Education is one of the pillars of a successful society. The only way to become a relevant person in the society is to become educated. But the concept of education till now has been something else than what it should be in the first place. Schools, colleges, and universities have been built to impart education to generation after generation of students all over the world. Children have attended classes for ages as they grew up and got promoted from one class to the next higher one until finally they graduated. But all of the children who started going to school at the age of three do not make it to graduation.
The prime problem that faces the present education system is that every child is subjected to studying the same subjects. The same method of learning and the same exams to test the student’s capacity for learning new things is carried out. Individual skills and passions are swamped by the flood of programs that consider these skills and passions to be the same for everybody. The idea of the ecole alternative is to give every child a chance to prove their own individual capabilities and capacities for learning. Motivation is the key factor that helps the student to learn what they want to learn and not something that others want them to learn.
Freedom of learning in a school has been aptly demonstrated by almost forty schools around the world known as ecole democratique. These schools follow a process that is truly democratic in every sense of the term. The school is considered as a community where decisions concerning the members are taken by everybody including the students, the teachers, and the parents. The decision for every individual is perfectly their own and the students decide whether they should attend any class or not. Every individual is free to express themselves and to attend any class up to the university level if they choose to. Discussions on topics outside the curriculum depend upon the choice of the students.
The method of education followed by the ecole alternative paris is truly fantastic. The children from 3 to 19 years of age are given complete freedom to do what they want to do with their lives. They are free to set their own goals and decided on their activities to reach that goal. The subjects they want to learn are decided by the students themselves. Every decision related to the school activities including all financial, recruitment, and other internal matters are taken collectively where every person including the students have a part to play. The children are ably supported by the teachers and their parents in running the school.
True liberty of learning is present in the ecole democratique Paris where the students decide what to learn, how to learn, and where to learn. They decide on the topics that they want to learn which can be anything that is taught in a kindergarten school to a serious topic in a university. The children decide whether to attend any class to learn the chosen topic or to go about it in a different way that they feel comfortable in. Most of these students could graduate from colleges and universities by being responsible for themselves from an early age.