You and Your Schoolchild (Költze & De Donato) - Review by Dr. Peter Wendt

 You and Your Schoolchild

by Horst Költze & Maria Teresa De Donato

 

Review by Dr. Peter Wendt, Essayist and former School Counselor

 

PISA, IGLU, VERA, ... markers of educational policy discussions and control projects. Comparative tests should not only determine school policy but also give preference to learning in schools so that efficiency checks can be carried out through comparative work. The “thumb screws” are tightened, and learning content and learning paths that teachers and children have to follow are specified. Horst Költze shows how school stress is created in this way - with the result that children go into internal emigration, refuse, teachers turn away from schools and educational paths, and parents increasingly despair of schools.

Költze wants to break up these processes and names a counterpoint from which learning processes and school life can be made child-friendly again. Students should no longer be victims of “functionalist output education.” The focus must be on their innate interest in learning, from which self-regulation can be strengthened and the individual potential of each student can be developed. This has enormous social effects because the comprehensive development of the “full potential of the young generation guarantees the fulfillment of the existential requirements of every society.” This means that education policy is confronted with the attitude initiated by the OECD that young people should be viewed as “raw material” for future-oriented “economic growth,” and their learning should be controlled.

This “change of perspective” is necessary: away from market-based educational ideas that see students as a production factor for future competitive processes, towards anthropologically determined learning through which everyone can develop their “self.” Anthropologically oriented teacher training stimulates these processes and can be the starting point for child-friendly learning. In the conversation between Horst Költze and Maria Teresa De Donato, principles for “education and freedom” are outlined and named. The path for a possible and necessary turnaround in education policy is shown.

 

This book can be ordered on Amazon