'Turning Points'- food for thought on the way

After spending two weeks in Paris, going home for a week and retourning, I had a lot of time to finally make a start on reading 'Turning Points', a book I picked up at the AERO conference in NY in June. In it, 27 education revolutionists tell their story and describe why and how they have changed education and the educational system we live in.

Apart from being very inspiring, it has also given me a few names and projects I would love to get in contact with:

- Northern Lights Media

- Kirsten Olson, who helps schools to integrate alternative education into their curriculum

- the online journal of unschooling and alternative learning (JUAL)

- www.HumaneEducation.org

- the 'Greenhouse for education and social innitiative' course at the HaKibbutzim College in Israel

- the Westmoreland House Institute of Mentoring

There are also lots of questions that emerged from reading:

- What do you think about punishment and rewards in education?

- How can you offer free or cheap education but still make a good living?

- In learning, what is more important, the self or the community?

- Can you start a school without knowing the master theories?

- How is it possible to educate everybody differently and let them study and work all over the world with different or no qualifications?

- How can you inspire children to choose to learn about many different things?

This is just a brief collectiong, but hopefully I will be able to think about my own ppoints of view a little bit more in the future. What I would love to do at this point is travel around, visit lots of schools and homeschooling families and emerge myself into this very exciting community of people who believe in educational alternatives. I would also like to find out how 'alternative' they really are and if there is not a way to convince people in Europe that there are other and better ways than the state school system.

However, I think it is not the worst path to deepen my studies a little bit in Cambridge and also get some teaching esperience in state schools before I embark on my big adventure. Two or three years are not a very long time and the only danger is that I get too comfortable in my life to leave everything behind for a big discovery when the time comes. Let's hope for the best!