
us to truly grasp that education takes place most efficiently under conditions
of freedom. Repealing Hitler's 1938 law against home education would be an
important step for Germany.

~~~
iSnow
IDK. The toughest calls for home-schooling in Germany come from religious
extremists, be it Islamists, Jewish orthodox or Twelve Tribes christian
fundamentalists.

None of those are anti-authority to begin with. Also: Godwin.

~~~
fao_
> Also: Godwin.

Godwin's law only comes in when something has been compared to Hitler, this
person stated a fact: That the law in question was brought in by Hitler.

~~~
Barrin92
Well that's not a fact though. Mandatory schooling started in Prussia and was
required for children aged 5-14 and the Weimar constitution adopted it as
well.

This is just the typical "ermahgerd authoritharianism" Hitler comment that
always comes up when the American audience hears the word government and
Germany in the same sentence, it's a Pavlovian reflex at this point.

I'm German and the only groups currently advocating home-schooling are crazy
religious sects who don't want to 'taint' their children with secular
education. Getting rid of long fought for public education isn't a progressive
issue.

~~~
wapapaloobop
We have home education _and_ government schools in England. Neither rules out
the other. We also have non-religious families who home educate. There are
probably secular families in Germany who would like to try too. There simply
is no one-size-fits-all model of education, whether we try to impose one or
not.

~~~
fao_
> We also have non-religious families who home educate.

A fun anecdote for you: Most of the parents I've met through the local Home
Education community have been PhD-level academics, that extremely dislike the
education system -- they simply don't believe that schools are the best way to
learn, and decided to set about making sure that their children get the best
education. Only a minority of this group hire tutors, as well -- most prefer
unschooling.

------
nottoday88
Is this a new idea or a rebranded old one? Summerhill school?

~~~
frozenport
Or Montessori, [1]

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education)

------
dschiptsov
The essence of teaching, it seems, to assist students with theoretical
knowledge while they are learning by doing the right things. We are evolved to
learn by doing (beautiful studies about how children of remote rural areas in
Himalaya and Mongolia are learning their native language without being taught,
by mere exposure is a nice evidence).

The second factor is to be taught of right things - the first principles,
fundamental ideas with no nonsense examples. This is why classic MIT or
Berkeley Scheme courses based on SIP were wastly supervisor than modern
"pragmatic" Python or Java crap. Brian Harvey's CS61A is a gold standard.

Schedules and grades are of second importance. The proof is all these self-
educated people who picked up knowledge without attending any high school.
Moreover, in many cases a municipal primary school, being much like an
overcrowded prison-like facility for kids from impoverished families, did more
damage than good by imposing wrong habits and impressions of what education is
about.

Learning is a continuous and natural process for us and other higher animals.
Removal of obstacles, distractions and idiots and exposure to right principles
and ideas will do much more than all the micro optimizations combined. "Good
schools", like MIT or Yale proved it many times.

There is also Pirsig's book.

------
alejoriveralara
Incredible! Sounds very similar to what schools like Acton Academy and Talent
Unbound are doing in the US. I have no doubt that the future of education will
come from private schools made by entrepreneurs re-imagining schools from the
bottom-up.

I opened the second campus for Talent Unbound in Houston about a year ago, and
am now working on building software to help power more of these schools. It's
very exciting to be a part of what seems like a world-wide learning
revolution!

------
nippples
I don't think you need to be a helicopter parent to be somewhat wary of the
description of this. There's plenty of value in standardized education and a
scoring system.

It doesn't need to be so rigid as traditional schools, but some metric, even
if very abstract and vague, that helps us identify that there are possibly
important gaps in the kids' knowledge is pretty damn useful.

------
JoeAltmaier
I don't understand the 'no timetable' part. In my experience kids will do
nothing if no deadline is presented. How do schools avoid some kids diddling
away the semester? Or is it just OK for some kids to fail?

~~~
mattc15
It said they had to come in on Saturday if they didn't get shit done during
the week

~~~
JoeAltmaier
SO, a weekly timetable. I suspected as much.

------
up_and_up
AMA: We are secular homeschoolers and primarily use self-directed learning as
our teaching method. Unschooling/self-directed gives our children extreme
freedom to pursue their interests, encourages deep play-based learning, and
instills a deep level of self-confidence in them.

Most of our homeschooling friends also use this method of "teaching". We have
really become more like facilitators for the next big project they feel like
doing.

------
ommunist
It depends on perspective. Getting education or acquiring skills or better
network is ol'good combination of carrot and stick anyway. Those instruments
just happily passed from teachers to students themselves. Time will tell who
is using these precious things more wise.

Full disclosure - I am big fun of didactics in delivering knowledge, since
only implying of proper level of didactical pressure makes the right chemical
background for application of nootropics.

------
frozenport
I went to one of these as a child and learned nothing. It became a real
struggle to learn in a time efficient manner. I would strongly discourage
parents from choosing this kind of education for early learners as it doesn't
include various social skills like how to sit in a classroom, address a
prompt, etc.

~~~
tamana
How early is "early"? Grade 1-5? Kids younger than that don't need to sit in a
classroom.

What does "appears a prompt" mean?

~~~
ams6110
> What does "appears a prompt" mean?

Guessing, but I'd say it means "respond to a verbal question" presumably from
an instructor/superior.

------
anotherhacker
A great primer to this type of philosophy (no grades for kids) is Deming--from
about 40 years ago.

"A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo)

------
2suave
The title should read "No grades, no timetable, and no degree". As much as I
like the idea behind it it's simply not a feasible concept in today's society
and it's competitive environment. In fact, I'd even wager that the pupils of
that school will be ridiculed by their fellow peers for attending such a
school. Not to mention that admission boards of prestigious universities would
never give them the time of the day. With such an "education" it's literally
impossible to compete in today's society.

~~~
socialist_coder
Eh?

Today, you can learn almost anything on your own from books, youtube videos,
online tutorials, etc. The only thing stopping you is perseverance and a
curious and exploratory mind. This school teaches you just those things.

Programming fits this to a T. Entrepreneurship as well. Writing, cooking, any
type of creative design too. Sure, you want to be a Doctor or a Lawyer you
need a degree, but I don't see how students that go to this type of high
school would not be able to get into University.

If you are a business owner who wants replaceable cogs for his factory, sure,
this type of school is terrible. But if you want people who can adapt, solve
problems, stay motivated and think critically, it seems great.

What kind of society are you living in?

------
programminggeek
Sounds a lot like many homeschooling approaches done well in a non-home
environment. Interesting.

------
lllorddino
> such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam.

Okay I suck at math but am decent at programming and the last time I checked
there is a bunch of math in game development.

I agree that __some __subjects in school are useless but if you give a kid the
option of doing whatever he wants versus learning math (which most would) then
I 'd say your school system sucks.

~~~
mac01021
Because everybody must learn math to be successful in life? What level of math
should be required?

~~~
Retra
Basic statistics.

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id122015
if I was still in school I wish they included being able to choose what
matters I wanted to be graded. But I wish no grades for humanities like
history, literature, geography.

------
pinaceae
so, this method is great for the outliers, kids like hawking or tony hawk -
kids that are driven by themselves, don't need no guidance, help, discipline.

there is a reason asian kids outperform others, and it's not montessori.

and yes, school is about performance as kids will grow up and will need to be
able to earn for a living. work, compete.

school is optimized for the average kid with average parents. all the HN
outliers don't apply.

i would opt for full day schools in shitty areas, get the kids away from their
parents as much as possible. off the street. teach them.

~~~
skewart
I'm guessing the reason this is getting down-voted is because the article
makes it pretty clear that the Berlin school's aim is to _teach_ kids to be
motivated and disciplined. It provides a lot of structure along with
opportunity cities for more self-directed learning.

That aside, highly structured, rote memorization-only education may well help
kids achieve the highest test scores, and it may well be the best way to
prepare kids for middle management and clerical jobs - the kinds of jobs for
which there has been great demand throughout the 20th century. It's not really
clear that it does a great job of preparing kids for creative, academic,
entrepreneurial or executive leadership roles. And it's certainly not clear
that it is the best way to prepare kids for jobs - or ways to earn a living -
that will be in demand throughout most of the 21st century.

~~~
pinaceae
9bn people - and all of them will be entrepreneurs. there is a world outside
of HN and there a lot of folks can barely finish high school.

~~~
socialist_coder
You are operating under the assumption that only exceptional children can
learn motivation, self direction, and a genuine interest in learning. That is
not true.

As our society outsources more and more jobs to robots, those displaced
workers need to be able to do more than just blindly follow directions. They
don't have to start companies, but they do need to be able to think critically
and have skills that are not replaceable by a robot.

~~~
tremon
It is true in a way, if you reverse the causality: children that learn
motivation, self direction and interest building are better equipped to be (or
become) exceptional.

------
themartorana
This is a child being disrespectful on a monumental level, not outsmarting
anyone. It also sounds like her parents are paying a great deal of attention.

She may also be a classic psychopath.

[http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-
psyc...](http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-psychopath-
difference)

~~~
dang
Any internet comment that ends in "psychopath" is probably a bad one—this
pattern is a Godwin mini-me—and to get there from one colorful anecdote of
adolescent cleverness is a particular stretch.

Please don't practice unsolicited psychiatry on HN.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032277)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
themartorana
Whoa. Agree to disagree, big guy. Not only are the majority of HN commenters
practicing amateur everything (especially with politics) but that's not what I
was doing.

And further disagreeing, any 12 year old that shows such blatant disrespect -
and makes friends with a porn star in the process - is in no way a cute story
of "adolescent cleverness." It's something that should get protective services
involved.

~~~
dang
You don't have nearly enough information to make such personal
judgments—that's an understatement by orders of magnitude—which makes your
comments here unduly personal and therefore uncivil. Please stop.

~~~
themartorana
Again, and as a parent of a daughter, we'll just have to continue to agree to
disagree.

