Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things … the first is the love of activity… The second fundamental thing is independence.” (What You Should Know About Your Child by Maria Montessori)
we are living in a world where everything is controlled by Policy makers, so the fate of human species in different regions of the world is directly influenced by national or International policy making. Forget about the trade policies which affect our economies depending on the goals of policy makers, even our 'learning' is also impacted by so called 'good policies'. When a child is born in any modern society , he is not free to learn in his own Natural way but his parents are been convinced by the policies that he can learn best when he start living in a cage. They are been told that unless he is 'locked up' in the classroom, he cannot even know how to learn and it is the teacher who knows how to teach, because he is the one who can control his 'learning process'. Upon those assumption millions of children are been admitted to schools just to be 'Experimented upon' by those who don't even know the laws of nature and how it is unfolded. So one day our children ,find themselves in a 'cage',just like 'Lab-rats' , only to discover that they are not only be experimented upon but they are been controlled by the authorities who has all the right to do what they want , to implement what they wish, to test what they think they should, to humiliate when they desire in the name of discipline, to kill their natural talents once and for all. Modern man call this LAB a school.
(Below is a one-paragraph description taken from an article published few weeks back in 'Films of Action' )
"Any wildlife biologist knows that an animal in a zoo will not develop normally if the environment is incompatible with the evolved social needs of its species. But we no longer know this about ourselves. We have radically altered our own evolved species behavior by segregating children artificially in same-age peer groups instead of mixed-age communities, by compelling them to be indoors and sedentary for most of the day, by asking them to learn from text-based artificial materials instead of contextualized real-world activities, by dictating arbitrary timetables for learning rather than following the unfolding of a child’s developmental readiness. Common sense should tell us that all of this will have complex and unpredictable results. In fact, it does. While some children seem able to function in this completely artificial environment, really significant numbers of them cannot. Around the world, every day, millions and millions and millions of normal bright healthy children are labelled as failures in ways that damage them for life. And increasingly, those who cannot adapt to the artificial environment of school are diagnosed as brain-disordered and drugged." (Taken from a research which can even be done by a child , the only requirement is SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION)
COLLECTION OF DATA :
So collecting data on how human species learn based on School environment is like collecting data on how Tigers learn to run fast in a zoo. We need to OBSERVE children in their most natural environment :where they actually live.
Naturalistic Observation:
Ethologist believe that in order to study species-specific behaviors, a species must be observed in its natural environment. One can only understand the function of a behavior by seeing how it specifically fits into the ‍‍species‍‍ natural environment in order to fulfill a specific need. So if we want to really improve the conditions of learning we should Discover how children learn in the natural environment and that can only be done by Scientific Observation. There are few amazing scientists who studied children using the method of Observation and we should be learning from them. But that 's not where we stop, we should carry on by training our teachers into Scientific Observers so they can carry on the process, discovering new elements each day. Teachers are like Observers ,…as he teaches little and observes much…
At last the question which needs to be answered by educationists is 'do we want our children to be Schooled or do we want them to be Educated ?
In the words of Dr Montessori ,"… we have learnt from him certain fundamental principles of psychology. One is that the child must learn by his own individual activity, being given a mental freedom to take what he needs, and not to be questioned in his choice. Our teaching must only answer the mental needs of the child, never dictate them. Just as a small child cannot be still because he is in need of coordinating his movements, so the older child, who may seem troublesome in his curiosity over the why, what and wherefore of everything he sees, is building up his mind by this mental activity, and must be given a wide field of culture on which to feed." (To Educate the Human Potential )