在旧金山教会区(Mission District)一栋不起眼的低层仓库内，隐藏着美国最创新的教育实验之一。已进入第七年的Brightworks正在颠覆教育方法，其做法是让学生全权负责设计自己的学习体验。Brightworks是一所接收各年龄段孩子的私立学校，它的与众不同之处在于没有测验，没有考试或SAT（美国大学入学考试），没有正式的教学大纲，没有学习目标，也没有老师，只有“协作者”。孩子们来到学校，投入完全由自己设计的项目——往往会使用电动工具、电钻、锤子和锯子。无论是在校内制作令人惊叹的大型金属作品，还是在湾区(Bay Area)和更远的地区进行实地考察，重点是让孩子们在无压力的情况下边玩边学习。Hidden behind the unremarkable frontage of a low-rise warehouse in the Mission district of San Francisco is one of the most innovative education experiments in the US. Now in its seventh year, Brightworks is turning education on its head with an approach that makes the pupil entirely responsible for shaping their own learning experience. A private school for children of all ages, Brightworks is unusual in that there are no exams, no testing or SATs, no formal curriculum, no learning objectives and no teachers, only “collaborators”. Children come to school to work on projects they devise entirely by themselves — often using power tools, drills, hammers and saws. Whether inside, creating extraordinary large-scale metal works, or outside on field trips around the Bay Area and beyond, the emphasis is on playful stress-free learning.
“我喜欢把我们的学校想成一个学习和玩耍的巨大实验室，”Brightworks的创始人基弗尔•杜雷(Gever Tulley)说。他没有接受过正规教育，通过自学成为了软件公司Adobe的一名程序员，后将自己重塑为一名颠覆教育模式的企业家。“我们的学校没有书面考试，而是让学生们自行设计游戏、拼图、以及他们共同解决的各种挑战。学校应该赋予他们能力，培养终身学习的习惯和好奇心。我很不愿意看到，一提到学校，孩子们眼睛里的光芒就会消失的情景。”“I like to think of our school as a huge lab for learning and play,” says Brightworks’ founder Gever Tulley, a self-taught coder for software company Adobe with no formal education who has reinvented himself as a disruptive educational entrepreneur. “Instead of school being about written tests, we’ve made it about games, puzzles and challenges [that children] devise themselves and solve together. School should be empowering and set them up for a life of learning and curiosity. I hated seeing the light go out of children’s eyes at the mere mention of school.”

尽管科技在某些领域无疑对学习有帮助，但问题是它是否占主导地位，并因此取代了我们在科技主导的未来最需要的技能。对于少用技术的另类学校团体——北美华尔道夫学校协会（Waldorf Schools of North America，简称“AWSNA”），证据是无可辩驳的。AWSNA的执行主任比弗利•阿米可(Beverly Amico)说：“尽管效果不明显，但仍有大量资金被用于向课堂提供科技设备。”日益受到硅谷科技家庭欢迎的AWSNA学校，聚焦于让孩子们玩，通过动手和社区来促进学习。在13-14岁之前，这些孩子在学校或家里很少或根本无法接触到科技设备。“在合适阶段，科技在教育中可以扮演角色，但可以肯定地说，AWSNA的教育工作者并不怎么看重技术，”她补充说。While technology undoubtedly aids learning in some spaces, the question is whether it dominates and, as a result, displaces the skills needed most in our tech-dominated futures. For low-tech alt-school group the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, the evidence is irrefutable. “Despite unremarkable results, significant amounts of money are still given over to putting technology into classrooms,” says Beverly Amico, AWSNA’s executive director. Increasingly popular with tech families in Silicon Valley, Waldorf schools focus on play, and learning through doing and community, with little or no access to technology allowed before age 13-14 at school or at home. “Technology has its place in education, at the right stage, but it’s safe to say Waldorf educators don’t place much value on it,” she adds.

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【完整全文】https://www.toutiao.com/i6574542258069045767/