Translator: Ewa Spohn Reviewer: Krystian Aparta
Good morning.
I've had my first coffee of the day and I hope you have too.
I know it's early, but kids have it worse.
They had to get up at 8 a.m., often earlier.
My name is Agata Wilam.
As mentioned earlier,
I'm the co-founder of the Children's University
so at the moment most of my life revolves around education.
This talk will be no different.
[Why do we always have to fit between the lines?!]
Does this picture remind you of anything?
Maybe school?
If it does, then you are no different
than most of the people I've asked in the past.
Strangely enough,
even though some of us probably left school 40 years ago,
or 20 or even 10 years ago,
our memories of school are based on similar images.
On the same images.
A blackboard, chalk, handwriting practice.
And even the children who have just started school,
after their school leaving exams in 10 years' time,
will have the same memories.
This question, 'Why do we always have to fit between the lines',
was asked by a bright third-grader.
She was probably bored by the constant correction
and the teacher's instructions to 'write evenly!',
but this also hides a deep observation.
I'm convinced that this third-grader, a bright girl,
had certainly reflected on this.
Is the purpose of school to make us fit a particular mould?
And why do we all have to learn based on the same formats?
Another bright third-grader, my daughter Matylda,
said to me a few days ago:
'I think that my best years are behind me'.
(Laughter)
'Matylda! Have you gone mad? You're only nine!
What do you mean 'behind you'? You've only just started'.
She says: 'Your best years are when you are three'.
I was shocked.
'Because when you're a small child
you can do a lot. In fact, everything is allowed'.
Such a small person has so many ideas
and adults are happy when they turn these ideas into reality.
Then education starts,
rules, regulations, prohibitions, 'this is allowed, that isn't'.
Being a small kid is best.
Then, you can do everything.
Matylda made another accurate observation.
A child is ready to absorb the world with their whole being.
A child is ready to engage with every subject,
is full of ideas and courage.
After that comes the next stage in a child's life
and then the adult's life.
This little explorer,
observer of the life of ants,
maker of Mars rovers,
the accomplished creator, who can make a work of art
out of what she has on her plate.
Actually, this doesn't always make adults happy.
And what happens when she starts school?
The school sits her behind a desk
and treats her as if she were a clean, blank white piece of paper,
which the school has to fill with something.
There's another metaphor.
It treats the child as an empty vessel to be filled up with knowledge.
A few years later, this perspective changes.
The school no longer thinks the child is so 'clean'.
It thinks that the child's head is muddled up
and that this muddle has to be sorted out,
arranged into lines.
In spite of all that, we're living in good times, when it comes to education.
It is one of the most popular topics.
Various debates regularly appear in the media.
The school year starts with articles about the first day of school.
For about 10 days, this appears on the first two pages.
One the issue which has been appearing for years
is the cost and weight of those heavy school books.
This year, it was slightly different.
Ten days have passed,
the leaves are falling from the trees, but the press hasn't dropped the story.
New themes have emerged.
One story, popular even before the summer holidays,
was the news we received from one of the Ministries,
that they want to buy a laptop for every first-grader.
The story returned after the summer,
but now, it wasn't about laptops for all first-graders,
but maybe, for example, digitizing all educational resources.
All the school books.
At the same time, to solve the 'heavy books' problem,
someone came up with the idea of buying lockers for schools.
A great idea, but contradictory.
Either digital school books, or those lockers.
In the end, those lockers will be empty
if the resources are digitized.
School is changing constantly.
The conversation about what to cut out of the curriculum is also constant,
what to expand, what to change.
Maybe we'll change the order?
Or maybe we could exchange roles?
But something else is needed.
A few years ago, Ken Robinson gave his famous TED talk
about changing the educational paradigm.
We must also set ourselves this question.
What is school for? This might sound naive,
but until we ask and answer the question
what is the purpose of school,
where it leads and what we want to achieve,
it's difficult to introduce any meaningful changes.
Traditionally, school fulfills two functions.
First, it keeps tabs on knowledge.
It fills something into a register,
some numbers.
It accounts for knowledge.
It's like the accounts department in a large business.
Of course, the business has a production department.
This production department turns children into pupils.
It shapes them according to certain accepted templates.
Why?
To make them fit a particular view of society.
To make them fit in better.
This huge business,
because this business called 'education'
is really massive...
Does it have a creative department?
Or Research & Development?
Do they develop new approaches?
Above all, do they think about how to help children,
each individual child,
to blossom?
Not to make them fit in, but fulfill the potential
that exists in these children.
Each child has their own, enormous potential
and their own gifts.
Some are more creative,
some more intellectual, but each has some of both.
So, we thought about what we could do,
this group of enthusiasts who decided to take on education.
Where to start in helping children develop their talents
and fulfill their potential?
Where to start to make education, above all else, effective?
We put our money on curiosity.
We realized that it is an inherent quality
in every child.
Apparently someone has counted that during the course of one day,
every 4-year old can ask 437 questions.
(Laughter)
Assuming that it's only when they're awake,
it comes up to one question every 2 minutes.
Try to match that!
I think that I could keep up that rate
for maybe 15 minutes, or roughly the length of my talk.
But for the whole day, every day?
No way! Only a young child can keep it up.
There's one group of adults who remind us of children.
Scientists.
They also ask questions and seek answers.
So we came up with a great idea.
Let's bring these two groups together, children and scientists,
and let's see what comes out of it.
Before we arranged this meeting,
we decided to set the kids one question.
We didn't prompt them.
We asked school-kids
what they would like to learn from the scientists.
Our wildest imaginings were exceeded.
We received 700 unique questions.
(Laughter)
These are the just the first few.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
What did they ask about?
What can these 7-8 year olds want to know?
About everything.
Dinosaurs, of course.
Why did they die out?
Will the Earth will be sucked into a black hole one day?
Several different questions about that.
They also ask about what causes war
and whether it's true that for nations like for people,
war is caused by quarreling.
Why some people are rich while others are poor,
and where evil comes from.
Many different questions.
We had no doubt.
We have a great asset
with which to build our Creative Department
and our R&D Department.
What do we do in this department?
First of all, for the last five years
we've searched for new, better forms of education.
We are working intensively.
At the same time, the kids are carrying out their own research
on all kinds of science,
and they're developing themselves.
The Children's University was founded in 2007.
We're now in our fifth year.
Many kids go through it.
What do we do with them?
Our youngest students are 6 years old, and the eldest are 14.
They have a whole range of problems,
and of course, a whole range of educational needs.
We have to adapt to them
so that everyone can develop at his or her own pace.
We start with discovery.
We allow these 6-7 year olds
to do what they love best, to experiment.
They experience science actively and directly.
There's no sitting at a desk here.
When they're a little bit older we put them in a lecture hall
where adult students sit every day.
We invite lecturers enthusiastic about our programme
as passion, enthusiasm and engagement are the second pillar,
in addition to curiosity, which is important for us.
We inspire them, show them different subjects.
They really are able to grasp everything.
We start with life sciences
so that they become familiar with some basics
and learn how the world functions.
Then we move on to the humanities.
We show the human being as a creator,
who can discover the laws of nature.
Then, we move onto the social sciences,
to show how a person doesn't exist in isolation
and that something emerges from these social relationships.
It can be something good, but it can equally lead to war.
Then, it's physical science and engineering,
where we teach that, thanks to the laws of nature,
and because we are not alone, we can create something.
And that's how civilisation progresses.
Of course, we also teach maths
to let them learn certain concepts.
For older children,
we must do more than just satisfy their curiosity.
We suggest interesting, important subjects.
They learn by solving problems
and want to know 'why'.
Why is it like this and not different?
And finally, the middle-schoolers,
usually considered to be difficult.
It's a great group,
and we absolutely love working with them.
They expand their knowledge.
They already know what they want.
For example, they want to know about what genetics,
or want to learn to write simple programs.
We also have them meet with 'masters',
to help them build their first, wider view of the world.
We've managed to capture our answer to the question
of what education should look like.
We are developing it through our mission,
by developing the children's creative and intellectual potential,
so that they make use of their talents and knowledge.
Not only from the University but also from school,
and what they learn from the press, radio, film,
and from all the possibilities that they have in the world.
So that they can understand the world
and actively live and participate in it.
We've been received really well.
Many people think the same as us,
parents say they've been waiting for this.
Which is why we have a growing number of students.
The University has grown even beyond Cracow.
We're now working in Warsaw, Wrocław and Olsztyn.
This year we'll have around 8000 students.
University students in the fullest sense.
We'll have around 500 lecturers from 12 different universities.
We've also introduced this exciting programme to schools.
We've gained a foothold
and we won't give up easily.
Who governs the schools?
We have our own ideas,
but in reality, the decisions are taken somewhere else.
Is it the teachers?
Or a minister?
Maybe it's the EU and its directives?
Or is it the opposite? Maybe it's the economy?
Or the future job market?
Do the children govern the school? Or maybe even the parents?
We don't know.
The Children's University answers children's questions,
but it also asks questions of adults.
So I'm leaving this question with you.
(Applause)