The Aims of Early Technical Education
1)
General
aims of early education
We start from the belief that
children enter the informal and later the formal educational system in order
that society can mould them into good citizens by encouraging their
independence of thought and furthering their abilities. Insofar as technology
has become an important aspect of all our lives, influencing us, supporting us and
at times relieving us of burdens, we need to ensure that children incorporate
technology into their learning processes from as early an age as is feasible.
Friedrich Fröbel believed
that a child's physical grasp of its world preceded its intellectual grasp, and
therefore stressed the importance of sufficient material for the child to
manipulate. Caregivers have the duty to take the child's curiosity seriously,
but also the duty not to be too intrusive whilst at the same time protecting
the childs world.
Maria Montessori stressed
the importance of play in the learning process, and the importance of the right
time to offer the child learning experiences. She stressed the development of
the senses, and the right of the child to be spontaneous and to develop his or
her freedom to experience their world.
Célestin Freinet believed
in the concept of providing experiential spaces for children, because he
considered learning to be both individualised and rooted in the real life of
that specific child.. The child learns to recognise his or her own needs and to
express wishes, thus forming and also taking responsibility for their own
development.
In the Reggio-Pädagogik the concept of social learning takes centre-stage.
The child learns from its surroundings, and takes in a very broad raft of
themes and concerns from its daily life. The questions that these raise for the
child are transformed into something understandable and malleable by exploration and experimentation.
This leads directly to the Situationsansatz method, which takes an
overall view of the child's situation, and designs learning situations from the
actual or current stage of development or concerns of the child. It is highly
individualized and takes account of the social circumstances of the child.
These are the general trends
of pre-school education and some elements of primary school pedagogy. Into this
framework we need to weave the elements of early technical education. We need
to look creatively at technology and technical and scientific education to see
how we can fit these into an overall concept of general aims for young
children's development.. The starting point is in the child's natural curiosity
about the world, and his or her questions - How? Why? What? Who? -need to be
taken seriously and to form the basis for the child's learning about scientific
and technical phenomena.
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