Student Centered Learning - Thailand

MOM’S WAY TO SUCCESSFUL STUDENT CENTERED LEARNING: THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING AND IN RESEARCH

By Peter J. Foley, Ed.D, editor and chief

My mom, Jackie Turner Foley, was a teacher who collaborated with her students. She taught children from ages 8 to 16 years old who had never learned to read properly and subsequently fell far, far behind their peers in academics. When schools no longer felt they could help such students stay in school and learn something, they called Ms. Jackie, the teacher of last resort. She was remarkably successful in teaching these children—many times labeled “unteachable” by the referring public schools, not only in getting them to read well but in them getting them to love learning.

When going through some of her papers recently, I came across this short piece of writing:

The learning process should be saturated with warmth and empathy. The key (to the successful teaching of reading) lies in allowing the student to reach out for the information he or she needs and develop his/her own ideas. As one youngster put it: ‘Mrs. Foley didn’t teach me a thing; I did it all myself.’

Dated March 1973

Educational Research over the last 40 years since my mom wrote this, has confirmed the wisdom of my mom’s student centered learning approach.

Let’s start with empathy in teaching.

Researchers have found that students who have caring relationships with their teachers are more motivated and perform better academically than students who do not have such relationships (Foster 1995; Gay 2000; Irvine, 1990). The renowned educator, Ted Sizer, had a similar prescription in calling for teachers acting as coaches and guides instead of the all too often, the one way communication of teacher to student.

A decade after my mom’s memo on education that I discovered in her files this week, Ted Sizer started the Coalition of Essential Schools in the United States. This educational movement included more that 1,000 schools and the principles of the schools were the same principles my mom espoused: high expectations; students constructing personalized meaning in their learning; teaching kids first and subjects as second, giving kids a part in the decision making on what was to be learned, and, of course, the teacher acting as a coach and mentor.

This is a good summation of principles of student centered learning.

Where my mom got her inspiration (and perhaps Sizer too) was in the methods of Marie Montessori. Like Montessori, my mom had high expectations for her students, and she made her lesson exercises in learning by doing. She was also influenced by John Dewey and thus believed in using democratic methods in her small groups in making decisions about learning or how the class would be conducted. Mom liked to stimulate conversation with her small groups of students about their thought process in solving a particular problem or having arrived at a particular idea after reading a passage. She was fond of saying to her students: “What shall we do next?”

Again, research has borne out that students’ learning improves with such participatory strategies (Biemiller&Meichenbaum, 1992).

Mom, I recall, insisted that her students concentrate on how they arrived cognitively at their conclusions or answers: “Tell me how you come to that conclusions?”; “Tell me how were you thinking?”; “How did you do that?”. Mom was teaching her students what is frequently referred to as metacognition skills that is, teaching students how to monitor their thinking and using these observations to guide them in strategies for solving problems or completing tasks. Research has shown that these skills boost students’ performance both in the classroom and on tests (Dunlosky, Serra, and Baker, 2007).

Mom also was careful to build on what the child already knew. I am not sure if mom was familiar with Lev Vygotsky’s work that became a base for educational psychology in the 1970’s even though Vygotsky died in the 1930’s. It was Vygotsky who postulated that learners had what he called the zone of proximal development( ZPD), the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that children can be helped to achieve with competent assistance. It is out of Vygotsky’s work that the present day popular teaching method of scaffolding grew. One way of defining scaffolding as a teaching method is when a teacher models a desired learning strategy or task and then gradually shifts the responsibility to the students.

Mom used this technique over and over again, by giving her students help with only the skills that were new or beyond their ability. Research indicates that scaffolding minimizes failure, which decreases frustration, especially with special learning needs children (Van Der Stuyf, R, 2002).

The proof of mom’s methods was shown in the success she had in teaching children with special needs how to read with comprehension. Research 40 years after her note on her methodology shows just how right she was in employing the principles of teaching that have been touched on in this article. They are principles incorporated in the rubric student centered learning. Sadly, both in the United States and in Thailand, many public schools still teach by rote with a one way communication, that is, teachers lecturing to students. Student centered learning in both Thailand and the United States has yet to win the hearts and minds of teachers and administrators.

In the words of folk singer Bob Dylan: “when will we ever learn, when will we ever learn”.MOM’S WAY TO SUCCESSFUL STUDENT CENTERED LEARNING: THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING AND IN RESEARCH

By Peter J. Foley, Ed.D, editor and chief

คุณแม่ของผม, แจคกี้ เทิร์นเนอร์ โฟลีย์ เป็นคุณครูที่ทำงานช่วยเหลือกับเด็กนักเรียนของท่าน ท่านสอนนักเรียนตั้งแต่อายุ 6 ถึง 16 ปี ซึ่งเด็กนักเรียนเหล่านี้ เป็นเด็กที่ไม่เคยเรียนรู้วิธีการอ่านหนังสืออย่างถูกต้อง และยังเรียนได้ช้าตามหลังเพื่อนๆ เมื่อทางโรงเรียนรู้สึกว่า ไม่สามารถช่วยนักเรียนกลุ่มนี้ที่อยู่ในโรงเรียนเรียนรู้ได้ จึงเรียก มิสแจคกี้, the teacher of the last resort คุณแม่ประสบความสำเร็จอย่างน่าทึ่งในเรื่องของการสอนเด็กๆเหล่านี้ ที่หลายๆครั้งได้รับนามว่า “ unteachable” จากโรงเรียนของรัฐบาล คุณแม่ไม่เพียงแต่สอนพวกเขาให้อ่านได้เท่านั้น แต่ยังทำให้พวกเขารักในการเรียนรู้ด้วย เมื่อได้อ่านบางส่วนของบันทึกของคุณแม่ ผมได้นำบางส่วนสั้นของบันทึกของแม่ไว้ว่า:

กระบวนการเรียนรู้ควรเริ่มต้นขึ้นด้วยความอบอุ่นและเอาใจใส่ เป็นสิ่งสำคัญ (เพื่อความสำเร็จในสอนเรื่องการอ่าน) ในการทำให้เด็กนักเรียนเอื้อมถึงเนื้อหาที่พวกเขาต้องการและ พัฒนาแนวความคิดของเขา เหมือนอย่างเช่นเด็กน้อยคนหนึ่งว่า “ มิสซิส โฟลีย์ไม่ได้สอนหนู แต่หนูเรียนด้วยตัวเอง”

วันหนึ่งในเดือนมีนาคม 1973

งานวิจัยด้านการศึกษา 40 ปีหลังจากที่คุณแม่ของผมได้เขียนสิ่งนี้ไว้ ได้เป็นสิ่งยืนยันถึงภูมิปัญญาของคุณแม่ เรื่องการเข้าถึงนักเรียนเป็นศูนย์กลางกาเรียนรู้

เริ่มจากความเอาใจใส่การสอน

นักวิจัยได้ค้นพบว่า นักเรียนที่มีรับความสัมพันธ์แบบห่วงใยจากคุณครูของเขา จะมีแรงจูงใจและทำงานได้ดีกว่านักเรียนที่ไม่ได้รับความสัมพันธ์ดังกล่าว(Foster 1995; Gay 2000; Irvine, 1990) Ted Sizer, นักวิชาการที่มีชื่อเสียงคนหนึ่งมีมาตรการในการให้คุณครูทำหน้าที่เหมือนเป็นโค้ช และให้คำแนะนำแทนบ่อยๆ ซึ่งเป็นวิธีหนึ่งในการสื่อสารระหว่างคุณครูและนักเรียน

หนึ่งทศวรรษ หลังจากที่คุณแม่เขียนบันทึกไว้ ซึ่งฉันได้ไปค้นเจอบันทึกนี้ในไฟล์งานของท่านในสัปดาห์นี้  Ted Sizer ได้เริ่มก่อตั้ง

Coalition of Essential Schools ในสหรัฐอเมริกา การเคลื่อนไหวด้านการศึกษานี้ได้รวบรวมโรงเรียนต่างๆมากกว่า 1000 โรงเรียน และหลักการในการดำเนินการของโรงเรียนเป็นแบบเดียวกันกับคุณแม่ผม คือ ความคาดหวังที่สูง, การสร้างนิยามส่วนตัวของนักเรียนในการเรียนรู้, สอนเด็กๆก่อนแล้วค่อยสอนวิชาการ คือ ให้เด็กๆเป็นส่วนหนึ่งในการตัดสินใจว่า ต้องการเรียนอะไรในหลักสูตร และคุณครูควรจะเป็นเหมือนโค้ชและพี่เลี้ยง นี่คือผลรวมที่ดีของหลักการนักเรียนเป็นศูนย์กลางการเรียนรู้

คุณแม่ของผมได้รับแรงบันดาลใจ (และอาจ Sizer ด้วยเช่นกัน) มาจากวิธีการของ Marie Montessori เช่นเดียวกับ Marie Montessori คุณแม่ของผมมีความคาดหวังสูงในตัวนักเรียนของท่าน และท่านทำแบบฝึกหัดบทเรียนของแม่ในการเรียนรู้ด้วยการลงมือทำ ท่านยังได้รับอิทธิพลจาก John Dewey ซึ่งเชื่อในการใช้ประชาธิปไตยในกลุ่มเล็ก ๆ ของเธอในการตัดสินใจเกี่ยวกับการเรียนรู้หรือวิธีการเรียนในห้องเรียนควรเป็นในรูปแบบใด คุณแม่ชอบที่จะกระตุ้นให้เกิดการสนทนากับกลุ่มเล็ก ๆ ของนักเรียนของคุณแม่ เกี่ยวกับกระบวนการคิดของพวกเขาในการแก้ปัญหาเฉพาะหรือมีความคิดเฉพาะหลังจากที่ได้ผ่านการอ่านบทความต่างๆ  คุณแม่มักจะพูดกับนักเรียนของท่านเองว่า “เราควรจะทำอะไรต่อไปกัน”

ทั้งยังได้มีงานวิจัยเกี่ยวกับการพัฒนากาเรียนรู้ของนักเรียนขึ้นอยู่กับกลยุทธ์ของการมีส่วนร่วมดังกล่าว(Biemiller&Meichenbaum, 1992).

ผมจำได้ว่า คุณแม่ของผมยืนยันที่จะให้นักเรียนของท่านให้ความสนใจในการรวบรวมองค์ความรู้จากทีเป็นข้อสรุปและคำตอบของพวกเขา “บอกครูว่า นักเรียนได้ข้อสรุปเช่นนี้ได้อย่างไร?” “บอกครูว่า นักเรียนคิดได้อย่างไร” “นักเรียนทำได้อย่างไร”  ซึ่งคุณแม่ได้กำลังสอนนักเรียนของท่านในทักษะที่เรียกว่า อภิปัญญา ซึงเป็นการสอนนักเรียนให้ตรวจสอบความเห็นของเขาและจากทักษะการสังเกตเหล่านี้จะนำให้พวกเขารู้จักการแก้ปัญหาหรือทำงานให้สำเร็จลุล่วงได้ มีงานวิจัยได้แสดงให้เห็นว่า ทักษะเหล่านี้ทำให้เพิ่มศักยภาพของนักเรียนทั้งในห้องเรียนและในการทดสอบแข่งขัน (Dunlosky, Serra, and Baker, 2007).

คุณแม่ยังคงระมัดระวังในสิ่งที่นักเรียนรู้อยู่แล้ว ผมไม่แน่ใจว่า คุณแม่จะคล้ายๆกับการทำงานของ Lev Vygotsky ซึ่งงานนี้ได้กลายเป็นพื้นฐานของจิตวิทยาด้านการศึกษา ในปี 1970  ถึงแม้ว่า Vygotsky เสียชีวิตในปี 1930 ซึ่งเป็น Vygotsky ทีเป็นผู้ตั้งสมติฐานว่า ผู้เรียนจะมี zone of proximal development( ZPD) ซึ่งเป็ช่องว่างระหว่างสิ่งที่เด็กๆสามารถทำได้ด้วยตัวเองกับเพิ่มการเรียนรู้ต่อไป เพื่อให้เด็กนักเรียนสามารถได้รับความช่วยเหลือและนำไปสู่ความสำเร็จ สิ่งนี้นอกเหนือจากงานของ Vygotsky ซึ่งเป็นวิธีการสอนที่เป็นแบบ scaffolding grew เป็นวิธีที่เป็นที่นิยมในปัจจุบัน วิธีการหนึ่งในการกำหนด scaffolding เป็นวิธีการสอน คือ เมื่อคุณครูสร้างแบบจำลองกลยุทธการเรียนรู้ หรือโครงงาน จากนั้นให้มอบหมายให้เป็นความรับผิดชอบของนักเรียน

คุณแม่ใช้เทคนิคนี้ซ้ำแล้วซ้ำอีก โดยการมอบหมายให้นักเรียนได้มีส่วนช่วยเหลือตามทักษะและความสามารถของนักเรียนเอง นักวิจัยชี้ชัดว่า scaffolding ลดความผิดพลาด ซึ่งลดความยุ่งยาก โดยเฉพาะ เด็กที่ต้องการการเรียนรู้แบบพิเศษ (Van Der Stuyf, R, 2002)

สิ่งที่เป็นการพิสูจน์วิธีการของคุณแม่เห็นได้จากความสำเร็จจากการสอนเด็กที่ต้องการการเรียนรู้แบบพิเศษ สามารถเรียนรู้ที่จะอ่านหนังสือได้ด้วยความเข้าใจ งานวิจัย 40 ปี หลังจากที่คุณแม่ได้บันทึกวิธีการของแม่ไว้ ได้แสดงให้เห็นถึงความถูกต้องของหลักการการสอนของคุณแม่ งานวิจัยได้ขึ้นทะเบียนสำหรับการสอนโดยมีนักเรียนเป็นศูนย์กลางกาเรียนรู้ เป็นที่น่าเศร้าใจ ทั้งในสหรัฐอเมริกาและไทย มีหลายๆโรงเรียนที่ยังคงสอนนักเรียนให้จดและท่องจำ โดยมีการสื่อสารเพียงทางเดียวในห้องเรียน ซึ่งคุณครูจะเป็นคนบรรยายให้กับนักเรียน หลักการเรียนรู้โดยมีนักเรียนเป็นศูนย์กลางการเรียนรู้ ยังคงไม่สามารถชนะใจครูและผู้บริหารได้เลย

จากคำกล่าวของนักร้องเพลงโฟล์ก Bob Dylan  “when will we ever learn, when will we ever learn”.

  Ellen Cornish is a very experienced Early Childhood and Primary School teacher from Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Dr Don Jordan had an extensive career in Tasmanian schools and completed his doctorate at Curtin University in Western Australia. Both Don and Ellen have had experience in other countries, either as visiting teachers or consultants. They have contributed several articles to SCLT.

Student Self-Assessment: what I ask myself

Our classroom teaching experience has demonstrated to us that whilst our own teacher-made and standardized tests gave us information about our student’s learning, these tests did not provide us with all the information we required or to allow our students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of what it is they had learnt. Nor did these testing regimes give students feedback on their own learning.

Student Self-Assessment.  Feeling Good Feeling Great. The Human Body.

  References. Armstrong, T. (2009). Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Bloom, Benjamin S. & David R. Krathwohl. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York, Longmans. Gardner, H. (2006a). Multiple intelligences: New horizons in theory and practice. New York: Basic Books

Principals Be[a]ware!: Student centered learning also requires teacher centered learning and it must permeate every aspect of schooling, even discipline!

By Dr. Barbara Kameniar

After spending nearly 20 years in teacher education I decided to “put my money where my mouth was” and return to teach in schools in February this year. I had spent 2012 undertaking the role of a “clinical specialist” supervising teacher candidates during their placements in schools and had become increasingly enthused about returning to high school teaching.

Having taught across a good part of the teacher education program at three different Australian universities and in subjects ranging from ethics and education, to educational psychology, sociology of education and subject specific pedagogical studies, I had developed a strong sense of what was possible within the classroom. I was aware of many of the inhibitors to student-centered practices as well as some of the ways in which to address those inhibitors. I had also become increasingly convinced that one of the best ways to effect change in education was for expert teacher educators to return to school classrooms at frequent intervals to share their expertise and to learn.

I quite deliberately chose a school in a disadvantaged area where national literacy and numeracy assessment results were low. For example, approximately one in four students were below the national benchmark in literacy and one in three below the national benchmark in numeracy at one of the year levels. The school had a principal who had held the position for four years and by all accounts the school had moved from being unwieldy and, in some cases, unsafe, to being an orderly and well-kept place with increasing enrollments.

However, a quick glance at the publically available literacy and numeracy results suggested that while order and discipline had improved, learning outcomes for many students had declined. So what happened and what can be learnt from the example of this school?

First, it is important to note that the principal was no doubt well intentioned, and that this school is not unique. Australia’s decline in international test results over the last ten years suggests that performance outcomes for many Australian students have fallen. This fall has happened at the same time that there has been a shift to private education, an increased emphasis on uniforms and discipline, and a focus on a single national curriculum and agreed standards. That is, the more governments, education departments and schools have focused on uniformity and control, the greater the decline in outcomes. It is important to note that this decline has not been universal. Some students still do well but overall outcomes have fallen.

The reasons for this change are multiple and complex. However, I would like to focus on three elements of school leadership that are not often spoken about in a field of literature that emphasizes policies and procedures; trust, freedom and respect. Before discussing these I will briefly outline a key practice within the school in which I worked for a few weeks and highlight how its apparent success had negative implications for trust, freedom and respect, and ultimately for student and teacher learning.

The Practice

As noted above, four years ago the school had significant problems with violent, aggressive and dangerous behavior. Like many principals in Australia and Thailand the incoming Principal acted decisively to “take control”. Quite appropriately the Principal established clear boundaries and clear consequences for any breach. The Principal insisted on a “whole school approach” to discipline. This entailed the identification and articulation of behavioral expectations among students that were to be systematically applied by all teachers. Behavioral expectations were reinforced through clearly defined rewards and punishments.

At the center of this system was the use of a school diary. Behavioral expectations were reduced to four (and later three) core values that were printed on every second page in the diary. At the beginning of the week, all students commenced with a grade of C+ for each value. During the week teachers were encouraged to record a student’s adherence to the values through notes in the diary that specified “good and respectful” behavior and “bad or disruptive” behavior. At the end of the week the pastoral teacher went through each diary, undertaking a calculus of “good” and “bad” notes, adding up or down from the C+ to derive a grade for the week. Students would then take the diaries home with the opportunity to share their success or otherwise, with their parents or guardians.

Teachers were expected to adhere to this process and were followed up by senior staff if they didn’t identify or manage a specific breach of behavior – particularly those breaches related to uniform, lateness or being out of class. Teachers were also expected to sign-in when they arrived at school and sign-out when they left (an unfamiliar but increasingly common practice for teachers in a traditionally liberal society like Australia), and clear expectations around arrival and departure times were set for staff.

An array of experts was brought in to undertake performance development with the teachers, and teachers were supported to undertake professional learning outside the school. Most teachers’ workloads were high (in part, as a result of needing to pay for a growing number of administration and non-teaching managerial staff) and teachers who were not deemed competent (or in some cases competent but not compliant) carried workloads that were so heavy they inevitably made the decision to seek employment elsewhere or they asked to go part-time. At times requests for part-time employment were refused and teachers subsequently left.

After four years of these processes being rigorously applied I arrived to find students who wore their uniforms well, were generally very polite, arrived at class on time and with the books that were required for the lesson. I also found a school in which teachers arrived early, worked at their desks in between lessons and stayed late. If the mark of an effective school is order then this school might be deemed to be effective.

However, I also found students who were passive learners and who saw the teacher as the locus of control, not only for their behavior but for their thinking as well. Most of the students saw “getting the right answer” as the purpose of learning and “remaining quiet while completing a required task” as the mark of a “good student”.

I found teachers who deeply loved and cared for the students and who were prepared to engage in their own professional learning so that student outcomes were enhanced. However, their teaching loads limited planning time and the idea of planning as a team, was foreign to most. The application of rigid rules around behavior, compliance and obedience meant the teacher’s creativity and effectiveness was reduced.

While creative pedagogic practices occurred in some classrooms, they often appeared to be used as engagement tools rather than learning tools. That is, students enjoyed the classes because the activities were fun but the activities were not necessarily organized to enable building of deep knowledge and discipline-specific skills over time.

Because the principal frequently asked students questions like “who is your favorite teacher?” and student dislikes and complaints had implications for the teachers, some teachers inevitably sought to “keep the peace” by not asking anything too demanding of the students. The rather dangerous practice of emphasizing “favorites” was one of the few examples of seeking students’ feelings about their schooling. However, it acted more as a way of “catching teachers out” than as genuinely seeking student feedback regarding their progress and learning experiences. In short, the attempt to create a safe and orderly school environment encouraged students and teachers to be silent and compliant. They effectively became disempowered.

When I arrived at the school the Principal recognized a problem existed – “the students in this school are not active learners and the teachers need help”. However, the Principal was unable to see that the discipline policy that had been so successful at stopping unruly behavior four years earlier was now a big part of the problem. While we would all agree that an orderly school is important in terms of safety and learning, when orderliness becomes control, active, deep and insightful student centered learning is severely inhibited.

The discipline practices described above are reminiscent of Pavlov and his dog. B.F. Skinner, the often-maligned behaviorist, criticized simple reward and punishment approaches to learning arguing instead that positive and negative reinforcement, provided at indeterminate intervals, was more effective. Given that Skinner’s behaviorism has itself been severely criticized over the years for its de-humanization of students and narrow outcomes, one does have to ask why this, and other schools, continue with practices that are pre-Skinnerian and that Skinner himself described as ineffective.

Certainly there may be times when behavior in schools is so dangerous, or obstructs learning to such an extent, that it becomes justifiable to utilize a strict behaviorist approach. However, once the immediate danger is over it is imperative that a school quickly moves to more humanist and restorative sets of practices. That is, practices that are commensurate with the education of active and responsible citizens must always be a priority. Narrowly defined behaviorist practices that render students and teachers passive and compliant must be resisted as much as possible.

Truly student-centered practices require trust, freedom and respect for students and teachers. Below I outline very briefly where each of these qualities were missing and what practices might have assisted in developing them. I also argue that there needs to be coherence between expectations for students and the support that teachers are given.

Trust

One of the most basic human needs is to be able to trust and be trusted. According to Erik Erikson (1979) we must first learn to trust and then to know others can trust us if we are to become autonomous, independent, industrious people who are able to take initiative and be active, powerful and productive citizens with a sense of social justice for ourselves and others. However, for all intents and purposes, there appeared to be a lack of trust in the students and teachers at this school. Why else would so much about their daily lives need to be itemized and administered? Why else would surveillance be normalized and reporting on infractions have had been so valued? Teachers and students were corrected and controlled, and this affected learning.

Teachers were expected to engage in student-centered and constructivist practices in the classroom because they were told to do so. However they, themselves, were treated as passive recipients of the wisdom of others. They were exposed to “experts” who were either brought into the school or encountered in professional learning days away from the classroom. Much of the professional learning was abstract or limited because it focused on what others thought the teachers needed rather than what the teachers identified as important for their immediate and long-term practice. Later, when the teachers were asked what they needed, they identified simple and affordable practices – time to plan together, fewer interruptions to classroom time, support for extending their pedagogic content knowledge that was relevant to their current needs, the opportunity to watch others teach and to have others watch them and give them feedback. They wanted feedback! But feedback for themselves and their growth as teachers, not feedback for a performance review that would result in a judgment being made about them as a teacher.

It seems like common sense to say that student-centered learning will be most effective when teachers understand “from the inside” what it means to be valued and trusted themselves, when they are acknowledged as learners, as much as they are understood to be teachers. Recognition and negotiation requires a situated understanding of what recognition and negotiation looks like, and feels like. Teachers tend to know what they need and they must be trusted to be able to identify and articulate these needs. Like students, not all teachers may know the best way to achieve their identified needs, however, they are usually open to suggestions that are respectful of their freedom.

Freedom

Paulo Freire (1972) calls education the “practice of freedom”. For Freire, if education does not lead to freedom then it is not education, but instead, another form of repression.

Freire articulated a view of student centeredness that was reliant on a reconceptualization of the teacher as teacher-student and the student as student-teacher. This reconceptualization is dependent on structural enablers within a school that do not control the teachers’ practices through excessive focus on minutiae.

It has become increasingly common in Australian schools to document almost every detail of each student’s learning. The documentation often has regulatory intent insofar as it records not only the student’s progress but the teacher’s practices as well. The increase in documentation has occurred at a time when classroom contact time is also increasing, leading to an emphasis by some teachers on record keeping of results rather than on student learning per se.

Knowledge and skills are also broken down into minute detail and arranged hierarchically with an assumption that progress is reliant on the successful completion of preceding stages. While there are some clear advantages to understanding various steps along the way to expertise in any area, focus on the steps as an end in themselves is problematic in the extreme. For example, in Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1991) wrote that attendance to “little things” is an effective way of training individuals and groups in “correct” practices that are defined by people who have authority and power.

Attention to minute detail is frequently engaged as a practice to render people passive. If student-centered education is ever going to fulfill its aims, teachers as well as students must be given the freedom to negotiate with one another about what learning is valuable, what learning outcomes are appropriate, and how learning should proceed. The ideas of teachers and students must be respected and valued as importance components of successful education.

Respect

When an excessive adherence to similitude first gave way to an understanding that difference was not only a part of life but also something of great value, “tolerance” was considered the most appropriate response. The idea of tolerance lost favor because of the way in which it reproduced an imbalance in power between those who were tolerant and those who were being tolerated. More recently “tolerance” gave way to the much more radical disposition of respect. Respect entails recognizing the inherent worth of something or someone. Teachers and students should be respected by one another and should also be respected by and respect Principals and other education leaders. It is only in a climate of deep respect for one another that all participants in education will grow.

Recently I spent time in another school in a disadvantaged area not too far from the school I described above. This school approached disadvantage in a different way, through trust, freedom and respect for teachers, students and the local community. The school has a long history of adapting teaching and learning to the interests and needs of students in the school and of taking students out of school to meet the requirements of the curriculum in alternative settings such as farms and industry. However, most impressive was the way in which teacher learning is seen as a vital part of student learning.

Rather than the Principal being seen as someone who must control outcomes for students through controlling teachers and their practices, the Principal in this school works with other senior staff to sit alongside teachers in their classrooms and help them with their planning and practice. Working more as a coach or mentor than a supervisor or judge, the Principal and senior staff work with teachers to help them identify the learning needs of the students and to ensure that their practices help to meet those needs.  Teachers are trusted to be able to engage in professional conversations about their own practices and given the freedom to experiment with alternative ideas. All teachers I spoke to indicated that their practice was becoming more student-centered in response to the opportunity to engage in non-judgmental professional conversations that are the result of direct observations of their practices.

There are probably no distinct sets of practices that will meet the learning needs of all students and teachers in all schools. Whatever practices are engaged in should be driven by a desire to trust both teachers and students, value freedom and be prepared to live with the “risk” of freedom, and be prepared to respect teachers’ and students’ understandings of their needs and also their desires. This is a story for Principals because they are, in the end, the people who limit or permit the shape of learning in schools. It is an Australian tale but, as someone who has spent quite a number of years visiting schools in Thailand, it is a Thai tale too. Our desires for positive outcomes must always be underpinned by a commitment to trusting others, being prepared to accept their right to freedom, and respecting the decisions they make. This does not diminish the role of the Principal. Instead it frames the Principal as a wise and knowledgeable Ajarn who gently guides, rather than a bureaucratic administrator whose chief role is to assess.

A LITTLE DIARY FROM THE SCHOOL FOR LIFE –

PART II

26^th July to 13^th August 2012

Hanseatic School for Life, 26^th July

A conversation with Sommart Krawkeo. As educational manager, he wants to bring the concept of the Hanseatic (formerly Beluga) School for Life to the far reaches of the coast which was ravaged by the tsunami in late 2004. Since August 2011, when the turbulence surrounding the collapse of the Beluga Group in Bremen slowly subsided and it became clear that the Beluga School for Life could survive with new sponsors and under the name of the Hanseatic School for Life, I have been acting in an advisory capacity for the project which I founded in 2005 after the tsunami and for which I acted as educational leader until 2010. My role is a voluntary one, for which the School for Life receives an annual compensation of €20,000 until my contract ends in July 2014.

Among other things, Sommart and I discuss a problem which is evident not only in Thailand after the tsunami, but also further afield – the fact that humanitarian aid projects, especially those of a prolonged duration, must be careful to ensure that people do not become dependent on external aid. Entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurship, the approaches of the Schools for Life, represent good methods for preventing this tendency, instead teaching the children to stand on their own feet.

Thalang, 28^th July

1. First stop: Bremen: I am here on a visit, and go for a stroll through the town. I come across a shop which repairs shoes, copies keys and sells a few watches. I have owned a Swiss watch for the past twenty years, not an expensive one, but reliable – but now the glass cover has got a crack in it and the battery has given up the ghost. I ask the man behind the counter to replace the battery and the glass cover. He manages to open the paneling on the back of the watch, but is unable to close it again. After half an hour of concerted effort, he gives up, and I take back the glass cover, the watch, and the panel, I am about to pay for the battery, but the man says that this is against his code of honor, which find very friendly of him.

1. Second stop: Berlin: With the components of my watch in my bag, I head for Berlin’s finest department store and find the section for fancy Swiss watches. I show them the individual pieces and tell them what I would like: a new glass cover and the paneling put back on. I am requested to come back in an hour. When I return, the expert behind the counter tells me with a dour face that the watch will have to be sent back to the manufacturer. They will contact me if the repair will cost over €200. Gulp!

After quite some time, I receive a message to say that I can come and pick the watch up. Back at the counter of this distinguished establishment, I am told that the watch is irreparable. I am somehow relieved – better the components of a watch than a dizzyingly extortionate bill for a glass cover and a panel which has been screwed back on.

1. Third stop: Thalang/Thailand: This is a place that you really only drive through if you are going from the mainland of the coast province Phang Nga to the town of Phuket on the island of the same name, via the long Sarasin Bridge. In Thalang there is a covered market selling all kinds of paraphernalia, and not far from the entrance sits an old watchmaker at a little table. I give him the parts of my watch and ask whether he can help me. He nods. I sit down on a stool opposite him and wait, expecting him to give up. First he checks the battery, and says it’s new. Then he holds up a magnifying glass to his eye and barely five minutes pass before he has replaced the glass cover, having bent the minute hand back into place (it was a little bit crooked), screwed the cover back on and attached a sealing ring. He then turns around and reaches for a little polishing machine to give the watch a glossy finish. I ask the price, and he says 280 baht – which is about €7.36.

Vivat Thalang! Long live this watchmaker! And if our Swiss friends don’t shift up a few gears in their watch repair service, and indeed their price-performance ratio – whether it’s up to incompetence, arrogance, indifference, laziness, or urging people on to consume? – then at some point they will find out that you don’t always rise in the market, but can also fall.

Chiang Mai, 6^th August

Ott, who went from ‘Bad Boy’ to polo player, has returned from Argentina. While he was there, he was trained as an up-and-coming professional. Ott is overwhelmed. He learned more there than he had learned in the rest of his life put together. He has now understood what it means to learn, and wants to learn about everything – religion, philosophy, politics – he has a multitude of questions that want answers. Dominique Leutwiler is the right person; she listens and answers with great patience. After a few days’ holiday in Chiang Mai, Ott is back at the Pattaya Polo Club and it’s onwards and upwards.

The owner of the club, Harald Link, has donated the school three beautiful horses and commissioned some stables to be built in a traditional style on some land on Lamphun Road in Chiang Mai. Now the way has been paved for offering equine therapy. There will be no lack of demand.

Chiang Rai, 7^th August

A mother and father belonging to the Karen people tell me that their daughter, who goes to school in the border town of Chiang Rai, has been reprimanded by her teacher for dying her hair brown, which is forbidden. She hasn’t though – her hair is naturally brown, like her mother’s – yes, there are brown-haired people in Thailand too. The teacher, however, doesn’t believe this and has continued to scolds her. So the daughter now dyes her hair black every morning so that it looks as if it hasn’t been dyed.

School for Life, 8^th August

On the lower part of the campus, the area which is being used for organic farming is increasing. Chanmongkol, the manager of the Center of Organic Farming & Animal Husbandry, accompanies me around the grounds. Down at the creek, tightly-woven bamboo boxes lie in the water protruding by about 30cm, and teeming with fish. I ask whether the especially agile fish are still jumping over the edge of the baskets on a bid for freedom. Well yes, replies Chanmongkol, but there are also immigrant fish that jump in when the fish inside are fed, eager to join the meal. All told, with emigrants and immigrants, numbers remain more or less stable.

On the field below the sports facilities, all manner of vegetables are growing, including beans and cucumbers. At the start, Chanmongkol had been wondering where they were all disappearing to, until he noticed that the children were eating them straight from the field. He toyed with the idea of putting up a fence, but decided against it – the children’s bellies is where the food is intended for anyway.

Half a dozen piglets are grunting in the spacious pigsty. A big, fat pig holds its mouth open wide because Suchart the farm worker is spraying him with a hosepipe and the happy pig can shower and drink at the same time. We carry on, and call in at Suchart’s hut. I want to see something there that I have never seen before: Suchart is rearing three large geckos that will grow to be much larger still – about 40cm long and weighing 400 grams. Chanmongkol explains that they can then be exported to Arab countries and sold for 200,000 baht (€5260) each. Apparently, a medically coveted serum would then be extracted from them, from one point on their head and one on their tail. This is not (yet) a project which involves the children – rather an expression of Chanmongkol and Suchart’s desire to experiment. They assure me that they have heard about these dream prices from reliable sources.

I can see three geckos of half an arm’s length each, who have nothing to do in their separate, barred boxes than to flick their long tongues at the live grasshoppers which they are fed every evening. Chanmongkol and Suchart get the grasshoppers from Kru Tomsri, the teacher who – as well as having a lovely vegetable garden – keeps a whole menagerie of animals including a rat. The rat likes to eat grasshoppers, so these are being bred carefully and expertly in Kru Tomsri’s little queendom.

Namsom, whose mother was sentenced to imprisonment in the women’s prison in Chiang Mai for 25 years, also has a pet rat. It has become vegetarian because it is only fed vegetables. Namsom loves the rat, so it’s allowed to go everywhere and join in with everything. Namsom’s new family teacher finds this rather unhygienic, so the question arises of how to accommodate the rat appropriately. Namsom would probably enjoy the blockbuster animation film “Ratatouille”, a humorous call for a better status for rats in the animal class struggle; she hasn’t had a chance to see it yet though.

While the feeding up of the geckos is still in its early stages (the two breeders give me the reassuring information that geckos are neither a protected species nor subject to a ban on exports), another more advanced experiment is running in a dimly lit room adjacent to the auditorium. This has been conceived of by Khun Anchana, who works at the School for Life to guarantee thorough and transparent financial management, and has sought advice for this experiment from scientists at a university in Bangkok.

A small team of children and teachers show me the room in which silk worms are being bred. On a table are the cocoons from which the silk worms have now emerged as butterflies. In a corner behind this is a box, the open sides of which reveal a number of little hanging threads on which the butterflies have laid eggs. Having eaten their fill of mulberry leaves when they were caterpillars, the butterflies then live on a diet for the seven short days of their life, with time only to mate, ensure the existence of their offspring, flutter around the room and then die. A very short flight on the wings of love. As I watch these dark, large-winged beings, I think of opening the door and letting them escape to freedom, but am reminded that I wouldn’t be doing them a favor because it would make it difficult for them to find a partner and they wouldn’t be able to produce the next generation. Better then to leave them to their short moment of happiness in the little room.

School for Life, 9^th August

The first installment of €20,000, paid by the Hanseatic School for Life gGmbH in Hamburg, is on its way. This money is desperately needed because the subsidies from Germany have decreased. Lots of sponsors have remained loyal for many years, but quite a few of them have now retired from professional life, and living on a pension, have to budget their limited resources.

The internationally experienced manager Maik Fuellmann has taken on the problem, and hand in hand with representatives of a major insurance company has thought up a way of motivating many customers to support the School for Life with small monthly sums of 6, 12 or 15 Euros. We are optimistic, and hope that this will be a success story.

In Germany, the team that looks after the School for Life has been reinforced: Andreas Dernbach, who was in development work for many years in Vietnam, has taken over the baton from Rita Haberkorn to become the new director of the School for Life Institute at the International Academy (INA), Free University of Berlin. Other members of the institute include Christian Luther, director of the Digital Print Centre ‘Laserline’ in Berlin, who will be responsible for setting up a support group, especially made of businesses; Dr. Julian Bomert of the Berlin University for Further Education, which – along with the Robinsohn Foundation – takes care of the collection, management and forwarding of donations and advises the School for Life;  Ulrich Griesdorn, from the German Foundation Center, a longtime adviser and supporter of the project; Dr. Berndt Tausch, CEO of the Step Foundation in Freiburg, which has promoted physical education at the School for Life for many years; and Rita Haberkorn, whose commitment from the beginning of the project helped secure its existence and whose advice is still in demand. Dorothea Schrimpe and Kathrin Ebel have founded UMIWI together, selling beautiful colored glazed bangles made from mango wood, produced in Chiang Mai under the supervision of Dominique Leutwiler – the proceeds go to the School for Life. Dr. Diethelm Krull has also joined the team, under contract from Barbara Hunz Personnel Management Ltd., and has taken on the task of fund-raising for the School for Life.

Of all institutions, the Shaul and Hilde Robinsohn Foundation is our oldest and most loyal supporter and competence companion, with their board members Prof. Dr. Götz Doyé, Rita Haberkorn, Dr. Gerd Harms, Dr. Hans-Henning Pistor and Dr. Wolfgang Schirp. The commitment of these people as well as the many others in Germany and Thailand is very moving, and I am very, very grateful to them all.

School for Life, 10^th August

The publishing company ‘verlag das netz’ has sent a proposal for the cover of my book, “Semi-Controlled Chaos – 50 Years of Reports, Essays and Portraits”, which will appear in Autumn 2012. 600 pages of text, lots of illustrations and a title that is borrowed from a text by Herman Melville. In “Israel Potter – His 50 Years in Exile”, he writes:

“The career of a stubborn adventurer is obvious proof of the principle that those who desire success in the bigger picture should not wait for smooth seas – which have never existed and will never do – but rather begin making their way blindly towards their goal with the random methods they have to hand and leave the rest to fortune. For all human relationships are messy by nature, as they both stem from and are maintained by a kind of semi-contained chaos.”

The printing of the book will receive substantial financial support from Laserline and the publishing company, and both the profits and my author’s fee will be used to benefit the children at the School for Life.

In the early 1960s, I began writing a lot for the newspaper ‘Die Zeit’ in Hamburg, and later also for other newspapers and magazines, and found that curiosity about the immediate and wider world can lead to getting entangled in situations of semi-controlled chaos – and that it can be important to keep the goal in mind and to develop good ideas along the way. I have encouraged my students to approach different realities from different perspectives and to choose a lively language for their description rather than fall to the assumption that abstract jargon is necessarily enlightening. I remember a story told to me by ethnopsychoanalyst Mario Erdheim, who once visited a colleague in a remote part of the world – perhaps Borneo? – and was fascinated by the stories he heard in the evening by the fire. His colleague then presented him with an article as a farewell present, said to contain the stories he had told his friend, so that Erdheim could read everything again on his flight home. When he did, however, it was unrecognizable. All the vibrancy and color had fallen victim to icy sheets of technical jargon.

Our condition is part of the process of realization, as indicated years ago by a doctoral student who wrote her research about the Pinochet regime in Chile and the transmission of the traumatic experiences of torture victims to the next generation. She wrote down her fears, doubts and unanswered questions in a research journal, which added a second complementary level of commentary to the actual research process. The “semi-controlled chaos” can be conceived of as a biography – translated into camera movements – of my curiosity about the world, the risks that are taken and the attempts to capture and hold on to threads of a real utopia.

School for Life, 11^th August

In Thailand, Mother’s Day is on the Queen’s birthday. At 9am, we gather outside near the entrance gate, in front of her picture. The headmistress, Siriporn, reads out a list of good intentions with her face turned to the royal image. This is done by all of the head teachers of all the schools in Thailand.

Today, the children are wearing what in this country is called “national dress” – the costumes of the Lisu, Lahu, Akha, Hmong, Karen, Thaiyai and the Thais of the North. A colorful picture. Celebrating Mother’s Day with children who often have no mother, either because she is no longer alive, or is not in a position to take care of her child, is a difficult and sometimes tearful affair.

I tell the children the story of the chalk circle: many, many years ago, two women both claimed that they were the mother of the same child. They quarreled violently and finally, went to court. Only one of them could be the real mother. The judge listened to both women, and then said he didn’t know who was the right or the wrong mother, and then he drew a big circle on the ground in chalk. He placed the child in the middle of the circle and ordered the two women to pull the child until one of them succeeds in pulling the child out of the circle – this mother would be the winner. The women began to pull, but then one of them let go. The other woman was triumphant, thinking the child was now hers. However, the judge took the child away from her and gave it to the woman who had let go, with the words: “You are the real mother, because you couldn’t bear your child to suffer.”

While I tell the story, which has spread since ancient times in different variations throughout various cultures, two young women who have come with a group of twelve from Kolping to do a work camp at the School for Life, play the roles of the two mothers. They take a kid and pretend to pull with all their might. Then one of them lets go. Now in the role of the judge, when I take the child away from the woman who held on and give the child to the real mother, this makes a big impression on the children, and some of them come running up to me and hang on me like grapes.

Later that morning, as every year on Mother’s Day, an Abbot comes with his monks and neighbors who live near his temple. They bring the children’s favorite food, and the Abbot shows them that Mother’s Day can be a good day even without mothers.

School for Life, 12. August

A few days ago, lightning struck the school. Nothing bad happened – no fire, and no one was hurt. The flash just broke the TV, DVD player and computer system. It will take a while until they’re repaired. I use this as an opportunity to spend the evening reading KurtTucholsky, volume 7 of his collected works. Tucholsky in 1929 on Bert Brecht, the copyist; Tucholsky on the Ten Commandments, which he no longer remembers; Tucholsky’s leaflet for jurors.

A few days after the lightning struck in the evening there is another storm. Now there is a power cut for hours. By candlelight, without music or film, it’s almost like being back in Wasserburg on Lake Constance in 1945, when we lived in a small, 15 square meter shack without power and water. We could hear the wind and the waves on the nearby lake. And I learned to pick up the cigarette butts dropped by the occupying forces and store them in matchboxes, exchanging them with the former German soldiers for a piece of bread or a corncob.

A LITTLE DIARY FROM THE School for Life – PART I

14^th February to 15^th March 2012

14^th February

If you want to enter the Royal Forest to find the School for Life, you have to turn right when you exit the highway which leads from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai and then on to Mae Sai and the Burmese border. After a few hundred meters there is a checkpoint, though no one is actually checked: the barrier is simply lifted and greetings exchanged. The narrow street runs past a small lake, a reservoir with a water level which rises or falls depending on the time of year. The road becomes unpaved, and in the rainy season a shower of mud is churned up by the wheels, while in the dry season – depending on how fast you drive – it is a banner of dust which rises up behind the vehicle.

The best vehicle to have around here is a pickup. You see pickups with crowds packed inside and boxes or bales piled several meters high above the cab, so that I increase my distance from such skyscraper vehicles if following them around a corner, worried that they might not only swing wildly from side to side, but even overturn. Motorbikes are loaded even more adventurously: light motorcycles which force every driver to check their wing mirrors time and time again. Three or four people on a motorbike, with a baby wedged in between? “No problem!”. A tower of goods of some description behind the driver, which he holds onto with one arm whilst trying to steer with the other? “Also no problem!”.

But somehow there is a problem. The fact that one of the most popular subjects for Thai pop-songs (alongside falling in love, having a broken heart, and being ready for someone new again) is the motorbike accident, is a telling sign. We recommend volunteers to drive their motorbikes on the defensive, and to watch out for the hot exhaust pipes which can cause painful burns to the shins.

All is quiet on the small road through the Royal Forest. The pace slows down. A sign points to the “School for Life”. Three kilometers later, a left turn. The farm emerges, bearing the name “Suan Sai Suoi Fha” – “Light Sky Over Beautiful Garden”. Children come running, laughing, and greet us with a Wai – the traditional Thai greeting – and want to carry the luggage, and I think to myself that it’s the same as ever. And I feel at home.

15^th February

At around 4:30am, the first cockerel crows. Shortly after this comes the collective howl of the dogs, though there is no full moon to be seen. Then it stops abruptly, as if lightning has struck. Then comes the solitary yap of one dog, but this receives no reply. All is quiet again.

At 6am, the temple bell is rung. Wake up! Morning has broken. By 7am it is lively. Every child belongs to the “cleaning the campus” team. The big dry leaves of the teak trees are collected up, later to be laid in heaps and used to grow mushrooms. Brooms are swung, and a babble of voices and children’s songs rings out from all corners of the campus.

At around 9am, Kru Ya comes running in, the Vice Principal who has been at the school for many years. She rubs her arms and shakes herself. She has goose bumps. I ask her if she’s cold. No, comes her answer – there’s a ghost in the school office! The shadowy face of an unknown child had appeared at the window. All the teachers who had been in the room had left in a hurry and rushed outside. Someone fetches a laptop. On the screen is a photo showing the back of the head and shoulders of a teacher sitting at the table, and at the window is an unrecognizable face.

Meanwhile, the incident has circulated amongst the children. A dense cluster surrounds the laptop that sits on a table in front of the farmhouse. Kru Ya and I speak about how in two days’ time, a ceremony is planned in front of the four spirit houses which are dotted about the campus. Kru Ya says she saw the ghost itself, not just in the picture.

A few hours later, Kru Tomsri (‘Kru’ means ‘teacher’) comes in and admits to the teachers that the ghost appeared for educational purposes. She had produced it on her laptop, touching up the photo of the office in such a way that it appeared to show a ghost. She had told the children that they would bump into ghosts if they roam around at night instead of going to bed. Now the teachers wouldn’t have to chase the children back into bed – they would go to bed like good children. Good, huh?

Kru Tomsri differs from Western parents who might threaten disobedient children with the bogeyman despite not believing in him themselves. No, Kru Tomsri believes in ghosts, as do all of the other adults – except for one who believes nothing of the sort, and wishes to dispense with spirits, angels, Buddha and reincarnation too, for that matter.

16^th February

Around 7 years ago, two comic advertisements appeared in the German Journal “Course Book”, financed by the publisher. One of them featured a person in a space suit, in front of a spacecraft. The text said “Tula Bpor-Wai, installing the first solar panels on the moon in 2026. Tula Bpor-Wai is one of over 60 Thai children at the School for Life…”. The other advert pictured someone in a doctor’s overall with a syringe in their hand. The text said: “Darin Sri-ma, developing the first remedy for Parkinson’s disease in 2028. Darin Sri-ma is one of the children at the School for Life…”. The text ends by asking the reader to support the project. Even if Tula doesn’t build solar panels on the moon or Darin doesn’t find the cure to Parkinson’s, both comics express the core of what the schools are about: helping children emerge from the shadows of society and proceed as far forward as possible.

Today, 19-year-old Put came to the farm from Chiang Mai. He spoke to the young people in 9^th grade who are about to decide whether they will go to Senior High School in the nearby town of Doi Saket, to Vocational College in Chiang Mai, or if they will do something else. Put has a suggestion: they could become grooms and work either in stables with thoroughbred horses or at a vet’s, or in a polo club. Put shows them photos of other graduates of the School for Life who, like him, have completed the groom’s training and are already, after a short period, earning as much as teachers. Photos of thoroughbred horses, photos of the polo club in Pattaya, photos of how horses are bandaged, harnessed and ridden, and of the grooms’ accommodation and their leisure time – going fishing, for example.

Having started his training two years ago, Put is now leading the project on the grounds of Chiang Mai University. He has also received a grant to train in Germany at the Marbach Stud Farm and become a farrier. With competition horses like those in Thailand, this is a profession that places high demands.

In Thailand, there is a great demand for grooms, and the School for Life – in collaboration with the veterinary faculty of Chiang Mai University – is the only educational institution in the country to provide a groom’s training. Both girls and  boys are welcome. The project was launched two years ago by Dominique Leutwiler, the General Manager of the School for Life and herself an avid rider. And her joy about Put and Ott and all those who want to make something of themselves in this profession is clearly visible.

18-year-old Ott was a ‘bad boy’ who stole and threatened to drift into the drugs scene. After his groom’s training, however, he developed his skill as a polo player. The high-end polo club in Pattaya is now sending Ott –  a talented rider – to Argentina for a few months to train him as a professional polo player. The club is planning to send Ott to play in the Thai national polo team in the future. This is breaking news for the School for Life! From ‘bad boy’ to international polo player: a story that we hope for in many variations.

19^th February

At dawn, a small procession moves towards the four spirit houses. Each is home to the souls of the ancestors who, on this day when many birthdays will be celebrated, are to be honored with gifts: two cooked chickens, mandarins, mangoes, juice and water are left on the verandas of each of the four houses. As one of the birthday boys for whom a party is to be held in the evening, I accompany the group of teachers on their tour. Kru Non, the teacher for Thai classical dance, is the master of ceremonies. We meditate in front of each house, and incense sticks are lit and stuck into the gifts.

The walk around the grounds shows the progress being made in organic agriculture: a greater area of land is now being cultivated, along with more village life, especially in the lower part of the grounds by the creek, where a small embankment dams the water and fish are being farmed. Nearby, water buffalo are grazing, and Somchart the farmer has turned his cottage into a small farm. At a small bridge that crosses the creek live Sampan and his wife. Sampan is one of the veterans of the School for Life in Chiang Mai, the foreman of the construction and maintenance team which installed the first sanitary facilities and laid the cables and water pipes after the Tsunami on the site which later became the Beluga School for Life; it was there that he fell in love with Noan, whom he married and took back to the North.

After the ceremony at the fourth spirit house down there by the bridge, Kru Non tells me that there are actually six rather than four, and that we will now go to the fifth and sixth spirit houses. I can’t remember there being any more, and so assume there must be some new ones. We walk from the creek at the East of the site back up hill to the entrance in the West and come to a halt in front of the school office. A stool is placed at the window where the ghostly child’s face was seen on Kru Tomsri’s laptop screen, and is then covered with the same gifts which were dedicated to the souls of the other spirit houses, followed by the same ceremony.

To be on the safe side, a second chair is placed at the far right of the main entrance, along with the gifts, and a final ceremony takes place. Better safe than sorry. Who knows whether the Tomsrian spirit which Kru Ya seemed to see even without a computer doesn’t exist after all. In any case, the twelve teachers are convinced by the little procession. This reminds me of the comment of one Thai, who said he wouldn’t hang up the 2012 School for Life calendar, which pictures exorcisms and rituals, because the spirits might come out from the pictures and cause trouble.

At around 9am, the large room in the farm house is emptied and the adjacent room with the Buddha statues is prepared for the visit of five monks. In Thailand, celebrating birthdays is more about honoring the mother than celebrating the person whose birthday it is. When all the children have gathered in the room and the monks have settled, I remember about this custom of honoring the mothers, and tell them about my mother. She was expelled from her family because of her unmarried relationship with my father, who later died in Russia. Her brother, who was a captain and a pentathlete who had been in training for 1940 Olympic Games which were no longer held, and who soon died in France, could have been dishonorably discharged from the army. I tell them how we survived the war living in a shack without electricity and water, collecting moldy white bread which the occupying forces had thrown away, and sorting out the parts which were edible. I also told them about the weeks before my mother’s death, in which she organized a concert for peace. With the donations which were collected at this concert, we founded the School for Life.

The chanting of the monks, which the children join in with, the Christmas festivities, the Thai New Year Festival Songkran, the visits to temples, the church service in the little wooden church nearby, the honoring of the Ancestors: the farm is an ecumenical amalgam of exploratory movements, all contributing to peace between the religions. I resonate with the faithful, with the intersecting fragments of religion and myth, and with our monks from the temple of Lamphun. We discourage missionary efforts, whether they come from the Buddhist-robed operators of “temple businesses” or fundamental Christian sects that approach us with their aggressive marketing and throw their spare change to the poor.

By late afternoon, the festival begins on the meadow at the edge of which HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand planted a tree in the fall of 2005. A buffet with many variations of the northern Thai cuisine and homegrown vegetables is laid out. Wasan, the drummer, leads his companions as they swing their hips and are swept into a wild dance by the “Drums of Victory”. Demonstrations of ancient and modern dances follow, and the highlight – by which time it has grown dark – is the Candlelight Dance of twenty girls who paint figures in the night with their candles, a symbol of the unity within the diversity.

At the end of the evening, a large cake is cut into many pieces – there is enough for everyone. Then it’s time to tidy up. Everyone knows what needs to be done. I take a melon, the top half of which has been ornately carved by Aimee, who wanted to thank everyone that she could learn and live at the School for Life for so many years.

21^st February

A phone call from Guillaume Amigues from the World Economic Forum in Geneva. They are interested in the concept of the School for Life and “entrepreneurship education”. In June, a regional meeting will be taking place in Istanbul: this will be a good opportunity to introduce the concept. He goes on to say that 750 million young people are unemployed worldwide, representing a major challenge for both the public and private sectors. I arrange a date to meet with my friend and colleague Günter Faltin (with whom I wrote the book “Wealth from the Bottom” over twenty years ago; back then it was trailblazer in all things entrepreneurial) as he is currently in Chiang Mai: together, we will design a dossier for the World Economic Forum.

22^nd February

Professor Apichai Puntasen, Doyen of Buddhist Economics, and most recently Dean of the Ubon Ratchathanee University in Isan, Thailand’s poorest region, has sent a student. Her name is Thip and she is studying “self-sufficiency economy”, a concept of the King of Thailand. It is the philosophy of independent survival in times of crisis, such as Thailand in 1997, when the currency collapsed overnight. Apichai (the Thai people address one another by their first name) is a board member of the School for Life Foundation and has been a friend and companion of mine for thirty years.

Thip is specializing in organic agriculture and has established frog breeding and mushroom cultivation. This is a pilot project in order to gain experience. The mushrooms grow in a mixture of straw and cuttings from banana plants, built into small mounds and covered with plastic sheeting and additional bundles of straw – mushrooms seem to like to keep warm.

23^rd February

The noisest classroom is that of the retired German teacher Angela Grossmass, who has been teaching English pro bono for the last two months. I’m not sure if “teaching” is the right word – more like a direct transfusion of English, through extreme drama, music and rhythm, into the flesh and blood. The children participate with full committment, and by the end they have exerted so much energy – both mental and physical – that they could fall into a deep sleep. And some do.

Today, the lesson is about the human body parts. The second-graders launch themselves into a choreography which would most aptly be dubbed “out of breath”. They jump up and down, row with their arms, and their legs swing rhythmically up and down so high that they look as if they are rehearsing for a performance in the Moulin Rouge. Simultaneously, the names of the body parts from head to toe are being sung, and this mixture of loud singing, hopping around, laughter and guesses as what this or that body part is actually called is the best English lesson I have ever seen. It reminds me a little of my French lessons in 1948 in the former robber baron’s castle in Hohenfels, in the lonely hinterlands of western Lake Constance. When Miss Köppen wanted to explain the difference between “under” and “on”, she crawled under the table or climbed on top of it, and we got a raisin if we could supply the right answer.

Angela Grossmass is a decidedly favorable contrast to one of my English teachers, who regularly turned up unprepared, got us to open up the English book on a certain page and read a few paragraphs before telling us to close the books and do a dictation. Week after week, a sure-fire remedy against learning English.

24^th February

Kru Tomsri has transformed her little wooden house into a zoo with hamsters and guinea pigs, as well as planting a vegetable garden which is growing by the day. She invites everyone to help themselves to salad and vegetables. The children love the zoo, and often drop by to look at the animals.

Next door lives Siriporn, the head teacher, who is busy extending her garden. Seedlings are being replanted, and beans curl their way up the trunks of teak trees. The children help both Tomsri and Siriporn to dig up the dry earth, mix it with organic fertilizer, water and cover the beds with straw and watch the plants grow.

Gradually, all of the unused areas of the campus (40 Rai = 6.5 hectares) are being transformed into vegetable fields and fruit plantations. “Self-sufficiency economy”, the philosophy of the King and pioneer of organic agriculture, reminds me of Julius Nyerere’s concept, the big statesman and visionary in Tanzania the 1960s: he called it “self-reliance”, confidence in ones own power. He wanted to implement it in the Ujamaa villages and schools in Commu­nity Development projects, but his bureaucrats countered him with tough resistance and outlived him.

25^th February

Thirty girls and boys from an international school in Bangladesh arrive. They help to renovate buildings. They bring paint and paintbrushes, and the School for Life children once again experience how many nationalities meet to form such a school.

The international school from Bangladesh isn’t the only one which has found its way to the School for Life. The international schools from Stavanger in Norway and Düsseldorf in Germany come every year – as long as the Yellow Shirts aren’t occupying the airport, or the Red Shirts taking control of the center of Bangkok, or floods submerging half of the country. Here in the Royal Forest on the hills of Doi Saket, we are far away from such occurrences, and no one must fear for their safety.

Every time when a group of students leaves after two or three weeks – the Bangladeshis are an exception to the rule with their two-day stay this time – tears flow on both sides. But the connections that have been made can always be maintained via social networks.

27^th February

Lutz Buschhüter, a graduate of social work who is married here and has lived in Chiang Mai for more than a decade, is coming here to meet up with two young Germans and their Turkish supervisor Onursal. The two boys are in the final phase of a two-and-a-half year program run by the Youth Fund “Par-ce-val” in Berlin and Brandenburg. This is a project that does rehabilitation work with young people who are ‘at risk’, if you will, of delinquency.

I met Haci Bayram, the manager of Par-ce-val, in Berlin to prepare the three-month stay in the School for Life. Bayram’s ideas of sending young people to a completely different social and cultural setting to gain experiences there was not new for me. The High Seas High School, which sails for months over the world’s oceans with students from the 10^th and 11^th grades is a clear example of challenging young people rather than over-domesticating them. We had volunteers in the School for Life whose stay with us was a turning point: one high school student, for example, had told his mother as he departed that he wanted nothing more to do with her,  but realized during his stay how much she meant to him and went on to develop a new, loving relationship with her when he returned; or the 16-year-old who had drifted into the dropout scene of her city, played truant from school and couldn’t see any point to her life, but then went on after her stay here to give up smoking, drinking and drugs, and went back to school to concentrate on her final exams. Her story was filmed for the German TV: “Polly on the Rocks”.

Before they leave, the two youths and Onursal talk to me about what went well over the three months, what we could do better for the next visit from Par-ce-val participants, and why they felt almost too good. The core of Par-ce-val’s rehabiliation program is about bringing strictness and structure to the lives of the young people. One of the two young people filmed a very moving video-portrait of Namson, whose mother was sentenced to 24 years’ imprisonment – 16 more years to go – in Chiang Mai.

28^th February

The abbot of the temple of Lamphun, has been a friend of the School for Life for many years. When people come to him and want to make a sacrifice for one reason or another, he encourages them to give 5000 Baht (€125) to fund lunch at the School for Life. The donors can buy everything in advance, as directed by the abbot, cook it at home, and then bring it to the school to eat with the children. The abbot’s soup is famous amongst the children, and tastes delicious. The abbot and the visitors he brings never fail to be amazed at how much the children can eat.

Today he’s celebrating his 60^th birthday with us. He has brought his monks and fifty relatives and friends along with him. Everyone collects in the canteen, an open-plan, covered room, for the feast. It is late morning – monks are not permitted to eat after midday.

29^th February

In the large room of the farmhouse, big sheets of paper lie on the floor surrounded by lots of smaller ones. The big pieces of paper have the names of the seven Centers of Excellence ‘under the trees’ written on them (unlike the Hanseatic – formerly Beluga – School for Life in the South of Thailand, the School for Life in Chiang Mai doesn’t have buildings for them), and on the colorful smaller labels are written ideas for projects, mini-enterprises and other activities that are assigned to the centers. The school and family teachers (mentors) have gathered in order to plan the next semester, which will last from May to September.

Project ideas for the Center for Organic Farming, for example, include fish farming, frog farming, mushroom growing, composting, herbal gardening, animal husbandry and planting fruits and vegetables.

For the Center for Culture Sensitive Tourism, a restaurant management team and projects ideas by the names of “being a little guide”, “where do I come from?”, “soul trekking”, or “the forest as a supermarket” have been compiled.

Under the tree of the Center for Nutrition & Health, courses in baking, Thai food, international food, and cooking with guests are all on the menu.

The piece of paper representing the Center for Cultural Heritage & Development is surrounded by a multitude of colored labels: Thai & contemporary dance, Thai music, world music, classical European music, jazz dance, local wisdom, ethnic fashion, painting, fresh flower fashion, teaching Buddhism, teaching Christianity, comparative understanding of world religions, performance program develop­ment and teaching the culture of indigenous people.

The Center for Body and Soul has also generated plenty of ideas: Yoga & Thai massage, football for girls, football for boys, swimming, martial arts for girls, Thai boxing, basket ball, morning exercise and meditation.

Children’s World Radio, an introduction to soft- & hardware, cinema club, children’s journal and white board (a large-screen digital window to the world of the internet) belong to the Center for International Communication, while the Center for Technology, Crafts & Ecology has been assigned maintenance, keeping the campus clean and a bicycle repair shop.

Since not everything can be assigned to one Center, another sheet of paper with “Other Essential Activities” written on it lies in the middle, surrounded by ideas for a children’s investment bank, a community shop, mediation, morning ceremony, family day, children’s parliament, guardian angels, night guardians and holiday activities.

At around 6pm it is slowly getting dark. The teachers are still deep in discussion. The first teams are being formed. Not all of the labels will turn into projects or Mini-Enterprises – we will set priorities. One upon which everyone agrees is organic farming and animal husbandry. The road towards a self-sufficiency economy is beset with many obstacles, but the Situational Approach upon which the Schools for Life are founded favors learning in challenging, real-life environments. You don’t have to look far to find these on the campus – it’s more a case of stumbling over them.

1^st March

Like on every school day, the temple bell is struck at 6am by a child with a metal rod. It begins with individual taps, and is followed by a quick staccato which then flows back into individual chimes. Then everyone gathers together in front of the auditorium, where the Thai flag is raised and the national anthem sung. The relatively tall aluminum mast is fitted with a pulley at the top, through which the rope runs. The flag is still hanging at the bottom. Today, two six-year-olds will raise the flag. The Head Pupil, Master of Ceremony, begins with a song to which everyone sings along. Depending on how high or low the caller begins, the children always find a pitch that feels comfortable to them. Darius Milhaud would have delighted in the ensuing polyphonic chant that is somehow taken for granted here.

The girl and boy try to raise the flag slowly enough so that it doesn’t reach the top of the pole until the end of national anthem. The pulley is squeaking, and several dogs start to bicker and chase a few children back and forth, and when the hymn is over there are still several meters of flag pole left to go, so the children then hoist the flag up as quickly as if they were launching a rocket.

And now it is time for an alternating recitation, like in the monks’ ceremonies. Then it is quiet again. The children are meditating, and the dogs have quietened down and are lying about in the shade. The School for Life song is often sung, beginning with the words “School for Life our home, our school …” and ending “I have brothers, sisters and friends”.

The children are still standing in six or seven rows, the younger ones on the left and older on the right, with their gaze fixed on the flag. But now the children in the first row turn to those in the second row and both greet each other with a Wai and a “Sawasdee”. The children in the second and third rows then greet each other in the same way, and then the third and fourth rows. The greeting is passed on in such a manner until everyone has been greeted. Finally, the children greet the teachers, volunteers and often the guests too.

After that, they form large circles and a meditative dance begins with very slow movements that point up to the heavens or down towards the earth. It is in this way that the strict, ceremonial atmosphere is dissolved into a soft, peaceful sense of togetherness.

I used not to think much of rituals, but nowadays I have a different opinion of them. They offer structure in lives which have been overshadowed by biographical catastrophes. The children at the School for Life love rituals.

2^nd March

The School for Life is more than a school. The academic core, the official part so to speak, consists of a nationally recognized social welfare school. It has a ‘School Board’ as well as coming under the umbrella of the overall ‘Board of the School for Life Foundation’ . On both committees, Thai people form the majority.

Today, the School Board is meeting. Its members include, among others, the representative of the highest education authority for private schools, the mayor of a community association, the representative of the Royal Forest project, a lawyer from the nearby village of Pongkum, the head teacher and her deputy as well as a family teacher representing the absent or non-existent parents of the children.

Two issues shape the debate this morning. First of all, how can bridges be built between the national curriculum and the projects and mini-enterprises? How can the conventional subjects be looted in order to shift some of their content into the new, interdisciplinary ‘clean slates’ of the Centers of Excellence? The seven sheets of paper with the names of the Centers and the labels with the project ideas lie on the conference table in the school library. With the school inspectors, we discuss questions such as how at least half of 120 teaching hours of mathematics can be transferred to other activities and nonetheless still be recognized and evaluated. The school inspectors comment that such a dynamic model, emphasizing the application of knowledge in real situations, has unfortunately not yet arrived in Thai schools. The children are kept inside the classroom and exposed to long speeches by their teachers, memorizing things which are then forgotten again.

Second on the agenda: the government has increased the minimum wage for teachers from 8000 to 15000 THB (200/375 €). In the primary school, one teacher is subsidized per 25 children, and in the junior high school, one teacher to 20 children. At this rate, the School for Life will only receive a grant for five teachers. But we have 12 teachers, because according to the School Act, each class must have one teacher. The nursery has three classes for the three-, four- and five-year olds and operates according to the Ministry of Education’s expectations for same-aged classes (unlike us). The elementary school with grades one to six, and the junior high school with grades seven to nine also all need one teacher per class. If we only hired five teachers, we would lose our license. So in the future there will be five funded teachers and seven unfunded teachers. Previously, all twelve teachers received state grants. For us, this means more toing and froing in terms of educational policy.

5^th March

The arrival of Lena Grüber. Lena, who is 26, studied Art in Public Spaces at Berlin-Weissensee. She also helps in the editorial team of “Betrifft Kinder” (Re: Children) and “The Net Publisher”. Her mother, Eva Grüber, became self-employed after the reunification of Germany and began to publish journals and books which do away with educational fussing around, instead seeing children as explorers, experimenters and constructors of their own lives. No educational “jargon” escapes the eagle-eye of the editor.

The magazine “Re: Children” is a fan of the School for Life, as is Lena with her big analog camera. She says that shooting analog photos demands more thought and a more accurate sense of waiting for the right moment. The problem with documentary filmmaking and photography, though, is that situations pass by so quickly and can never be repeated; you therefore have to somehow imagine what might happen, and Lena will try to catch some of those moments over the next three days.

In the afternoon, the teachers meet again. They form groups on three different subjects. Firstly: Mind Mapping in connection with the fish farming project. When such projects go off at a tangent, it doesn’t mean anyone has got lost – it’s just another chance to learn. The children themselves develop maps of the situations which interest them the most. Since the fish farming project doesn’t take eight hours a day, there’s plenty of opportunity for that.

Questions thus emerge which demand clarification and experimental research. Can fish sleep? Why don’t they sink? Don’t they need air? Fish float, but stones and wood sink – why? Why does a stone sink more slowly in oil than in water? Why can birds and butterflies fly? Do they crash sometimes? Airplanes fly too – how do they do that? Why do they crash sometimes, why don’t they float down to the ground if they have wings? How do rockets fly? And when fish get hungry, what do they eat? How do they have babies? Do they lay eggs like birds? Don’t the eggs swim off? Why don’t people lay eggs? What is an egg exactly? If we don’t eat the fish, but want to sell them, where could we sell them and how much for? Why only 20 baht for a fish and not 200? You can get money so easily when you put a card into a machine and push buttons … and so on.

Secondly: the planning of an excursion of a few days with the children and guests to the nearby villages the children are from. The project is called “Where do I come from?”. This way, the guests will also get to know the everyday culture of the Thai people and ethnic minorities beyond the well-trodden tourist paths, and make new friends.

Thirdly: local wisdom. What do the elders know, and what have the young people forgotten? Who can the children ask, and how can they document their findings? The idea comes from Eliot Wigginton (USA), who in 1966 as a young teacher began collecting the stories of old people with his class. This was in the Appalachians, and was the consequence of Wigginton’s realization that the methods he had learned at university were practically useless with his students. The “Foxfire Book”, with its multiple volumes, was the result of their research, and sold millions of copies. Many many readers wanted to know how to build a cabin or a chimney out of rocks, how to construct a rabbit trap or how to extract the bristles from a slaughtered pig, what a homemade banjo looks like or how a smoking oven can be built.

The teachers at the School for Life want to go out with the children into the surrounding areas, find the wise old people, and find out first of all how to build a bamboo hut covered in dry leaves; they don’t just want to collect the knowledge, but they want to build a life-size version with the children, not just a miniature model.

6^th March

The Step Foundation in Freiburg (Germany) has funded sports facilities, including a large football field and a basketball court. At 5pm, it’s time for girls’ football – on the basketball court, because the grass-covered football field is still hazy with the heat of the day, and the distances really are very far to run. Two little goals stand underneath the basketball nets, and the girls are dribbling, shooting, shouting and laughing, with little breaks here and there when the ball – which is not contained by any fence – disappears into the distance and has to be retrieved. The teacher, Dim, whose stature and shooting power is somewhat reminiscent of the legendary ‘Bomber Müller’ from FC Bayern, played in the first ever women’s football team in Chiang Mai seven years ago. Her job is funded by the Foundation in Freiburg, so for the first time we have the opportunity to form a real team with the ten- to twelve-year-olds.

Martial arts for girls is also on the wish list. Not full contact martial arts, but dance-like forms such as Pencak Silat from Indonesia or Brazilian Capoeira. The aim is to promote the girls’ self-confidence through martial arts which can be transformed into a dance ritual with high levels of physical discipline.

7^th March

An evening trip to the outlying Wang Tarn restaurant with Trirat Petchsingh, son of a diplomat, who grew up in various countries and is an engineer, has founded a Computer School, teaches at an elite school in the vicinity of Bangkok. Trirat, who can speak better English than Thai, and runs a website which offers a critical perspective on Buddhism,was  a journalist for Reuters and “The Nation”,  and is the author of “Thai mangoes”, a book of short stories – Trirat is leaving us. Responsible for “education innovation”, he says he couldn’t get the backing of the teachers. He comes from a very different world. I appreciate his honesty, his commitment to children, his education, his penchant for experimenting and scientific learning, and I observe the relentlessness – reminiscent of that of Michael Kohlhaas – with which he throws himself into conflicts and creates opponents for himself. He says that he was not the right man for the job, and I agree. We amicably agree that he will retire and take care of his daughters and their companies.

Trirat’s role is filled by two people. Manoon Kalapat, former director of the Hotel Training Institute of the Beluga (now Hanseatic) School for Life – a friendly, experienced manager of Hotel Management Schools and hotels, who speaks fluent English and began working for the School Life a few months ago months as grounds manager and head of the guest area. He will now be responsible for the implementation and development of the educational concept. The other person is Dr. Chanmongkol Trisri, previously known as Charlniwat – he has changed his name because Chanmongkol means ‘long life’, and this gets more important the more years one numbers. He spent five years as director of the Center for Organic Farming at the Beluga School for Life and was very highly regarded by the guests for his storytelling skills and for guiding them through the jungle. Now Chanmongkol wants to work in the North. His seventeen-year-old son is studying two hours’ drive away, in Chiang Rai, and will be happy to see his father more often.

Chanmongkol will become Director for Organic Farming & Animal Husbandry at the School for Life, and be one of those responsible for seeing that we not only move towards our goal of agricultural self-sufficiency, but also raise funds through the cultivation of highly priced products like cantaloupe melons or out-of-season limes. We are also receiving advice from Ex-Senator Mechai, who many years ago organized a successful nationwide Anti-Aids awareness campaign and since then goes by the nickname of “Mr. Condom”.

One of Chanmongkol’s showpieces has been the establishment of a pig farm in China that doesn’t smell. That was a great sensation for all involved. Prior to this, there had been violent dispute with the owners of nearby hotels because of the odors – but after Chanmongkol had solved the problem, the hotel owners were so happy that they became shareholders of the pig farm!

Chanmongkol has also advised farmers in Israel. He knows how to drive away snakes with mongooses and that you can feed catfish with a dead dog and they’ll gnaw it down to the bone in six hours. He rides, and when he puts on a hat, he looks like the brother of Charles Bronson. We will breed odor-free pigs, and if the pig farmers in Mecklenburg (a pig-breeding area of Germany) want to know how to avoid the protests of local citizens, then Chanmongkol can hold seminars to reveal his secrets if they are willing to pay good money to the School for Life.

But now he has a new problem: some time ago, on Trirat’s initiative, the creek at the lower part of the grounds was dug out for twenty meters for the purposes of breeding fish. Many small fish were introduced into mesh baskets of several square meters. Now they have grown, and it appears that the designers of the baskets underestimated the intelligence of the fish – Chanmongkol has seen the fish overcoming the sides of the basket in one elegant leap and swim off to their freedom. Not an insurmountable problem, but one of many in the world of fish farming.

8^th March

Chalee was here. School inspector, evaluator and specialist in teacher training, whose workplaces extend over much of Thailand. He thinks that the School for Life’s concept, or more precisely the connection between the national curriculum and the Centers of Excellence, would be a good idea for every school. Today, Chalee is here to train the new teachers about how to build bridges between the curriculum subjects and the Centers, as well as on how the inescapable “credit points” can be awarded beyond the confines of conventional education. Chalee loves movement, is an entertainer, and hates the classroom – so the seminar will take place outdoors.

Basically, it’s like in a good kitchen: you take the elements from the different subjects, mix them up into a project and then treat this fusion not as some unofficial game, but rather as a modern version of a previously antiquated structure of a curriculum. Yes, something like that. The “credit points” are then just the stamp of approval.

Although I can imagine learning without “credit points”, and it’s not as if I’m a supporter of this dynamized bureaucracy, I do realize that in this way we can do sensible things without risking the academic recognition of our children’s efforts. Thanks to Chalee.

9^th March

Born in Berlin in 1787, Emma Hart went on to emigrate to America and marry Dr. John Willard, thus becoming Emma Willard. In 1819, she wrote to the House of Representatives in Vermont campaigning for the education of women, sending them a kind of Magna Carta for the higher education of women in America. In the same year, she opened a school for girls, today’s Emma Willard School in upstate New York.

On the 9^th of March 2012 at around 9:30am, two minibuses arrive at the gates of the School for Life. Around twenty girls from the Emma Willard School, a gang of spirited fourteen- to fifteen-year-olds, clamber out of the buses. Students from other countries are always received by our children with a big hello. They want to join in with decorating one of the walls of the house with colorful characters, dance and play with the children, and show them that Emma Willard is an important role model. They have brought along her portrait and hold it up high as they gather for a group photo.

10^th March

At the Pattaya Polo Club, Dominique Leutwiler met Harald Link, its owner, and spoke to him about the development of the groom’s training project. Link, initially distracted by telephone calls and all of the things distract the attention of a manager of a large company who runs a polo club as a hobby, was suddenly gripped by this project, unique  in Thailand, realized its value and was thrilled. Now we can move forward together.

Everywhere in the clubhouse there are photos, including ones of the British princes William and Harry, who have played polo here. The demand for grooms who are skilled enough to make a career of it is much greater than our project can meet at this stage, so expansion is called for.

Harald Link asked whether we have horses on the farm; no, we don’t. Well then he’ll send us a couple of horses so that the children can get used to them at an early stage. Chanmongkol is already looking forward to converting part of the grounds into a ranch or cooperating with a neighbor.

The groom’s training project has its costs. On the way to writing a memorandum of understanding, we will consider how we can return our investments from the customers and define the proportion of overhead costs in favor of the School for Life so that more is covered than just the costs.

12^th March

The vice-governor of the province of Chiang Mai, Pairoj Sangpoowong, wanted to come and visit today, but ended up having to go to the constituent assembly in Bangkok instead. The Board of the School for Life Foundation will meet at the farmhouse. Those present are Chamnang Chanruang, governor of 65 Rotary clubs in northern Thailand and Senior Legal Expert at the Administrative Court of Chiang Mai; Mary Kelly, on behalf of her husband Matthew, who once played with the “Grateful Dead” and now heads the Amicus Foundation, but is sick today; Prof. Apichai Puntasen, director of the Rural & Social Management Institute under Royal Patronage in Bangkok; Siriporn Hanfaifa, the school director; Dominique Leutwiler, the general manager; and myself. Manoon Kalapat and Chanmongkol Trisri are also present as expert witnesses.

We discuss the development of schools, the finances, the new management structure and the long-term security of the School for Life. I announce that the School for Life will be ten years old next year, and I will be 75, and that I plan to retire from all operational matters at the end of 2013 and deal only with the more enjoyable affairs of educational innovation. It therefore makes sense to found an Association of Supporters of the School for Life by this time, in order to ensure the existence of the project in the long term – half of the suporters coming from Thailand, the other half from Germany and the rest of the world.

13^th March

It is a day of departure, joy and sadness: graduation day. The graduates of the 9th grade will follow different paths from now on: to Senior High School in nearby Doi Saket, to Chiang Mai Technical College, or to undertake other professional training. Most of them will stay on with us for the next three years, either commuting every day and continuing to live on the campus or, like the grooms in training,  moving into a townhouse where they will continue to be looked after by us.

At 9am, everyone gathers in the Seminar building which has by now been brightly painted by our international guests. The graduates have flowers pinned to their lapels. Speeches, dances, laughter – and tears, not only in the children’s eyes. The head boy has to interrupt his speech because his eyes overflow. He speaks of the happy time he has spent here and says that when he has made something of himself, he wants to come back and support the School for Life. I also believe that some of the graduates of the first generations of the School for Life will return as very capable teachers. They will be very welcome, as are all alumni.

Now that the event is coming to an end, the graduates of the Junior High School are all solemnly presented with their documents. This is followed by a particularly beautiful custom: the adults tie small white bands around the graduates’ wrists and wish them well. Many hugs and more tears.

The beautiful flower arrangements are carried outside onto the sports field: group photo. The cameras click. Their faces are radiant once more. In the evening there is a BBQ outside the farm house for the celebrated graduates and teachers. A screen is erected, texts roll across it, and the sounds of karaoke are to be heard until late into the night.

Then – silence. But no. A dog that apparently sees ghosts every night begins to bark furiously. No other dogs join in. They know that this dog is not quite right in the head.

15^th March

Late on the previous evening, a brief and violent storm swept the leaves from the trees, tore branches down, lifted up one of the rooves and felled a tree. No electricity for fourteen hours. Nobody has to oversee the cleanup next morning – everyone has their job and knows what to do.

The holiday season begins. Many children set off to their villages, others are taken to their villages by the teachers, and some remain on the farm.

The school and family teachers gather together and form teams of four: Team A for the nursery, Team B for grades one to three, Team C for grades four to six of the primary school, and team D for grades seven to nine of the junior high School. Each team also manages a family with children. Four, rather than the previous two teachers, take on the role of parenting. Each team is responsible for both curricular and extracurricular life. The teachers want to overcome the formation of subcultures – school on the one side and family on the other. I like this integration. In the world of boarding schools, you find the structure of ‘school’ versus ‘boarding’ with teachers and mentors or the role of teacher and mentor in one. We tried that practice, but it led to the overloading of teachers, giving them less time to prepare for classes.

The model of integration of the two areas will be tested next semester, and one of its best features is that we can break up the usual daily routine – lessons in the morning, projects and other activities in the afternoon – in favor of a rhythm which is both more child-friendly and makes more sense: dedicating the cooler parts of the day in the morning and late evening to organic agriculture, and using the rest of the day for school, project and free time to avoid forming a rigid routine.

The teachers are very satisfied with the teams they have built. Towards the end of the meeting, the old teachers practise both of the School for Life songs with the new teachers and show them what is meant by “making power”. We form a tight circle, put all our hands in a pile in the center, count to three and then raise our arms with a powerful “School for Life – Yeah!”. We have been doing that for the last nine years.

At 5.30pm, the closing party for all the employees begins outdoors in front of the farmhouse. BBQ, dancing and karaoke. The mood is relaxed. Chanmongkol muses with Sampan over how he can purify used water for irrigation purposes. The driver, Tub, tells us that he thinks he needs to be paid a little more because he has to buy all his own food when he’s on the road. The cook is dancing rock ‘n’ roll. A half moon is in the sky. Even at midnight, the hardier among us are still singing. At some point in the night, everything is cleaned up. It is all done as quick as a flash. And then there is peace.

No, not entirely. The dog who sees ghosts begins to howl again. No other dog joins in, but a frog does. The stormy rain lured him out of his hole in the ground too early. Now he croaks for attention, but in vain. No other frog replies. The dog who sees ghosts and the lonely frog are an odd couple in the night before the day when I pack my things and set off to the South, to the other School for Life.