It is known for a long time that when people self-organize to achieve something, the results are much better. Also they are more satisfied on their way to the goal. How far is this true for a group of children and should it be explored in schools ?
Recently I got opportunity to try the idea of Self-organization - the school concert. I decided to put-up a short song-dance for the annual concert. This is how it went. Thirty kids singed-up. I asked them to hear the song for a while and tell me who wants to be a singer, dancer or a musician. I gave three copies of the song to the three groups. Over the next one month - musicians adapted the the song, setting both the vocals and the instrumentals. Singers were the first to learn and sing in-tune. Dancers were lost for a while, till our dance-teacher showed a few steps to them, and they developed the moves. A week before the concert, I elected a child to be the conductor of the group. He was proud to hold the baton in his hand.
As we came together for the rehearsals, I could see how well they had adapted the song, dance and the music score. Effectively, children had learned to conduct themselves. The performance went-off well on the Concert day.
Now here is the thing. I had really not monitored what the kids were doing. They made copies of the song to give it to all. They decided who is good in what and selected their roles and instruments. They would gather for the rehearsal and plug-in their keyboards. I tried to provide them space for practice. They selected their costumes - as long as it was traditional. In the final performance, I was not even present anywhere near the hall. I got them dressed and sent-them off.
However there is one draw-back to such self-organized activities. It takes time. And time is one thing that schools don't have. You are asking for free time in which children can work-out their organization on-their-own ! I could squirrel away small time for my class-kids in the name of concert practice. But this is near anathema to most schools.
This was a small experiment to see if self-organization would work with kids. If we can adopt such techniques we can achieve happy learning of higher quality.
Recently I got opportunity to try the idea of Self-organization - the school concert. I decided to put-up a short song-dance for the annual concert. This is how it went. Thirty kids singed-up. I asked them to hear the song for a while and tell me who wants to be a singer, dancer or a musician. I gave three copies of the song to the three groups. Over the next one month - musicians adapted the the song, setting both the vocals and the instrumentals. Singers were the first to learn and sing in-tune. Dancers were lost for a while, till our dance-teacher showed a few steps to them, and they developed the moves. A week before the concert, I elected a child to be the conductor of the group. He was proud to hold the baton in his hand.
As we came together for the rehearsals, I could see how well they had adapted the song, dance and the music score. Effectively, children had learned to conduct themselves. The performance went-off well on the Concert day.
Now here is the thing. I had really not monitored what the kids were doing. They made copies of the song to give it to all. They decided who is good in what and selected their roles and instruments. They would gather for the rehearsal and plug-in their keyboards. I tried to provide them space for practice. They selected their costumes - as long as it was traditional. In the final performance, I was not even present anywhere near the hall. I got them dressed and sent-them off.
However there is one draw-back to such self-organized activities. It takes time. And time is one thing that schools don't have. You are asking for free time in which children can work-out their organization on-their-own ! I could squirrel away small time for my class-kids in the name of concert practice. But this is near anathema to most schools.
This was a small experiment to see if self-organization would work with kids. If we can adopt such techniques we can achieve happy learning of higher quality.
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