Video

Greetings VDA! I am curious to know more about how Mr. Lewis teaches note-taking to children. Is there a book on the topic? Thank you. 😊

Wonderful insites to Art appreciation!

I guess my parents are perfect balance. Not too Chinese actually not Chinese at all but not too westerners .. m lucky .. Nd these Chinese concept of hardwork is right however rest is disgusting .. what's wrong with play rehearsal or bf .. what if their brain is more effective towards acting than on maths Nd stuffs . I have a lot to say about this essay maybe that's why it's under definition and argumentation

Chinese mom are only caring there daughter not son...lol...eg...Eileen Gu and rudacuna

You are definitely a part of the soft western parents Chu mentions, and everyone else on this comment section as well. Bunch of soft snowballs

I'd like to see some people revisit this article. Especially, knowing what we know now about the "Model Minority Myth."

Thank you so much for sharing! Gives me great ideas on what I should expect from my kids' education.

I'm a science teacher and I just discovered your channel. I contemplated the title of this video for a while before watching it, and the criteria for success you laid out are exactly the same as what I see as educational success. I look forward to watching more of your videos!

:)

Thank you so much for this explanation! How awesome. I will make this connection for my 5 year old.

Oh my, the audio is SOOO LOW and muffled! I am eager to hear the details - I will extract this video and fix the audio track first... P.S. I have edited this video so the audio track is boosted and normalized - if you would like the edited file (VanDamme Academy only) I will get it to you if you would like. :) - It is MUCH easier to hear and understand.

Amazing approach!

Wonderful!

Hi

"Mostly, the studying that I do is for myself." Zara, 3rd grade @14:12. Some highlights: 1. No homework @47:55 2. No letter grades through 5th grade @46:00 3. Mr. Steele's 5th grade History class: freedom and science @37:39 4. Hierarchy @40:25 5. And finally, the future @1:00:37

14:34 The name of the book is "Between Parent and Child", from Dr. Haim G. Ginott.

4:53 - 4:59: Those two kids look vaguely familiar. ;-)

Thank you.

David Rovner . School Science Courses Don't Teach Science at All ! . When educators discuss the "basics" that all students have to be taught in school, no subject receives more intense support than Science. We are told that of all things that are important for youngsters who will grow up to be adults in the 21st century, knowledge of science ranks first. This is the standard justification for vast science curricula, from elementary school through high school, supported by expensive textbooks and equipment, staffed by an army of teachers. It will therefore probably come as a surprise to most readers that virtually everything we have been told on this subject is pure myth. NOWHERE IN OUR SCHOOLS TODAY IS SCIENCE BEING TAUGHT. We are being hood-winked. Here is the scoop. Science as an enterprise of the human intellect is distinguished by certain fundamental characteristics. Let me list the most important ones: 1. Scientists must first and foremost be careful observers, noting meticulously the behavior of whatever it is they are studying. They must never obfuscate or deny the data. 2. Scientists must learn to tease more information out of their subjects than is available at first sight. They must learn to design experiments that ask questions which can yield meaningful answers -- answers that are INTERESTING to them. And they must carefully and honestly record the answers, regardless of whether or not they are what the experimenters expected or hoped for. 3. Scientists -- especially good, creative scientists, the kind we are eager to have in abundance -- must learn to use their imaginations freely, to design meaningful new explanations for new observations. To do this effectively, they must keep their minds as open as they can be, and minimize their burden of prejudices and preconceptions. Good scientists, then, must be intensely curious, careful, honest, imaginative, and flexible in their thinking. To make these points even clearer, let's contrast science with the discipline generally considered to be its polar opposite: Religion. The differences virtually jump out at you. The starting point of religion is FAITH, which must perforce be beyond (though not necessarily in contradiction to) rational analysis. Religion is based in a set of dogmas, generally believed to be divinely inspired, and certainly not derived from any mere exercise of human intellect. Great theologians must be well versed in intricate traditions often handed down for thousand of years, and elaborated on by hundreds of great thinkers before them. Innovation in religion, to the extent that it occurs, takes place through Divine intervention, not through human endeavor. Now let's take a look at what passes for science instruction in the schools today. Lo and behold, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing! Science is everywhere presented in the form of religion! THE MAIN, INDEED THE ONLY SIGNIFICANT ACTIVITY PURSUED IN ALL SCIENCE CLASSES IS THE TEACHING OF THE LAST CURRENT SCIENTIFIC THEORIES IN THE FORM OF DOGMATIC TRUTHS. The textbooks are the repositories of these dogmas. From the books, children are taught HOW THINGS ARE. They learn the vocabulary of science ("scientific literacy"!), the "laws" of science, the heroes of science (science's equivalent of holy man or saints). The very use of the word "law" is a dead give-away: regardless of what real scientists may mean when they use the word, teachers and students of science in school take the word "law" to mean a strict description off how or why something happens. Scientific laws are understood to be true, unchangeable realities. Few people realize that virtually every "law" written in today's textbooks differs completely from the "laws" that were written in textbooks a century ago; those, in turn, bore little resemblance to what appeared as "laws" two centuries ago; and few scientists will disagree that the "laws" that will be current one hundred years in the future will have little if anything in common with what the schools teach as scientific truth today. The object of science courses as taught in the schools is to cram into kids' heads as much information as possible about the latest thinking of scientists. The students are given no choice about accepting or rejecting any of this material: it is represented as truth, and when they are examined, students are expected to repeat it and regurgitate it in the same form that was given to them. In fact, one of the main features of the much-ballyhooed national standards the President and Governors are pushing is the introduction of a series of examinations on science given to all students nationwide, in order to promote the widest possible absorption of the latest scientific dogmas. Worse even than the classroom lectures and the textbooks are the various science laboratory courses and fieldwork. Although virtually every lab manual goes on and on about the importance of observation, careful recording, etc., the fact is that all lab experiments are prescriptions FOR WHICH THE "RIGHT" OUTCOME IS KNOWN IN ADVANCE -- an outcome that students are expected to get, or else. Thus, a student who carefully measures everything he is told to (already a sad departure from real science) and finds that acceleration of gravity according to his experiment, is 35 ft/sec/sec, is not praised for having discovered a new fact, but is told that he has messed up the experiment, since the right answer is 32 ft/sec/sec. Not only isn't the lab science, it's worse: it gives the exact wrong impression of what science is, by making the students believe that even before they begin, there is some "right" answer that is pre-ordained. What a far cry from discovering truth through unprejudiced observation! The last thing any science classroom is set up to accommodate is a group of students who are genuinely curious about their surroundings and want to set about studying things that really interest them on their own initiative. Nor can it handle students who have their own ideas about how to explain things, and who want to play with these ideas, discuss them, test them out. Such activities will not yield good test scores, won't prepare students for Achievement Tests or Advanced Placement -- in other words, won't produce any of the results the schools care most about. The simple fact is that students who would do things that really trained them to be good scientists would not fit into the schools' massive science programs at all. All those claims made by educators about the importance of science in the curriculum are baloney -- expensive baloney; and they produce the opposite of what they promise. They produce passive students who do what they're told, memorize what they're supposed to, work hard to get the results they are told are correct, and totally suppress their curiosity, their imagination, and their critical abilities. The scientific enterprise in this country would probably be way ahead of the game if the existing science instruction at the pre-college level was abolished altogether. "School Science Courses Don't Teach Science at All !", EDUCATION IN AMERICA, A View from Sudbury Valley School, Daniel Greenberg, 1992. - czcams.com/video/awOAmTaZ4XI/video.html . Up next AUTOPLAY

. School Science Courses Don't Teach Science at All ! . When educators discuss the "basics" that all students have to be taught in school, no subject receives more intense support than Science. We are told that of all things that are important for youngsters who will grow up to be adults in the 21st century, knowledge of science ranks first. This is the standard justification for vast science curricula, from elementary school through high school, supported by expensive textbooks and equipment, staffed by an army of teachers. It will therefore probably come as a surprise to most readers that virtually everything we have been told on this subject is pure myth. NOWHERE IN OUR SCHOOLS TODAY IS SCIENCE BEING TAUGHT. We are being hood-winked. Here is the scoop. Science as an enterprise of the human intellect is distinguished by certain fundamental characteristics. Let me list the most important ones: 1. Scientists must first and foremost be careful observers, noting meticulously the behavior of whatever it is they are studying. They must never obfuscate or deny the data. 2. Scientists must learn to tease more information out of their subjects than is available at first sight. They must learn to design experiments that ask questions which can yield meaningful answers -- answers that are INTERESTING to them. And they must carefully and honestly record the answers, regardless of whether or not they are what the experimenters expected or hoped for. 3. Scientists -- especially good, creative scientists, the kind we are eager to have in abundance -- must learn to use their imaginations freely, to design meaningful new explanations for new observations. To do this effectively, they must keep their minds as open as they can be, and minimize their burden of prejudices and preconceptions. Good scientists, then, must be intensely curious, careful, honest, imaginative, and flexible in their thinking. To make these points even clearer, let's contrast science with the discipline generally considered to be its polar opposite: Religion. The differences virtually jump out at you. The starting point of religion is FAITH, which must perforce be beyond (though not necessarily in contradiction to) rational analysis. Religion is based in a set of dogmas, generally believed to be divinely inspired, and certainly not derived from any mere exercise of human intellect. Great theologians must be well versed in intricate traditions often handed down for thousand of years, and elaborated on by hundreds of great thinkers before them. Innovation in religion, to the extent that it occurs, takes place through Divine intervention, not through human endeavor. Now let's take a look at what passes for science instruction in the schools today. Lo and behold, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing! Science is everywhere presented in the form of religion! THE MAIN, INDEED THE ONLY SIGNIFICANT ACTIVITY PURSUED IN ALL SCIENCE CLASSES IS THE TEACHING OF THE LAST CURRENT SCIENTIFIC THEORIES IN THE FORM OF DOGMATIC TRUTHS. The textbooks are the repositories of these dogmas. From the books, children are taught HOW THINGS ARE. They learn the vocabulary of science ("scientific literacy"!), the "laws" of science, the heroes of science (science's equivalent of holy man or saints). The very use of the word "law" is a dead give-away: regardless of what real scientists may mean when they use the word, teachers and students of science in school take the word "law" to mean a strict description off how or why something happens. Scientific laws are understood to be true, unchangeable realities. Few people realize that virtually every "law" written in today's textbooks differs completely from the "laws" that were written in textbooks a century ago; those, in turn, bore little resemblance to what appeared as "laws" two centuries ago; and few scientists will disagree that the "laws" that will be current one hundred years in the future will have little if anything in common with what the schools teach as scientific truth today. The object of science courses as taught in the schools is to cram into kids' heads as much information as possible about the latest thinking of scientists. The students are given no choice about accepting or rejecting any of this material: it is represented as truth, and when they are examined, students are expected to repeat it and regurgitate it in the same form that was given to them. In fact, one of the main features of the much-ballyhooed national standards the President and Governors are pushing is the introduction of a series of examinations on science given to all students nationwide, in order to promote the widest possible absorption of the latest scientific dogmas. Worse even than the classroom lectures and the textbooks are the various science laboratory courses and fieldwork. Although virtually every lab manual goes on and on about the importance of observation, careful recording, etc., the fact is that all lab experiments are prescriptions FOR WHICH THE "RIGHT" OUTCOME IS KNOWN IN ADVANCE -- an outcome that students are expected to get, or else. Thus, a student who carefully measures everything he is told to (already a sad departure from real science) and finds that acceleration of gravity according to his experiment, is 35 ft/sec/sec, is not praised for having discovered a new fact, but is told that he has messed up the experiment, since the right answer is 32 ft/sec/sec. Not only isn't the lab science, it's worse: it gives the exact wrong impression of what science is, by making the students believe that even before they begin, there is some "right" answer that is pre-ordained. What a far cry from discovering truth through unprejudiced observation! The last thing any science classroom is set up to accommodate is a group of students who are genuinely curious about their surroundings and want to set about studying things that really interest them on their own initiative. Nor can it handle students who have their own ideas about how to explain things, and who want to play with these ideas, discuss them, test them out. Such activities will not yield good test scores, won't prepare students for Achievement Tests or Advanced Placement -- in other words, won't produce any of the results the schools care most about. The simple fact is that students who would do things that really trained them to be good scientists would not fit into the schools' massive science programs at all. All those claims made by educators about the importance of science in the curriculum are baloney -- expensive baloney; and they produce the opposite of what they promise. They produce passive students who do what they're told, memorize what they're supposed to, work hard to get the results they are told are correct, and totally suppress their curiosity, their imagination, and their critical abilities. The scientific enterprise in this country would probably be way ahead of the game if the existing science instruction at the pre-college level was abolished altogether. "School Science Courses Don't Teach Science at All !", EDUCATION IN AMERICA, A View from Sudbury Valley School, Daniel Greenberg, 1992. - czcams.com/video/awOAmTaZ4XI/video.html .

Thank you for sharing this! I love the explanation on the 3 year cycle.

Good stuff.

Great stuff! I understand you don't want to grow the school or franchise, etc. But maybe you could sell videolectures of the classes? Would be a great example about how teach children / homeschool. And adults like me could actually learn a lot from it as well!

This was really valuable information to me!

So is it "have read" or "has read"?!

Thank you.

you sounded a little nervous...

Do you accept 55 year old students?

I need a place like this near me for my kids!

What a beautiful story. As a teacher, I'll have to watch this a few more times.

Phenomenal

Amazing, wish there were more options like this in New England.

Not just a school. A sense of life

A LITTLE CANDLE, "SHEDDING LIGHT IN A WEARY WORLD" Education has burning questions, and there are no easy answers. But everyone would agree that there IS something that can happen in the childhood stage, when a child, OPENS his eyes, to the beauty and the sense of wonder of the world... This is a school doing that, creating an environment that makes a child develop his curiosity and 'wisdom and depth of soul" THERE IS A LOT THAT HAS BEEN SEEN AND DISCOVERED BY THE GREAT THINKERS DOWN THE AGES, THAT NEEDS TO BE PROFOUNDLY TRANSMITTED. Literature, History, Math, Sciences is here taught with the SAME spirit of enquiry, deep thinking, opening the eyes, with passionate educating, sharing while deeply respecting the child's unique soul, mind and needs. The children THEMSELVES feel that sacred, precious feeling, knowing that this stage in this beautiful school, "is the best thing that has happened in their lives" Watch this documentary and definitely, it will inspire all educators, parents,and even students to think, of how important it is to truly ask questions, find meaning and joy in learning, and translate that into a life long passion, and dedication to a purpose!! --NARENDRA

I wish there was a VanDamme Academy in every city in the world.

4:01 OPAR right on display!!

I have been waiting for over a year to see this. Just sitting down now to watch it. Very excited! :-)

Amazing!

Thank you, Lisa VanDamme, for starting this wonderful school and for producing this documentary! I was proud to contribute to help support its production. I think it turned out quite well.

So proud of you.

Loved it!

Have you ever thought you could expand to multiple schools?

If you create a university you will become a billionaire. And I would certainly be one of the students.

Would anyone be able to provide links to the books talked about in this stream?

Wow. Such a simple message, yet so effective. I still find writing, to communicate, difficult. I think it is going to take practice.

Nice tribute. Thanks. Also, another reason to be very cautious with Socrates and his ilk. From kim komando concerning bad apps: f you're like a lot of parents, you've learned to love Echo's voice-activated assistant Alexa and the video site CZcams. They each have loads of helpful information - and answers - when your kids and you are struggling to figure out answers. That's a good thing and so is the homework-helper app Socratic Math & Homework Help. The problem is that it's too easy for kids to cheat their way through homework. This app provides answers without walking kids through the steps, so they don't actually have to learn anything when they're getting the answers. Not what their teacher hand in mind when they assigned homework."" TY DR LVD. $

We needed to care about our grades in high school or middle school because that's the only thing that matters. The content surely didn't matter. 90% of it is things you learn and forget in 6 months. Even 5 years later, can you really still factor a polynomial? Do a quadratic equation? Did we really need to listen to some 14 year old butcher MacBeth during group reading in English class? So since none of the content matters one iota, the grades are the only thing left to bother about. I just slid through until grade 11 and 12 where marks mattered for uni. After that I naturally forgot it all, like everyone else.