CHANGING EDUCATION María Acaso

          Reading about education in Internet I found an article about an interview to María Acaso, which headline said “There is no attention deficit disorder, just bored kids”. I always thought that deficit attention is not a disease, it's the answer of some children about something wrong in their education. I thought that medicate these children is better for the teacher and parents that for the student. When I continue reading the article I discovered a sentence which I strongly agree: “Medicate with amphetamines to 2 years-old children is simply an atrocity. Won't it be better to change education they receive?”.

           Maria Acaso is a teacher and investigator specialize in artistic education area. She was teacher of a friend at the University, then I listened about her before, but I never read anything about her thinkings. Her proposal is changing educational system in many aspects, which she called “rEDUvolution”. Here you can get a brief idea about what it is (in Spanish). 

          The starting point of her critic is “everything changes, unless education”. Her proposal is around 5 key ideas, it is direct and easy to follow.

1. What teachers teach is not what students learn.
2. Change hierarchy in the class and in the school.
3. Humanize classrooms, become classrooms in inhabited places.
4. Learning based on experience, not on theoretical data.
5. Changing assessment, based on creativity and investigation of the students.

           Based on this conception of education, it's principal that teachers develop their own creativity and prioritize students interests using it as a link between what students have to learn (curriculum) and what they want to learn (real interests). Also María highlights the importance of the invisible pedagogy. Teachers have to accept that students learn more about implied aspects, more than explicit aspects. Explicit learning is what teacher say about contents from text book, but there are a lot of things as class lighting, how teacher dress, or how classroom is organized that give students more information. It is implied pedagogy, that is lost in traditional methodologies and we have to regain.

           Apart of “rEDUvolution” María participate in a social movement in classrooms all around the world called “EDUpunk”: (Click in the image to watch the video)

 

         There are many alternatives for all who we are not conformed with traditional methodologies, all we have is to be informed, to be awake and to be active. Participate in different meetings and seminaries with other teachers whose we can learn many interesting ideas, and fix an aim in our teaching-learning process. As María Acaso says is very important for a teacher to have a manifesto, a group of ideas that gives horizon and sense to your teaching. Here you have the manifesto from María Acaso, I encourage you to do it with your own ideas, that can agree or not with her ideas, or my ideas, but are ideas. (Click for watching the video)