Frainet's pedagogy — 30 Invariants for education

Celestin Frainet is a french educationalist who, in the first half of the 20th century, invented a new way of teaching to children. It was based on self-expression and autonomous learning based on experimentation, natural curiosity and democracy. At the end of his life, in 1964, we wrote* those 30 invariants (the word rule was prohibited) about education. Those statements can apply to any age, any student and I think this is totally fitting in here, echos back to previous texts, by Rancière e.g.

Invariant 1: The child is the same kind as us.
Invariant 2: Being taller does not necessarily mean being above the others.
Invariant 3: The school behaviour of a child depends on their physiological state, organic and constitutional.
Invariant 4: No one - the child nor adult - likes to be commanded.
Invariant 5: No one likes to line up, because to align is to passively obey an outside order.
Invariant 6: No one likes to be forced to do work, even if they don't particularly dislike the work. It is the constraint which is paralysing.
Invariant 7: Everyone likes to choose his work, even if the choice is not favourable.
Invariant 8: No one likes to behave like a robot, meaning to act on, and bow themselves to, thoughts inscribed in formulations to which they don't contribute.
Invariant 9: We need to motivate the work.
Invariant 10: No more scholastic.
Invariant 10a: Everyone wants to succeed. Failure is inhibitor, and destructive of enthusiasm.
Invariant 10b: It is not the game that is natural for children, but work.
Invariant 11: The normal method of acquisition is not the observation, explanation and demonstration, a process essential to the School, but experimental trials and errors, a natural and universal approach.
Invariant 12: The memory, which School values so much, is valid and valuable only when it is at the service of life.
Invariant 13: Acquisitions, unlike what is commonly believed, are not achieved by studying the rules and laws, but rather through experience. To learn languages, arts, mathematics and sciences by first learning their rules and laws is to to put the cart before the horse.
Invariant 14: Intelligence is not, as taught by the scholastics, a specific faculty operating in closed-circuit, independent of other vital elements of the individual.
Invariant 15: The school only cultivates an abstract form of intelligence, which operates, out of the living reality, through the intervention of words and ideas stuck in memory.
Invariant 16: The child dislikes listening to 'ex cathedra' lectures.
Invariant 17: The child will not get tired of working on something that is in line with his life, which is functional to him.
Invariant 18: No one, neither child nor adult, likes control and punishment. They are always considered an affront to his dignity, especially when they are conducted in public.
Invariant 19: Scores and rankings are always a mistake.
Invariant 20: Talk as little as possible.
Invariant 21: The child does not enjoy herd work to which he has to submit like a robot. He loves individual or team work in a cooperative community.
Invariant 22: Order and discipline are needed in class.
Invariant 23: Punishment is always wrong, they are humiliating for all parties involved and never reach their goal. They're a makeshift solution, at best.
Invariant 24: The School's new life requires school collaboration, that is to say management by its users (educator included) of school life and work.
Invariant 25: Class overcrowding is always a pedagogical error.
Invariant 26: The current design of large academic institutions results in the anonymity of teachers and students and is, therefore, always a mistake and an obstacle.
Invariant 27: One prepares tomorrow's democracy through School's democracy. An authoritarian regime in School cannot be formative of democratic citizens.
Invariant 28: Teaching can only occur in dignifying conditions. Respect children, they must respect their teachers in return: it is one of the first conditions for the renovation of the School.
Invariant 29: The opposition of the pedagogical reaction, component of the social and political reaction, is also an invariant with which we will have to, alas! deal with, as we are not able to avoid it or correct it.
Invariant 30: There is also an invariant which justifies all our trials and authenticates our action: it is the optimistic hope in life. 


*Célestin Freinet, Œuvres pédagogiques, Seuil, 1964.
Tome 2 : Les invariants pédagogiques.

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Links:
http://www.freinet.org/icem/history.htm
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More things for the french speakers :
— http://www.freinet.org/
— Invariants + Frainet's pedagogy (Wikipédia)
— Bio on Wikipédia
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