Examinations, tests and grades

       And when will the exams
and the tests take place?

          How will the grading of the
students be done?

Examinations, tests and grades?

You are kidding, surely.

There are no such things.

What constitutes the darkest pages
of our school years is unknown.

Didn't you understand that the purpose of
this school is to cultivate free personalities
and not slaves of the system?

The parents are in contact with the teacher all the time

and receive regular analytical reports describing in
detail the child's progress and any problems he meets.

But there are no grades.

To characterize a person
with a number is considered an
offense against human dignity.

       And so, is all the time spent playing games?

Yes.

Just that the games change, because the interests of the children change.

The game with the coloured beads will be replaced by difficult, complex
and very demanding experiments in physics and chemistry.

And the ones who built with the wooden bricks, have moved on to serious design
studies, where it is proved that the diagrams, the equations and the very complicated
calculations are very useful tools that the children will learn to use "on the side"
because they help a lot in their work, which is the construction of the bridge linking
Treasure Island to the opposite shore.

Working is shifted from the floor to the tables and drawing boards, because
there you can spread your PC, your papers and your books more easily.

More and more books will appear on the shelves,
as children are now turning their interest to them.

Either because they enjoy reading the text that they have "chosen by themselves",
or because they find the answers there to the questions which occupy them now.

Because if you go and ask the teacher something, she never gives you a clear
answer to what you are asking, but she gets you to think by yourself and sends
you to search in the encyclopaedia or in certain book.

That is of course if you're lucky,
since otherwise she might start up an entire
discussion involving the whole class,
and you will spend hours discussing it until
you find the correct answer "by yourself",
and you will regret it bitterly,
cursing the moment you asked her.

The time which the teacher spends with the
children around her, becomes ever greater.

The discussions are more heated, and
the teacher "reveals" more and more.

Either the story of the photon which fell on a leaf

and finally formed a glucose molecule
("in passing" the children will of course
hear all the details of photosynthesis),
or the story of the little turtle which emerged fully
formed from an egg, which initially contained only a yellow liquid
(and of course the children will learn "in passing" all the details of
the mechanism for protein synthesis under the instructions of the DNA).

There is no scientific domain which
the children can't understand and
follow if they are interested in it.

This school begins without fail with the kindergarten

(because what we call the pre-school age is crucial
to the intellectual development of the child)
and ends with the high school, when the child
has already matured so much that he can
        decide on his own
(without quotes now)

whether to take a job or to study further.

But enough of all this.

Time to go back to our "castaways"
and their problems.

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