Jacques Duez: On listening to the children

In the last week I was very absorbed by Jacques Duez's work and busy preparing an event where I presented it to teachers. Jacques Duez has worked for more than 30 years as an ethics teacher in Mons (Belgium). In his early teaching he was very soon frustrated with giving lessons to students during which they were When he noticed that what students brought up themselves was much more interesting to them and to him, he started first tape recording and soon video recording what they said about a certain topic and to share those recordings among different classes. He became famous in Belgium at the moment where Wilbur Leguebe a director of documentary movies working for the national broadcast company RTBF and Agnès Lejeune a journalist made a series of five TV documentaries on Duez's work. One of the most interesting aspects of these documentaries was that they contacted Duez's former students to find out what memories they had of their primary school years and their ethics lessons with Jacques Duez, and to what extend it influenced their later life. The sequences showing young adults sharing their perception of themselves as children while reviewing video tapes showing them during their discussions ten or fifteen years ago are quite remarkable.

When I discovered Jacques Duez's work a few years ago (unfortunately after having left teaching) I was very much impressed by his approach, his way of talking to the children and their profound reflections. His approach is very close to that of Vivian Gussin Paley and in the best tradition of people like Françoise Dolto the famous French doctor and psychoanalyst. I was particularly impressed by a story of a boy whose difficult family situation affected his behavior in school and generated the usual difficulties in the relationship with his teachers, classmates and of course with learning. Only after viewing a video sequence on how this boy explained his situation in Jacques Duez's class his teachers realized how difficult this boy's life was, how little they knew about him and how they had kept teaching and expecting a certain behavior from him without any regard to his social background.

What I intended by showing extract of Duez's work was to sensitize teachers to the potential of children's reflecting and to the importance of considering their socio-cultural background when judging their behavior in an educational setting. I also wanted to sensitizing teachers to the fact that school development needs to be considered not only in the light of meeting new or higher standards. First and foremost, school development should aim at improving the general context for learning and for reflecting about learning, and I see listening to children and children's thinking as one of the preconditions to meet that aim.

Event announcement: http://www.olefaschool.org/community
Event picture gallery (pictures by Xavier Maquil, Luc Gilbertz, Christian Schwarz)

Parents / Enseignants … La guere ouvert? Book including DVD and one documentary by Jacques Duez : http://www.decitre.fr/livres/Parents-Enseignants.aspx/9782870034613

Le Temps des Enfants (printed document with DVD, edited by the Observatoire de l’Enfance, de la Jeunesse et de l’Aide à la Jeunesse:
http://www.oejaj.cfwb.be/rubrique.php?id_rubrique=31

Die Welle - The Wave

On Friday I went the see the movie "Die Welle". It is based on an experiment by Ron Jones that took place April 1967 in his Highschool history class. Jones' objective was to demonstrate to his students that if the context is right and the slogans strong and clear enough, individuality and critical thinking can easily be replaced by a kind of mass-"consciousness" with fascist tendencies.

In 1972, 5 Years after the experiment Ron Jones wrote down his view of the experience - called at that time The Third Way. You can find his report here :
http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/Auxiliary/Psychology/Frank/Thirdwave.html


In this report Ron Jones tells us how it all started: "We were studying Nazi Germany and in the middle of a lecture I was interrupted by the question. How could the German populace claim ignorance of the slaughter of the Jewish people. How could the townspeople, railroad conductors, teachers, doctors, claim they knew nothing about concentration camps and human carnage. How can people who were neighbors and maybe even friends of the Jewish citizen say they weren't there when it happened. it was a good question. I didn't know the answer."

In only five days the students experienced the metamorphoses from critical thinkers to subjects completely submitted to discipline and authority similar to the one of Nazi regime.

Ron Jones : "We have seen that fascism is not just something those other people did. No. it's right here. In this room. In our own personal habits and way of life. Scratch the surface and it appears. Something in all of us. We carry it like a disease. The belief that human beings are basically evil and therefore unable to act well toward each other. A belief that demands a strong leader and discipline to preserve social order."

But the experience not only has an effect on his students but also on Ron Jones himself:
"I now began to ponder not just how far this class could be pushed but how such I would change my basic beliefs toward an open classroom and self directed learning".

For my part I didn't like the end of the film to much. I prefer the version in Ron Jones report on the final day of the experience. But anyway, The film is a must for all educators and good occasion to reflect on some of the classroom rituals they sometimes impose on their students without thinking of possible drawbacks of a "uniform code of behavior" as Jones calls it.

I strongly recommend to read the original report by Jones and also read through the following Wikipedia pages
on the Milgram-Experiment : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment,
the Stanford-Prison-Experiment : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
on Jane Elliott, best known for her workshops on racism : http://www.janeelliott.com/
and on Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's theory of the 'spiral of silence' (Die Schweigespirale in German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweigespirale

Finally Ron Jones' website : http://www.ronjoneswriter.com/

Into the Wild

On Friday night I went to see the movie "Into the Wild" directed by Sean Penn and based on the nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer. It's the true story of Chris McCandless, a young man who, after getting his college degree leaves everything behind, his parents and his sister, his room and his car, gives away his money and even burns part of it, and goes off for a two years trip ending up in Alaska's wild nature.

The movie tells me that getting an educational degree or a driving license isn't enough to serve as a rite of passage to real life where you feel being more than a product of your nearest environment, composed by your family and its history or your schooling and the relationships you experience within or around your school life.

Definitely Shawn Penn is a great director and Emile Hirsch who plays Chris McCandless is just captivating.

As an "avant goût" visit the movie's website at www.intothewild.com.